September 19, 2007	Wednesday	Ramazan 06, 1428

RAHIM YAR KHAN, Sept 18: Banished by poverty nine long years back, two cousins returned from United Arab Emirates to the their native place here with the resolve that no matter what amount of foreign currency they were offered they wont go back to the place which devoured up their golden years called childhood.

“We will never go back to UAE come what may,” said Yousaf Ali, now 14, who was sent to the Gulf state at a tender age of five along with his cousin Wazir Ali, now 15.

The two boys were among the six camel jockeys who landed at the Allama Iqbal Airport, Lahore, on Sept 4 on their return from Al Ain (UAE).

Yousaf and Wazir reached their native Chak 141-Abbasia, Liaqatpur tehsil, four days back.

Yousaf’s elder brother Abdul Ghani told Dawn that their father Dil Muhammad sent Yousaf and his cousin Wazir to UAE in 1998 through an agent, Liaqat Hussain, who assured the family would get 600 dirham a month for each child who would be employed as jockeys in camel races - a sport popular with Gulf Arabs.

“Due to poverty, my father and my uncle Muhammad Hussain agreed to the deal offered by Liaqat,” he said.

Ghani said after the boys’ departure to the UAE, the agent started paying them a meagre sum of Rs10,000 and that too after every three to four months.

“As we were not happy with the amount, we demanded that our children be returned to us,” Ghani said, adding that the agent flatly refused to increase the amount and asked them to go to the UAE themselves if they wanted to bring their children back, knowing that they were too poor to do that. Yousaf’s father died only eight months after his departure.

“After 2001, we suddenly lost contact with the agent and the money too,” Ghani said. However, the families remained in contact with the children by phone.

Ghani said that as many as 30 children of his village had bee sent to the UAE through different agents, and all of them had been brought back, mostly by the Punjab Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (PCPWB).

Yousaf and Wazir, who speak Arabic fluently, said agent Laiqat took them first to Dubai, then to Al Ain and then to an area called Masjid where they found racing camels everywhere.

According to them one Saeed Bin Haza Qalbani owned the camel farm, where there were six other children - four from Sodan and two from Bangladesh.

“At the farm, there were trainers who would take us on camel rides every morning. Then we would feed fodder to the camels,” Yousaf said and added the jockeys were treated kindly and were served various kinds of food.

“We used to cry when we felt lonely and remembered our parents. Then we would talk to them (parents) by phone,” he said.

The boys said Laiqat used to regularly collect their salaries, giving them 20 dirham each only.

“On an August day, Qalbani told us that we were going back to Pakistan. Our happiness knew no bonds. We were given 2,000 dirham each on our return,” Wazir said.

Now Yousaf and Wazir want to get education.

CPWB’s Farhan Aamer said 356 jockeys were brought to Rahim Yar Khan who now lived with their parents. Eight jockeys were still with CPWB in Lahore whose parents were yet to be identified.

CPWB Chairperson Dr Faiza Asghar had directed the officials concerned to get these jockeys admitted to school so that they could become responsible members of society, he added.