Title: Born Under a Million Shadows
Author: Andrea Busfield
Fawad is a preteen boy in modern-day Afghanistan. He has only known the horror of war, first by the Taliban and now the occupying forces of the West. When his widowed mother gets a job cooking and cleaning for three Westerners, Fawad gets a first-hand look at the strange customs and lifestyle that the occupiers are bringing to his homeland. Despite the foreigners' strangeness, Fawad and his mother come to appreciate and love James, May, and Georgie.
James is a lazy, drunken journalist, but has a sympathetic ear for Fawad. May is the first lesbian that Fawad encounters, and Georgie is Fawad's favorite. She is beautiful, smart, speaks the local language and helps farmers and their goats. Unfortunately, Georgie is in love with a rumored drug lord which brings her emotional, and sometimes physical pain...
The first 40 pages dragged but after that I couldn't put the book down. Busfield spent a few years in Afghanistan and it shows in her humorous and sympathetic portrayal of ordinary Afghans.
