Why a Booktrail?
Enaiatollah’s journey – a universal story of stoicism in the face of fear
In the Sea there are Crocodiles (Young Adult Edition)
What you need to know before your trail
One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah’s mother tells him three things: don’t use drugs or weapons, don’t cheat, don’t steal. The next day he wakes up to find she isn’t there. Ten-year-old Enaiatollah is left alone at the border of Pakistan to fend for himself.
In a book that takes a true story and shapes it into a beautiful piece of fiction, Italian novelist Fabio Geda describes Enaiatollah’s remarkable five-year journey from Afghanistan to Italy where he finally managed to claim political asylum aged fifteen.
Travel Guide
The journey of a refugee
His ordeal took him through Iran, Turkey and Greece, working on building sites in order to pay people-traffickers, and enduring the physical misery of dangerous border crossings squeezed into the false bottoms of lorries or trekking across inhospitable mountains. A series of almost implausible strokes of fortune enabled him to get to Turin, find help from an Italian family and meet Fabio Geda, with whom he became friends.
The little boy had to ensure such hardship and grief in order to travel all that long way, often without food and drink. The traumatic journey takes him through several countries – Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Greece via Lesbos, before he manages to get to where he wants to be. Each stage is deadly and the people traffickers take no prisoners. The weeks he spent trying to get across the mountains from Afghanistan to Iran is horrendous for anyone least of all a child.
Now, after several years in Italy, he tells his story.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: In the Sea There Are Crocodiles
Author/Guide : Fabio Geda Destination: Afghanistan, Iran, Greece, Italy
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