Afghan child workers find hope in classroom

When Karim heard that thousands of Americans were killed in New York, a city he knew little about, he knew that war would be coming soon to his family. Other friends in the destitute Qal-e Ab Chakhan neighborhood hurriedly packed their belongings and fled to villages outside Kabul, but Karim's family was too poor to leave.

So they spent the next three months in the basement of a friend's house, and waited for the bombs to fall.

"There was nothing to do but wait for death," says Karim, without emotion. "We were not near a military installation, but there was a TV tower on the top of our hill, and on the first night of bombing, they attacked that hill. We didn't have glass windows, we just had plastic sheeting, but we could hear the windows of our neighbor's house shattering."

During this time, Karim's studies halted. He didn't have any books to read, any paper to draw on. He says he even forgot to change his clothes.

"We thought we would be completely destroyed, so there was no need for pen and paper, or for clothes," he says. "Every night, we tied a cloth over our noses and mouths. They said that nuclear bombs will be dropped on Kabul, so we were afraid of the poison. Even now, sometimes when I dream, I hear the sound of the B-52s."

In Karim's class, most of the boys and girls paint architectural monuments, holding a photograph or postcard in one hand, and a paintbrush in another. But even here, there is no escaping the ravages of war. Most monuments, from the blue-domed shrine of Hazrat Ali, one of the prophet Muhammad's closest companions, in Mazar-e Sharif to the leaning minarets of Ghazni are shot full of bulletholes, pocked by 23 years of war.

A more striking change is the sudden resurgence of portrait painting, something forbidden under the Taliban's strict injunction against "graven images" and idolatry. Up on the walls, there are several renditions of the famous green-eyed "Afghan girl" on the cover of National Geographic magazine.

"There are lots of changes now," says Karim. "During Taliban times, we couldn't even wear pants, we had to wear salwar kameez [a traditional baggy Afghan outfit]. And we couldn't draw pictures of human beings. Now we can do that easily."

Yet there is much about Karim's life that hasn't changed. His father is still too old to work; his mother still washes clothes for a living in other people's homes. His older brother still shines shoes, and his younger brothers still stay at home, too young and too poor to get an education.

Karim's new job of shouting at a taxi stand earns more money: nearly 40,000 Afghanis ($8.50) a day, compared with 15,000 per day picking through trash. But his throat is perpetually raw, and other more aggressive boys always seem to get more customers.

But every day, Karim looks forward to his morning classes with an enthusiasm that might surprise children in, say, America. "Mostly, I enjoy painting, but now I can read and write, and I can read the Holy Koran," he says. "I'll stay here until they tell me to go."

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