Guantanamo Boy
It’s hard to believe sometimes that we live in a world where wrongful prosecution befalls many different and innocent individuals all across the globe. Each day we live our secluded lives, there are more people forced into terrible situations across every expanse of continent.
Gauntanamo Boy tells the tale of a 15-year-old boy, named Khalid, who is wrongfully accused of having ties to the terrorist cell Al Qaeda. Khalid is a British teenager, also of Asian descent, who travels to Pakistan during a time of grief to attend a family funeral and eventually ends up jailed within the walls of Guantanamo Bay. The story follows Khalid closely as he spends his time confined within the prison facing gruesome torture, intense anger and boredom, and weeks upon weeks of sleep deprivation.
The story is entirely fictional, of course, but the tale is based on true occurrences that unfolded shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Anna Perera, the novel’s author, heard about related events through a charity reprieve and was later influenced to write the novel based on the imprisoned children, and their particularly cruel circumstances, within Guantanamo Bay.
Perera commented, “I was so shocked and appalled by that fact. I began researching the prison, and the more I read the more shocked and appalled I became.”
Perera’s novel includes some graphic and serious portrayals of very controversial issues, but she feels that this helps inspire teenagers and young adults to do something about the situation.
In fact, The Times Daily quoted in a review that Guantanamo Boy is “one of the grimmest books for teenagers to have been published for some time.”
Perera simply commented in return, “You’d be surprised how many controversial issues are addressed in children’s books.”
Before the novel’s final draft and publishing, Perera felt the need to tone down some serious and more mature torture scenes. One of which included the act of “waterboarding”, a form of drowning that is used to withdraw held information. Perera eventually decided against this and included even the “waterboarding” scene within her final draft of her novel.
It is an inspiring and gruesome tale that you should take the time to experience. Visit a world outside the safety of your own, and you eventually will see what terrible things can happen, even within our country.
