After every suicide attack the calculating of the dead beginns. It starts with one or two and then the numbers rise, usually rapidly. You can read the figures on twitter, you can hear them in the news. Everytime you force yourself to imagine what they actually mean. But you just cant.

After a couple of days the figures are gone. Was it 10? Was it 12? You dont even remember.

The brothers, the friends, the neighbours - they wont forget the figures: for them it was one. Maybe we should stop counting and instead try holding the hands of those who are surrounded by darkness, the ones we never see.

The pictures below show some friends of Nashim. He was a smart boy at the age of 9 who used to work on the streets of Kabul, polishing shoes. Three days ago he was killed by a man who blew himself up in a car.

"How do you remember your friend?", I asked one of the boys. "We always played hide and seek", he said, "and Nashim was never following the rules."