This is the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari. It is listed as fiction though, so not sure how embellished or cut down it is. This from the back cover 'One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah's mother tells him three things: don't use drugs, don't use weapons and don't steal. The next day, the ten year old Afghan boy wakes up to find she has gone. He is on the border of Pakistan, and he is all alone.'
Enaiatollah goes from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Iran to Turkey to Greece and to Italy. Always trying to feel safer.
I was reading an English translation of an Italian novel, the story of which was told to the author in Italian by a boy whose first language is either Pashto or Dari. But it doesn't matter, you get the impression that there are so many children like Enaiatollah and so many people in the same situation, that if it didn't happen quite like that to him, it will have happened that way to someone else.
I don't think there is much else I can say about this, it is too real and it is happening everywhere.
Thanks David Fickling Books for the proof.
I am reading Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian now.
