Joy!

Our first ever video call with Yasheen, our Egyptian flower boy, known to many of you from this journal, and also from my book.

We managed to connect to him after over a year without knowing if he was OK due to Covid. His work life selling flowers on 26th July Street in Zamalek, Cairo continues as always but the news is that, now 21 years old, he is married and has a son of a few months!

He was absolutely delighted to see us 'live' and ran up and down the stairs of his mother's modest home to show us his possessions including bunches of flowers, ready for selling, out back and the Swatch watch I presented to him on one of my last visits . . . exactly the same as the one I wear.

It's ten years since we first 'adopted' him.  I'm always moved when I think about Kendall's line that he is our child in the sense that all the children in the world are 'our children' but as regards Yasheen, that she particuallry thinks of him as ours.  So it seemed today.