The first day in Pakistan, I had to visit Gulshan and her two girls the very first family freed from afar. They are living in a small room in a city in Kasur. Gulshan now has a part time job working on shoes. It had to be hard, being a mom and not getting aid, abandoned by a husband who fled the brick yard two years ago, leaving her and the girls. We’re going to get them a big fan ASAP. We prayed with her and encouraged her. We brought them icecream.
We visited the Anwar family. His wife Sugra, had succumbed to the heat and had to be hospitalized their last days in the brick yard. The young people were pressured by the owners of the brick kiln to continue making bricks, while Anwar was with his wife at the hospital. He had an initial loan for $400, that 11 years, and 700-1000 bricks a day later, had never been lessened. Rather it had more than tripled to $1,300. There is exorbitant interest bonded laborers in subjection to powerful Brick Masters never get to ever know of or question.
We met with the Shazahd Family. All five daughters were born in the brick yard. Two hundred and fifty US dollars had been borrowed from the brick master for their wedding, and a million bricks and 15 years later, instead of a debt that should have long been paid down, but rather their debt increased THREE FOLD. I asked him if he would have borrowed from a brick master if he had it all to do over again. He put his hands to his head and said ‘NEVER’, that he repented every day his family was stuck there. His wife said there were days that the family went hungry. The only food that they got to eat ninety nine percent of the time was flatbed, cooked without any oil and days-old, vegetables. Shahzad works part time for a trucking firm now, and they now have a low rent home with much more space than the 14 by 14 ft hut, built into the brick yard wall, that they lived in for 15 years.
Freedom Cry (Living Tree International) 