Shooting Kabul by Naheed Hasnat Senzai

It is July 2001, and eleven-year-old Fadi Nurzai's family are fleeing their home country of Afghanistan. Fadi along with his father Habib,his mother Zafoona, his older sister Noor and younger sister Mariam are packed into a taxi hurtling across the dusty plain in the dark. Their driver is Professor Sahib, Habib's former  teacher at Kabul University. After a six hour ride from Kabul, they arrive in Jalalabad, a city in the eastern province of Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan. Here they will rendezvous with a truck to take them to across the Afghan border with Pakistan to Peshawar where Zafoona's cousin and her husband will meet them at the border.

Only a month earlier, Fadi's father had told them they were leaving Afghanistan. Zafoona needed better medical care for a cold that had turned into a serious illness. But also the Taliban had tried to recruit Fadi's father in what was a thinly veiled threat. Although he had put them off for the time being, it is inevitable that they will return.

Habib was born in Afghanistan but had travelled to Madison, Wisconsin where he earned a Ph.D in Agriculture. Afterwards he returned to his homeland inspired to help rebuild Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets by the Taliban.

When he and Zafoona had returned to their homeland along with their family, the Taliban asked Habib to rid the country of the poppy fields used for opium. Gradually Habib had been successful in this endeavour, getting farmers to grow food for the country. However, the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam began creating problems as they began suppressing civil rights. Music, movies, books and photography were banned, women were forced to wear the burka, and schools for girls were closed. Fadi's father had hoped to obtain work at Kabul University in the agriculture department but it was closed because of the years of war. Instead, Habib opened a dry goods store in downtown Kabul to support his family.

Just past midnight an army truck shows up at the rendezvous point to take them to Pakistan. Habib, realizing this is their ride, orders Fadi to take Mariam, while Noor follows with their mother. As they move towards the truck, suddenly dozens of people emerge from hiding, running towards the truck. Fadi is gripping Mariam's hand tightly and tries to steer them towards his father in the back of the truck. In the chaos, with everyone scrambling to get on the truck, the Taliban arrive, creating even more panic. But as Fadi's father pulls him into the back of the truck, Mariam slips from his grip, trying to retrieve her pink Barbie, Gulmina which as fallen to the ground.

Panicked by the approach of the Taliban, the truck driver announces he is leaving. To Fadi's horror, the truck roars away, leaving six-year-old Mariam behind with many others and the Taliban in hot pursuit. Zafoona, already ill and exhausted is completely hysterical. Her pleas for the truck to return to retrieve Mariam are ignored while Habib who wants to jump out of the truck, is held down by the other men. Returning would mean capture by the Taliban and possible execution.

On the plane to London, Fadi berates himself, feeling responsible for losing Mariam. He thinks back to when they arrived in Peshawar. Once in Peshawar, Fadi's father went back over the border in an attempt to locate Mariam, but could find no trace of her. Zafoona's cousin, Nargis promised to contact them and let them know when she heard any news. Unable to delay any longer, Fadi's family had to go to the American consulate in Peshawar to pick up the papers "arranged with the help of Habib's old college advisor in the United States." Zafoona had wanted to remain in Peshawar but Habib told her that if they did not leave their asylum papers would expire and they would have been stateless - unable to return to Afghanistan but unable to remain in Pakistan.

When they arrive in San Francisco, Fadi and his family are met at the airport by Uncle Amin, who is married to Zafoona's younger sister Khala Nilufer. Once a doctor in Kabul's main hospital, Amin and Nilufer had left Afghanistan in 1998 along with his parents Abay and Dada, a month after Fadi's parents had arrived back in the country from the United States. Uncle Amin works two jobs as a lab technician to support his family but he generously offers them to stat with him at his home in Fremont. Fadi meets his cousin, Zalmay, who is his age. While eating lunch, the adults talk about little Mariam and how UN Refugee Agency has sent out a bulletin about Mariam and how there are many people looking out for her. However, Fadi's feelings of guilt overwhelm him and he hides inside the pantry.

In August of 2001, Fadi's father and his Uncle Amin have contacted many family and friends in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, all searching on both sides of the border for Mariam. Meanwhile Habib moves his family out of Uncle Amin's house into an apartment at the Paradise Apartment Complex.

Fadi begins the school year at Brookhaven Middle School where he is in Mr. Torres' 6B class. Almost immediately he draws the attention of two bullies in his class, Felix and Ike. Fadi does a good deed by returning a classmate's wallet and she introduces herself as Anh Hong. Meanwhile at home, Fadi's family learns that Mariam may have been taken in by a family with two boys who were trying to get to Peshawar. This information upsets Zafoona and she argues with Habib telling him they should not have left Peshawar.Zafoona wants to return to Peshawar to search for Mariam but that requires money the Hurzai family does not have.

When Fadi learns about the school photography club and an upcoming contest with the chance to win tickets to India, he believes he just might have found a way to go back and help find Mariam. With the encouragement of Anh and Noor's money for the club fee, Fadi is determined to win. Meanwhile he must deal with the class bullies and his own feelings of guilt. When the contest doesn't produce the results Fadi is hoping for, he all but gives up until a remarkable meeting changes everything.

Discussion

The events in Shooting Kabul bracket the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and throughout the United States. The novel provides young readers with insight into the immigrant experience during this time. Fadi's parents who returned to their homeland of Afghanistan with the hope of helping to modernize their country are now refugees in the United States. But their relief at escaping from the Taliban is marred by the loss of Mariam who was accidentally left behind in Jalalabad.

Shooting Kabul focuses primarily on the struggles of eleven-year-old Fadi as he experiences tremendous guilt and shame for not being able to hang onto his little sister Mariam when they were trying to board truck to take them out of Kabul. He is so certain of his own guilt in the matter that he is shocked to discover that each member of his family is also struggling with guilt. Shortly after arriving in San Francisco, Zafoona confesses her feelings of guilt to her sister Nilufer,
" 'She's my baby. I'm her mother. It's all my fault,' cried Zafoona, and, she burst into ragged sobs...
'No you don't understand,' said Zafoona. 'If I wasn't so sick, I could have looked after her. But instead everyone was looking after me. Noor and Habib were so worried about getting me on board the truck that they lost track of Fadi and Mariam. It's my fault.'"

Despite hearing this, Fadi continues to believe Mariam's situation was his fault, and he withdraws, often withdrawing from his family. In their new apartment, Fadi overhears his sister Noor confessing her responsibility for the loss of Mariam to their father. Noor states that she was responsible for caring for Fadi and Mariam; "No, I'm the oldest. I should have taken care of them...It's my fault Mariam is lost!" Fadi is shocked to overhear this admission but he thinks, "Everyone things it's their fault she's gone. But it's my fault, not anyone else's. I'm the one who doesn't deserve to belong to this family. I'm the one who's torn it apart."

Fadi then hits on the idea that he will return to Peshawar to find his sister. However without money this will be difficult so he devises a plan to travel to Pakistan. Just how deeply Fadi feels the loss of his sister is demonstrated when he sneaks into the trunk of his father's taxi to hitch a ride to the airport. His plan is to board a flight to London and then to catch a plane to Peshawar. Fortunately for Fadi, when he is unable to get out of the trunk, disaster is averted when his father opens the trunk to place a passenger's luggage inside.

Fadi then becomes determined to win the grand prize of a trip to India, in a local photography contest. Although planning to enter the photography contest gives Fadi hope his pain and guilt surface in a destructive way when the family visits a Toys R Us store.
"From both sides of the aisle hundreds of Barbies stared down at him. Fadi closed his eyes. His body felt cold and his hand went numb...His eyelids flickered open. Cowgirl Barbie gave him an accusing glare. Artist Barbie stood next to her, holding a paintbrush, sharing a conspiratorial frown with Doctor Barbie....Assembled on the bottom row stood a platoon of Barbies from around the world. Native American, Korean, Spanish, Nigerian, and Austrian Barbie were whispering to one another...whispering about Gulmina." The sight of the Barbies triggers the image of Mariam "holding out Gulmina, asking him to put her into his backpack." Fadi becomes enraged and begins destroying the Barbie display. "He knocked off a line of dolls, and they crashed to the floor. He stomped on the slender rectangular boxes, his tennis shoes making crunching sounds. He fell to his knees and ripped of the lids and pulled out Diamond Princess Barbie. He shook her with all his might and started banging her and Soccer Barbie against the concrete floor. The store manager found him, huddled on a pile of crushed boxes and Barbies, sobbing." The scene is tragic and disturbing, portraying the trauma many refugees from war-torn areas  experience.

Although both Zafoona and Noor have told someone about their guilt over Mariam, Fadi has been unable to confide in anyone, carrying his burden alone. However, after losing the photography contest and any chance of traveling to India, he confides in Ms. Bethune, telling her what happened that night in Kabul. Fadi is shocked that she does not consider him responsible and she helps him look at what happened in a different way, encouraging him not to blame himself for something he had little control over. Fadi never does tell his family about his guilt because the situation is resolved before he has the opportunity to do so.

Throughout the novel Senzai does an good job of incorporating recent Afghan history into the story so that younger readers have the background information to understand the events that occur. Readers experience the 9/11 attacks from the perspective of the Afghanistan refugees through the characters of Habib, Zafoona, Uncle Amin and others. The author also portrays how the Afghani people themselves view Osama Bin Laden, in the scene after 9/11 in the grocery shop in Little Kabul, and how they believe the events of 9/11 will impact their country. By incorporating many details about the country itself young readers from the United States and Canada are able to learn a bit about  Afghanistan's a rich heritage and diverse ethnic groups.

Shooting Kabul is another fine novel from this author and is highly recommended. Senzai states in her Author's Note at the back that "I didn't want to write this book..." because it touched many sensitive and personal issues including Islam, Afghan history and politics. Senzai's father-in-law's experiences are mirrored in those of Habib making the novel a very personal story. But it is a story well worth reading because it provides young readers the opportunity to understand Afghan history and culture separate from the American perspective presented in the media and because it also portrays the challenges refugees experience in coming to a culture vastly different from their own.

map credit: https://www.cia.gov/static/6795428c1b9ef1df4e25cd6418c88f44/afghanistan-admin.jpg

Book Details:

Shooting Kabul by Naheed Hasnat Senzai
New York: A Paula Wiseman Book      2010
273 pp.

Escape From Aleppo by N.H. Senzai

Escape From Aleppo tells the story of the Syrian War through the eyes of a young girl as she makes her way across the city of Aleppo after getting separated from her family.

Early on the morning of October 9, 2013, Nadia Jandali is awakened by her cousin Razan who tells her they must leave at once. Nadia is filled with fear and attempts to crawl back under her bed where she's been sleeping. She can hear the deep boom of bombs called barmeela in the distance. These are barrel bombs filled with shrapnel which are dropped onto rebel held areas by the Syrian army. Nadia is forced awake, grabs her backpack and a burlap bag to meet the rest of her family.

Nadia's cousin, Malik who is the eldest son of Khala Fatima (Nadia's maternal aunt), believes the helicopters are coming their way and that they need to leave. Nadia's family have formulated a plan that Nadia, her mother and grandmother, and her three aunts and their children will assemble downstairs in the apartment building. The building was built by her grandparents thirty-five years ago and has four apartments, each housing a son and his family. Nadia's mother orders them to go downstairs while she hunts for Nadia's younger brother Yusuf's shoes. Razan's job is to help Nadia leave the building.She's rarely been outside in the past year after she was hit by a barmeela and severely injured. The trauma from that event has made Nadia terrified to leave her home.

At the front door, Khala Fatima, Khala Lina, Khala Shakira, and Nana debate what to do next but Khala Lina is emphatic that they need to go to the dental clinic where they have arranged to meet their husbands and sons at noon. Suddenly Malik comes tearing down the stairs telling them they need to leave immediately because the government military helicopters are heading towards them. At the last minute Nadia's mother, Amani comes downstairs carrying Yusuf and the group exits the back door - all except Nadia. As Nadia is forcing herself out the door and Malik races back to help her, their building is rocked by a barmeela, throwing Nadia down the steps and against an abandoned Jeep. Stunned, Nadia lays there hearing Malik yell for her.

In the confusion of the bombing, Malik believes Nadia is beneath the rubble and dead and her family leaves, not knowing she is uninjured but dazed. As another bomb explodes, Nadia rolls under the jeep and falls unconscious. She awakens later that afternoon, her family gone, determined to travel to Dr. Asbahi's dental clinic. Nadia flees through the city encountering a group of children playing on a playground surrounded by the graves of rebels and government soldiers. In trying to find her way through the ruins of Aleppo, Nadia soon finds herself lost. Unable to find the mosque, a landmark on the way to the dental clinic, hungry and exhausted, she runs into a shop for shelter during a rainstorm. It is late in the evening and she is tired and defeated.

Nadia discovers she has taken shelter in a pharmacy. She soon falls asleep underneath a desk in the office and doesn't awaken until very early the next morning. But Nadia learns she's not alone; an elderly man "in loose woolen pantaloons and a navy vest, a taqiyah (skull cap) covering his cropped white hair...Past him, near the door, stood a sturdy, dun-colored donkey." are also in the pharmacy. Relieved he is not a soldier or worse, Nadia attempts to get out the door of the pharmacy but finds it blocked by the donkey. Terrified but responding to the old man's kindness, Nadia tells him all that has happened to her and asks him if he knows the way to the Asbahi clinic. He tells her he does and that he will take her there after he completes a short errand. However, one thing leads to another and Nadia discovers her journey with the elderly man named Ammo Mazen, is filled with unexpected revelations and leads her to discover the hidden inner strength she needs to reunite with her family.

Discussion
Escape From Aleppo tells of one girl's journey across war-torn Aleppo and Syria to the safety of Turkey where her father and family waits for her. The main story is set in 2013, and takes place over a period of five days. It is told through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Nadia who travels through the city of Aleppo with a mysterious elderly man, Ammo Mazen. During this time the reader is shown the impact of war on Nadia's life, the effect on her family and her community

Senazi makes use of flashbacks to demonstrate how much Nadia's life has changed from before the start of the Syrian war. In 2010 and 2011 life for Nadia and her family is filled with ease and comfort. Her tenth birthday party is a feast of Nadia's favourite food, "kabob karaz - grilled lamb meatballs prepared with cherries and pine nuts.", a "towering chocolate cake...adorned with pink sugar roses", and attended by "Her family and friends from school, along with her parents' friends and neighbors, gathered in her grandparents elegant dining room..." She's the center of attention in a "satin aquamarine dress", with nails painted a matching shade of blue and she has a "stack of presents".  Nadia's life revolves around the finals of Arab Idol, auditioning for television commercials, the wedding preparations for her cousin Razan's marriage and her final exams. Life is full of possibilities.

In contrast is Nadia's life in the present, in 2013. After being injured in a barmeela attack, Nadia has a scar that runs from her knee to her hip and has a piece of shrapnel that remains in her leg. Once told she resembled the Arab Idol semifinalist, Carmen Suleiman, Nadia's appearance after escaping the bombing of her home in Salaheddine two years later is much altered. "Her eyes shifted, catching her reflection in the mirror. A stranger stared back at her: face covered in dust, hollowed cheeks marked with pale white scars. A cut, caked with dry blood, from where her head had hit the Jeep. Her hair, once thick and wavy, had been hacked off because of lice. Spiky and short, it now lay stuffed under an ugly olive-green woolen cap..."

After the bombing, Nadia looks at their family's apartment building which is mostly destroyed. "She peered inside Khala Lina's apartment, cut in half, her embroidered silk curtains still hanging from the window, fluttering like a maroon flag. A leather sofa hung from the ledge, it's matching love seat lying on what remained for Khala Fatima's kitchen below, her stove flat as an atayaf, a sweet cheese-stuffed pancake. Nana's beautiful cream-and-gold china lay scattered across the ground like snowflakes, broken in a million pieces."

The devastation of the war is shown as Nadia's journey through Aleppo to catch up to her family. She travels "past houses where shells had punched great holes and others that had collapsed completely, blocking the surrounding alleys with rubble." She watches an ambulance pull up to "what had been a large apartment complex, now a stack of concrete pancakes with jagged metal rods protruding from all angles. Survivors huddled near the road, coated in dust, consoling the injured while parmedics bandaged a boy's leg. And old man knelt beside teh rubble, weeping, his bent figure shielding something. Nadia got a glimpse of golden bangles and a frail arm." The city is filled with broken down cars, uncollected trash, abandoned stores, salons and mosques, snipers hiding on roofs, and there are "hundreds of checkpoints that had sprung up around the city, each manned by a different group, either affiliated with the Syrian army or one of the hundreds of rebel groups."

Throughout the story, Senzai incorporates various facts about the war. For example, readers learn how the Syrian War was rooted in the uprising in other parts of the Middle East. During Nadia's birthday party, the adults in the family gather to watch the television broadcasts of the self-immolation of a young man, Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bousid, Tunisia. The demonstrations in Tunisia spread to the surrounding countries of Jordan, Algeria and Oman while in Egypt, demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo lead to the removal of dictator Hosni Mubarak. This was followed by unrest in Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco and Libya. These demonstrations come to be known as the Arab Spring. In Syria it begins with the arrest and torture of a group of boys from Deraa who had written anti-government slogans on their school.  Through a flaskback, Nadia remembers the discussions at home between her grandfather and the rest of the family about how the U.S. wanted Assad to resign and how U.N. peacekeepers were sent in to monitor the situation. Later on as Nadia and Ammo Mazen are walking through the streets they encounter a woman who tells them about the sarin gas attack by the Assad government on rebels in Ghouta, near Damascus. An encounter with a group of rebels and an Egyptian-American journalist explains the rebel's view of the involvement of ISIS in the war. "The road you were on is blocked by those foreign bastards who call themselves ISIS. They've been fighting other rebel groups to usurp power...These foreign hypocrites use religion as an excuse to fight some glorified war, seeking power and fame. They are ruthless barbarians, posting videos on the Internet of their atrocities, like blowing up ancient sites or killing civilians for not following their brand of Islam."

Senzai uses the character of Ammo Mazen, to highlight the efforts of the Syrian academics to preserve their historical treasures from destruction in the war. Readers learn that "Most of the museums in the country, and all six of Syria's World Heritage sites, have been affected in one way or another..." Some of those treasures turn out to be rare books brought by Ammo Mazen and include "Kitab al-Tasrif by medieval Arab surgeon Abulcasis, Katib Cheleb's seventeenth-century Islamic atlas, and other rare books of poetry,history, science and mathematics."

Nadia's journey through the ruins of Aleppo to the safety of Turkey mirrors her own personal journey from a fearful traumatized girl to one who acts with courage and decisiveness when needed. Senzai has crafted a realistic protagonist in Nadia Jandali. She's a typical teenager - impulsive, self-absorbed but she is also courageous, intelligent and caring. At the beginning of the story, Nadia has been housebaound for almost a year, filled with fear. Spurred by the loss of her family, Nadia forces herself to try to find her way to the dental clinic in the hopes she will meet up with her family. "She realized that if she kept her eyes down and didn't look around too much, she could keep the fear at bay. Don't think. Just move."  Her encounter with Ammo Mazen forces her to trust him despite the fact that he is a complete stranger. His kindness surprises her. "She realized that she had to trust him, at least a little, if she was going to find her family."  Although she does get to the Asbahi clinic, a note from her family telling her where to meet them leaves her feeling abandoned and angry. It also means that she must continue to rely on Ammo Mazen who she suspects is not telling her the full truth of who he is. Nadia is impatient and dismissive of Ammo Mazen's decision to travel by donkey. "Nadia mutinously stared at the smelly donkey, snoring away with Mishmish curled up under her neck. All he has is a bunch of junk, she fumed. Why is that so important?..." Instead she discovers that the old books are rare treasures to be preserved. As Ammo Mazen's healthy begins to deteriorate and he collapses, Nadia wants to abandon him. "I should just ditch them and go find my familiy on my own.It would be easier and faster..." she thinks but she reconsiders. "He had helped her when she needed it the most. And now she would help him. For now, the questions she had didn't matter. she would trust him." And when Ammo Mazen is attacked and his donkey and cart stolen, it is Nadia who comes up with a plan that retrieves them and allows their journey to the border to continue. In the end, Nadia and Basel a little boy they have picked up along the way, leave Ammo Mazen in the care of an elderly woman. Nadia's questions are answered

Escape From Aleppo is a well-written, interesting novel that portrays the realities of war without being too graphic. It is informative, giving younger readers the basic background of the Syrian war which is still ongoing, while putting a face to the conflict through Nadia, Basel, Ammo Mazen and the many other characters.

Book Details:

Escape From Aleppo by Naheed Hasnat Senzai
New York: A Paula Wiesmen Book            2018
324 pp.