KABUL, Afghanistan - They dart between several lanes of heavy stop-and-go traffic, some barely tall enough to peer at the drivers of the cars who studiously ignore them.
With dry rags, they smear the dust on windshields, or press boxes of cheap facial tissue or gum against closed windows, tapping on the glass in a vain attempt to get attention.
They are the small pockets of uncounted street kids in the teeming, raucous city of Kabul.
For them, the typical Afghan storylines of insurgents, soldiers, governments and billions in aid and reconstruction dollars disappear amid the realities of minute-by-minute survival.
"I'm not happy," seven-year-old Fatimah said during a recent break from her daily routine, fidgeting with the folded, filthy cloth she uses to wipe windshields.
"I want to go to school. I want to be at home, to do my homework and do the work of home, not be outside."
Her mother does laundry for others; her father lost both his legs to a mine blast, said Fatimah, who -- along with her four siblings -- contributes her meagre earnings to help feed the family.
Fatimah's begging day starts at 7 a.m. and lasts until 6 p.m. Her window swipes earn her at best a few coins from the occasional sympathetic motorist.
"We clean cars and they give us 10 rupees, 20 rupees. Sometimes they give us free money," she said, estimating she makes about 40 afghanis in a day --barely the equivalent of a U.S. dollar.
"I buy bread and the rest I give to my mom."
They weave expertly through indifferent, exhaust-belching traffic, mere steps from potential catastrophe, their faces desperate, disturbing -- even menacing.
Metres from the roadway in the quiet of a large, treed park, however, those same faces melt into the sweet earnestness of kids anywhere.
"We have so many problems," said Noorullah, who gives his age as 14 but looks barely 11 or 12.
His parents are at home and his father works only sometimes, he said. He no longer goes to school.
"We don't have food at home -- we don't have bread, oil, those sorts of things -- so we have to earn money this way so we can buy wheat and oil."
Noorullah carries a large plastic bag with boxes of facial tissue he buys cheaply at a market. Sometimes, if a car window is open, he simply pitches a box onto the back seat to try to force payment.
On a good day, he said, he makes between 100 and 200 afghanis -- almost $4 on the high end.
"I don't like it -- it's not good, selling these things on the road. There's a chance of accidents. I wish I could go to school."
Nazir Muhammad, 38, who has worked the park for past several years as a portrait photographer, said he finds it distressing to constantly see the young beggars plying their trade.
"These children are the future of Afghanistan but, as there are no children's rights in Afghanistan, I feel very sad to see them begging and asking for money," said Muhammad, himself a father of four.
"There is no support for them. As a Muslim, as an elder, as an Afghan national, I really feel sad about them."
Five-year-old Yargul bravely asserts he's never ill, a claim belied by his runny nose and quickly contradicted, in a big-sister kind of way, by Fatimah, who insisted he once had a sore throat and chest problems.
Yargul looks like he might cry. But self-pity does not seem to rank among the reflections of these children, despite their clear awareness that the reality they endure is grim, their prospects for the future hardly less so.
Fatimah, for one, has not given up hope.
"If I can be at home," she said, "it's going to be a good life for me."
