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Khaled Hosseini

My dear Marwan,

in the long summers of childhood,

when I was a boy the age you are now,

your uncles and I

spread our mattress on the roof

of your grandfather’s farmhouse

outside of Homs.

We woke in the mornings

to the stirring of olive trees in the breeze,

to the bleating of your grandmother’s goat,

the clanking of her cooking pots,

the air cool and the sun

a pale rim of persimmon to the east.

We took you there when you were a toddler.

I have a sharply etched memory

of your mother from that trip,

showing you a herd of cows grazing in a field

blown through with wild flowers.

I wish you hadn’t been so young.

You wouldn’t have forgotten the farmhouse,

the soot of its stone walls,

the creek where your uncles and I built

a thousand boyhood dams.

I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan.

In its bustling Old City,

a mosque for us Muslims,

a church for our Christian neighbours,

and a grand souk for us all

to haggle over gold pendants and

fresh produce and bridal dresses.

I wish you remembered

the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh

and the evening walks we took

with your mother

around Clock Tower Square.

But that life, that time,

seems like a dream now,

like some long-dissolved rumour.

First came the protests.

Then the siege.

The skies spitting bombs.

These are the things you know.

You know a bomb crater

can be made into a swimming hole.

You have learned

dark blood is better news

You have learned that mothers and

sisters and classmates can be found

in narrow gaps between concrete,

bricks and exposed beams,

little patches of sunlit skin

shining in the dark.

Your mother is here tonight, Marwan,

with us, on this cold and moonlit beach,

among the crying babies and

the women worrying

in tongues we don’t speak.

Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and

Eritreans and Syrians.

All of us impatient for sunrise,

all of us in dread of it.

All of us in search of home.

I have heard it said we are the uninvited.

We are the unwelcome.

We should take our misfortune elsewhere.

But I hear your mother’s voice,

and she whispers in my ear,

‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling.

Even half of what you have.

If only they saw.

They would say kinder things, surely.’

I look at your profile

in the glow of this three-quarter moon,

my boy, your eyelashes like calligraphy,

closed in guileless sleep.

‘Hold my hand.

Nothing bad will happen.’

These are only words.

A father’s tricks.

It slays your father,

your faith in him.

Because all I can think tonight is

how deep the sea,

and how vast, how indifferent.

How powerless I am to protect you from it.

All I can do is pray.

Pray God steers the vessel true,

when the shores slip out of eyeshot

and we are a flyspeck

in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting,

easily swallowed.

you are precious cargo, Marwan,

the most precious there ever was.

I pray the sea knows this.

How I pray the sea knows this.

Sea Prayer was inspired by the story

of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old

Syrian refugee who drowned in the

Mediterranean Sea trying to reach

safety in Europe in September 2015.

In the year after Alan’s death 4,176

others died or went missing attempting

similar journeys.

This book is dedicated to the thousands

of refugees who have perished at sea

fleeing war and persecution.

BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are

trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Text first published online by the Guardian, 2017

This edition first published by Bloomsbury in Great Britain, 2018

Text © Sea Prayer by The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, 2018

Illustrations © Dan Williams, 2018

Recording ℗ Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Read by Khalid Abdalla

Khaled Hosseini and Dan Williams have asserted their right under the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author and

illustrator, respectively, of this work

All rights reserved

You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make

available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical,

photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written

permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in

relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and ci vil

claims for damages.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim, as far as the law allows,

any responsibility from any liability, loss or risk (personal or otherwise)

which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and

applications of any of the contents of this book

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-0271-8; eBook: 978-1-5266-0270-1

Designer: Sandra Zellmer

Illustrator: Dan Williams

To find out more about our authors and their books please visit www.

bloomsbury.com where you will find extracts, author interviews and

details of forthcoming events, and to be the first to hear about latest

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