A UNHCR report released at the end of 2014 places the estimate of the total number of displaced people around the world at 60 million — the highest ever recorded, more so than following WWII. In late November, an article in Vice magazine stated, “Citizenship is our most loaded form of fiction. Our nationalities are invented, nothing but marks on a page, but they can determine who is free and who is not. Or who dies and who gets to live.”

In light of the current debate in the US and other countries as the security and morality of refugee intake dominates news cycles, and recent foreign policy reports shed light on the regrouping of terrorist cell networks in Europe, the New York Times editorial board and a mélange of its top op-ed contributors gave a sharp rebuke to Republican US governors and those European nations proposing to or closing their borders to the influx of refugees following the San Bernardino and Paris attacks.

On the other end of the spectrum we have The Jungle, a refugee camp in Calais, a city on France’s north-west shore, connected to England by a narrow channel of water. There, a vast refugee camp of intrepid squalour, poverty and desperation has developed as a safe haven for all those crossing over whether from Syria, Afghanistan or Africa. First reported in in-depth articles both in The Globe and Mail and the New York Times this past summer, it documents the lives of refugees housed here on their way to England, in search of better lives.

Nadia Hashimi, in her latest offering, When the Moon is Low, begins her story with a map of one such route; starting from Afghanistan and travelling through Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and England, the route the Waziri family follows. Coincidentally, The Jungle is also the closing chapter of this novel — the final springboard of hope from where refugees take off.

While op-eds and in-depth reportage can only say so much, Hashimi goes into the lives of refugees, concentrating on a single family’s struggles before and after the Soviet invasion and the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan. A harrowing tale of refugees fleeing war zones and the journeys they endure, Hashimi weaves a fictional retelling of these stories, no doubt from actual accounts.

In a novel spanning three generations of the Waziri family, the main protagonist, Fereiba, grows up in Kabul, losing her mother at an early age. Subject to indifference at the hands of her stepmother, she eventually finds happiness within her own family life just as the Taliban rise to power following the Soviet exit. The Taliban soon bring an end to her bubble as they take her husband away under false charges one night. Fereiba, fearing for the safety of her three young children, sets off to make her way to London, to her stepsister, in the hope of acquiring asylum — armed with nothing but forged passports and hope for a better life.

The book follows their journey along the cities they pass through, their encounters with kind strangers along the way, their collective astonishment at the sights and sounds outside of Afghanistan and of sights previously unseen. In Athens, as Saleem her eldest and most rebellious child is separated from her, she makes the painful decision of continuing her journey for the sake of her newborn son who is in dire need of medical attention, knowing that Saleem is safe, as he finds his way to Izmir to the house of the strangers who had previously housed them.

The narrative voice switches to Saleem at this point and Hashimi astutely chooses Saleem’s narrative to show the reader the harsher reality of a refugee’s life, not subjecting Fereiba and her younger children to it. He takes readers through refugee camps at Patras and then at Calais. This, therefore, does not necessarily become a narrative of vulnerability or pity, but instead of hope, as her characters find the tenacity and courage to keep persevering.

The book ends with Saleem making his way through the tunnel at Calais, leading to Dover. This allegory is prevalent throughout the book as Fereiba makes many allusions to water denoting light and hope, leaving readers wondering whether Saleem eventually reaches the light at the end of his tunnel. The symbolism of light is also noted as the title itself suggests — referring no doubt to the journeys undertaken on foot under cover of the night across borders.

At her final stop in Paris, before she makes her way to London, Fereiba reflects on her family’s journey to have made it this far. The choices she and her husband made prior to his disappearance are all before her in the form of her present situation. However tired from the journey she may be she is grateful to have survived the seas many others did not.

This story is one told simply from a refugee’s perspective, tracing their paths of danger and squalour, and eventual destination, those like Fereiba and her children are lucky enough to reach. It also highlights the barriers refugees and migrants like Fereiba and her children face in the cities and countries they pass through — social, cultural, linguistic, economic and so on.

Written in stunning poetic and melancholy prose, When The Moon is Low is a story of courage, resilience, destiny, miracles and challenging fate. More importantly, the book highlights the plight of refugees the world over, the very real danger that exists for them in war zones, of entire villages and communities that flee and reconnect in camps like Patras and Calais recounting their journeys. The role of governments and civil society is also highlighted. Hashimi writes a current and cohesive story about the lives of displaced individuals.

The reviewer is a freelance journalist writing on politics, current affairs and culture.

When the Moon is Low
(NOVEL)
By Nadia Hashimi
HarperCollins, USA
ISBN 978-0062439772
384pp.