45 pages • 1 hour read
Benjamin ZephaniahRefugee Boy
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Road to Nowhere”
While the staff are busy, Alem takes his bag and escapes out of a window in a broom closet. He scales the fence around the children’s home, cutting himself on the barbed wire at the top. He walks down the road and spends the night in a barn. In the morning, Alem continues down the road and realizes that he must have made a wrong turn because he ends up back at the children’s home. He decides to go back to the home because he does not know the area, and he feels tired.
After the staff clean his cuts and give him breakfast, Mariam arrives. He tells her about Sweeney and why he ran away. He says that he does not want to stay in a place where someone will hurt him over French fries. Mariam reminds Alem that many of the children in the home have also undergone trauma, even if it is different than his, and some of them do not have a family waiting for them. She introduces Alem to Sheila, a social worker who can find Alem a foster home.
On the way to the foster home, Sheila says that they must stop at the Home Office for a screening. She tells Alem that it will not be a pleasant process but that the government will want his pictures and fingerprints. They take him to the Home Office, and he goes through the screening, which humiliates him. He asks Mariam as they leave if “he [is] now a criminal” (77). Mariam tells him that “the system is not fair” and that the Home Office should not treat him that way (77).
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Family’s Fine”
Alem and Mariam arrive at the Fitzgeralds’ house, where Alem meets Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald and their daughter, Ruth. The Fitzgeralds are Irish, and Alem learns that they have fostered several children. After Alem and Mariam leave, Alem decides that he likes the Fitzgeralds. Sheila completes the paperwork and takes him back to the house in the evening.
Over the next few weeks, Alem settles in. Ruth hardly talks to him even though she is only a few years older than him. Alem asks if he can go to school, and Mrs. Fitzgerald agrees to enroll him. Alem spends his free time reading the books in his room. He finds it difficult to complete a book because there are so many different books in the room, and he feels compelled to learn as much as possible while he can. Mrs. Fitzgerald tells him that he will start school on Monday. She buys him a uniform, which he loves.
Chapter 9 Summary: “First Class”
On his first day of school, Alem sits through an assembly that discusses the death of a teacher whom a student stabbed. Alem realizes that England also has violence even if it is not in the middle of a war. The headmaster hands out Positive Pupil Certificates to two students for their time volunteering. Alem thinks that someday he would like to receive a Positive Pupil Certificate.
As Alem waits by the door for his first class to begin, a student named Robert flings the door open and knocks him to the ground. The whole class laughs at Alem, but Robert admits it was his fault and apologizes. Alem sits next to him, and the two become friends.
After school, Mariam arrives at the Fitzgeralds’ and tells Alem that they have not heard back from the Home Office about his application. She then gives him a letter from his father. In the letter, Mr. Kelo writes that he cannot find Alem’s mother. He also tells Alem that the East African Solidarity Trust (EAST) offices were raided in both Ethiopia and Eritrea. EAST is an organization that Alem’s parents started that works to reunite tribes in Africa and end war. Mr. Kelo writes that he will continue to search for Alem’s mother, but he does not know when he will find her.
Alem believes that soldiers have taken her and made her a slave. Mariam says that they do not know that, but Alem reminds her that violence is the only possible option when a person goes missing during war.
Chapter 10 Summary: “What the Papers Say”
Even though Alem is upset by his mother’s disappearance, he still goes to school to maintain the feeling of normalcy. Alem meets another friend at school named Ray Buckley, known as Buck. Buck is in a band, and Alem feels drawn to him because of his reserved nature. Buck and Robert invite Alem to hang out with them over the weekend, but Alem decides to stay home and finish reading Great Expectations.
When Alem gets home, Mariam is waiting for him. She tells Alem that the Home Office refused his asylum request. Mariam tells him that they are going to appeal the decision but that Alem will have to appear in court with a judge. Mariam gives him a folder filled with newspaper clippings about refugees in England so he can prepare himself for the way that the judge may treat him.
Alem does not understand why the newspapers would speak so harshly about refugees, and Mrs. Fitzgerald tells him that when the Fitzgeralds came to England to escape starvation in Ireland, people treated them poorly as well. Alem decides to keep the newspaper clippings because he wants to remind himself of the way some people think of him.
Chapter 11 Summary: “A Way With Words”
Alem learns that the date of his hearing will be January 7. He decides to spend his time studying and reading to learn as much as he can about the world. Even though some kids at school tease him about his accent, most of the students are kind. On Christmas, the Fitzgeralds give him money, which he uses to buy himself a bike.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Court in Action”
The day before his hearing, Mariam and Sheila come to the house to prepare him. They tell him that his lawyer’s name is Nicholas Morgan and that he works on immigration cases all the time.
The next morning, Mrs. Fitzgerald gives Alem a suit she bought for him. At the courthouse, Alem and the Fitzgeralds meet Nicholas. Once the hearing begins, the state representative tells the adjudicator that the state believes that Alem would be safe if he returned to Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nicholas refutes this by telling the adjudicator that Alem would be subject to violence if he returned home.
The adjudicator adjourns the hearing so that Nicholas and the state representative can prepare their cases. He asks Alem if he has anything to say, and Alem wishes the room a happy Christmas. The adjudicator looks confused, and Alem explains that in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Christmas is celebrated in January. The adjudicator laughs and wishes Alem a happy Christmas, too.
Chapters 7-12 Analysis
In this section, Alem experiences how Resilience in the Face of Adversity connects to The Challenges of Asylum Systems. When Mariam comes to visit Alem after he tries to run away from the children’s home, Alem tells her that he does not understand the violence in the children’s home because “these people are not fighting for land, they are not fighting for justice or their beliefs, these stupid boys are fighting for chips” (75). Mariam tells Alem that there are many kinds of suffering and hurt in the world. Her message aligns with the moral lesson that Mr. Kelo gave Alem before leaving him; in separate ways, both adults remind Alem to stay kind and not grow callous when faced with adversity. Alem’s resilience is further tested when he undergoes a screening at the Home Office. The dehumanizing nature of the screening makes him feel like a criminal. Mariam tells him, “There is no one more innocent than you, but look at the way you’ve been treated” (77). Her words highlight the flaws in the asylum system; Alem is an innocent child seeking safety from war, but the process the system puts him through is psychologically damaging.
Alem experiences further anti-immigrant bias when he reads the newspaper clippings Mariam brings him about what England thinks about refugees. The newspaper clippings complain about “refugee beggars” and how the government wastes money building a “new detention [center] for ‘bogus’ refugees” (121). Although Alem experiences kindness and acceptance from so many people, he realizes that many others do not have empathy for his situation and do not want him in England. Alem keeps the newspaper clippings with him as a physical reminder of the stereotypes that he will need to overcome in the hearing. These clippings represent structural issues and institutionalized discrimination against refugees and immigrants, showing that the individualized violence Alem experiences is part of a larger system.
As Alem settles into the peacefulness of the Fitzgerald home, he applies himself to learning, education, and reading. Alem recognizes that education is a privilege. He feels “amazed at the amount of knowledge that [is] lying around his bedroom” (88). Alem’s choice to go back to school after learning of his mother’s disappearance also shows how he uses education as a tool of distraction and normalcy. However, education cannot fully lessen The Impact of War on Individuals and Families. While he learns and reads, Alem thinks about the presence of the military in Ethiopia and Eritrea compared to the lack of military presence in England. Although he knows that England has one of the most powerful militaries in the world, he does not understand why he does not see soldiers on the streets. The war doesn’t just impact Alem’s life in the present, it also affects his ability to remember his family: Alem realizes that he conflates the military and war with memories of his parents because “it [is] hard trying to remember his parents and forget the war at the same time” (89). When it comes to the war, Alem has an expansive understanding of “family” that goes beyond his parents and immediate relatives; he reflects that the Eritrean-Ethiopian war “is like a family at war, it is neighbor killing neighbor” (110). Because of his knowledge of the brutalities of war, Alem immediately understands the severity of his mother’s situation following his father’s letter. The trauma of war, even from afar, threatens to break Alem’s spirit, but he focuses on being resilient in the face of adversity. Although everyone tries to comfort him, Alem does not want pity but rather a return to normalcy, education, and routine.
However, Alem continues to feel broken as he experiences dehumanization and discrimination from the British court system. At his first hearing, Alem listens as the state representative says that they think that Alem would face “no personal threat if he were returned to his country […] [H]e would live a relatively peaceful life” (143). This statement directly contrasts with Alem’s lived experiences and reveals the anti-immigrant bias of the court system. Although Nicholas points out that Alem has suffered in both Eritrea and Ethiopia, the adjudicator does not believe him. Alem’s statement to the adjudicator about Christmas works in his favor because it humanizes him in the adjudicator’s eyes rather than simply resigning Alem to a case number. This reflects the contrast between anti-immigrant bias, which is rooted in stereotypes rather than facts, and compassion toward immigrant and refugee communities.
