When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari’s small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early 2000, his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself. Thus begins Enaiat’s remarkable and often punishing five-year ordeal, which takes him through Iran, Turkey, and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen.
Along the way, Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings, trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck. But not everyone is as resourceful, resilient, or lucky as Enaiat, and there are many heart-wrenching casualties along the way.
Based on Enaiat’s close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda and expertly rendered in English by an award- winning translator, this novel reconstructs the young boy’s memories, perfectly preserving the childlike perspective and rhythms of an intimate oral history.
Told with humor and humanity, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiat’s moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.
BTC couldn't find a translation for this video, but the sights and sounds are so powerful, we just had to use it anyway:
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| Enaiatollah Akbari |
Jackie says:
"This slim volume in based on the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari, a young man from
Afghanistan who was smuggled to, then abandoned in, Pakistan at the age of 10 by his mother. It was his best bet for survival in the region at the time--the Taliban had taken over his native village and would have either killed him, enslaved him, or recruited him.
This is an amazing story of how a small boy was able to make it from Pakistan to Italy, several thousand miles, keeping himself and often others alive as they tried to find a place to make a home. It is enlightening, inspiring and astonishing what all he went through just to have a home again."
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