Wild Poppies

The 2020 Young Adult Book category winner of The Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature.

I grabbed the gun with a shaking hand, and I asked myself; Why should I kill someone who didn’t offend me? This is injustice… God has forbidden injustice. Then I closed my eyes and decided: No matter what happens, I will not kill anyone. I let the gun fall from my hand and I ran away, my feet hit a rock and I fell to the ground. A novel about the recruitment of children, and the war whose fire will disappear off the face of the earth so that the anemone will bloom, carrying with it the meanings of beauty, joy and hope.