no“It smelled like they were roasting a goat or something, like they were cooking a goat. It was that bad,” he said, bending his neck to show the top of his head covered in coin-sized burns.
Needless to say, it hurt, but a week has passed and the burns he sustained while fighting a fire during unrest in the Harehills area of Leeds are starting to heal.
He was one of more than a dozen people, mostly Muslim men, who stepped in to defuse tensions on July 18 when police and social services handed over children from Roma families to a shelter, causing chaos.
A police vehicle was overturned, riot police were hit with missiles and a double-decker bus was completely burned, but thanks to the efforts of local residents, no one was seriously injured.
For Qurban, the scene was frighteningly familiar: In 2001, he had taken part in riots in which 26 cars were set on fire, an apartment building was ransacked, and a laundromat was vandalized. What came to be known as the Harehills riots began after an altercation with a Muslim man over a questionable tax receipt and accusations of police heavy-handedness.
The incident sparked an outpouring of anger at police who are felt to be unfairly targeting working-class residents, particularly black and Asian men, in one of Britain’s most deprived areas.
The ensuing clashes involved around 200 people and left several police officers and civilians injured.
A total of 25 young people from Harehills and further afield, including Mr Kurban, who was 21 at the time, were jailed for their actions.
He was convicted of rioting, arson and battery and sentenced to eight years in prison, of which he served more than four. “Prison is not the place to be,” said Kurban, now 44.
So when history threatened to repeat itself 20 years later, he was determined to prevent the young people of his community from suffering the same fate.
“We’ve learnt from this incident and we don’t want this to happen again. The first time it happened we never thought it would happen, so we’ve learnt from this,” he said after a community event at St Aidan’s Church in Harehills.
He had just been applauded along with the young people who risked their own safety to protect their communities.
As the unrest spread, people who remembered 2001 rose up, preventing police from being injured, rerouting buses, collecting water in trash cans to put out fires, and most importantly, warning young people.
“We kept telling the kids not to riot, not to riot,” he said. “At first nobody listened, but then these kids came and they started listening,” he said of the young people around him, all born and raised in Harehills, aged between 22 and 30, most of whom, like Kurban, work as fast-food delivery drivers.
Looking back on 2001, he said, “Something happened and we got caught up in it. We were just as young as those kids were, but I’m proud that they didn’t do what we did then.”
Zain Rashid, 27, said: “One bad [choice] “The past doesn’t make you bad. The past is the past, and people change. You can’t judge someone because of one mistake they made in their life.”
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But despite the lack of violence, there is anger among the younger generation, who said it was a “horrifying experience” and that they were let down by police, who withdrew from the scene of the riots in the early evening.
“We’ve been abandoned by the police. They made the wrong decision to back away and basically let the community rot,” he said.
After the incident, West Yorkshire Police said: “It was clear that police were the only target and officers withdrew. This allowed further local mediation to take place in an attempt to calm the situation.”
Some in the group said a police presence may have made the situation even worse. “Their problem was with the police and social services,” said Nazam Kurban, 24. “Their problem wasn’t the absence of civilians.”
Speaking about the incident, Ms Rashid said: “It was a heinous act. Harehills is not like that. We just had to do what we had to do.”
Syed Hussain, 30, who works for HM Revenue and Customs, agreed, adding that the men who intervened to defuse the anger were doing so “for the good of the community and to show that we are peaceful people”.
Rashid lamented the amount of racism online, both during and after the unrest, including from prominent figures such as his right-wing opponent Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), who was accused of inciting the rioters by those who quelled the situation.
“It’s sad that we risked our lives that night and yet the bad press remains.”
