Where Every Meal Is a Sacrifice

It is his last goat; his family of four has sold or eaten the five others in the past year as food prices have spiked. The family will be left with one lamb when this is gone, if the kid sells.

A prospective buyer in emerald-green robes shows interest. Mahmoud engages him.

"Let me sell you this goat."

"How much? What's the lowest you can go?"

"Gimme [$25], at least."

"It is a very small goat."

"Yes, it is. I raised it in my house. But it is also very nice."

No sale. As has happened throughout the day, the buyer will not pay what had been the going rate here for months, not when so many other goats are for sale. Mahmoud considered what to do, resigning himself to asking for an advance from his part-time job as a goatherd for a businessman in the market. "I cannot sell it too cheaply," he said of the kid goat. "It would not be right for my family."

The family is already in debt at the local market, a debt that has grown to $20 in recent months. He has no idea how he will pay it back. He prays, he said, that the market owner will keep lending to him. "How else will we eat? The prices are too high." Though life is hard here, he, like others in the shantytown, say going back to their lives of trying to coax food from the arid earth in the country would be worse. He is here to stay, he said.

"Of course I don't want to go back to the village," he said. "There, you can die of hunger without realizing it. You don't even see food. Here at least you can see it, even though you can't get it. It kind of gives you hope. You can see it in a car passing by. That makes me happy."

Washingtonpost.com staff writer Travis Fox and Washington Post staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.