SIDON: The hardworking shoeshiners of Sidon often find themselves chased down the streets by the police who consider them to be an annoyance and a source of chaos. This feeling however is not shared by all security officers. Some of them have apparently adopted a more lenient method of dealing with the young boys who earned their living out of “a brush, a box and a little paint,” as one police officer who wished to remain anonymous put it, adding that it was not his job to “fight and bully those poor folks.”
As for the shoeshiners themselves, they roam the streets of the city searching for “a decent income away from begging.”
Moustafa al-Ahmad, an 11-year-old shoeshiner. has been in the business for three years and is constantly playing the cat and mouse game with the city’s police. With the help of a shoe-shiner colleague, Ahmad was able to mislead the local security forces on Wednesday on Sidon’s Riad al-Solh Boulevard.
The colleague, Abdel-Kader Hamade said helping Ahmad was “a noble act.”
“There cannot be three shoe shiners on one street because it’s bad for business; each one should work alone and trust Allah,” he added.
The young shoeshiners are always weary, they are afraid to talk to anyone including the press for fear of being reported to police.
Ahmad talks about how he was threatened to be put in jail.
“The police pulled my ears and told me that if I ever show my face again on the streets, I’ll be put in prison” he said.
“You shouldn’t always believe what the police say,” Hamade was quick to answer
Ahmad has never been to school and does not hold Lebanese citizenship, but if he had his chance at education he said he’d want to become a lawyer to “defend the poor.”
As a shoeshiner the young boy divides his clients into three categories: the “regulars” who pay LL500, the “chiefs” who pay LL 1,000 and the “big shots” who pay even more.
Street shoeshiners earn around LL 15,000 LBP per day, a small sum they usually shared with their parents.
“Our clients today are no longer restricted to men since women too have been seeking our services,” the boys said.