Sami and the Time of Troubles

While many people found this book more upsetting, I find it hard to choose which is more upsetting between the two. These two books are so different that I feel that they cannot be compared. While the other one doesn't seem upsetting, to me it is (see my next blog) and this one is upsetting in a completely different way. Sami is a little boy who essentially lives in the dark. His city/country is ravished by war and fighting. He goes to bed each night in the basement of a house with no front wall due to an explosion from a bomb. The basement is dark and his noise machine does not sound like the ocean or a rain forest; his noise machine is the rat-tat from machine guns, people scream, and loud explosions. He is not rocked to sleep in a chair by his mother or father but rather by the shuttering and shaking from the explosions all around his house. During the day he has nothing better to do than play with his friend, building forts and pretending to kill each other. While most kids play army, this is very different for me. These two boys live in a world of death and violence and seem to be imitating what they are seeing in real life. Children in our country play army and have no idea what the true effects of war are.
In the end, I feel that this book is sad because I have no idea what it feels like to go to sleep each night wondering if I will wake up or if my family will be dead when I do. I don't know what it’s like to not have a childhood that isn’t filled with death and violence. I could not imagine being Sami and only know that I would do everything in my power to get out of a country like that. He seems like a very strong and mature person, almost as if he was forced to grow up because his childhood has been taken away, something that I will never be able to completely relate to.