Lost Riders Read online

  ‘What are you going to do, Salman?’ asked Rashid. ‘Are you going home to Sudan?’

  Salman shrugged.

  ‘I tell you before, no home. I stay in Dubai. Be a big masoul, like Haji.’

  He had been squatting beside them, but now he stood up and Rashid noticed for the first time that he had grown, and that a little black down was clinging to his upper lip.

  ‘I like you, Salman,’ he said, a rush of tears pricking his eyelids.

  He jumped to his feet. Automatically, Shari stood up too. Rashid pushed him away.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  He ran off blindly, and found himself in the camel pen.

  The camels were standing at the food racks, lipping over the piles of green stuff. Rashid breathed in their pungent, earthy smell. Why hadn’t he noticed it properly before? Shahin was the nearest to him. Her huge, heavy-lashed eye caught sight of him and she turned her head to stare, a green shred dangling from her mouth. She began to shake her head irritably, lifting her long upper lip. Rashid stepped back. She looked as if she might lunge at him with her powerful yellow teeth. Next to her, Hamlul was restless too, shifting his weight from one horned back foot to the other. A kick from Hamlul would be no joke.

  He might never have to ride them again. He might never mount them in the dead of night, and sit hunched on their backs, cold and tired, through the miserable hours of exercise. He might never again have to carry their piles of food and buckets of water. He might never stand waiting in a holding pen before the start of a race, parched with thirst, his stomach clenched with fright, or endure the terror of the race’s start, or the wild thrill of the dash to the finishing line. He wouldn’t have to fear the camels any more. He wouldn’t have to master them.

  ‘I hate you, anyway!’ he shouted, and ran out of the pen.

  He hadn’t heard a car arrive. It was Abu Nazir’s, and he was standing beside it, tapping one hand on the white roof impatiently.

  ‘Hurry up!’ he was shouting. ‘I haven’t got all day!’

  Iqbal and Amal emerged from the sleeping shed. Each carried a little bag. Salman, watching from the kitchen door, was working a tea towel over and over in his hands. Haji Faroukh took the boys’ free hands in his, and walked them down to the car, one on each side of him.

  ‘No!’ Rashid shouted. ‘Don’t go! Not yet!’

  But Iqbal and Amal were already being chivvied into the back of the car. The doors slammed shut. Through the glass, Rashid saw Amal’s face, pale and set, his head rocking back and forth. Iqbal’s face had crumpled and his mouth was open in a round O of anguish. He put both hands against the glass of the window, and Rashid heard him howl.

  He was no longer the dauntless hero, the brave one, the leader. He was sobbing out his pain and fright, like the little boy he was.

  ‘Iqbal! Where are you going? Where will I find you again? Amal!’ yelled Rashid.

  But the car was moving already, bouncing across the rutted sand, gaining speed as it disappeared out through the palm-frond fence.

  ‘You’ll meet up with them again in Pakistan,’ Haji Faroukh said with gruff sympathy. But Rashid knew he was lying.

  He stood weeping uncontrollably on the very spot where Iqbal had come to him and comforted him on his first day in Dubai.

  Bilal came as Rashid’s storm of tears subsided. He arrived in a taxi, stepping out of it with a flourish. Haji Faroukh greeted him with a warmth that he’d never shown to him before, and even invited him into the guest house.

  ‘I can’t stop,’ Bilal said regretfully, conscious of the honour. ‘I have to get the boys to the airport.’

  ‘The airport?’ gasped Rashid, shocked out of his despair. ‘We’re going now?’

  ‘Yes. Where are your things?’ Bilal was grandly jingling some money in his pocket. ‘Where’s Shari?’

  Rashid looked around, realizing with surprise that he hadn’t seen Shari for a while.

  ‘Find him quickly,’ Bilal said. ‘We’ve got to get going.’

  Shari was hiding in the sleeping shed.

  ‘Go away!’ he shouted at Rashid. ‘I’m not going anywhere! You can’t make me!’

  ‘Shari, you little fool, it’s Uncle Bilal. He’s going to take us home. To Pakistan. To Ma.’

  He found it hard to believe his own words.

  ‘The goat will be there,’ he added cunningly.

  ‘Is Iqbal coming? Where did they take him?’ said Shari.

  ‘I don’t know. Come on. Where are the clothes Haji gave you?’

  A few minutes later they had bundled everything into a bulging plastic bag.

  The little red car had been lying under Rashid’s sweater. Rashid picked it up, and was about to put it into his pocket when something turned inside him.

  ‘Go to Uncle Bilal,’ he told Shari. ‘I’m coming.’

  He darted out of the shelter and ran to the open space at the back of the uzba where he had played football so often with the others.

  He hesitated for a moment, then lifted his arm and hurled the car away from him. It sailed up and over the palm-frond fence, and disappeared.

  He watched it go, imagining it landing on the ground out there, lying motionless, to be buried soon in drifting sand.

  ‘Good,’ he said out loud. ‘Good.’

  He had been holding the car so tightly that it had left marks on his hand.

  He ran back to the shelter, picked up the bag of clothes and walked slowly to where Uncle Bilal was still talking with Haji Faroukh.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ he heard Bilal say indignantly as he approached, ‘Gaman Khan is the biggest crook in the business. He’s stolen half the boys’ money. My sister got much less for them than she should have done. She’s managed though. She’s opened a little shop. That man cheated me too. At least I’m free of him now he’s locked up. What I earn, I’ll keep.’

  Haji Faroukh was no longer listening. He astonished Rashid by kneeling down on the sand, lowering himself with the awkwardness of a heavy man. Putting an arm round Rashid and Shari he pulled them into an embrace.

  ‘Don’t think too badly of me,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was your fate to be born poor and to work here to help your mother. God go with you, and give you both a long life.’

  He rose with difficulty to his feet.

  ‘I’ll miss them, God help me,’ he said to Bilal. ‘They’re good boys. I don’t know how we’ll go on now. There are such changes round here. Robots and all - I don’t know.’

  He saw Salman come, and called out, ‘Have you got it, Salman?’

  ‘Yes, Haji.’

  Salman came up and handed him an envelope. Haji Faroukh put it into Rashid’s hands.

  ‘Here are the tips you earned for the races you won. I’ve kept them for you. You’ll thank me now for not letting you fritter it all away on marbles and the like.’

  The taxi driver tooted his horn.

  ‘Where did they take Iqbal? And Amal? Will they be all right?’ Rashid asked breathlessly, as Bilal pulled him away.

  But Haji Faroukh didn’t seem to hear. He had bent down and picked up Shari, and he was carrying him to the taxi.

  ‘Goodbye, Yasser,’ said Salman, and Rashid, turning to him, saw that his good eye was wet with tears. Rashid flung his arms round Salman’s waist and clung to him, but Bilal tugged him away.

  There were no long bus rides on the journey home, no nights in filthy rooms, no tense and angry adults. There was only the brilliance of the airport at Dubai, and a plane so flooded with light that it seemed to Rashid as if it must be flying straight into the sun. And when it landed, there was the traffic, and noise, and hubbub of Pakistan, with everyone speaking Punjabi, and over it all the smell of spicy food.

  They came to the village in the same way that they’d left it, in a rickshaw, whose little engine stuttered with a loud tic-tic as it bumped down pot-holed roads.

  Familiar landmarks began to appear: the quiet courtyard of the mosque, glimpsed through open gates; the little shop on t
he corner with the same old pile of bricks tumbled outside it. Rashid’s hands, clasped tightly together, were sticky with nervous sweat.

  Now they were turning down the lane, and the rickshaw was stopping outside the rough boards of the old door, and the door was opening, and a woman was rushing out of it, her arms wide, wide open. ‘Rashid!’ she was calling out. ‘Shari!’ He knew her voice. He remembered it at once, and the sight and smell and feel of her. He tumbled off the rickshaw into her arms, and knew he had come home.

  Elizabeth Laird has been nominated five times for the Carnegie Medal and has won numerous awards, including the Children’s Book Award. She is the author of many highly acclaimed children’s books.

  She and her husband divide their time between London and Edinburgh.

  Also by Elizabeth Laird

  The Witching Hour

  Crusade

  Oranges in No Man’s Land

  Secrets of the Fearless

  Paradise End

  A Little Piece of Ground

  The Garbage King

  Jake’s Tower

  Red Sky in the Morning

  Kiss the Dust

  Secret Friends

  Hiding Out

  Jay

  Forbidden Ground

  When the World Began: Stories

  Collected in Ethiopia

  The Wild Things series

  Acknowledgements

  Lost Riders owes its existence to Angela Coleridge, adviser to Save the Children Sweden in Peshawar. Without her inspiration and encouragement I would never have dared undertake this mission.

  In Peshawar I was greatly assisted by Syed Mehmood Asghar (Country Manager) and Ghulam Qadri of Save the Children Sweden, who made my visit possible and gave me unstinting help.

  In Rahimyar Khan I was welcomed and looked after by PRWSWO (Pakistan Rural Workers Social Welfare Organisation). Its Secretary General, Sabir Farhat, made great efforts to help me, putting his time and resources at my disposal. His advice was invaluable. Tariq Choudhry, the Project Officer, organized the details of my visit and was endlessly patient with my many demands. Muhammad Ahmad, the Social Organizer, and Muhammad Pervaiz Khan, the Job Skills Supervisor, set up my visits to the rural areas and gave me very useful information and advice.

  Nothing could have been done without the help and enthusiasm of my facilitator, Muhammad Tayyab Farooq, who took me out to the villages and spent many hours in the arduous work of translation, scrupulously answering all my questions and aiding me with his deep knowledge of the boys’ lives and backgrounds.

  Wolfgang Friedl of Unicef helped to arrange my visit to Dubai. Once there, I was greatly assisted by Issam Jamil Azouri, spokesman of the UAE Ministry of the Interior, who drove me all the way to Abu Dhabi to attend a camel race, introduced me to the President of the Camel Racing Association and took me to a camel farm. His passionate commitment to ending the exploitation of children in the Gulf was inspirational.

  In London, I was encouraged and given useful information by Catherine Turner of the Anti-Slavery Society.

  I would like to thank them all.

  First published 2008 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This edition published 2009 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2010 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-230-73894-2 PDF

  ISBN 978-0-230-73893-5 EPUB

  Copyright © Elizabeth Laird 2008

  The right of Elizabeth Laird to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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