"I often have nightmares that I am on the back of a camel and fall on the ground," says 20-year-old Azad, who returned to Bangladesh recently. "...The employer beats me and then I wake up and see...no, I am now in my own country," he says in Bangla mixed with an accent of Arabic and Urdu, languages he speaks fluently.

Azad is now staying at a home of Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association (BNWLA) in the city with 65 other camel jockeys who returned home on August 11 and 23.

Azad along with his fake parents--Nurunnabi and Ratna Nabi of Noakhali--and their son went to the UAE in 1995 via India as transit.

Azad does not know if his real parents handed him to Nurunnabi and Ratna for taking him to Abu Dhabi. Only he was directed to call them "Abba" and "Amma' (father and mother), Azad recalls.

The BNWLA authority is yet to discover whether Azad's real parents gave their son willingly or he was trafficked.

Nurunnabi and his wife along with Azad and some other children and their parents first went to India and stayed there for a few days. Azad, however, cannot remember the name of the state. Azad, his fake parents and their son went to Abu Dhabi separately and stayed at a room of Ratna's sister.

More sisters of Ratna had been living in Abu Dhabi since long, according to Azad.

A few days later, an Arab man named Ali Diliti--as Azad pronounced it--took him to his house by a car. The man handed Azad over to another Arab, who put him on the back of a camel as soon as he arrived his home.

"I was very happy to sit on the camel's back, but the accident took place when the animal started running. I fell down. The Arab man beat me and again put me on the camel's back, but I was so frightened that I fell down again," Azad narrates his first experience on a camel's back.

"He then tied me with a tree and beat me severely. Blood oozed out the cut skin," he says. "At one stage my employer Ali Diliti took me to his house where I was in bed for two weeks to be cured."

Azad says the Arab man also used to beat him if he failed to become first in a race and gave him very little food to keep him light. There were more children from Pakistan and Sudan with Azad. They had to take part in camel races for different competitors--the employer and his friends.

"I also had to look after the camels, train them by running them for 20-40 kilometres. I had little time to sleep," Azad recalls his days of camel jockeying that became quite a habit within a few months.

But crueler was racing against a speedy car. "Some Arabs would drive cars and force us to race against them. We had no choice as they would whip us mercilessly if we disobeyed," Azad says.

Overwork and lack of nutrition have taken its toll on the little boy. In his sickly-looking, skinny frame, 20-year-old Azad hardly looks more than 15.

The authorities working on human trafficking say boys are often injected drugs to hinder physical growth in a bid to prolong their work period. A camel cannot run fast when boys become heavy.

Azad worked under Ali Diliti for four years.

"I could not control my tears whenever I went to Amma's residence and would urge her to send me back home. But she wouldn't listen to me," Azad narrates in tearful eyes. Moreover, the monthly salary of 400 dirham he was supposed to get was given to his fake parents, he notes.

One day Azad collected a mobile phone number from Ratna's house to contact his mother in Bangladesh. Annoyed by his constant appeal, Ratna sent him to another employer.

One day in 2000, the young lad fled this second employer's house and started working under another person. "But somehow my fake mother came to know of my whereabouts. She came to me and threatened me saying she would tell the police if I don't go with her." Ratna, however, had to go back as Azad lashed back at her that the police will not arrest him but her.

One and half years later, Azad went back to his second employer as he had assured him of a better salary of 500 dirham. "I began sending money to my mother," he told The Daily Star at the BNWLA home on Monday. There he only looked after the camels and did not take part in the race.

"I used to spend rest of the money on talking to my mother in Bangladesh," he says.

This year after the UAE government directed all its citizens to release the Bangladeshi camel jockeys, his employer sent him to a deportation cell in Abu Dhabi from where he was flown back home.

The youth, who never went to school before going to Abu Dhabi, now dreams of being educated and a free life.

"I am happy now...my mother came to visit me here. I will be with my parents very soon and go to school," Azad says. "I want the people, who took me and others for employing as camel jockeys, be punished for our sufferings."