CAIRO — She has a baby in her arms and another growing inside. She says she knows about love, says she found it on the streets, where boys fight with razors and a one-armed glue-huffer whispers the pretty things a girl yearns to hear before she curls and sleeps in the abandoned buildings that clutter Cairo's heart.
Amira Osman Dakhly left the streets a few days ago, rushing past the new houses on the hill to the homeless shelter, the one with yellow walls and toddlers in the courtyard. She'll stay, maybe until next month, or maybe until tonight. That's the thing about Amira, she changes direction as quick as a starling in a winter sky.
But for now, the 13-year-old with the snug white blouse and gap-tooth smile will sit and talk, cracking her knuckles and squinting her eyes, narrow and thin, like shutter slats.
One of her love stories began after she quit first grade. Her mother left home to marry a rich man, and her father, a taxi driver with a drug habit, took up with women. Amira's four sisters were divvied among family. She chose the city's streets and alleys, wandering between broken cars and rubbish bins, pretending to be as glittery as moonlight. That's how she felt in her new dress, the one she stole from a store a few nights before she met Ahmed, a 24-year-old waiter in a coffee shop.
"I love him," says Amira, holding Randa, the 18-month-old daughter she had with Ahmed. "I had an affair with him four years ago. I love him because he protected me. When anybody bothered me, he'd fight for me, and when it got cold he took me into his house. I still love him. I saw him last Friday."
There are reasons why there has been no wedding: They couldn't afford marriage, he didn't want to, she was too young, life plays tricks, and the streets, hard as they are, sometimes offer more comfort than a grown man's bed.
Then there are the problems with Randa that can twist a street girl's wiles inside out. Randa is a numberless child of a child; in the eyes of the state she doesn't exist.
In Egypt, where Islam and tradition can intertwine at the harshest places, a single mother bumps against walls in all directions. Until 2008, the government stipulated that a child's birth certificate and identity card could be granted only if the father signed the documents. Amended legislation allows mothers to register their children, but human rights groups say that in cases such as Amira's, state officials are reluctant to grant birth certificates or have yet to be informed about the new guidelines.
