Little gangsters

'If you wanna swear, swear to my face you wuss, don't go swearing to my friend, you hear me?' said the chubby little seven-year-old menacingly to his classmate.

No, I'm not making this up. Kids here are strange. You always see them beating each other up and fighting. Sure, when we were kids we used to beat each other up as well, but not like this.

During class today, we had to take a break because a terrible scream emanated from just outside the apartment door. Sounded like a child in excruciating pain. Muallima returned, beaming.
'I'ts nothing to worry about, the neighbour's just spanking her child.'
'But...for what? What did it do?'
'Oh, it just doesn't want to come in after playing in the snow...'

Of course, then we had an argument about spanking children. Muallima and I have quite alot of arguments, always ending in her getting pissed off and then trying to hurt my feelings in some (utterly pathetic) way. And then she wants my forgiveness for a week to come.

I'll probably miss all of this this when I'm out of here, but it's pretty tiring the way people here are so, backwards, for the lack of a better word (and how they are always so stuck up and easily-offended). They keep wondering why every other nation is ahead of them, and they think it's just material progress, but they never stop to think that that maybe, just maybe, they have to change their way of thinking regarding some things. Like spanking children, or wives for that matter. Muallima thinks its fully justifiable in some circumstances, like if the wife doesn't keep the house tidy enough for her husband.

Sometimes when she rants her nonsense (martyrs' bodies never rot, the water in Dushanbe is not making you sick etc), I just nod and smile. No need in upsetting her.