The Naked Don't Fear the Water

September 1, 2021

The Polk Award-winning Aikins began reporting from the Middle East and Afghanistan in 2008, actively participating in Afghan society and learning the Dari language. So in 2016, when his friend Omar, a translator and driver, made the heart-buckling decision to flee the war-ravaged country, Aikins decided to go with him. That meant leaving behind his passport and identity and encountering refugees, smugglers, and activists, so that finally as a documentarian he could better understand what being a refugee really means. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

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December 20, 2021
Journalist Aikins debuts with a powerful account of the “long and dangerous journey” many Afghans take out of their war-torn country. At the center of the story is Omar (a pseudonym), a Sunni Muslim and former interpreter for the American military, who in 2016 took the “smuggler’s road” to Europe after his application for a Special Immigrant Visa to the U.S. was denied. Raised in exile in Iran and Pakistan, Omar was a teenager when his family returned to Kabul in 2002 in the largest repatriation program in U.N. history. By October 2015, however, Afghanistan lay in tatters, with the Taliban back in control of the provincial capital of Kunduz and the U.S. government signaling it was on the way out. Going undercover as a “young Kabuli of modest background,” to join Omar, Aikins characterizes the journey as “mostly waiting punctuated by moments of terror.” He details Omar’s reluctance to leave his Shia Muslim girlfriend and vividly describes roads lined with burned-out buses, overcrowded safe houses where migrants crack grim jokes, and unaccompanied Afghan children “mingl with the drug dealers and johns” on the streets of Athens. The result is a heart-wrenching portrait of resilience and ingenuity under the most trying of circumstances. Agent: Edward Orloff, McCormick Literary.

January 1, 2022
A Canadian journalist's riveting account of his travels with a friend attempting to flee from Afghanistan to Europe. In 2015, Aikins, a winner of the George Polk Award, had been covering the war in Afghanistan for seven years. He spent much of that time with a friend he calls Omar (many names have been changed for safety purposes), who frequently served as his translator. By this point, Omar and the rest of his family had decided to try to leave despite the fact that the borders had been closed. Aikins, who looks "uncannily Afghan: almond eyes, black hair, wiry beard," decided to accompany Omar, paying his way and reporting on the refugee underground, disguising himself as an Afghan migrant and leaving his passport with friends. What sounded at first like a fairly straightforward plan soon fell apart, as Omar delayed again and again, hoping to arrange a marriage with a young woman, or lost his nerve at crucial moments. Often separated, the two ended up together first in Turkey, then in an internment camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, and then in a "squat" in Athens, where they lived with "a mix of activists and migrants." Aikins is meticulously aware of the difference in the level of danger the two faced. Though he sometimes thought, "What kind of protagonist was he?" as Omar spent weeks mostly lying in bed staring at Facebook, he also acknowledges that "we both knew I could make a phone call to get my passport back and leave, any time I wanted." Finely, if sometimes bewilderingly, detailed, the book shines a humane spotlight on many of the people the author met along the way as well as on the role chance played in their fates, with particularly moving chapters on life within the Greek refugee camp. The narrative is scrupulous and often suspenseful. Sharp insider insights into a global dilemma.

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January 1, 2022
Canadian journalist Aikins, who writes for Harper's, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker, draws on his reportage from Afghanistan and the Middle East in this intimate look at one family's 2016 journey out of Afghanistan. The author immerses himself in the struggles of his friend Omar, who makes the wrenching decision to leave the woman he loves and set out on a smuggler-facilitated journey to Europe. Aikins casts aside his own passport and identity to insert himself as completely as possible into Omar's experience. As they disagree over whom to trust and which dangerous trail points to the greater chance of success, Aikins also tracks Omar's family, who are separated across various countries and stages in the refugee process. There is also the emotionally fraught relationship between Omar and Laila, whose family does not support their commitment to each other and insists that she remain home and seek a more appropriate match. Whether ruminating on the strength of their love, the frustrations of paperwork, or the ever-changing rules for travel, Aikins leaves no detail uncovered in the travails of this family determined to find a better life. Timely, personal, and deeply human, this is a riveting look at the struggles of refugees, one of the world's most enduring crises.

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