My Friend Matt and Hena the Whore - Hardcover

Also from Zameenzad (see above): a well-meaning, often mystical story of children trying to survive in war-torn Africa--a story with special resonances considering the situation in Somalia but one that makes more for inspiration than literature. When Matt--a charismatic boy who's been converted to Christianity and who ``sees the pathways of the stars''--suggests that friends Golam, Hena, and the narrator bunk school and go to Gonta to see the famous Spirit Dance, the four embark on an adventure that soon becomes a dangerous odyssey. As they make their way through the forest, they stumble upon a guerrilla band that's captured a rival leader they are about to kill. The children rescue the prisoner, escape, and make it to Gonta, where they watch the dancing as well as make new friends--who will come in handy later as the situation in their country, devastated by drought and racked by civil war, deteriorates. Back home, seeing their village and families decimated by starvation, the children hope to find work in the big city and courageously set off again on another hazardous journey--but they are no longer the same innocents: Golam is haunted by his mother's madness and recent death, and Hena, whose father has lost all he had, is determined to become rich whatever the cost. They survive encounters with various armed groups and reach the city, but find life there even worse than back home--and far more dangerous. Hena deliberately becomes a rich man's whore, and the other three struggle to survive, only to be injured badly in a bombing raid on a refugee camp. They continue the journey, but their fate is inevitable. The friends and their families are reunited at last in the great spirit world beyond. Much powerful writing, and the events described have all too many parallels, but cumulatively more homily than novel. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This moving, often harrowing novel about the coming-of-age of four spirited children in a starving African village is narrated by Kimo, a nine-year-old boy who recounts brutal scenes of civil strife in one breath, while playfully describing the personalities of his bosom pals in another--from "smart-ass" Matt to innocent Golam with his "lovely smile" and Hena, with her "twisted mind." When life in their village is disrupted by civil war and famine, the children travel to the big city to get help from Kimo's supposedly successful cousin. But the cousin is hiding from the police and nowhere to be found. The stirring part of the book is the way they cleverly extract themselves from dangerous situations as they wend their way through the violence and disorder of the city. Even though the fighting causes them terror and pain, Kimo refuses to stop believing in the goodness of people, saying that "the hurt of those who stop loving you is worse than the hurt of those who leave you" and "the hurt of those who never love you is the worst of all." Zameenzad, an award-winning novelist living in England, adds a new dimension to the footage of hungry children we see on television newscasts and makes them come alive in an unforgettable way.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.