When he was 10, his father died while being tortured by the Taliban. At age 14, just after 9/11, his mother was killed in an attack near a Kabul marketplace. His older sister is married and living in London. His younger brother is a responsibility he’s not prepared for. That’s when Wali, with not much left to lose, makes the courageous decision to journey to London in order to be with his sister. Later on, he would make arrangements for his brother to join them.

Wali takes the reader with him step by step as he travels across Afghanistan, Iran, Kurdistan, Turkey, Greece, Italy and to what surprisingly ends up being his ultimate destination – Calais, France. The teenage boy travels via truck, train, ferry, raft, on foot…whatever it takes to reach a land that offers him a better life.

During many legs of the journey, Wali is either confronted with danger or runs the risk of getting caught without papers and shipped back home. With a remarkable maturity, he overcomes amazing obstacles until the greatest one of all lies in his way – the English Channel. Wali finds himself trapped in Calais until he crosses paths with the incredibly generous Loeuillieux family. Sympathetic to his dilemma, they will bring him into their home and treat him as if he were their own child. Eventually his brother is even able to join him there.

Now that that harrowing journey ended, Wali, 21, is a French resident, has completed his schooling and found work. He simply dreams of the day he can safely go back to Afghanistan in order to make a positive difference in his homeland.