Summary

At the start of the novel, 12-year-old Fadi, his parents Habib and Zafoona, and his older sister Noor and his younger sister Mariam, were trying to escape from their home country of Afghanistan in order to pursue a new and safer life in the United States of America. In Chapter 1 the family travelled by taxi from their home in Kabul to the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. During the journey, Fadi remembered the night his father Habib told the family that they were leaving the country. Habib explained to the family that, although the Taliban had initially done good things for their country, they were now destroying it by oppressing the Afghani people, which is why the family had to leave. The family arrived in Jalalabad late at night and waited for the next stage of their journey.

In Chapter 2, an army truck...