I recently gave a talk at Catford Library about my latest book, All Booked Up. It followed a meeting of the library’s book group and two of its members stayed for my event. They were full of, and passionate about, the book they’d just read and had been discussing: The Lightless Sky. So I bought it.
Subtitled “An Afghan refugee boy’s journey of escape to a new life in Britain” this harrowing book should be compulsory reading for Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper and everyone in the cabinet.
Gulwali was 12 when his desperate mother paid “agents” to take him and his brother to safety in Britain because their father and grandfather had been murdered. It took over a year during which he almost drowned, was badly burned in a lorry carrying chemicals, was arrested several times, and became ill from malnutrition. Sometimes, like a hideous game of snakes and ladders he was forced to go back a stage. He, and others like him were ruthlessly tossed about, literally and figuratively. Moreover he was separated from his brother almost from the first day so there’s ongoing anxiety about where he was. It’s gut-wrenching stuff. Human beings should not be having to endure experiences like this in the 21st century and as for the squalid, inhumane horror of the “Jungle” at Calais, only 22 miles from our shores, I am almost at a loss for words.
And yet … underpinning this narrative are two very positive things. First there’s Gulwali’s unshakeable Muslim faith. His version of it is humane, gentle. kind and he is scathing about Muslim extremism. Eventually he comes to recognise and respect other religions too because decent people of all faiths and none – and that’s most of us – all want the same peaceful things.
Second, he makes a number of very good friends on the way, often separated from them and then sometimes joyfully reunited. Most of them are older than him and try to support him even when the situation is terrifying. And there are several occasions when supremely good charity workers really help him although, his mental health is so poor that he makes repeated irrational decisions to run away. So there’s celebration of goodness in this story too.
Now, when you read a book like this – Waheed Arian’s In The Wars which I featured here last year is similar – you know that eventually there will be some sort of happy ending because the narrator has, literally, survived to tell the tale.
After repeated failed attempts over several weeks, Gulwali and two friends eventually get to Dover by stowing away in a lorry full of bananas. Many interrogations follow and he has great difficulty making British authorities accept that he is only 13 – he has had to do a great deal of growing up in a short time and seems to be older.
Eventually he is taken in by a foster family in Manchester, put through a rehabilitation programme, learns English, goes to school, passes A levels and gets a degree in politics. And by an astonishing piece of co-incidental luck, he is reunited with his brother. Today, a happily married man of 29, Gulwali works as an advocate for refugees. He is an active influencer too, giving talks about refugee rights. Hw works hard to support causes in Britain because, he says, he wants to put back as much as he can in the country which has taken him in.
The Lightless Sky is uplifting as well as disturbing because, obviously, for every refugee success story there are hundreds who die on the way or get sent back to dangerous environments having endured almost unthinkable hardships. Please can we stop thinking about the refugee “problem” and start working out what we, who have so much, can do to help people in desperate need?
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
