to see his take on "life here".
"It is very hot here, but not as hot as there. It's about 35 or 38 in
the middle of the day. By this time of the summer it's usually over 40.
I go to school which is two hours and ten minutes long. When I go, I
have to get in line but sometimes I get scolded because I was late or I
didn't come the day before. When a boy shows up late he has to stand by
the door because there's no seats for him. There are about 43 boys in
my class. I do at least one page from about three different books,
which are D--i, Xat sometimes which is calligraphy, and math, in D--i.
Ok? After school, I meet a friend that is bigger than me named R----. I
don't know the other boy's name but he likes to walk me home and I like
to walk home with him. I like being with him. And then he goes to
school when he's done walking me home.
In afternoons at 6 o'clock I go and play soccer with other friends that
don't go to school at the same time as I come out of school. There are
a couple boys who are neighbors to R---- and a couple are my neighbors.
They speak D--i mostly but my teacher speaks both, both U----i and
D--i. The Mudir sayib that I really liked who is gone now always spoke
to me in U----i, so the teachers do, too. They think I'm from here but
they also think I've been to somewhere where I learned U----i like
U-----stan or Turkey.
The people here use dish soap, in the city but not in the villages, to
wash dishes. And they make their houses out of mud and straw bricks
either sun-dried or baked. We wear koylagi ishton, the men do, and the
women wear panjobis. Women put on scarves and chawdaris because one of
the rules here is that men can only look at women who trust them. The
capitol is K---l. People use planes and huge Pakistani trucks for
taking bricks, hay, food, rams, sheep, cows, that kind of thing. The
most popular trucks are Surfs and Prados. People use rickshaws and
corollas for taxis. Villagers use horses, donkeys, and camels. We
don't have UN helicopters but we do see ISAF helicopters because we live
very close to an ISAF landing pad. So they always, almost every day, go
around our house." Isaac
