August 13, 1999

A Scholar Who Studies Child Laborers Gives Them a Place to Play

By ANDREA USEEM

Rows of books, meeting rooms, empty coffee mugs: A visitor to the Al-Jeel Center for Youth and Social Studies here may find it a typical research center. But how to explain the misshapen clay heads peering out from the library shelves, or the colorful pictures marking rows of cubbyholes?

Besides serving scholars who study Egypt's youth, the Al-Jeel Center is also a small corner that some of Cairo's hard-working child laborers call