“So what did you say, Iqbal?”
“I didn’t know what to say. Then I caught a glimpse of their feet, his and his brothers’. I looked away quickly, but the youngest, who was about five years old, noticed and started to laugh. ‘Look!’ he said. The soles of his feet had a two-inch, black callus, all cracked. When the kiln starts, they have to climb on top with baskets of coal and pour it into the hole in the middle to get the fire going.
“The kiln is like a dragon,’ the boy said. ‘It eats and eats but it’s never satisfied. You should hear how it grumbles and then spits flames.’
“’And doesn’t it burn you?’ I asked.
“Of course it burns!’ he answered, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say to him.”
I had never seen Iqbal so depressed. All the men had come back grim and discouraged that day, even Eshan Khan, who was always optimistic and ready to smile.
“Then what happened?” I asked him, even if I already knew, because word had spread as soon as they got back.
“The munshi arrived in a big car. When he saw us talking to the workers he got very angry. He yelled at us to go away. Eshan Khan explained who we were and told him that we had the right to speak to these people, that they were free. The munshi just yelled louder. That always happens, you know that, so we weren’t worried. Then the munshi ran into a green iron hut. It was his office, the only building with electric light. We could see the wires. We thought that maybe he was going to phone somebody, his partners or maybe the police. Eshan Khan told us to stick together, that they couldn’t do anything to us. Then the munshi came out of the hut with something dark in his hand, and he stretched his arm out toward us. He had a gun. We heard the first shot while we were scattering through the clearing, while we slid in the mud, while we looked for a way out of there. He shot and shot and screamed insults at us, and I didn’t think he’d ever stop. He was shooting to kill, and it’s a miracle that nobody got hurt. We got back in the vans and trucks and drove away fast. It’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
Later on, toward evening, Iqbal and I were waiting to be called to dinner. The usual sounds of the street came in through the windows.
“This hasn’t changed a thing, Iqbal,” I said.
“I know. We’ll keep on working.”
There was something else he wanted to say to me. He lowered his voice to a whisper. A truck was passing down in the street, and I could barely hear him.
“I was scared, Fatima. But please. Please. Don’t tell anybody.”
I put out my hand to touch his shoulder, but then I pulled it back. I felt shy.
“Dinnertime!” Eshan Khan’s wife was calling.
“Don’t worry,” I said very softly, “I won’t tell anyone.”
That was one of our last long conversations, because a few weeks later, Iqbal departed, and I went home.
I wish I had been brave enough to actually touch him.
Fourteen
One dull, rainy day at the beginning of November, Eshan Khan called Iqbal and me into his personal office. We entered the small, whitewashed room, which was almost empty and very neat. It stood in complete contrast to the rest of the house, which was full of papers, signs, color, and confusion. Here was a desk under neat piles of papers, a telephone, a chair that didn’t look very comfortable, makings for tea, and a strong smell of tobacco. Eshan Khan was walking impatiently back and forth, his eyes shining. He was holding a big brightly colored ball. We had already seen it a few times and we thought, Oh, no! Another geography lesson.
Eshan Khan spun the ball and showed us a big area colored yellow. “This is the United States,” he said. “It’s a big and important country.”
“I know,” said Iqbal, hoping to avoid a lesson. “It’s the place where they make the songs.”
“Where there’s Hollywood and the movie stars,” I said to help him.
Ignoring our show of knowledge of American culture, Eshan Khan pointed to a small black spot on the edge of an enormous sea.
“This city is Boston,” he continued. “Every year a company called Reebok awards a prize that’s called ‘Youth in Action.’ It’s given to a young person who has done something of merit in any country in the world.”
“I know Reebok,” insisted Iqbal. “They make shoes. I’ve wanted a pair for months, but they’re too expensive.”
“The prize is fifteen thousand dollars.”
“How many rupees is that?” I asked.
“More than we can imagine. This year the prize has been awarded to Iqbal.”
Silence.
“To me?” Iqbal asked, confused.
“Yes, and do you know what it means? It means that now you’re known all over the world and so is our fight against child labor. It means that from now on, they will have to be careful before they try to touch us in any way. It’s a victory, Iqbal, and it’s all thanks to you. You and I will go to Boston to receive the prize. But first”—Eshan Khan turned the globe—“we’ll stop here.”
He pointed to another country.
“This is Sweden,’ he said.
“And what’s that?”
“A country where it’s very cold. It’s in Europe. There’s going to be an international conference on labor problems. People will be coming from all over the world. They want to hear you speak.”
“Me?”
We were astonished. It was like a dream. It was difficult for us to believe that others, in that faraway and unknown place called the world, knew about us and our suffering. We were nobodies, wretches who just a year before had been working at our looms, some of us chained to them. And all those people wanted to listen to Iqbal!
“There’s more,” said Eshan Khan. “A university near Boston has given you a scholarship. It means you’ll be able to get a degree. Didn’t you say you want to become a lawyer?”
Iqbal nodded without speaking.
“But … that means … we’ll have to go …”
“We’ll be away almost a month,” said Eshan Khan. “Just wait. You’ll like traveling. You’ll see so many new things. When we get back you’ll begin your studies, and later on you can go visit your family. You must be happy.”
“I am happy,” answered Iqbal, “but I want to stay here, with you and Fatima and Maria. I want to free more children.”
“You’ll still be helping us. You’re important. But later on, if you become a good lawyer, you’ll be even more useful.
“Today there’s good news for Fatima, too. We’ve found your village, and your family. You’ll be going home.”
My heart jumped. Home! I could hardly remember it. And my mother? And my brothers and sisters?
Suddenly I wanted to cry, but I felt silly. Why should I want to cry at good news? I was about to return home—free! Iqbal was going to receive a rightful reward for what he had done. Everything was going well. Whoever could have foreseen all this when we were working like slaves for Hussain?
I did cry, and it was because I was so happy.
The next two weeks just flew by. The big pink house boiled over with activity, everyone running from one end to the other, getting things ready for the journey. Reporters from Pakistan and abroad wanted to know about the prize. The garden was always full of people. For me, every sunset held sadness and hope.
How much longer before Iqbal left? Nine days.
I have memories of Eshan Khan talking into three microphones. Of a stranger wandering around, taking photos of all of us. I should have made him give me one—at least I’d have that now. I remember the women kneeling with pins in their mouths, fitting the Western-style suit that Iqbal would wear at the ceremony. It had a jacket, trousers, and a vest, all in a heavy dark blue material. It would be cold where he was going.
One day I came upon Iqbal all alone in the middle of an empty room, while he was practicing the speech he would give in Sweden and in Boston. He tripped over every sixth word, and then said, “Come on, Fatima, help me!” so I took the written speech and, r
eading a little slowly, gave him the right cues.
“… Every day in Pakistan seven million children get up in the dark before dawn. They work all day, through evening. They make rugs, they make bricks, they work the fields, they go down into the mines. They don’t play or run or shout. They never laugh. They’re slaves and they wear chains on their feet….
“… So long as there’s a child in this world who is deprived of his childhood, a child who is beaten, violated, or exploited, nobody can say: It’s not my business. That’s not true. It’s your business, too. And it’s not true that there’s no hope. Look at me. I had hope. You, ladies and gentlemen, you must have courage….”
How much longer before he left? Six days.
In a rare afternoon of quiet, Eshan Khan’s wife took me in her arms and said, “Poor little girl.” Then she explained that my mother was dead and that now my brother Ahmed was the head of the family. He was impatient to see me, because he had plans to go far away, to try his luck in Europe. He wanted to take me and my little brother Hasam with him.
I was going home to my family after Iqbal’s departure. Maria promised to keep me informed about everything that went on. Before I left for a foreign country, I’d come back to Headquarters to say good-bye.
The last night Iqbal and I were together, we got up and met in the big room, where we talked and talked, just as we used to in Hussain’s workshop.
At dawn the next day they let me ride in the car with Iqbal and Eshan Khan to the airport. Iqbal and I sat in back. From a terrace I watched them board the plane. They waved, from so far away.
With a loud roar the plane took off and flew higher and higher through the sky.
Iqbal had taken the biggest kite.
My heart was beating very fast. Something was wringing my heart and soul. The plane disappeared beyond the horizon.
I wonder what America’s like, I thought.
A few days later I was taken home. I can still remember the long journey in the Toyota van as it bumped over all the holes in the road. I can remember the countryside, part green, part gray and flooded. I can remember the working men and the beasts. I remember the muddy dirt roads.
Every time I saw a group of huts, I thought, Is this my village?
I couldn’t trust my memory, and I was confused.
The driver was kind and pleasant. He talked and talked to distract me, as though he knew what I was feeling. Part of me wanted to go home, part of me was sorry.
We arrived. My brother Ahmed was now a man. Hasam, the youngest, was taller than me. Slowly, gradually, I began to recognize objects that were once familiar to me. I found my way to the well instinctively. I had gone there so many times in the past, trying to balance a jug on my head.
Even the buffalo looked the same, only a little older.
I cleaned, I cooked, I helped in the fields, just like my mother had done. I didn’t know anything about my brother’s plans and I wasn’t interested.
The days and weeks passed. In the country they seemed much longer.
I finally received a letter from Maria. I ran to read it outside.
She wrote, “Here everything’s going well.” She said that Eshan Khan had telephoned, once from Sweden, twice from America. Maria had spoken to Iqbal, who was fine. He told her all about the speech he had given in a big city called Stockholm. He hadn’t tripped up once. In fact, all those well-dressed people had stood up and applauded him.
They had welcomed him warmly in America, too. In Boston, everybody wanted to meet him, and when they gave him his prize some ladies cried. The only thing he complained about was his new shoes. They hurt his feet. He sent his love to me. They were about to return. School would resume, and later on Iqbal would go to visit his family for Easter. He hoped I was well and wanted to know what my village was like. She would write again. “Kisses, Maria.”
There was a folded article from an American newspaper in the envelope. Naturally I couldn’t read it, but in several places I could see the name “Iqbal,” and there was also a photograph of him. I looked at it for a long time, even if it was dark and smudgy.
Time passed. With a piece of chalk I made marks on the wall in a corner, to keep count. Two weeks, a month, three, then four. Winter passed, and the spring rains began. I stopped counting. The lame man who came to distribute and collect mail every ten days wasn’t to be seen.
“We’ll be leaving soon,” my brother Ahmed said.
When I finished my work I would sit in the doorway and look out toward the path that led to the village. They’ve forgotten me, I thought.
My mind went back to the kites, to Iqbal standing tall next to the carpet he had cut, to the night we crawled to the Tomb to help him, to the afternoon in Lahore when we went to the movies. I thought that I didn’t want to go to a foreign country, far away and ugly.
Two days before we were supposed to leave for Europe, I saw the lame man in the distance. He was struggling along the muddy paths. His bag was slung on his shoulder and his stick sank five inches into the mud at each step.
The light was ugly that day, livid and nasty. The clouds lay low on the horizon and everything looked spotted and black. I watched him for half an hour, as he came along so very slowly. Before he reached me with the letter my eyes had started crying.
Fifteen
Dear Fatima, my friend, beloved sister,
How I wish you were near me these days, so I could talk to you and cry with your arms around me. Do you remember how many times I’ve done so in the past? And you were always able to find the best way to console me and to protect me. If you could only do it once more! If we could only share our common grief! If only I could be the one to find the right words!
I know I haven’t written for a long time. Maybe you thought I had forgotten you, that my affection had vanished like the mist on morning fields. My silence was because I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to you. Even now my hand trembles and my tears fall. Forgive my cowardice, Fatima. I know you mustn’t learn from others—who knows what they might say? I’ll tell you.
At Easter, the Christian festival, Iqbal went home to his village. He went there to visit his family and celebrate. He was supposed to spend a month with his parents, and then return to us, to continue his work. He said that he had made a promise in front of all those people in America, and that he meant to keep it.
You know what he was like.
They say that the village welcomed him joyfully, like a hero. Everyone knew what he had done and they admired and respected him. Everybody in the village visited his home, brought him presents, and asked if it was true that he had been in a plane.
They say that after two days he was tired of all this attention and began avoiding people. He preferred to get up at dawn and go out into the fields with his father instead. In the afternoons, he rode an old bicycle with his two younger cousins, or together they flew kites. He was happy and serene and full of plans for the future.
They say that Easter Sunday was a lovely day, full of sunshine and light. Iqbal went to his church and then went around to visit relatives. There was a big feast, with singing and dancing, and there was even meat to eat, and all kinds of sweets, and Iqbal ate enough laddu to cause a stomachache. Then, while the adults were talking among themselves, the children scattered off to play, and their voices could be heard in the distance.
They say that around three that afternoon—when the sun was beginning to go down—a car appeared just where the road turns in toward the village, raising a cloud of dust. Nobody recognized it. It was a big black car, covered with mud. It looked as though it was driving by itself, and it whipped up the gravel with its enormous wheels as it passed.
Some people say that at that precise moment a sudden thunderstorm broke, and raindrops the size of large coins hit the ground and the thunder shook the roofs of the houses. Others say that the thunderstorm broke later, toward evening.
The black car drove slowly through the village and then turned into a narrow lane
that leads down to the rice paddies. The pouring rain and the water in the rice paddies merged as one.
They say that Iqbal was riding up the lane, standing so that he could pedal better, with his wet hair in his eyes and his T-shirt flapping in the wind.
Nobody knows what happened, Fatima, my sister. A man has murmured that through the curtain of falling rain he saw Iqbal pass close to the car. The window came down a little, and there were three, four, maybe five flashes. Before anyone could get the men together and run to help, the car had disappeared. Iqbal’s body was there, fallen in the lane, and the water under him was stained red, but even the red water disappeared soon. The rain washed it away. This is what they have told me.
But listen, Fatima. I know it’s not true.
At first I thought I had become mute again. I had closed up inside. I kept saying to myself, “It’s not true, you know what people are like, how they imagine things, how rumors persist.” Everyone else was convinced the news was true, even Eshan Khan and his wife. I was the only one who didn’t believe it.
Then, one afternoon two weeks ago, there was a knock on the garden door. It was a boy, dirty and with bruises from chains around his ankles. He told us he had been working in a carpet factory, that he had run away and come to us so that we would help arrest his master and free the other children.
And then, do you want to know what he said?
“I’m not afraid.”
I looked at him carefully, Fatima. It was Iqbal. I swear, he was identical! The same voice, the same eyes.
Three days later another boy appeared. And then at the market a boy rebelled against his master, one of the richest merchants.
They were Iqbal, too.
Try not to be sad, Fatima. He changed our lives and will be with us forever. I told Eshan Khan that I’ll be the one to study and go to university. I’ll be a lawyer, and I’ll fight to free all the slaves in Pakistan and all over the world. And for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid either.
Iqbal Page 8