A House Without Walls

A House Without Walls by Elizabeth Laird is a story for 11 year olds about a girl who leaves Damascus in the middle of the night with one packed rucksack.

What happens

Safiya introduces herself in a list. She's twelve. She's Syrian. She's a refugee, and she hates that word. Also her teeth stick out a bit, which she would like you to know.

She talks to you like that the whole way through. Straight, quick and very honest about things she isn't supposed to say out loud.

Because plenty is off limits. Her Baba is a lawyer and he sometimes defends people the government doesn't like. So the rule at home is that you never talk about politics, not to teachers, not to friends, not to anyone.

Even Farah upstairs, Safiya's best friend in the world, counts as not anyone. That's the bit she can't accept.

Her brother Tariq is fifteen and thinks he's right about everything. Auntie Shirin has run the house since their mother died and scolds her constantly. Safiya also has a twin sister she has never met, adopted as a baby by an uncle in America.

Then things start going quiet and strange. Baba takes phone calls in a locked room. A packed holdall appears by the front door and nobody will move it. One afternoon Safiya finds a full rucksack shoved under her own bed, with winter clothes and vitamin pills in it.

Auntie Shirin sits down next to her and explains, very gently, that she won't be coming with them.

That evening the knocking starts.

What makes this so good is how ordinary it all feels while it's happening. Safiya still argues about shoes. She's still jealous of Farah's mum, who hugs people and leaves flour on her face. She's still cross that boys can go out alone and she can't.

She also says something that stays with you. Nobody can stop you saying things inside your head. So that's where she keeps everything.

You should know what you're handing over. This one sits inside a real war. Safiya's family talk plainly about arrest and torture, because that is what would happen to her father. A classmate is an informer. Children at school stop speaking to a girl whose brother has disappeared. Nothing violent happens on the page in these opening chapters, but the fear is constant and it's meant to be.

If your reader is anxious, or has family caught up in any of this, read it first. If they're ready for a true-feeling story about a clever girl losing her whole world and refusing to be small about it, this is a really good one.

What to read next

For the same story seen from the other end, there's The Boy at the Back of the Class in the library. A new boy turns up in a London classroom, says nothing to anyone, and the girl telling the story decides on the spot to be his friend.