In the Sea There are Crocodiles

June 13, 2011
Based on the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari, a young boy whose agonizing struggle begins after his native Afghanistan becomes a dangerous place to live, Geda's novel is his first book to be translated into English. Enaiat is 10 years old when his mother takes him from their village into Pakistan, leaving her other children behind. She shepherds her eldest son to presumed safety while imparting three tenets for adulthood: don't use drugs, don't use weapons, and don't cheat or steal. She leaves him during the night and when he realizes she's gone and he's alone, he finds a series of jobs and transient shelters while trying to figure out which country might provide him with the chance to survive. He crosses into Iran, only to be to repatriated to Afghanistan under harsh conditions. His treacherous existence is filled with touching moments of accomplishment, as when he's able to buy a watch. "I'd often thought about having a watch, just to give some meaning to the passage of time..." Geda includes a running dialogue between himself as author and Enaiat that gives perspective to the tale as the boy forges onward, crossing borders and leaving his childhood far behind. The book is simply written, and strangely distant emotionally, but gives a face to the refugees who face daunting odds to get to the West.

Starred review from June 15, 2011

A nonfiction novel, recounted in part from contemporary oral history.

Ten-year-old Enaiatollah (Enaiat) Akbari lives with his mother in Ghazni province, in Afghanistan, and neither one knows his life is about to change forever. One day the Taliban arrive at his school and tell the headmaster to shut it down, but he ignores—or perhaps defies—them. Two days later, the Taliban show up again, put the headmaster within a circle of students and shoot him. Thus begins Enaiat's odyssey from his village, and he's not to settle down again for five long and precarious years. Soon after the incident at his school, his mother gives her son three pieces of advice—don't use drugs, don't use weapons, don't cheat or steal—and then she takes off, leaving Enaiat to fend for himself. He starts a pattern of relying on traffickers to get him across sundry borders, first to Pakistan, then to Iran, Turkey, Greece and, finally—at the age of 15—Italy, where he's able to get asylum and start school again. Along the way he has various jobs, mostly selling wares on the streets or working illegally (and dangerously) on construction sites. He also relies on the kindness of strangers, a Greek woman, for example, who clothes him and gives him food and money. And while from an objective perspective Enaiat's life is both unsafe and high-risk, he never loses his innate optimism or his buoyant pluckiness and ingenuity.

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March 1, 2011

When Enaiatollah Akbari left his tiny Afghan village with his mother, he was only ten years old, and he had no idea what an arduous journey lay before him--a journey that eventually led him, alone, from the Pakistani city where he and his mother had fled to Iran, Turkey, Greece, and, finally, Italy. There he met Italian novelist Geda, whom he asked to tell his story. Having helped Akbari to reconstruct events and give them lyric shape, Geda is so scrupulous that he insists on calling this fiction. But the book reads like a conversation between the two. The result, both affecting and unaffected, powerfully delivers one child's story of survival while bringing us close to the horrors that characterize Akbari's part of the world. A major best seller in Italy and France, with rights sold to over 20 more countries, this book would seem to be on its way. Another Kite Runner? It's certainly a lovely read.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
Based on a true story, Geda's novel faithfully retells the torturous life of Afghan EnaiatollahEnaiatAkbari as, beginning at age 10, he proceeds from one dire situation to another in hopes of finding a new life free from Taliban rule. His plight is briskly as well as briefly told, yet in it there's no shortage of heart-breaking trials to be faced as Enaiat journeys through Pakistan and Iran to Turkey and Greece before finding political asylum in Italy when he is 15. On one page he's doing back-breaking labor to repay debts, and on the next he's spending days inside the false bottom of a truck dangerously crossing a border. Throughout, firing AK-47s boom and blast. Enaiat's daring adventure is ideally suited for young adults, but older readers will find in it a deeper layer of investigation of the humanity of strangers and the power of family. If Enaiat's memory eventually seems muddled and fragmented, so that the book must be called fiction, the truth of his experience remains.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)