Friends

With the school holidays Bilaal has been seeing alot of the neighbours' kids. They don't always get to play together in the week because both kids go to aftercare so they come home quite late. The nice thing about living in a complex with security guards is that it is safe for them to move between each others houses or even play in the driveway between our houses. I would never ever otherwise allow Bilaal to go across to the neighbour without me watching his every step until he was inside their house, or play outside in the street even if right infront of the house. How things have changed! I rememeber how my brother at 5 years was able to go quite safely from neighbour to neighbour and we would simply call out for him from the yard when it was bath time, knowing that one of the neigbours would send him home.

The funny thing is Bilaal reminds me so much of my brother at this age. He was that kid. I supposed it's because we lived in the middle of our end of the street so he was friends with the nieghbours all around us and so he was the common denominator between all the other boys. Rameez is also a very friendly, confident person and has always loved being social. So as a result he was always friends with everyone. I remember the one neighbour's kid, Subair, used to knock at our door 8am in the morning on weekends and I would usually be the one to answer the door with sleep in my eyes and in my pjs to a little boy asking "is Rameez here?"... To which I would reply in a most irritated tone, "It's too early, come back later!"

I chuckle when I think about it now. Of course as they got older it wasn't so much the mornings that annoyed my teenage self, it was the constant presence of these irritating little tweenies, because they were ALWAYS at our house. Bilaal is a little like that with these 2 neighbours kids. Only this time I am not annoyed, but happy that he gets to have this experience of friendship outside of school. In the mornings the first one arrives at about 9.30 am and Bilaal is usually still milling around in his pjs unless we have somewhere to go. If we go out in the morning, we only need to pull into the parking space on return and out pops the 2 friends and follow us inside. They don't even give us a chance to put our bags down and they're already there ready to play. Both kids' parents work and are looked after by a domestic worker, so if they are here at lunch time, I normally give them lunch too. My only gripe is that sometimes the playstation tends to dominate play, so I always monitor and limit the time they are allowed to spend in front of the T.V. I find it amazing that they don't play outside in the garden more often. I usually have to encourage them to play with a ball, because they always want to be inside with the cars and toys. Sumayah of course thinks she's one of the boys, always trying to get in on the action when they are playing with the toys.

Bilaal and Oscar who lives opposite us.

Seth lives next door

Sumayah thinks she's one of the boys

Uncle Rameez