Initially, at a distance the smaller one was showing me the bottom of her feet. An older girl scolded her for this. Once they saw the camera they smiled and crept forward over time. I imagine that to them, living in the middle of nowhere in the middle of an even bigger nowhere, it must have been really something to have someone finding them interesting enough to take their photograph.
After a while, one of the boys from the previous day, still wearing an "Iraq" t-shirt, sat between the truck and the girls, and scolded them, apparently telling them to hide their faces. He even stood defiant in front of the truck at one point.
Eventually a woman came out and shewed them away. I have to remind myself sometimes that I'm sitting in an up-armored Humvee with a huge gun on top. A member of an invading force, in a war torn country where western influence is not exactly welcome, and tyranny is a fresh memory. As an American, who sometimes forgets he's not a tourist and takes lots of pictures, I should remember that females, of any age in southern Iraq typically do not have the freedom to wave back, and carrying a camera is sometimes more offensive than carrying a weapon.
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