In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda is based on the true story of a young Afghan boy named Enaiatollah Akbari who, with the help of his mother, escapes Taliban rule in 2000.

It tells the story, in first person, of how his father, in Nava, is enslaved by the Taliban and sent on a mission to retrieve supplies in another city and told that if anything goes wrong, his family would be killed.  Things did go wrong.  His father was killed.  The Taliban threatened to take the two young boys in payment for his father's wrong doing so his mother takes him across the border to Pakistan and leaves him there to fend for himself.

The young Enaiatollah suffers through some very harrowing circumstances as he, alone, finds his way from Pakistan all the way to Italy where he later seeks and attains political assylum.  The situations that he finds himself in are extreme and life threatening such as dangerous border crossings, traveling across bitter cold mountains on foot, crammed into the false bottom of a truck with hundreds of other immigrants, traveling across violant waters in an inflatable raft.

Fabio Geda is an Italian novelist who works with children under duress and helped Enaiatollah put his story in words.

This book was originally published in Italy as Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli by B.C. Dalai editore, Milan, 2010 and translated to English by award wining translator Howard Curtis and published by Double Day books in 2011.

This book really puts into perspective, for me, what it must have been like for Afghans during the last decade.  I had a different view on how people lived and had been treated in the middle east during the war and even now it's not safe for Enaiatollah to return to his family.  For the record, he has contacted his family,  paid for them to travel and live in Pakistan and plans to visit them soon.