Tag: Pakistan

Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed (Juvenile Fiction)

Amal Unbound

Aisha Saeed (Juvenile Fiction)

Twelve-year-old Amal belongs to one of the more prosperous families in her Punjabi village in Pakistan and dreams of becoming a teacher. She vividly remembers that particular afternoon: the smell of the chalkboard, the students chattering outside the door, and talking poetry with her teacher, Miss Sadia. Little did she know that that would be her last day at school. While at the market, Amal encounters and challenges the son of the village’s powerful landlord—a slight that would have unimaginable consequences. She is forced to pay off her family’s debt by working on the Khan estate where she begins to realize the full extent of the family’s vast wealth and power. Amal must summon all her strength and courage to change the status quo because if everyone decided that nothing could ever change, then nothing ever would.

Amal Unbound is a captivating read and its short chapters allow readers to absorb the important messages and lessons that fill each page. The societal and cultural limitations that Amal brings to light accurately reflect her life and the obstacles that she faces. The idea of “fairness” is a major theme throughout the book and she constantly recalls her father’s words of life’s unfairness whenever she is at a crossroads. This is a hard thing to reconcile given the number of things totally out of her control: her sex (Maybe then I would not have learned that they thought being a girl was such a bad thing.), her birth order (Why did this random chance [being the eldest] have to dictate so much of my destiny?), and political power (How many lives had this man upended? Why did no one stop him?).

Saeed delivers a story about an ordinary girl who does an extraordinary thing…she has the audacity to speak out for change. Amal quickly realizes that life comes down to a series of choices. Choices that she doesn’t want to make or feels that she lacks the courage to do so. But her teacher at the literacy center reminds her, “Making choices even when they scare you because you know it’s the right thing to do—that’s bravery.”

In her Author’s Note, Saeed shares the story of Malala Yousafzai who was shot at point-blank range by the Taliban for advocating education for girls. Her life was also a series of choices, and her courageous advocacy led her to become the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala once said, “We were scared, but our fear was not as strong as our courage.” Amal was also scared, but sacrificed her own safety to bring about justice. In the end, she proved just how powerful a servant girl could be once she freed herself from the ties that bound her.  

Rating: 5/5

* Book cover image attributed to: www.abebooks.com

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A Moment Comes by Jennifer Bradbury (YA Historical Fiction)

A Moment Comes

A Moment Comes

Jennifer Bradbury (Young Adult Historical Fiction)

“Safe.  I think about the word as we continue walking.  What does safe mean anymore?  I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe again.  I wandered these markets and streets freely just a few years ago.  And then I grew up.”

Tariq is Muslim born and raised in India.  He is eighteen and aspires to study at Oxford.  It is what Daadaa—his grandfather—dreamed for him and he will do anything to make it a reality.  Anupreet is Sikh and nearly sixteen years old.  She’s beautiful despite the scar that runs from her eye to her cheek.  It’s healing, but will always be there, just like the memory of that horrible day when she acquired it.  Margaret is sixteen and from London.  Her father was sent to Jalandhar to work for the boundary award.  His job is to help break India into pieces so that Muslims can have their own separate state.  She knows why her mother made her come here…to restore her virtue, make her “respectable” again.  Although she’s not sure how this hot, sticky, and loud place will be able to accomplish that.  It’s June 1947 and the worlds of these three teenagers are about to come together and their journey will take them to what history would later refer to as the Partition of India of 1947.

Books, like Bradbury’s, that are based on actual world history play such an important part in the lives of our younger population.  Historical Fiction is not only a way to educate, but to offer an all-important perspective.  In A Moment Comes, we are given three very different yet relatable young adults: each offering his or her own point of view about what is happening to them, their family, and the world around them.  Bradbury largely avoids stereotypes and instead offers up an honest landscape about a country being torn apart from the inside.

The Partition of India of 1947 began after the Second World War.  Lacking the sufficient resources to control its greatest asset, Britain exited India after three hundred years of British rule and partitioned the country into two independent nation states: India (with its Hindu majority) and Pakistan (with their Muslim majority).  It marked one of the greatest migrations in human history and resulted in more than fifteen million people losing their homes and between one to two million people losing their lives.  Bradbury is exceptionally careful not to choose sides and paint one party as “good” or another as “bad”.  Instead, she lays out three lives told through three alternating points of view and allows the reader to form his or her own judgments and opinions.  The story is fast-paced, harrowing, poignant, and bitter.  But in the end, Bradbury offers up some much-needed hope.  It’s faint and so very uncertain, but she places it there nonetheless so that we—along with Tariq, Anupreet, and Margaret—can grab it and hold onto it as tight as we can.

A Moment Comes reminds us that history is more than just words on a page.  Rather, it’s people who breathe, dream, hope, bleed, and die.  People who have risen above their own limitations in order to do something remarkable or historic or even heroic.  And just like history is more than just printed words, maps are more than just lines.  They are traditions and cultures and religions.  Bradbury summed this up perfectly through Margaret when she said, “Lines are funny things. They make us feel safe—at least for a while—knowing where we end and something or someone else begins.  But they can also make us want, can make us bitter, wanting what lies on the other side of the line.  But whether it’s a border on a map or a boundary between two people, the lines are still only lines.  Still something someone made up, decided on.  They’re not even real, but so long as everyone agrees to play along, they work fine.  But how can lines of a map tell a piece of land what to be any more than lines between one person and another can pretend to be what makes them different?”  In the end, Tariq, Anupreet, and Margaret were all able to let go of their own prejudices and realize that they themselves aren’t so very different from one another…regardless of what the lines might say.

Rating: 5/5

*Book cover image attributed to www.goodreads.com

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