Gang Gang for Life
2000s
These are the years I actually remember. This is firsthand information. No rants, no secondhand accounts. Just what happened.
I barely remember growing up before this. Most of my early life, I was a happy-go-lucky kid. Nothing mattered. Everything was taken care of. All I had to do was get good grades. I only really pushed when it mattered. All year, I remained unbothered, except for those few days and nights right before exams. Then it was all hands on deck. Day or night, I would just go for it. That was how my mum did it, honestly.
Most of my time was spent around her. My father was barely involved in the day-to-day. It felt like she was always there, always on my case. She kept order in the house. And in the beginning, everything was civil.
Until we reached the last two years of school.
Now we were in the game. We had rule. The first taste of power for a kid. And we dominated.
Boys school in Saudi Arabia was our playground. It was divided like everything else in that country. Unsaid lines drawn between people who looked almost the same but carried different passports, spoke slightly different dialects, came from countries that hated each other for reasons we didn’t fully understand.
Before us, it was always Paki versus Indians. Or the Arabs looking down on all Hindis: that’s what they called all of us, anyway. Brown boys. Didn’t matter if you were from Lahore or Mumbai or Dhaka. To them, we were all the same.
But we changed that.
We brought together the Arab boys, the Paki boys, and we were the Indian boys. This was the first time anyone had organised on similarities instead of differences. We found civility in what connected us instead of what divided us: we were all outsiders in our own ways. The Arabs might have had the home advantage, but many of them were just as far from power as we were. Those poor bedouins. The Pakistanis and Indians shared more than we wanted to admit. And all of us were young, dumb, and full of raw testosterone.
It started with family.
My “cousins” were already giving us credibility among their Paki friends. Unlike others, we never let anything come between blood. Didn’t matter what our parents’ passports said or what wars our grandparents’ countries fought. We were family. We kept it gang gang.
That loyalty was everything. It kept the bond alive. It attracted the fence-sitters, the guys who wanted to belong to something stronger than themselves. It gave courage to the ones who’d been too scared to stand up before.
People respected that. When they saw us stick together no matter what, they wanted that.
One day, someone pushed my brother.
I even remember who it was. A senior kid who thought he could get away with it. Thought my brother was alone.
He wasn’t.
Hell rose.
It was sudden, but it was exhilarating. The kind of moment that changes everything. One second, we were just kids navigating the cafeteria and the classroom. The next second, we were something else: a force.
The Arab boys came to our side. They had our backs because we came from the same neighbourhood. That’s how it worked. That was the code.
And we rode that wave.
For those last two years, we were the order. Not through fear, though there was some of that. But through solidarity. Through the understanding that if you came at one of us, you came at all of us.
It felt good. It felt right. Like we’d figured something out that the adults hadn’t. That we could be stronger together.
We kept it family over everything. Loyalty above all. That sticking together, that refusing to fracture, it was the bond. It made us untouchable.
For a while.
It also gave way to the rats.
Infested.
Some gave away quickly, got close for the protection, then bailed when things got tough. Some stayed and ate away at the foundation, taking what they could while giving nothing back. Some more than others.
Some are still eating.
You learn quickly that power attracts parasites. That not everyone who claims brotherhood mean it. That some people will use your loyalty against you, will take everything you offer and give nothing in return. And some are just playing you for a quick leg up.
The boys taught me two things: the strength of unity and the poison of betrayal.
Both would follow me for the rest of my life.
Looking back now, I see it differently. I thought we were building something permanent. We thought the brotherhood we formed on those streets would last forever.
But nothing lasts forever. Not in a place like that. Not when you’re young, dumb and the world is constantly trying to separate you. Citizen and foreigner, powerful and powerless, us and them.
The boys fell apart eventually. People graduated, moved back to their home countries, some stayed, drifted into their own lives. Scattered. Some went back, some moved to the West, some ended up in other Gulf countries, chasing the same dreams our fathers had chased.
We promised we’d stay in touch. We didn’t.
But for those few years, we had something real. A brotherhood built against what the world tried to impose on us. A refusal.
Brown boys who decided we were stronger together than apart.
We were a gang. Gang gang for life, we said.
And for a brief, shining moment, we meant it.
That was the first time I felt like I belonged to something bigger than myself. The first time I understood what it meant to have people who would show up for you without question. The first time I tasted power and felt what it was like to not be afraid.
It was also the first time I learned about temporality. Fragile lives. That power corrupts. That loyalty is rare and betrayal is norm.
My father tried to teach me about these things in his own way. Through patience, through quiet example, through his refusal to compromise. But I was young. I had to learn it myself, through the chaos of teenage alliances and schoolyard politics.
I learned that you can build something beautiful and watch it rot from the inside.
I learned that some people will use you and discard you.
I learned that trust is a currency, and most people are bankrupt.
But I also learned this: when it’s real, when the loyalty is genuine, when people actually show up, there’s nothing more powerful in the world.
That’s what I carry with me. Not the betrayals. Not the rats still eating away at whatever’s left.
The memory of my brother getting pushed, and the whole world rising to meet it.
My brothers. Rising for a fight without questions. Riding together. Laughing at each other. Us against the world.
That’s what I hold onto.
Gang gang for life.
Even if it’s just a memory now.