(Beirut) I heard her crying on a corner of the street as I walked back to my hotel after dinner. It was 11pm at night and the girl looked no more than 10 years-old. She wiped a dirty tear from her face with the sleeve of a dirty pink sweatshirt and was holding onto a bunch of roses - sitting in yellow water of a used water bottle. As roughed up as she looked, I could tell she had been outside for a couple of days.
I didn’t know whether or not she would understand me, but I squatted down and asked anyway, “Are you ok? What’s wrong?”
She could tell I was trying to help. She spoke quickly - in Arabic - and pointed to another bar down the road. I didn’t quite understand, but almost immediately, a young man noticed the girl speaking to me and came over to help. He translated, “Apparently, she says, some guy smacked her in the face with one of her roses.”
He walked toward the bar where the girl was pointing. I held out my hand to help her up. The man asked a group of three standing outside what happened, explaining in Arabic what the girl told us. After a back and forth, he turned to me and said, “They’re blaming her.” According to the trio, the girl knocked over a cocktail glass and broke it. I was horrified; she is just a kid, that didn’t give him the right to hit her. The translator agreed, but said there was nothing to be done. By the time I turned around, the girl was running back down the street.
She wasn’t the only child I encountered in Beirut, selling flowers.
They’re out every night, around the bars and streets, asking for money, giving people roses. One boy, I saw almost every night, 6 or 7 years old, maybe, understood me a little better than the girl, enough to sell a rose and say thank you when I bought one. He was short, shaggy hair, always in a jeans and t-shirt and a light jacket, he had pudgy cheeks and a shy smile. He seemed to be well known on Gemmayze Street, several bartenders and store owners spoke to him and waved when he walked by. He would sell his roses, hail a cab and move on.
One night, on my way back to the hotel, a tall lanky kid, he looked about 12 or 13 years old, walked up to me with a little "gangsta-swag" in his step, a huge grin crossed his face and he handed me one of the roses, "you want one," it was statement, not a question. I raised my eyebrows, smiled back and asked, "Shouldn't you be in bed?" He scrunched his face and retorted back, "Aw, c'mon!" I only had 10,000 Lira in my purse, I pulled it out and gave it to him and told him to keep his flower, give it to his sister, whatever. He face gleamed as he said, 'Merci!' I walked away shaking my head and smirking. Cute kid. He was with an older boy, probably late teens, drinking a beer and watching the kid like a hawk.
It was my soft spot, the small moments I let my guard down, just a little. They were kids. The one place I had no strength to say, 'no.' And yet this was common place. You won't find, really any, reputable news articles on these kids, NGO statistics seem to be scarce and what little I could find were a few testimonies of others who have met them: some reacting to children who acted out violently, others describing how the kids would talk about their 'boss.' Some of the Beirut locals I spoke with said the kids were Syrian, others from poor families, and others kidnapped - raped and/or forced to work.
I kept wondering, how many of them will end up criminals? Picked by gangs, extremists groups or enter sex slave trade?
The Ministry of Social Affairs in Beirut released a commercial video earlier in 2013 noting the money often given to the young kids on the street don't go to them or their families, rather adults who are abusing the children's vulnerability. What more they are doing to prevent the children from being in the streets is unclear. And for now, without the help or sufficiency of aid organizations, rescue efforts from the government seem to be far from in place.
In retrospect, I wonder if my attempt to help the girl I met did any good. I never saw her again. Although, I wish I had.
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