My mother, up for an hour or more already, was in the kitchen making lunches. The Kielburger household would soon be heading off to school.
Both my parents are teachers. There were just the three of us; my older brother, Marc, had gone away to a junior college in January.
“Hi, Mom. The paper arrived yet?” I said, pouring cereal into a bowl.
“It’s on the chair.”
Every morning I read the comics before heading off to school. Doones-bury. Calvin and Hobbes. Wizard of Id. These are my favourites. If I find one particularly funny, sometimes I’ll cut it out and post it on my bulletin board, or tape it to one of my school books. We all can use a good laugh every day.
I picked up the Toronto Star and put it on the table. But I didn’t make it past the front page. Staring back at me was the headline: “Battled child labor, boy, 12, murdered.” It was a jolt. Twelve, the same age as I was. My eyes fixed on the picture of a boy in a bright-red vest. He had a broad smile, his arm raised straight in the air, a fist clenched.
I read on. “Defied members of ‘carpet mafia.’” Scenes from old movies came to my mind. But this wasn’t any such mafia; the dateline was Pakistan.
The boy was someone named Iqbal Masih.
I read quickly through the article, hardly believing the words before me.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) – When Iqbal Masih was 4 years old, his parents sold him into slavery for less than $16.
For the next six years, he remained shackled to a carpetweaving loom most of the time, tying tiny knots hour after hour.
By the age of 12, he was free and travelling the world in his crusade against the horrors of child labor.
On Sunday, Iqbal was shot dead while he and two friends were riding their bikes in their village of Muridke, 35 kilometres outside the eastern city of Lahore. Some believe his murder was carried out by angry members of the carpet industry who had made repeated threats to silence the young activist.
I turned to my mother. “Have you read this? What exactly is child labour? Do you think he was really killed for standing up to this ‘carpet mafia,’ whatever that is?”
She was as lost for answers as I was. “Try the library at school,” she suggested. “Maybe you’ll find some information there.”
Riding the bus to school later that morning, I could think of nothing but the article I had read on the front page. What kind of parents would sell their child into slavery at four years of age? And who would ever chain a child to a carpet loom?
Throughout the day I was consumed by Iqbal’s story. In my Grade 7 class we had studied the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln, and how some of the slaves in the United States had escaped into Canada. But that was history from centuries ago. Surely slavery had been abolished throughout the world by now. If it wasn’t, why had I never heard about it?
The school library was no help. After a thorough search I still hadn’t found a scrap of information. After school, I decided to make the trek to the public library.
The librarian knew me from my previous visits. Together, we searched out more information on child labour. We found a few newspaper and magazine articles, and made copies.
By the time I returned home, images of child labour had imbedded themselves in my mind: children younger than me forced to make carpets for endless hours in dimly lit rooms; others toiling in underground pits, struggling to get coal to the surface; others maimed or killed by explosions raging through fireworks factories. I was angry at the world for letting these things happen to children. Why was nothing being done to stop such cruelty?
As I walked through my middle-class neighbourhood, my thoughts were on the other side of the world. And my own world seemed a shade darker.
That evening I had great difficulty concentrating on my homework. I pulled out the articles I had brought from the library and read them over, again and again. I had often seen the faces of poverty and malnutrition on television. At school we had discussed the famines whole nations have been forced to endure. But this was different. For some reason these descriptions of child labour had moved me like no other story of injustice.
Perhaps it was because the stories were of people my own age, and many even younger. Perhaps it was because these few words had shattered my ideas of what childhood was all about—school, friends, time to play. I had work to do around my house—carrying out the garbage, cleaning up the backyard—but it all seemed so trivial compared to what these children had to do.
I thought of how I would react if I found myself in their place. I felt sure I would rebel, gather everyone together and stand up to the cruelty. But I wasn’t in their place; I could only imagine what I would do.
I opened our world atlas on the kitchen table and searched the index until it led me to a map of Pakistan. I discovered it wedged between Iran, Afghanistan and India, with the Arabian Sea along its southern edge. I couldn’t locate Muridke; it was too small to be on the map. I did find Lahore, and repeated the word several times out loud. It seemed so far away, a world I didn’t know at all.
I had to find out more.
“I have a friend who worked overseas, in Africa,” my mother told me.
“Why don’t you give her a call? If she can’t answer your questions, I’m sure she’ll know of someone who can.”
That first telephone conversation led to calls to several human rights organizations. Little did I think, in the months to come, it would lead to hundreds of other calls and faxes around the world, all in a quest to get to the heart of the issue of child labour.
Two things struck me right away. First of all, none of the organizations I talked to seemed to know much about child labour. But equally amazing: every person who tried to answer my questions was an adult. Without a single exception. Even though the issue was all about children, there were no young people involved in these organizations. I could hardly believe it. Shouldn’t other children be speaking out in defence of children?
I’m always fascinated by coincidences, how one random event can come on the heels of another and together alter the whole direction of a person’s life. Early the following week, in the Life section of the Toronto Star, there was a full-page article in celebration of Youth Week. As part of the activities, an organization called Youth Action Network was sponsoring an event at a downtown convention centre that coming Friday. Youth organizations were invited to set up displays and distribute information.
I’m not sure why, in the end, I decided to call the number in the article. I guess it was because I was tired of being able to speak only to organizations run by adults.
By a stroke of good fortune, my call was directed to Alam Rahman. Alam, whose parents were from Bangladesh, was a recent university graduate. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but Alam would become a very central figure in my life. I spoke to him for more than an hour about Iqbal and child labour. I tested the idea of getting some friends together and starting a children’s group to fight such cruelty.
Alam didn’t hesitate. “It’s a great idea, Craig. You should try it!”
That was all I needed. The following day I asked my Grade 7 teacher, Mr. Fedrigoni, if I could have a few minutes to speak to the students before class began. I’m sure he must have thought it was about some social function or a football game I was organizing during lunch break.
As usual, we stood by our desks while the morning announcements came over the public-address system, followed faithfully by the national anthem. Then we sat down and quietly listened to Mr. Fedrigoni say how there had been a few problems with discipline the day before, but that he hoped this would be a better day. When he had finished, he simply said, “Craig has a few comments he would like to make to you.” He looked at me and nodded.
I walked to the front and turned