"I was hungry almost for two days. How long can you survive with a bun?....."

I was hungry almost for two days. How long can you survive with a bun? My friend asked me to go with him. They steal things and sells in the black market. I mean I joined a gang of thief. I was feeling strange as I never did any kind of crime even when my grandma died without any treatment. She raised me alone and taught me every good virtue she knew. Knowing me well my friend Rubel encouraged me by saying that is only stealing, not killing people. My luck was on my side. That day the man was standing alone in the crowd carelessly, at a school gate. It took me a second to take his mobile phone and I disappeared.

My friend quickly opened the sim and put it on my palm. I never saw any mobile before that and asked my friend to keep that for a day. He said that was a very good deal. I snatched it from him and looked closely. In the display, a small girl was giggling, I felt she was smiling by looking at me. At night I went to our street tube to sleep, I was going through all pictures that phone had. Hundreds of picture of that girl. From the day she was born. And then with her dad, that man. At last the baby girl was in the hospital bed, smiling the same with all equipment attaching to her. And then it finished. I asked my friend to check well, my friend is smart and educated. After reading a message he said, ‘Asfaq, the girl died.’ At that very moment I freeze. I could not sleep that night because whole time the girl was giggling in my ears.

Next day I asked my friend to put the sim inside. He warned me that if the man caught me the gang will kill me. I did not care. I have nothing to lose, I do not even love my life. After turning the phone on, it was ringing constantly. My friend showed me how to answer. The man was other side, begging me to give back his phone and he would give me whatever I want. I was unable to speak a word, cut the line. At evening I asked my friend to send a message by asking him to come in the same school gate.

The next day, on my way, I wanted to go back, I wanted to sell that beautiful phone and have some lunch. But then there was the little girl smiling ahead of me. So, I keep walking with her. I saw the man in the crowd, looking madly here and there. I stopped a little girl and asked her to give the phone to the man. She innocently asked me who am I. I told her I am a street boy. What she understood I don’t know, I saw her running towards the man. I saw the man holding the phone with his chest and looking through the crowd, I ran away before his eyes could reach me. After that, the little girl never came to my dream.

• Asfaq