Published : 2021 || Format : print || Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the story of her family through the other protagonist, El
I was fed up with being treated badly. I was fed up with the fundamentalists, the police who stopped you and asked you for your passport and, when you said you didn't have one, took your money and kept it for themselves. And you had to give them the money straight away, otherwise they took you to the police station and punched and kicked you. I was fed up risking my life,...
Ten-year old Enaiatollah Akbari's mother decides that Afghanistan is no longer safe for him. Enaiatollah's family belongs to the ethnic Hazara group, which has been subject to attacks by the Taliban. When her family comes under the Taliban's eye, Enaiat's mother decides to take him to Pakistan and leave him there to fend for himself, hoping he was safer away from their home. While this leaves Enaiat panicking for a while, he quickly slips into self-sufficiency mode and starts looking for work. Over time, he learns the tricks of survival and how to deal with people and win battles through clever cunning. He befriends other Afghan children making their lives in the Quetta district of Pakistan. After some success eking out a decent living and earning quite a bit, he starts thinking of leaving Pakistan and heading to Iran. And there starts a risky and dangerous adventure that eventually takes him to Italy.
In the Sea There are Crocodiles is a true story based on Enaiatollah's life. Originally written in Italian, it was translated into English by Howard Curtis. The author, Fabio Geda, has tagged it as fiction because he says that Enaiatollah didn't remember his journey perfectly. Enaiat and the author looked at maps and Google to help reconstruct the journey that Enaiat took. On the very first page, there is a map that lines out Enaiat's journey from Afghanistan through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, to finally Italy. The entire journey spanned quite a few years with plenty of stops, detours and dangerous events in between.
Enaiat's life was anything but smooth. Finding himself suddenly on his own, without a close family member, and not knowing much about the basic lessons of fending for self, his only hope was for help of some kind from the very person who had housed him and his mother for the past three days. He quickly slips into his job proving himself useful. During his routine work, he comes across other Afghan boys. Later, as he moves from place to place, he always finds other Afghan boys like him, who are all trying to make a life on the streets and find a place they can feel safe in. It is this changing clan of friends from home that teach Enaiat many of his useful lessons in survival, and show him how to stay hidden from the authorities and find traffickers to help him move to another place. Although Enaiat starts as relatively unaware of the ways of the world, as the book progresses, we see him becoming more clever and in control of his circumstances. This comes to prove useful later.
Fabio's narration doesn't mince any harrowing experiences that Enaiat undergoes. There were times when I really had to pause and block out some of the horrifying images that his prose conjured up. Considering how, in spite of everything each country does to keep illegal immigrants out, there are still people crossing borders, it is obvious that the means to do so would not only be clever but also physically excruciating. Some of the tactics can truly kill - walking on thin shoes across mountainous terrains for weeks, packed with other people in a hidden cavity in a truck with your neck perpetually bent. In the Sea There are Crocodiles is a frank unflinching account of one such experience.
Although Fabio penned the book, it is in first person account, as if narrated by Enaiat himself. The narration is very direct and stripped of emotion. As Enaiat tells to Fabio many times (there are short exchanges of speech between the two, interluding the narration once in a while), his priority is to tell the story, and according to him, nothing else matters. That lack of emotion is what makes Enaiat's story occasionally hard to stomach. But that also means we do not get an insight into Enaiat's mind or the emotional impact of the events on any of the people in the book. Enaiat didn't believe in talking about people or places in relation to his experiences. He believed in facts, and while he had plenty of jaw-dropping facts, he didn't consider it necessary to share how he felt, other than on a very few occasions. As a reader, I would have loved to get more than facts on each page. There is no doubt that the experiences narrated in this book are significant and painful, and that with or without emotions, they will remain so, but I would have loved to see more exploration of the events - and his perspectives on a whole lot of things that he brings up. The mostly stick-to-facts approach also made it hard for me to get a fair perception of the time that has passed. The passages didn't do a fair justice to time.
In the Sea There are Crocodiles is a very short and quick book. There is a lot packed within the 200 pages that it leaves you thinking about illegal immigration from a different perspective. I haven't had much exposure to this subject other than from the more privileged side of the fence. And it's a different picture there, because the stress is more on what this means to the country where the people migrate to. Enaiat's story shows how life sucks for them wherever they are - constant moving is not just an option but a way of life. I was pained by how much they had to struggle to find a safe place for the night and was moved by the many close friendships that developed. And the experiences aren't graphic or too unsettling, except for a few times, but overall, it shouldn't disturb you. I would strongly recommend this read to anyone keen on a different shadier and riskier perspective on the illegal immigrant life.
In the Sea There are Crocodiles is a true story based on Enaiatollah's life. Originally written in Italian, it was translated into English by Howard Curtis. The author, Fabio Geda, has tagged it as fiction because he says that Enaiatollah didn't remember his journey perfectly. Enaiat and the author looked at maps and Google to help reconstruct the journey that Enaiat took. On the very first page, there is a map that lines out Enaiat's journey from Afghanistan through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, to finally Italy. The entire journey spanned quite a few years with plenty of stops, detours and dangerous events in between.
Enaiat's life was anything but smooth. Finding himself suddenly on his own, without a close family member, and not knowing much about the basic lessons of fending for self, his only hope was for help of some kind from the very person who had housed him and his mother for the past three days. He quickly slips into his job proving himself useful. During his routine work, he comes across other Afghan boys. Later, as he moves from place to place, he always finds other Afghan boys like him, who are all trying to make a life on the streets and find a place they can feel safe in. It is this changing clan of friends from home that teach Enaiat many of his useful lessons in survival, and show him how to stay hidden from the authorities and find traffickers to help him move to another place. Although Enaiat starts as relatively unaware of the ways of the world, as the book progresses, we see him becoming more clever and in control of his circumstances. This comes to prove useful later.
Fabio's narration doesn't mince any harrowing experiences that Enaiat undergoes. There were times when I really had to pause and block out some of the horrifying images that his prose conjured up. Considering how, in spite of everything each country does to keep illegal immigrants out, there are still people crossing borders, it is obvious that the means to do so would not only be clever but also physically excruciating. Some of the tactics can truly kill - walking on thin shoes across mountainous terrains for weeks, packed with other people in a hidden cavity in a truck with your neck perpetually bent. In the Sea There are Crocodiles is a frank unflinching account of one such experience.
Although Fabio penned the book, it is in first person account, as if narrated by Enaiat himself. The narration is very direct and stripped of emotion. As Enaiat tells to Fabio many times (there are short exchanges of speech between the two, interluding the narration once in a while), his priority is to tell the story, and according to him, nothing else matters. That lack of emotion is what makes Enaiat's story occasionally hard to stomach. But that also means we do not get an insight into Enaiat's mind or the emotional impact of the events on any of the people in the book. Enaiat didn't believe in talking about people or places in relation to his experiences. He believed in facts, and while he had plenty of jaw-dropping facts, he didn't consider it necessary to share how he felt, other than on a very few occasions. As a reader, I would have loved to get more than facts on each page. There is no doubt that the experiences narrated in this book are significant and painful, and that with or without emotions, they will remain so, but I would have loved to see more exploration of the events - and his perspectives on a whole lot of things that he brings up. The mostly stick-to-facts approach also made it hard for me to get a fair perception of the time that has passed. The passages didn't do a fair justice to time.
In the Sea There are Crocodiles is a very short and quick book. There is a lot packed within the 200 pages that it leaves you thinking about illegal immigration from a different perspective. I haven't had much exposure to this subject other than from the more privileged side of the fence. And it's a different picture there, because the stress is more on what this means to the country where the people migrate to. Enaiat's story shows how life sucks for them wherever they are - constant moving is not just an option but a way of life. I was pained by how much they had to struggle to find a safe place for the night and was moved by the many close friendships that developed. And the experiences aren't graphic or too unsettling, except for a few times, but overall, it shouldn't disturb you. I would strongly recommend this read to anyone keen on a different shadier and riskier perspective on the illegal immigrant life.
I received this book for free for review from the publisher, Doubleday Publishing. In the Sea There are Crocodiles was released on August 9th.
Comments
The story sounds really good . I've not read a book on illegal immigration in so long. The last book I read was Tortilla Curtain (years and years ago).