Book Review: Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini and Dan Williams

Book Review: Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini and Dan Williams

Quote: First came protest,Then the siege.

How does one read a poem? At one go or does one sit through it for a day? Is it the words that matter only or the history behind it? What of an illustrated book? These are the questions I always revisit before I read a book that is illustrated or is a book of poems.

So my bossy was gifted this book today by our senior-editor, I grabbed it first to read. I have seen the book in every other book shop and bookfair I drop by, reviews calling it haunting enough to evoke bouts of pathos.

The poetry in the book is small but stretched out on 48 pages of illustrations. Beautiful illustrations of loss and fear. If I had read the poetry without the illustrations and on a sepia page, the impact wouldn't have been the same.

It's poetry inspired by a three-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose lifeless little body had washed up on shores of Turkey in 2015. A poem layered by Hosseini's own experience as a refugee. Sea Prayer, as I read was first thought-born as a script for a virtual reality film for the UNHCR.

A parent narrating the life of a home lost, the city of Homs. It's a letter to a son from a father who speaks about a city that the child will never see. A city like any other bustling with life, noise, and harmony.

It's an apology to a generation of children that will grow up through trauma and turmoil, but with almost no hope for triumph. Refugees shed their last thread of dignity before they leave their homeland. Being rootless and homeless is not a choice but an act of desperation. What does a refugee carry with her? Her memories, the violence her mind and body go through, and her prayer to survive.

Sea Prayer indeed has the haunting impact because of the illustrations and the arrangement of the poetry. The breakdown of poetry into stanzas and sentences which are spat out against the beautiful but scary art is what elevates the poetry from a mere poem of despair.

Art and protest go hand in hand. Art gives birth to awareness. A poem can be misread but symbols can't. It can have interpretations but Art will always find that one spot in the human being that will make her think. This book is that right balance of art, awareness, literature, and protest.