NAVEED

BLURB

“You can cut down the flowers, but nothing can stop the coming of Spring.”

Fourteen year-old Naveed has only ever known war. Born into it, living it every day, he’s had to grow up quickly to be man-of-the-house for his widowed mother and little sister. Life is one long battle for him as he struggles to pay rent, put food on the table, and just stay out of harm’s way.

But Naveed dares to dream. He’s sick of war – of the Taliban and the war lords and the drug barons and the foreign powers that together have torn his country apart. He dares to dream of peace, of a day when Afghans will say no to hate and revenge, when they will take charge of their own future and begin re-building their country.

In one boy’s dream lie the seeds of a nation’s future.

From the winter of war comes the spring of hope.

SAMPLE

From chapter 1

The explosion jolts him awake. He sits up, gasping for air, heart thumping.
Was the blast real? Perhaps it had only happened in his head, a bad dream. He’d had plenty of those, nightmares real as real. Demons of the dark, his father called them.

‘Push them away. They’ll only poison your thoughts. Seek the light and they can’t hurt you.’

The boy peers hard into the tiny room where he lives with his mother and sister. He listens intently. But the room gives nothing back. Its mud walls hunch over him. The two windows, holes patched with plastic bags, look down like a dead man’s eyes. The blanket covering the low doorway to the outside shifts in the morning breeze; a mouth that might speak but only sighs. He catches a whiff of its stale breath, a mix of smells he knows well – garbage, diesel, sewerage, dust. He grimaces. But almost immediately his father’s words are there again.

‘In every darkness there is light, Naveed. Never forget that. Always look for the light.’

‘Yes, Padar,’ he whispers into the pre-dawn greyness that fills the room. ‘I will.’
He means it. He will never forget anything his father said. Never. And he does always seek the light, or at least tries his hardest to do so.

‘It’s just not that easy, Padar. Without you here the darkness seems so great.’

‘The darker it gets, the harder you must seek.’  Padar always had an answer, always a reason to see good, even when it seemed to be nowhere in sight. ‘The world lives on hope.’

‘Of course, Padar.’

Of course there is much to thank Allah for, Naveed has to admit as he looks around the room they moved into barely a fortnight ago. It might be tiny and cramped, with a wide crack down one wall and a ceiling in need of repair, but it is a thousand times better than the tent they’ve lived in for almost two years after Padar died. Perishingly cold in winter, unbearably hot and filled with dust in summer, that tent was a kind of hell.

The room is heaven by comparison – a solid roof over their heads, a place to call home. Mr Kalin charges far too much rent, but that only makes Naveed more determined to work harder and longer. After all he is the man of the house, the head of the family. It is all up to him now.

AUTHOR NOTE

Naveed represents a confluence of two paths in my life as a writer.

Years ago I wrote a picture book called MY DOG about the 1990s war in Bosnia. The story is told by young Alija, who searches for his family across a war-ravaged landscape with a small blotchy dog as companion. In researching the book I developed an abiding interest in war as part of the human condition, especially its impact on children.

Years ago I also spent time travelling through Afghanistan. The journey left an indelible impression on me, and since then I’ve followed the nation’s demise through civil strife, foreign invasion and war. Now, as the West prepares to leave, it is tempting to see only a bleak future for this beautiful country and its proud people. And yet in the many personal stories I collected as research for this book I found real seeds of hope.

Naveed is my story of one boy’s fight for the future of his country.