Iqbal

“I had been working for Hussain Khan for three years, and I had never been put in the Tomb. Some of the other children were envious, and said I was Hussain Khan’s pet and that’s why he didn’t punish me.”

Fatima is Hussain’s favorite because she submits without complaint, making her easy to manage, and she is good at making the carpets. Some of the children turn against Fatima and are jealous of her rather than uniting against Hussain. By creating strife among the children, Hussain has an easier time oppressing them.

“He has been erasing those lines for three years, and they were still all there, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. Sometimes I even thought there were more of them, but that wasn’t possible—the lines on the slate couldn’t be like the weeds in my father’s garden that grew overnight and crowded the crops.”

The author uses dramatic irony to reveal that when the children are not around, Hussain replaces the lines that he erases. Fatima, like many of the others, trusts him when he says she will eventually pay back her family’s debt. By providing false proof of the children’s progress, Hussain both motivates the children to work hard and prevents them from rebelling against him.

“The fourteen of us child-slaves plus Karim, all observing another slave. He was one of the many who had come and gone over the years, but we felt that somehow, this new boy was different.”

Iqbal is distinguished from the other bonded children in the plant upon his arrival. His presence unites them. This line also serves to separate Karim from the rest of the bonded children. He is much older than the others, and he is still at the factory largely by choice because he feels that he has nowhere else that he can go. This contrasts with the circumstances for the other children, who are forced to stay at the factory against their will.

“One thing was for certain: He wasn’t chained because he was a numskull. Oh, no. It was for some other reason.”

Upon his arrival, Iqbal is chained to his workstation. Most of the children who are chained are poor workers, but Iqbal has exceptional carpetmaking skills. The fact that he is chained alludes to his rebellious nature. Hussain is taking precautions to avoid complications with Iqbal.

“‘You’re crazy!’ cried Salman. ‘You’re saying those things because you’re mean. You’re trying to frighten us.’”

The children are upset when Iqbal tells them that they will never pay off their debts. They held onto hope that they would repay them and return to their families, and when they hear otherwise, they become defensive. Salman accuses Iqbal of lying, in an attempt to hold onto his hope, instead of directing his anger toward Hussain, who is the real enemy.

“When we stopped working at sunset we were exhausted. Our fingers bled from all the cuts the threads made.”

The children are coerced into working harder than normal before foreign clients are coming to visit and pick up their order. The threads they work with cause small cuts, which makes their work more difficult and painful, but they must work through the pain if they want to avoid further abuse. These lines use imagery and sensory language to evoke emotional and physical responses from the reader, which is intended to help them relate to the bonded children.

“Now that he was so big and therefore useless for working on the loom, he was afraid he’d be thrown away like an old, outgrown pair of shoes.”

Karim’s character is an example of dramatic irony. Karim believes that Hussain is fair and that he will erase the children’s debts. However, Karim has been at the factory for most of his life, and his debt has not been paid off. He no longer fears his slavery; he fears freedom because slavery is all that he has ever known.

“Hussain Khan screamed like a stuck pig. The mistress screamed. Karim screamed, because he always did everything they did.”

Hussain is likened to a pig, which enhances his role as an antagonist. The description of his scream also serves as sensory language, helping the readers to hear the sound he makes. Karim’s characterization is developed by his tendency to follow what Hussain does. Karim does not want him to see him as another of the bonded children, so he strives to impress Hussain to gain his respect.

“You feel yourself suffocating and you think you’re going to go mad. It feels like someone’s grabbing your throat and squeezing. And then there’s the dark. After a while you begin to see strange shapes, and colors, too, but they don’t help you; they only scare you.”

Salman describes what it feels like to be in the Tomb. His description uses imagery and sensory language to help his audience and the reader understand the misery of the Tomb. The description aligns with reports of symptoms people experience in solitary confinement, which has been proven to be psychologically detrimental.

“He was still like a dog, but like the kind that carries his tail between his legs.”

The image of a dog is used to describe the bonded children throughout Iqbal. Karim describes a child who was bonded by Hussain years before. When the boy first arrived, he was likened to an arrogant street dog, but after Hussain abuses the boy, Karim describes him as a submissive and fearful dog. This dehumanization is intended to portray the child’s circumstances rather than to insult the bonded child.

“We’ll find somebody to help us out. Out there. There must be someone.”

Iqbal is characterized as optimistic despite being bonded and abused. He believes that he will find people who can help him and the other bonded children to escape their oppressive circumstances. This line foreshadows Iqbal’s discovery of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front and Eshan Khan.

“Hussain seemed nervous—it was like he was frightened. And the more the carpet grew, the more nervous and irritable he became. But he didn’t say a word to Iqbal, not a word.”

Hussain is worried that he might do something that would cause Iqbal to destroy another blue Bukhara, so he avoids him. Blue Bukharas are worth a lot of money, and he does not want to lose the profit nor lose the client because he failed to deliver the product twice. His attitude develops the theme of The Economic Impact of Forced Child Labor. Hussain’s livelihood is completely dependent upon the children he enslaves and who work for him.

“Not a single one of us dared to say ‘next summer,’ or ‘in a year,’ or ‘when I’m grown up.’ Oh yes, we talked about things we’d like to do, and we talked about the day our debt would be canceled. We talked that hope into the ground. But nobody really believed it.”

Although the children hope to gain their freedom, and they discuss it, in theory, they do not explicitly discuss their potential futures. Their futures are uncertain. They know that they will not earn their freedom from Hussain; they don’t know what will happen when they are too old to make carpets. The children do not like to face the idea that they may never see freedom again.

“‘Fatima,’ he said in a low voice, ‘next spring you and I are going to go and fly a kite. Remember that, whatever happens.’”

Iqbal foreshadows his and Fatima’s experience flying a kite after they are freed from captivity. In this quote, Iqbal is characterized as both hopeful and encouraging. He is optimistic, and he wants to share his positive outlook with Fatima.

“Hussain stuck his hand into the wide band he wore around his waist and brought out a big wad of banknotes. He counted out a small pile and gave it to the first policeman, then he counted out another and gave it to the second.”

The behavior of Hussain and the police officers embodies The Power of Corruption. Hussain carries the wad of money with him for unexpected situations, such as when Iqbal returns to the factory with the police officers, who willingly accept the payoff. The police officers are corrupt, and Iqbal is bonded again due to their lack of ethics.

“Iqbal had sown the seeds of hope in all of us. Now the disappointment was too strong.”

Iqbal is thrown into the Tomb after he tries to have Hussain arrested. He is left in the cistern for several days, and Fatima is worried that he will die. Iqbal brought the bonded children together and changed the atmosphere in the factory, and she is worried that without him they have no chance of escaping their enslavement.

“She had taken advantage of the fact that nobody ever paid much attention to her and that Karim behaved as though she didn’t exist, and she had changed the carpet she was working on.”

Everyone underestimates Maria because she is young, small, and does not speak, and they question whether she can hear or not. She surprises everyone by creating a picture of a kite on her carpet, and when Hussain attempts to throw her in the Tomb, the other bonded children stand up for her. Maria, like Iqbal, is able to unite the children against their oppressor.

“So I thought, I’ll talk to a policeman. They’re here to help.”

Before his experience with the corrupt police officers, Iqbal trusted the police and believed they would help him and the other bonded children. It did not occur to him that the police could benefit from the forced labor market.

“Then a small voice spoke from behind the group, a voice we had never heard before. It was a strange voice. It sounded rusty.”

The author uses sensory language in the description of Maria’s voice to enhance the reader’s experience. Maria has not spoken for a long time, and her silence affected the sound of her voice. This line also serves to demonstrate the surprise the children experience at hearing Maria speak, as they did not know that she could.

“A year had passed since Iqbal’s arrival, and something had changed. Before we were a group of children facing the same sad fate, each of us just trying to survive. Now we were united, strong, friends and something more.”

Iqbal’s positive and hopeful spirit and his drive to find freedom for himself and the other children unites the children. Before Iqbal arrived, the children were divided, which made them weaker and easier to control. The change in the relationship between the children reflects the adage that there is strength in numbers.

“I’m afraid they’ll discover that my father’s dead. I have only you. Where will you go, Fatima?”

Maria does not have a home to return to after she is freed from her life as an enslaved person, and she is worried about her future. She has been sticking close to Fatima during their time together in the carpet factory, and she is afraid of losing Fatima, who has become her surrogate family.

“The more children we liberate, the more exploiters we accuse, the more they will try to silence us. That’s what they’re afraid of … our voice. They get rich and fatten where there’s silence and ignorance.”

Eshan Khan highlights the concept that oppressors want to silence the people that they oppress. The enslavers do not want to draw attention to themselves, and they do not want the people they enslave telling the world how they are treated. If the bonded people spread the truth, people will come together to end the unethical practices, which will result in large profit losses for the enslavers. Eshan’s comments reflect The Economic Impact of Forced Child Labor and the importance of Coming Together to Escape Oppression.

“Then he named names. He shouted all the names he had heard during the meetings at Headquarters, the names of the great moneylenders, the names of rich, important, mysterious men who lived in luxury in the center of town, who traveled, who had business all over the world: Eshan Khan’s they.”

Iqbal does not understand the danger of announcing the names of the corrupt people who support the forced labor market. Eshan Khan refers to the corrupt people as “they” because it is safer. However, Iqbal feels that to see more drastic results, he must reveal the individuals who drive the debt bondage market. By doing so, he puts himself at risk of retaliation by the people that he names.