Iqbal Masih was gunned down by an assassin in cold blood. He was just 13 years old. Andrew Crofts, the bestselling ghostwriter of "The Little Prisoner and The Kid", tells the heart-wrenching story of this courageous child martyr, who died trying to end child slavery. After six years of bonded labour in a Pakistani carpet factory, Iqbal escaped the clutches of his tyrannical carpet-master, and then tirelessly worked to spread the word to other enslaved children that they could be free too. He addressed international conventions on behalf of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front and participated in raids on illegal factories. He was awarded the Reebok 'Youth in Action' Award, and a scholarship to study law in Boston. But before he could study, his life was cut short by a hail of bullets from the gun of an unknown sympathiser with the carpet-masters.

‘Don’t go back to the city, stay another day,’ Iqbal’s mother pleaded. Iqbal was glad that he’d returned to the village. His mother was full of maternal pride, revelling in the excitement of the occasion. This was only his second visit but both times he had attracted crowds of people to the house bearing gifts of drinks and food. He knew his mother, Inayat, had no idea what her small son did when he was in Lahore, but she was pleased to enjoy the attention and respect that he brought to her door. God knows she deserved it after all she’d been through; the endless work and struggle and a husband so useless to her she’d have been better off on her own from the start. Iqbal also knew she’d never given a thought to what he’d been doing all those years when he went off to work in the carpet factory, either. Why would she? She had enough to worry about as it was. The carpet master had assured her he would look after her son like an uncle. How would she know to distrust the word of a man who was always so friendly towards her? ‘I have to get back, Mama,’ he told her, wriggling forward to the edge of the bed where he’d been holding court, his feet still swinging above the ground, reminding her that however important her son might now be in the world, he was still just a child. ‘My medication is in the city. I mustn’t miss it, even for one day.’ The relatives and neighbours sitting with him on the bed shifted reluctantly to let him through. They immediately sprawled out to fi ll the space he’d left beneath the lazy ceiling fan. It had been a pleasant afternoon for them all, neighbours and relatives alike, with Iqbal’s visit to distract them from their daily problems and Inayat’s hospitality to spoil them with endless cups of tea. Iqbal cast his eyes round his family home. It seemed so much more basic now he had experienced more of the world. The house consisted of two cramped, windowless rooms leading onto an enclosed courtyard with an open kitchen and a basic toilet in the opposite corner. The contents of the toilet emptied themselves out through the front wall of the courtyard into the open sewer, which ran along the edge of the narrow alleyway outside. All the houses in the village were the same, endless plain stone walls, punctuated with a variety of makeshift gates and doors, guarding the privacy of the families that gathered inside to talk and argue, drink tea and complain. Or simply sit still and try to keep cool. The walls of the rooms were lined with shelves displaying rows of lovingly washed and polished tin cups, plates and glasses. Every possession a family had in Muridke was on show for visitors to admire. There was nowhere else to store anything anyway. Large tin trunks protected clothes from the dust and the humidity, and from insects that would have destroyed them long before anyone could have afforded to replace them. Iqbal was proud, and a little embarrassed, to see that most of the pictures propped up around the shelves were of him. Some had been cut from newspapers and others had been given to the family as gifts by visitors who had come to the village eager to see where Iqbal started life. The biggest newspaper cutting was already curling up from the heat and yellowing at the edges. It carried a grainy picture of him standing on a podium with his arms stretched up as if accepting applause, a rare smile of pure joy vanquishing the lines of concentration that usually furrowed his brow. He remembered the moment that was taken, in Stockholm, thousands of miles away from Muridke.

 

Andrew Crofts is a bestselling ghost writer and author. He is the author of The Little Prisoner, Just A Boy and The Little Hero (Vision Paperbacks) amongst many others and is currently one of the featured ghostwriters on Richard and Judy.

 

 

The Little Hero by Andrew Crofts
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