Lost Riders Read online

  His mother swooped on him and picked him up. He struggled out of her arms. He couldn’t understand why she was crying. He dashed out of the door into the lane and scrambled into the brightly painted rickshaw, anxious to grab the front seat before Shari could take it.

  But Shari hadn’t run after him. He had felt Ma’s arms tremble as she picked him up, and the wetness of her tears on his cheeks. He began to cry too and clung to her with all his strength, struggling and lashing out at Bilal with his small fists. When at last Bilal had peeled him away and carried him outside, he kicked and screamed, his face red with fury and distress.

  It was a long time before Shari subsided into resentful hiccups, and it was only as the rickshaw left the rough country roads behind and entered the town that he fell silent and began to look around. Like Rashid he was awestruck by the trucks, the buses with their blaring horns and the shiny cars bowling along the broad tarmac roads.

  The rickshaw pulled up in a back street where Gaman Khan was waiting near an open door.

  ‘You’re here at last,’ he said, leading the way into a small dark room.

  A woman was sitting on the only chair, studying her varnished nails. She barely looked up as the others entered.

  ‘Have you straightened the kids out? Told them what to do?’ Gaman Khan said to Bilal.

  Bilal bit his lip.

  ‘I-I’m sorry. I haven’t had the chance. Shari was too upset.’

  ‘Upset!’ scoffed Gaman Khan. ‘Don’t you realize how much hangs on it? Get on with it. We haven’t got all day. The bus goes in half an hour.’

  Rashid, watching closely, saw that the friendly stranger who had come to the house had turned into someone else, someone stern, with a frightening inner power.

  Bilal crouched down, gathering the boys into his arms.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Rashid and Shari. You see that lady? You have to call her Ma.’

  They looked across at the young woman. She glanced up at them, gave them a quick smile, then went back to studying her nails.

  Bilal gave the boys a little shake, to bring back their attention.

  ‘And,’ he went on, ‘you’ve got to remember something else. If someone asks you your name, Rashid, you have to say that it’s Yasser, OK? Shari, your name is Farid.’

  ‘That’s silly,’ said Shari, pushing out his lower lip. ‘I’m not Farid.’

  ‘And I’m not Yasser,’ Rashid said, not wanting to be outdone.

  Gaman Khan pushed Bilal aside, nearly toppling him over.

  ‘I thought you said you could manage them,’ he growled. ‘Don’t you realize how important this is?’

  ‘Yes, but they’ve only just . . .’ began Bilal.

  ‘I see I’ll have to handle them myself,’ Gaman Khan said impatiently. He bent down, thrusting his face right into Shari’s, so that his bushy black eyebrows nearly touched the little boy’s forehead. ‘Farid, Farid, Farid. Now tell me. What’s your name?’

  ‘Sha . . . I don’t know,’ whimpered Shari, backing away from him.

  Gaman Khan’s hand came down hard, smacking him across the head. Shari was so shocked that he didn’t cry but just sat down on the floor and stared up at Gaman Khan with his mouth open.

  ‘Your name! What’s your name?’ Gaman Khan hissed at him again.

  ‘It’s Farid. Farid!’ Rashid said quickly, wanting to show that he at least had learned this strange lesson, and afraid that Shari would start to scream and that Gaman Khan would hit him again.

  Gaman Khan swung round towards him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  For a moment Rashid hesitated, then he whispered, ‘Yasser.’

  Bilal was picking Shari up off the floor.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gaman Sahib,’ he said nervously. ‘I’ll make sure they remember.’

  Gaman Khan ignored him.

  ‘And who’s that?’ he barked at Rashid, pointing to the woman, who had taken out her mobile phone and was staring at the little screen.

  Rashid bit his lip, unable to speak.

  ‘She’s your mother. Ma. Call her Ma,’ Gaman Khan said, and raised his hand threateningly.

  Rashid looked down. Something was wrong. Something awful was happening, but he didn’t know what it was.

  ‘Ma,’ he whispered unwillingly, and as he said the word his chin started to wobble. ‘I want to go home!’ he cried out suddenly. ‘I don’t want to go to Dubai. I want my ma!’

  Gaman Khan’s hand came cracking down on his head and he was sent flying across the room. Not daring to make another sound, he gulped back his tears and held on to Shari, who had crept across to the corner where he was huddled, and had buried his head in Rashid’s lap.

  There was a long journey after that. Days in a hot, stuffy bus. Nights in strange rooms. Long waits beside mountain roads where men in uniform talked to Gaman Khan, and money changed hands, and people asked Rashid and Shari to tell them their false names.

  Yasser, Farid . . . Yasser, Farid . . .

  It wasn’t long before home, and Ma, and Zabidah and the village became blurred in Rashid’s mind, though he thought of them all the time. A girl on a bus might have a dress in the same pattern as one of Zabidah’s, or a glimpse inside a whitewashed mosque courtyard as the bus flashed past might remind him of the mosque in the village at home. Once he thought he saw his mother in a crowd at a bus station, and started to run towards her. He was jerked back with a wrench from Gaman Khan’s muscular arm.

  He didn’t dare say anything to Shari, for fear of starting a burst of shouting and tears. But as the days had passed, the little boy had become unnaturally quiet and still. He had almost stopped speaking altogether, except in a frightened whisper. Even when Bilal spoke to him he’d stiffen up and stare, then press himself against Rashid, trying to hide his face.

  Bilal would crouch down whenever they changed buses, or saw officials approaching. He would take Shari gently by the arms and whisper, ‘Tell them who you are, Farid. Tell them your name. Say you’re Farid, nice and loud, so they’re sure to hear you. Call that lady “Ma”.’

  And he’d point to the woman, who would be tapping her manicured fingers on the strap of her bag, looking bored.

  Rashid never knew who she was, or learned her name. She took no notice of the children on those long hot thirsty bus rides, except to tell Shari to stop pulling at his hair, as he’d started doing all the time, and scolding Rashid when he accidentally spilled some water down her sleeve.

  But when she thought that someone was looking, or there was a man in uniform around, she would catch hold of Shari and try to make him sit on her knee. Shari wouldn’t let her at first. But after she’d given him a couple of painful pinches he soon learned what he had to do. He would sit as stiff as a lump of wood, holding himself as far away from her as he could.

  Bilal, who looked increasingly anxious, kept trying to explain things to Rashid.

  ‘This is the worst part,’ he’d said, ‘but we’ve made it out of Pakistan already. That’s great. You’re doing well. Once we’re through Iran it’ll be easier. We’re going on a plane from Tehran to Dubai. You’ll love it.’ He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. ‘This name business, it’s just because of our papers. An official thing. We have to pretend that we’re a family. Gaman Khan is being your pio, that lady’s your ma, and I’m your uncle.’

  ‘I don’t mind you being my uncle,’ Rashid said, ‘because you really are.’

  ‘It’s not for long.’ He put his arm round Rashid’s shoulders. ‘Just till we get to Dubai. It’s like a game. If we can fool them, we’ll get through safely and we’ll all have everything we want. But if they realize that we’re not a family, they’ll arrest us. They might even send us all to prison. So you’ll do your best for me, eh?’

  Rashid nodded solemnly. He would do his best for Uncle Bilal. And he would go on pretending because he was afraid of the police and being in prison. He told anyone who asked that his name was Mohammed Yasser, that Gaman Khan was hi
s father, and the woman was his mother, and he told Shari that his name was now Farid. And all the time something inside him was saying, No, no, this isn’t right. I don’t want to be here. I wish I’d never come. I want to go home.

  It was the arguments between Bilal and Gaman Khan that frightened Rashid most of all. Uncle Bilal had always seemed so carefree, so confident in the big world outside the village, with his mobile phone and his borrowed motorbike. But when he was with Gaman Khan he seemed smaller and strangely powerless.

  On the first long day’s ride, which ended in the town of Quetta, still in Pakistan, Bilal had been as excited and happy as a schoolboy. He had shown off his knowledge of the different makes of car they passed on the road, and had pointed out the sights:

  water towers, and mosques, and once or twice a distant plane in the sky.

  He grew quieter after the border into Iran had been crossed, and went more regularly to the prayer rooms when the bus stopped to let the passengers out to pray.

  It was at one of these wayside stops, somewhere in Iran, that Rashid overheard Bilal talking to Gaman Khan. Rashid sidled closer to listen, disturbed by the distress in his uncle’s voice.

  ‘I’ve paid you everything I’ve got,’ Bilal was saying. ‘We agreed the price. I can’t possibly give you another fifteen thousand rupees. I haven’t got it. I haven’t got any more money.’

  ‘It’s not for me. It’s for your visa,’ Gaman Khan said, sounding indifferent. ‘If you want to get into Dubai, you have to pay up. It’s up to you.’

  ‘But you said that everything was included. You said I wouldn’t have to give you any more.’

  ‘Grow up, country boy!’ Gaman Khan was beginning to sound irritated. ‘Unforeseen expenses. That’s life. If you haven’t got the money, you’ll have to owe it to me. Couple of months wages, that’s all it’ll be. You’ll pay it off in no time. I’ll only expect interest on the loan at first.’

  ‘Interest! You’ll charge me interest?’ Bilal’s voice was rising.

  Gaman Khan pushed a meaty hand against his chest, looked around and scowled in warning.

  ‘Find your own way to Dubai if you don’t like it. But I’ve got the passports. I’ve got all the contacts. And I’m taking the kids. If you cut loose from me, it’ll be your responsibility if you end up in a police cell.’

  Bilal began to cry silently, and the sight of tears rolling down his uncle’s cheeks sent shivers running down Rashid’s back. He turned away, not wanting to look, but couldn’t stop listening.

  Gaman Khan began to speak again, and his tone was softer.

  ‘Listen, Bilal. Don’t think I don’t understand. But you’ve got to see it from my point of view. You’re young. What are you? Eighteen? Nineteen? You’ve never been out of Pakistan. You don’t know what it’s like in the big bad world.’

  Rashid dared to look up, and he saw to his surprise that the hot, forceful, angry look had died out of Gaman Khan’s face. He was looking almost sympathetic.

  ‘It’s not just me that’s in this,’ Gaman Khan went on. ‘If it was, you wouldn’t have to pay one more rupee. But there’s a bunch of others on my back. Men you wouldn’t want to know. If I don’t turn in a profit on this journey, they’ll kill me. I mean, kill me. And, anyway, who’s taking all the risks? I am. If I’m caught, there’s a long whack in prison for me.’

  There was a short silence. Rashid, daring another glance, saw that his uncle was tightly squeezing together his fingers behind his back.

  ‘What about the boys?’ Bilal lowered his voice, so that Rashid had to strain even harder to hear. ‘I heard people talking in the bus. They’re not really going to stay in rich families, are they? What are you going to do with them?’

  Gaman Khan patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘You know what, old son? You worry too much. The boys’ll be fine. I admit, it’s not exactly like I told their mother. They’ll be working. But they’ll be looked after. It’ll be fun for them. Little monkeys, I bet they’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘What work? Working at what? Not carpet weaving? Not the brick factories?’

  Gaman Khan laughed.

  ‘Now would I? I’ve got kids of my own! Working with animals, that’s what they’ll be doing. A healthy life, out in the desert on the camel farms. Look, I know I’ve had to come down heavy on them, but they’ve got to learn how to behave. We couldn’t have them kicking up a fuss all the way along the road, now could we? We’d have been caught out in no time.’

  Camels? thought Rashid. What does he mean?

  But at that moment the bus driver had sounded his horn and Rashid’s arms were grabbed by the woman, who almost dragged him out to the bus. Bilal jumped on at the last moment, and sank down into the seat beside Rashid.

  ‘When am I going to get my toy car?’ Rashid asked experimentally, testing his uncle to see if what he’d overheard was right.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ Bilal said distractedly. ‘Give me a break, Rashid, OK?’

  The little group arrived at last in a village near Tehran, far from the Pakistani border in the north of Iran.

  ‘Is this it? Are we there now?’ Rashid said to Bilal, swallowing his disappointment at the sight of a village house with boarded up windows.

  Bilal summoned up a smile for him.

  ‘No, of course not. I told you. We’re going to Dubai on a plane. We’re only here until Gaman Sahib sorts things out.’

  There were other men staying in the cramped rooms of the little house. All of them were from Pakistan, all hoping for work in Dubai. They had anxious faces and argued ceaselessly about money with the men who had brought them there.

  Shari, who had said barely a word for days, became a little livelier. Some of the men had left boys of their own at home, and they were kind and gentle with him, coaxing him out of his silence with games and rhymes. Shari was almost like his old self sometimes, tumbling about and talking, but as soon as he was noisy a look from Gaman Khan, and a shake of the man’s raised fist, would send him scuttling back to the corner that Rashid had made his own special place, his face closed and still again.

  The men tried to befriend Rashid too, but he held back. How could he tell what they were really like? How did he know that they wouldn’t turn nasty on him, as Gaman Khan had done? How could he be sure of anything any more?

  3

  The plane journey was nothing like Rashid had expected. He had played aeroplanes sometimes at home, stretching out his arms and zooming around the courtyard, tilting and wheeling and making engine noises, imagining the excitement of flying through the air. But there was nothing exciting about the real plane. There was only a seat with a strap tied over him and not even a window nearby to look out of. He played for a while with the little button inside his armrest, turning the overhead light on and off, until Bilal told him to stop.

  They had had to get up in the middle of the night and had driven a long way in the dark to the airport. Shari fell asleep as soon as the plane took off and after a little while Rashid dozed off too.

  Bilal shook him awake.

  ‘We’re in Dubai!’ he said, tense with excitement. ‘We’ve made it, Rashid! We’re here!’

  ‘His name’s Yasser,’ Gaman Khan growled at him, his voice more gravelly than ever. ‘You’re not through immigration yet. Do you want to ruin everything?’

  Rashid had been so sleepy that he had barely noticed the airport in Tehran, but here in Dubai everything dazzled and astonished him. There were corridors where the floor moved under his feet, carrying him along, and moving staircases too, where he held tightly to the handrail, afraid of falling. He could look through huge glass windows down and down to a kind of indoor street full of shops below. There were lifts where doors closed with a soft sigh, and little roofless cars, which beeped loudly to warn people that they were coming. And everywhere was light: brilliant, sparkling, blinding light.

  Several times Bilal had to grasp his hand and haul him along. Shari, who had refused to wake up, was actually being carried by
Gaman Khan, his head lolling sideways off the man’s heavy shoulder.

  Rashid sensed an increase in tension in their little group as they inched forward towards a desk at the far end of a long room. The man behind it was wearing a white robe, and there was a white cloth on his head, kept in place by two circular black ropes. He looked briefly at the sleeping Shari, and a little longer at Rashid, whose hand had suddenly been grasped by the woman. Then he raised his stamp, brought it down on the passports that Gaman Khan had handed him, and waved them all through.

  A few minutes later they were standing by a carousel in the huge baggage hall waiting for the woman’s big suitcase to come through. The boys had no bags of their own. Bilal had been carrying a change of clothing and a sweater for each of them in his shoulder bag, along with his own few possessions.

  Rashid and Shari watched mesmerized as the suitcases went round and round, but after a while Shari turned away, bored. He tugged at Rashid’s sleeve.

  ‘Look!’

  There was an empty trolley nearby. Shari put out a cautious hand to touch it, glancing sideways at Gaman Khan, but Gaman Khan was scanning the hall with darting eyes, and Bilal, who was biting his lower lip, also seemed preoccupied.

  Shari clutched the trolley with both hands and smiled beseechingly at Rashid. Rashid looked at Gaman Khan, but he was still watching the carousel. Daringly, Rashid sidled over to the trolley.

  ‘Get on it,’ he whispered to Shari.

  His face alight with joy, Shari climbed on to the trolley and sat triumphantly, gripping the sides. Rashid gave it a shove. It went faster than he had expected and he had to haul it back before it crashed into a pile of suitcases. Shari had his hand over his mouth, trying to stop himself squealing with excitement. Rashid, laughing, gave the trolley another push, and saw too late that it was heading for Gaman Khan. Frantically he tried to wrench it round, but couldn’t stop it in time. It hit Gaman Khan’s leg, making him buckle at the knee.

  Icy fingers of horror ran down Rashid’s back. He squeezed his eyes shut, not daring to look, bracing himself for a blow. Nothing happened. He opened one eye and then the other. Amazingly, Gaman Khan seemed to have barely noticed. He was in urgent conversation with Bilal.