DISCOVER
Eraj Alisherov
A Thief Among Us
A Debt No Child Should Carry
September 2026
— I am writing this to ask a question that has followed me since I was eleven years old: what happens when a child's temptation outruns his fear of consequence? I recall the cases, the situations of ten or eleven years before, and sometimes I get truly amazed by what I witnessed over such a long stretch of time. What I am about to tell you is just my personal observation, nothing more, nothing less. This article is not a complaint; it is an account of a quiet possibility — that the heaviest punishment isn't the crime itself, but the debt it leaves behind.
SERVICES
Risk Advisor, Accountability Leader, Strategic Forecaster
Backstory
It's 2015 again. I packed my school belongings, got ready, excited for the lessons ahead, homework done, confident in myself, especially in love with math class. Two to three kilometers, hot sun, the goal: 56th school of Dangara District. I walked that distance every single day, and it made my legs strong. I entered the school as if nothing had happened, found my classmates, greeted them, and we chit-chatted until the bell rang.
I was 99% ready for every class, because nothing was truly difficult — especially English and Russian. But we still had classmates who weren't ready for a single thing.
The only goal on their mind was Counter-Strike after school, maybe Left 4 Dead 2. Sweet life, according to them. I wasn't interested, because I knew this time came only once, and I had to protect it.
Current Reality
When Your Gut Tells You Something
But one hooligan in that school was a different species entirely. I won't share his real name, for anonymity's sake — let's call him Marduk. He belonged to another group: the more dangerous one, where all sorts of hooligans had pooled together. They set off color bombs during physics and chemistry class just to spike their dopamine, and they got suspended for it, repeatedly.
Marduk shared the walk home with me and my friend. He'd join us to chat, laugh, joke — but something told me there was a problem with this guy, something I couldn't name. A Spider-sense, a Tajik version of it, tingling in an eleven-year-old's chest. I usually brushed it off and kept walking. I was wrong to ignore it. If your gut ever starts dancing frantically, something is out there — believe it.
The Future
Then, suddenly, Marduk disappeared. No attendance, nothing. My classmates and I kept asking — "Where is this guy, man?" — but some people would hear the question and deliberately change the subject. Eventually we found the source.
Marduk had committed burglary at eleven years old: breaking into a house and stealing around 12,000 TJS, close to 1,200 USD. In 2015, that was a fortune — the kind of loan people fought banks for. The school called a majlis, a gathering, and warned everyone that even a child's burglary carries consequences. Teachers and the director were reprimanded too, blamed for failing to teach him manners. In response, the teachers argued that parents matter most — it's their job to teach a child not to steal.
One day, we saw Marduk being led by the hand by a strict teacher, scolded like a dog that had just bitten someone. He was crying. Too late for that now. His family fell into debt — I believe they took a bank loan just to repay the people he'd stolen from. A child had acted, but the parents were held responsible.
Which Path Should I Take?
A question kept surfacing in my mind, even though I was only eleven myself, same as him: what was the motive? Could the family have avoided this with more conversation, more attention? Was he simply hungry for money, blind to what would follow? I wondered what kind of confidence — or recklessness — an eleven-year-old needs to break into a stranger's house. I never found a real answer. I think it was just pure temptation. Maybe that's all it ever is.
''One teacher, worn out from the majlis, turned to our class and said something I never forgot: "You think the shame belongs only to him? It belongs to whoever taught him nothing was watching." I didn't have a strategic forecast for that, no risk assessment to offer back. I just nodded. Whatever supervision we think we're free of, someone always ends up paying the bill — the child, the parents, or both.'' — Eraj Alisherov, The Patriot
The Land of Ajam
''As you may know, "He who steals an egg as a boy will steal an ox as a man." It's an old warning, repeated across cultures long before Dangara had a school building. In Marduk's case, the saying didn't stay a proverb — it became a court record, and a bank loan his parents had to sign.'' — Eraj Alisherov, The Patriot
The End
''And so we kept walking that same dusty road home, past the same hot sun, the same 2–3 kilometers, only now with one fewer voice joining us to chat. We didn't talk about what happened much after that. We just walked, a little more aware that a normal Tuesday could turn into a family's debt overnight. To grow up in that town was to learn, early, that consequence doesn't ask if you're ready for it.''
— Eraj Alisherov, The Patriot
The unease I felt as a child isn't just anecdotal. A global review of youth-justice systems found that roughly 28 out of every 100,000 children worldwide are held in detention, a number that varies enormously between countries that invest in early intervention and those that lean on punishment alone. And once a young offender is released, the odds of walking the same path again are steep: aggregated juvenile-justice data put the 12-month recidivism rate for released juveniles at 55%.
These numbers confirm what an eleven-year-old could already sense on a dusty walk home: temptation is quick, but the bill it leaves behind rarely is.
AUSTRALIA 12-MONTH JUVENILE RECIDIVISM RATE
12-MONTH JUVENILE RECIDIVISM RATE
