by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 26, 2009

It's a children's book set in Cairo, Egypt, and Ahmed has a secret. But first the book shows his life in a crowded marketplace. "All day long my secret will be like a friend to me," Ahmed thinks, and he's also accompanied by a donkey which pulls his cart through the street. "Everyone is going somewhere," observes Ahmed, saying he hears "maybe every sound in the world." There's cars and camels, shouts and whistles, "and laughter all at once."

And he feels like a part of it, because of the sound of his own cart. In fact, the book suggests the lonely insignificance of a child in a crowded city, and Ahmed's search for a way to feel important. The young boy already has a full-time job, lugging heavy cans of butane to the people in the village. ("Hurry to grow strong," says his father, "but do not hurry to grow old.") But when Ahmed is seen smiling on the first page, it's only because his secret is even more comforting in the crowded street.

The illustrations are photo-realistic illustrations, capturing the bustle of the crowded marketplace. My favorite illustration is the simplest - pyramids in the distance across a wide desert. The pale colors of the sky seems peaceful after the busy marketplace, and there's a comforting feeling in the cool darkness when the day finally ends.

The book describes the things you'd see in Cairo - camels, carts, and city walls - but it suffers because the world is so unfamiliar. And while it captures the impersonal feeling of the city, it makes Ahmed's life seem unhappy. His secret is simply that he's able to write his name, and then smiling proudly, he demonstrates it for his family - over and over again. He thinks that his written name could outlast the voices in the marketplace, lingering as long as the city's thousand-year-old walls. Whether that's true - it seems like a desperate thing to hope for. Is his life really this devoid of present-day joys?

"I write my name over and over as they watch..."

The book's jacket says that author Florence Parry Heide co-authored this book with her daughter Judith, and that normally she collaborates instead with Judith's twin sister, Roxanne. Maybe their partnership needs more time to develop, since it seems like their first story wasn't particularly warm or cheerful. In fact, it's not much of a story, since Ahmed's character never really solidifies, and he's not even pursuing a specific goal. The book spends more time describing Ahmed's city than it does on Ahmed. In the end, the book captures the impersonal feeling of a large city more than the authors realized, because at the end of the book, I still felt like I didn't really know Ahmed at all.

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