The Naked Don't Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground

Product Information

No, sir,’ I’d say, scrambling around the belt with my passport before the cop could snatch the bottles. ‘Look at my name, I’m not even Muslim—sorry.’

DAVIES: And is the Taliban - I mean, are they refraining from, you know, the mass imprisonment and executions and hard oppression of women that people feared? AIKINS: Yeah, people were somewhat free to come and go from the camp itself but not to leave the island.

The Naked Don’t Fear The Water

DAVIES: He said, this is not what we paid for. And he saw a weapon and said, you're going now. So that's - you got into this little boat. The most affecting book I have read about the iniquity of the refugee crisis since Exit West. The reporting is totally immersive, without ever losing its clarity, and gives a heartbreaking insight into the lives of normal people taking terrible risks to save themselves.’ Fitzcarraldo Editions has acquired Matthieu Aikins’ debut The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground, about Aikins’ journey undercover on the migrant trail from Kabul to Europe in 2016. Fitzcarraldo Editions will publish in February 2022, simultaneously with Harper in the US. DAVIES: So you decided you would go ahead. You could travel easily on your own, and you would meet Omar in Turkey. He could not easily travel (laughter) on his own. He managed to get into Iran and then make a very difficult crossing over - through some smugglers over the Zagros Mountains. You weren't with him then, but you were hoping he would make it. He eventually - you connect with him in Turkey where his mother and sister and, I think, a friend are there, right? What is your goal there? Now you're in Turkey, where do you have to go? How are you going to make it? Aikins is an effective storyteller: the momentum of the narrative is never overwhelmed by all the post-trip reading and research he brings in. And yet the reader can’t help but feel that Omar’s ordeal is his alone. Aikins can at any point have his second passport mailed to him, or reveal his true identity to camp officials and leave the island. Omar, on the other hand, procures a fake passport and risks being caught at the airport in Lesbos. He ends up in Athens, where he shares a room with Aikins in a makeshift refugee squat.

By the time Omar left Kabul with Mr Aikins in 2016, his mother and father had already fled their war-torn country for a second time. Some of his siblings were already living in Europe; the rest of his close relatives were in Turkey, hoping to go west. His own trip had been delayed after he fell in love. He eventually sold his prized car, a gold Corolla, and steeled himself for the trials ahead. DAVIES: And when you say prison, we're not talking about a regular prison for criminals on the island. We're talking about a - what was a refugee camp that, in effect, functioned as a detention facility, right? Highly readable, empathetic and revealing, Aikins’s book is brutally honest and often deeply moving – a work of great sympathy and understanding.’ Matthieu Aikins is that rarest of combinations – an intrepid journalist who writes beautifully. The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is a compellingly original piece of work, an unforgettable narrative about one of the great human epics of our day.’AIKINS: They had their cellphones out and were showing me pictures of the children they said had died in the strike. They showed me the business card and documents belonging to Zemari Ahmadi, who was the one targeted in the strike and saying, you know, he worked for an American NGO, you know, he's an aid worker. They had the documents right there.

AIKINS: Well, the money came from the book advance. And there's a system for transferring money that Afghans use. It's called Hawala or saraf. And so you can actually just leave all your money with your mother in Kabul, and then she can go to money changers and have it sent to various spots along the route. And it's one of these many ingenious systems that migrants use that we discovered in the course of this book. AIKINS: Yeah, Jim and I lived on a street that had formerly been guarded by the police, and now there was Taliban outside our house. And, you know, we kind of got to know them, and they didn't give us any trouble. But it was a little bit sketchy, and the city changed. You know, it was a ghost town as soon as sunset came around. This is a gripping, devastating book, and it must have taken great courage and determination to write. The best way to honour this book would be for us all to read it and ask ourselves what we can do for the thousands of unknown and unrecognized people who are treading this terrifying path.’

Journalist Aikins debuts with a powerful account of the “long and dangerous journey” many Afghans take out of their war-torn country…The result is a heart-wrenching portrait of resilience and ingenuity under the most trying of circumstances.’ Published 15 February 2022 | Winner of the 2022 Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia