Boy, Everywhere: A journey from privilege to poverty


Boy, Everywhere author A. M. Dassu talks to Pen&Inc. about her first book – a privilege to poverty tale of 13-year-old Sami and his family’s escape from war-torn Damascus. The book opens our eyes to the stark choices refugees make – to swap a life of comfort for one of danger and hardship in the hope of finding a safe place to live.


FOR A. M. Dassu, the story of a 13-year-old Syrian forced to flee his home is not about dwelling on other’s hardships, but about shining a light on how easily it could happen to any one of us. Boy, Everywhere is Dassu’s first book and she says she was determined for the characters and scenario to be relatable. The book’s hero Sami lives in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with his parents – dad, a doctor and mum, a teacher, and his younger sister. Sami, his family and his friends living in the capital have rarely felt the impact of the civil war raging in the country, but as fighting moves closer to Damascus things change for the worse.


A. M. Dassu says she wanted to show Sami’s life before he becomes a refugee, so that readers can see how similar his life in Damascus is to our own, and appreciate what he and his family have lost. Dassu says: “Boy, Everywhere is a privilege to poverty story. It’s about a boy who has everything, but then loses it all. Thirteen-year-old Sami has a comfortable life in Damascus, which is something that people in the West don’t expect. It’s torn apart by a bomb attack in a shopping mall, which forces his family


Autumn-Winter 2020


to leave their home in Syria to move to England to help his sister. He goes from this life full of opportunity to one of poverty, across countries and continents.” That notion of leaving a comfortable, middle class life behind reinforces the idea that refugees are not choosing to come to a new country looking for a better life – most were happy with the life they had. Instead, the journeys they embark on are forced on them – they are escaping danger, rather than searching for riches. A. M. Dassu says: “When Sami eventually settles in the UK, he wants to go back home. I wanted to show that not everyone wants to be here. They miss their country and their family. A lot of Syrians hope to go back one day. “People think that Syrians are so lucky to be here, but I wanted to show that they had good homes and good lives before the war affected them. I wanted to challenge stereotypes in a relatable way, because Sami has a life in Damascus that was like ours in lots of ways.”


A. M. Dassu wanted Sami to come from a middle class background, where it wasn’t a struggle to afford toys and nice clothes. In Damascus he has friends, an iPad, goes ice skating and he lives in a nice house, in a safe neighbourhood.


Dassu adds: “I knew immediately that his dad was going to be doctor and his mum a teacher, and then when they came to the UK as asylum seekers, they were going to become cleaners or work in factories, and they would struggle.” When A. M. Dassu began work on Boy, Everywhere, there had been a noticeable shift in how refugees and asylum seekers were viewed. Negative stories and scaremongering helped to create an environment where asylum seekers and refugees were seen as coming to this country in order to access a supposedly generous benefits system. And while this narrative failed to address the reality that those escaping war had left behind comfortable homes and jobs, it began to gain credence. Civil war had been raging across Syria for around five years and the resulting turmoil displaced hundreds of thousands of people – some moving to safer areas within the country, others leaving entirely. Refugee camps were created to provide shelter, but these were dirty, cold and often dangerous – certainly no place to make a home or bring up children. For A. M. Dassu, a mother of three, the inspiration for Sami’s story came when she was watching a news story, where a


PEN&INC. 7


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56