The Lightless Sky

The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay is a memoir about his experience traveling alone as a twelve-year-old boy from war-torn Afghanistan to the United Kingdom, where he applied for refugee status and tried to remake his life in the Western world. Gulwali's story of his 12,000-mile solo journey, heart-breaking and terrifying, gives a face to the experiences of many during the ongoing refugee crisis that is now bringing millions of Syrian and Afghani immigrants to the shores of southern Europe, particularly Greece and Italy.

Gulwali begins his memoir with stories from his childhood growing up in rural southern Afghanistan. He and his family are Pashtun, and Gulwali grew up speaking Pashto. Gulwali fondly looks back upon his traditional life in Afghanistan and his experiences there, despite the fear that overtook his family when American warfare came to their country, putting their lives at risk.

Eventually, Gulwali's mother made the decision that he and his brother should flee the country, becoming refugees for fear that otherwise, the boys would lose their lives. Gulwali's father and grandfather, suspected of hiding weapons and other materials for the Taliban, were killed in a shoot-out by US troops. After the death of their father and grandfather, Gulwali and his older brother, Hazrat, who was just thirteen at the time, were harassed by the Taliban who wanted them to become rebels, freedom fighters, and to spy on the US government. Gulwali and Hazrat's mother decided that the only safe place for her children was abroad, and in 2006, she gave the boys backpacks and sent them on a journey to England.



Gulwali's mother paid a smuggler living in Kabul $8,000 to get the boys to Italy, where they could then safely travel north to a country where they could easily apply for status as refugees. Gulwali notes in his memoir and in subsequent interviews, that in the mid-2000s, Afghans were the largest refugee group in the world, only recently becoming the second largest group because of the Syrian refugee crisis in the last five years. At the airport in Peshawar, before the boys had even reached a remotely safe location, Gulwali was separated from his brother and the smuggler, and his harrowing journey truly began.

Gulwali talks about his dual desires – both to find safety for himself and to reunite with his brother – that lead him to take the journey alone at age twelve across Iran, Turkey, and then across the sea on a boat to Greece, and finally to Italy. In Bulgaria, Gulwali is thrown off a moving train and is then imprisoned in Iran, which he had just passed through. He finds a way to escape Iranian prison, finally making his way to Turkey, where he gets on a small fishing boat packed with 120 people, which capsizes before they reach the shore in Greece. Gulwali is not one of the people crammed into the bottom of the boat – those people, he writes, drowned in the sea.

Finally, Gulwali makes it to the shores of Italy, where he seeks a safe-haven. Hearing about his brother's arrival in England, he travels to Calais to meet him. Gulwali is forced to live in humiliating conditions, eating from food kitchens, scavenging for sustenance, and sleeping in filthy places on the streets and in shelters. He finally arrives in Dover and tries to convince the authorities in England that he is only thirteen years old, but they don't believe him. Instead of offering him a foster home and the chance to go to school, Gulwali is forced to live with adult asylum seekers.



Gulwali's real success comes later, when his story makes him a prominent figure in the movement to support the rights of refugees globally, and also to respect and care for unaccompanied minors who are fleeing their country in order to find a better and safer life in America and Western Europe. Gulwali held the Olympic torch in 2012 with 8,000 others because of his commitment to social change in the community in Bolton, where he went to secondary school. This was a moment of crowning achievement he never anticipated after his struggle as a boy to escape the torturous and war-torn conditions of his home.

Gulwali Passarlay is the author of one memoir, The Lightless Sky, and an activist and advocate for refugee children in Europe. Now twenty-four years old, he lives in the United Kingdom. He began his undergraduate studies in 2013 at the University of Manchester, where he majored in Politics. He hopes to return to Afghanistan to help his country overcome both its status as a war-torn nation and the aftermath of decades of conflict.