back-to-square-one: Back to Square One
by Robert Knoth
Chira in 2009. Her father Gholam passed away a year after the summer of 2001. The girl firmly clutches the first picture she has ever seen of the father she cannot remember. Her mother Kalam Niso is not impressed: “What good is a picture to me? Why don’t you bring money?” This week she had to sell a 7 kg bag of rice to pay for Chira’s visit to the ‘doctor’, a trader without any medical training who buys medicine in town to sell to the villagers. Three of Kalam Niso’s children have died when they were small.
