In the Sea There Are Crocodiles

Zusatztext 50156376 Informationen zum Autor Fabio Geda is an Italian novelist who works with children under duress. He writes for several Italian magazines and newspapers and teaches creative writing at Scuola Holden, the Italian school of storytelling in Turin. This is his first book to be translated into English.   Enaiatollah Akbari graduated from high school in the spring of 2011 and plans to attend university in Italy while continuing to support his mother and siblings, who are now living in Pakistan. He dreams of having the chance to return one day to a democratic and peaceful Afghanistan. Klappentext What would you do if, when you were ten, you were left to fend for yourself, and, in order to survive, you had to undertake a harrowing journey all the way from Afghanistan to Italy? In early 2002, Enaiatollah Akbari's village fell prey to the Taliban. His mother, fearing for his life, led him across the border. So began Enaiat's remarkable and often publishing five-year ordeal--trekking across bitterly cold mountains, riding the suffocating false bottom of a truck, steering an inflatable raft in violent waters--through Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Greece, before he eventually sought political asylum in Italy, all before he turned fifteen years old. Here Fabio Geda delivers the moving true story of Enaiat's extraordinary will to survive and of the accidental brotherhood he found with the boys he met along the way. In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiat's engaging voice and humor, in what is a truly epic story of hope and survival, for readers of all ages. AFGHANISTAN The thing is, I really wasn’t expecting her to go. Because when you’re ten years old and getting ready for bed, on a night that’s just like any other night, no darker or starrier or more silent or more full of smells than usual, with the familiar sound of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer from the tops of the minarets just like any- where else... no, when you’re ten years old—I say ten, although I’m not entirely sure when I was born, because there’s no registry office or anything like that in Ghazni province—like I said, when you’re ten years old, and your mother, before putting you to bed, takes your head and holds it against her breast for a long time, longer than usual, and says, There are three things you must never do in life, Enaiat jan , for any reason... The first is use drugs. Some of them taste good and smell good and they whisper in your ear that they’ll make you feel better than you could ever feel without them. Don’t believe them. Promise me you won’t do it.   I promise.   The second is use weapons. Even if someone hurts your feelings or damages your memories, or insults God, the earth or men, promise me you’ll never pick up a gun, or a knife, or a stone, or even the wooden ladle we use for making qhorma palaw , if that ladle can be used to hurt someone. Promise.   I promise.   The third is cheat or steal. What’s yours belongs to you, what isn’t doesn’t. You can earn the money you need by working, even if the work is hard. You must never cheat anyone, Enaiat jan , all right? You must be hospitable and tolerant to everyone. Promise me you’ll do that.   I promise.   Anyway, even when your mother says things like that and then, still stroking your neck, looks up at the window and starts talking about dreams, dreams like the moon, which at night is so bright you can see to eat by it, and about wishes—how you must always have a wish in front of your eyes, like a donkey with a carrot, and how it’s in trying to satisfy our wishes that we find the strength to pick ourselves up, and if you hold a wish up high, any wish, just in front of your forehead, then life will always be worth living—well, even when your mother, as she helps you get to sleep, says all these thin...

Product details

• Authors: Fabio Geda
• Assisted by: Howard Curtis (Translation)
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 12.06.2012
• EAN: 9780307743824
• ISBN: 978-0-307-74382-4
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 203 mm x 17 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature