Four Feet, Two Sandals - Unerasable Memories

Book Review:

Four Feet Two Sandals

Written by: Karen Lynn Williams & Khakra Mohammed

Illustrations: Doug Chayka

Story about refugees (people who leave their country due to war and other civil disturbances ). It is based on an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, which is also supposed to be the Afghanistan -Pakistan border.

Four Feet, Two Sandals - Unerasable Memories

Synopsis :

Lina and Feroza were two girls around ten years old who lived in an Afghan refugee camp, where in a war Feroza lost her entire family except her grandmother and Lina who lost her father and sister in the war, is living with her mom and two younger brothers. 

One day, a van carrying relief workers arrived at the camp. It was filled with used clothing, and people gathered in large numbers to grab the clothes thrown at them. Lina managed to get herself only one sandal. When she starts searching for the other, she finds it on Feroza’s foot.

Feroza was kind enough to spare the other one for Lina, as she thought one sandal was useless, but Lina drew a beautiful plan where both could share the sandals. What is Lina’s plan for sharing the sandals? How do they get out of the camp and continue their friendship? That is the rest of the story.

Review:

This story is about sharing, friendship and loss, which makes us realize how refugees are made victims of terrorism. 

The sandals are the main protagonists in the story, and they carry a sign of friendship wherever they go. Alongside there is one event in the story where the two girls learn to write their names in the sand just by watching through the window of school, and rubbing them so that no one should notice, which shows why women’s literacy in Afghanistan is still one of the lowest in the world.

Beautiful and sensitive Acrylic illustrations give life to the story. Life in Borders is brought in front of us through the same. The story makes everyone understand that Refugees not only carry belongings to the other place but lots of memories, unerasable memories of their motherland.