Fardin is only seven-years-old but the slight, paled-faced, youngster has never learned how to play.
When he was four, Fardin was taught by his older brothers and sisters to use his small, agile, hands to make knots on the huge steel carpet loom that dominates his two-roomed home in the Old City area of Peshawar in northern Pakistan.
Two years later, Fardin was enlisted full-time in the family carpet-weaving business. His childhood was officially over.
Fardin is one of Kiram and Amina Uddins eight children, aged between six and 22 years. They are a settled Afghan refugee family who fled to Pakistan from their homeland when the Taliban took over in 1996.
Seven of the brood are roused from their beds at 5 o'clock every morning to prepare for work. The youngest, six-year-old Tamana, is still spared the grind of the family enterprise, but not for much longer.
The Uddin clan work at the loom seven days a week from 5.30 a.m. until 5 p.m. in the evening. There is a one-hour break for lunch. The long grind does not end there. The younger children go to Afghan evening school from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m, with only Friday off. If they have homework, they do not get to bed until after 10 p.m.
The Uddin family is not on its own. An estimated 80 per cent of Pakistan-based Afghan refugees, or one million people, are involved in the carpet weaving trade. Their skills have allowed the industry here to flourish.
Ruthless carpet manufacturers prey on the vulnerable refugees, making huge profits from their labours. They prefer children, because the smaller the knot the better the weave and the more money they can get for their carpets.
Children who get involved in weaving from a young age suffer from poor health in later years. With as many as a million refugees predicted to come over the border from Afghanistan in the coming weeks, thousands more children will get sucked into this cruel slave trade.
When the refugees first came to Pakistan to escape conflict and strife in Afghanistan in the early 1980s, the carpet industry was small. It was centred on Persian-style carpets made in the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan.
Two decades later, the North Western Frontier Province, (NWFP) has become a well-established carpet centre. The natural colours and high-quality wool come from Afghanistan while the the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan provide cotton yarn.
It is people like the Uddins and families living in refugee camps and spinning wool on a wooden spool for 20 cents a day, who supply the sweat and labour.
Hand-knotted Afghan carpets top the North West Frontier Province's exports list. In 1995, the export of carpets and rugs was worth $19 million. Last year this figure jumped to $130 million.
Originally from Kabul, Kiram, once worked for the Ministry for Social Affairs in Kabul. He fled his homeland when the Taliban arrived in 1996 and wanted to conscript his sons into the army.
When the family crossed the border into Pakistan, they paid all their savings to the guards and were penniless when they arrived in Peshawar.
One day a man came and asked if members of the family would like to learn carpet weaving. The eldest, 22-year-old Fawad, who left the Kabul polytechnic when the family fled Afghanistan, learned the skill and passed it down to his younger siblings.
The family gets the material needed to make carpets, the steel loom, the pattern and the dyed sheep wool, from a local carpet dealer. They can weave six square metres of carpet every two months if everything is normal and no one gets sick.
They get paid an average of 500 rupees, or £7 a week. Rent, electricity and gas swallows up most of the money.
According to Fawad, the work is very tiring. "It affects our noses, chest and even our brains because we get so tired," he says.
Karim says sometimes there is not enough food and they cannot afford to buy clothes. If one of the children gets sick, he cannot afford to take the child to the doctor.
Mohammad Suleman Amanyar, a neighbour of the family who works with the organisation Co-operation for Peace and Unity, is appalled at the practice.
"Families like these are being exploited and it should be stopped. This is no life for these children," he said.
The Irish aid agency Trocaire funded Suleman's M.A studies at the Development Studies Institute in Kimmage Manor in Dublin last year.
He said he has heard of young children who are being brought from Afghanistan into Pakistan on the promise of receiving a better life and education.
"But when they arrived they end up in compounds working from early until late. I have pictures of young children who have been beaten because they do not work hard enough," he says.
The reality is for thousands of Afghan refugees like the Uddins, weaving is a blessing. It gives them their only hope of having food every day.
