The Eleventh Trade

July 15, 2018
Sami and his grandfather escaped Afghanistan and traveled through Iran, Turkey, and Greece to make it to Boston, Massachusetts, where now they must learn to adapt to a new country, a foreign language, and a completely different culture. In Boston, Sami and Baba try to make a living in music by playing the Afghani rebab, which Baba managed to keep safe during their journey. But one day while Sami is watching over the instrument while busking, someone steals it and disappears into a subway train. Sami has the month of Ramadan to recover the rebab. To do this he must find a way to earn $700 without Baba finding out, so he begins a sequence of trades. Along the way, Sami's soccer team joins him in his struggle to get the rebab back. But flashbacks from his escape from war-torn Afghanistan keep coming back to haunt him; every time he crosses the Charles River he thinks of the journey across the Mediterranean, when water meant drowning and dehydration. Sami narrates in the present tense, his desperation to recover the rebab, his sorrow at leaving his home, and his acclimatization to Boston, English, and American customs made plain. It pulls readers into Sami's quest to regain stability in his new life, making it impossible for readers not to empathize with his longing for a home. Both a quest story and a friendship story, this book brings to life the traumatic reality refugee children experience in a world filled with borders and walls. (Fiction. 8-12)

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September 1, 2018

Gr 4-6-Twelve-year-old Sami and his grandfather, Baba, are Afghan refugees who recently arrived in Boston with their prized musical instrument: a rebab. When the rebab is stolen from them in a subway station, Baba loses his source of income. Determined to find the beloved instrument, Sami befriends a resourceful, tech-savvy, soccer-loving classmate, Dan, who helps Sami locate the rebab in a secondhand music store. Sami must buy it back for $700. Unbeknown to his dispirited grandfather, Sami begins a series of trades to acquire the money, starting with his Manchester United keychain for a seemingly "broken" iPod. Joining Dan's rec center soccer team, Sami makes new friends and discovers a support network of peers and adults who help him regain the rebab and adjust to his new life. Sami's first-person narration is youthful, engaging, observant, and interspersed with personal references: Pashto vocabulary and sayings, vivid recollections of his deceased mother and father, prayer and fasting customs during Ramadan, and searing memories of his escape from a Taliban suicide bombing. Sami is not immune to the harsh realities of theft, poverty, the hate speech of a classmate who labels him a terrorist, and his own recurring nightmares of explosions, death, and harrowing escape. Background information on the Taliban insurgency and U.S. military in Afghanistan is minimal. VERDICT Sami's story sheds light on the special challenges, determination, faith, resilience, and post-traumatic stress that impact and shape the lives of many refugees.-Gerry Larson, formerly at Durham School of the Arts, NC

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