the crying girl

This is Lékyi and Métsal at the Nir Café, or the Toast Bakery, or the Nir Toast Bakery, or something. They have interesting bread that looks like Western bread but still tastes like incense or flowers combined with garlic. They also have a fab fresh fruit salad one can eat with impunity. It has pomegranate seeds in it, which indicates that labor is cheap here (which it is) or else we're in the Underworld.

The Nir Café is at the end of a dark alley or arcade. Several times, when coming or going from the restaurant we are accosted by a girl who looks about eight years old. She's crying and she will only stop crying after she has hugged and been hugged by all the women in our group and sometimes the men as well. Sometimes she starts crying again and everybody has to hug her again. She seems particularly obsessed with hugging round shaped women so I come in for a lot of this.



After a while a small Western woman with henna'd hair and a Tibetan jacket shows up and leads her away. But she usually starts crying again and has to hug everybody all over again. I can't figure out what nationality she is but she has very shiny, fine, curly hair and a round face. Indian maybe? I don't know. She seems stuck in some permanent misery. She gives these desperate but somehow perfunctory hugs. I don't have a picture of her because I find I don't want to initiate any interaction with her.

This is a group of people waiting for some other people to be ready to go to dinner.