The Girl From Aleppo: Nujeen’s Escape From War to Freedom

The Girl From Aleppo: Nujeen’s Escape From War to Freedom
Christina Lamb

Nujeen Mustafa

Previously published as ‘Nujeen’‘She is our hero. Everyone must read her story. She will inspire you’ Malala YousafzaiAn inspiring tale of a young disabled girl and her escape from the hell of war.Nujeen Mustafa has cerebral palsy and cannot walk. This did not stop her braving inconceivable odds to travel in her wheelchair from Syria in search of a new life. Sharing her full story for the first time, Nujeen recounts the details of her childhood and disability, as well as the specifics of her harrowing journey across the Mediterranean to Greece and finally to Germany to seek an education and the medical treatment she needs.Nujeen's story has already touched millions and in this book written with Christina Lamb, bestselling co-author of ‘I Am Malala’, she helps to put a human face on a global emergency.Trapped in a fifth floor apartment in Aleppo and unable to go to school, she taught herself to speak English by watching US television. As civil war between Assad's forces and ISIS militants broke out around them, Nujeen and her family fled first to her native Kobane, then Turkey before they joined thousands of displaced persons in a journey to Europe and asylum. She wanted to come to Europe, she said, to become an astronaut, to meet the Queen and to learn how to walk.In her strong, positive voice, Nujeen tells the story of what it is really like to be a refugee, to have grown up in a dictatorship only for your life to be blighted by war; to have left a beloved homeland to become dependent on others. It is the story of our times told through the incredible bravery of one remarkable girl determined to keep smiling.

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Copyright (#ud1a5c192-22ad-56f2-ad0a-2c6fdcb37029)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.williamcollinsbooks.com)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins 2016

Copyright © Christina Lamb and Nujeen Mustafa 2016, 2017

Christina Lamb and Nujeen Mustafa assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

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

Cover photograph © STR/AFP/Getty Images

Interior images from the Mustafa family collection unless otherwise attributed

Map by Martin Brown

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008192815

Ebook Edition © September 2016, 2017 ISBN: 9780008192792

Version: 2017-02-23

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Epigraph (#ud1a5c192-22ad-56f2-ad0a-2c6fdcb37029)

I see Earth! It is so beautiful.

Yuri Gagarin, first man in space, 1961

Contents

Cover (#u196e45c0-b60d-5945-8a99-286b786e5653)

Title Page (#u28c42823-7790-5357-9031-5e1eb3bca2f1)

Copyright (#u3e03e649-9daf-5019-9278-f48f0e43ce9e)

Map (#u2b8b7087-98c3-5a02-8e9d-79ef50242e10)

Epigraph (#u1add299c-3ffc-52fe-8d56-0adea0710167)

Prologue: The Crossing (#u33db111d-c158-5da1-8057-0369bb920903)

PART ONE: To Lose a Country (#u4a170c8c-7f5f-55a6-b2b1-f5ced2489743)

1 Foreigners in Our Own Land (#u4e5e10d4-1cde-55f7-9735-fd80485eb30c)

2 The Walls of Aleppo (#u968ed968-a0a9-5f9d-bffb-d4af9d26f5a7)

3 The Girl on TV (#u56b9379a-d853-5e9d-9206-8e349317d22b)

4 Days of Rage (#ud459738b-ece6-59f4-9a6d-1d8d37ee56ea)

5 A City Divided (#ube5785d9-7529-56ce-a7d6-5df4c0cb05b2)

6 A War of Our Own (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Gone with the Wind (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Forgive Me, Syria (#litres_trial_promo)

PART TWO: The Journey (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Widen Your World (#litres_trial_promo)

10 In Search of a People Smuggler (#litres_trial_promo)

11 The Route of Death (#litres_trial_promo)

12 Freedom like a Normal Person (#litres_trial_promo)

13 Through the Beautiful Gate (#litres_trial_promo)

14 Hungary, Open the Door! (#litres_trial_promo)

15 The Hardest Day (#litres_trial_promo)

16 The Sound of Music (#litres_trial_promo)