First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019

Published in this ebook edition in 2019

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Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2019

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Illustrations copyright © Michael Foreman 2019

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Source ISBN: 9780008347918

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008347932

Version: 2019-08-20

For Tom and Kate,

and for Hannah, Jack and Zoe.

M.M.

To my big brothers,

Ivan and Pud,

giants of my boyhood.

M.F.

With thanks to Jonathan Swift, author of the great

Gulliver’s Travels, published on 28 October 1726.

Thanks also to Clare, Michael Foreman, Vicki

Berwick, Nick Lake and Ann-Janine Murtagh for

their help in making this book happen.

And also my thanks to Sarah Outen, ocean rower

extraordinaire, and an inspiration to us all.

‘Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise’

George Whitman

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

First Part

1. Tiny, They Called Me

2. Fore Street, Mevagissey

3. Something to Cling On To

4. The Little People

5. Me, a Mountain!

6. Son of Gulliver

7. The Whole World

8. Gran Baruta

Second Part

9. Where Was I?

10. Thank You

11. Zaya and Natoban

12. Dark Clouds

13. A Tree to Climb On

14. Talking to Mother

Third Part

15. Round End Good. Sharp End Bad

16. The Wrecking of the Warships

17. The Eggy Part

18. How to Crack an Egg, Peacefully

Fourth Part

19. Blufescu

20. Bronar the Tyrant

21. Come What May

22. No More Tyrants!

23. Be There, Please, Mother

24. I Am Coming, Mother

25. Homeward Bound

26. So Here We Are

27. Yellow as the Sun

Fifth Part

28. Anything But Ordinary

29. Your Home Too

30. Not Like Lilliput

31. You’re That Girl, Aren’t You?

32. A Safe Place

33. A Proper Home

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Also by Michael Morpurgo

About the Publisher

All we knew about her was that she called herself J.J., that she spoke English, that she was alone out there in her big yellow rowing boat and that she was like a giant to all three of us – even me – a giant with a bandaged wrist and plasters on her fingers.

‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘tell me everything.’

I could hardly refuse, could I? I mean, this J.J. had saved our lives. It was thanks only to this stranger that we were dry again, well fed, warm and rested.

‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘I want to know how it is that you’re out here on the open ocean in such a small boat. Who are you? Where have you come from?’

I could have asked her much the same questions. But I found myself telling her our whole story. I was happy to tell her too, not just because she had shown us such kindness, but because once I began telling her our story out loud, it somehow helped me to believe it had all really happened to me, helped me to remember who I was, who I had become. That she would believe me I had no doubt. After all, she had the evidence right in front of her. She could hardly take her eyes off the evidence. The three of us were there to prove it. We were the truth of our own story.

I began at the beginning, because without the beginning none of it would have made sense to her; and anyway, none of it would ever have happened. I would never have had to leave home, and my life would have been another story altogether.

‘It’s quite a long story,’ I told her.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I need to rest this wrist anyway. Can’t row far like this.’

So I began.

Where I come from is no longer my home. There was a house and a village I once called my home, in Afghanistan. I had a family of my own once. Not any more. I have my name – Omar – and I have Mother, but I don’t know where she is. I think and I hope she may be in England with Uncle Said. I was on my way to find her. That’s why we were out here on our little boat when you found us, and we found you.

I don’t know any more what day or month or year it is, but I think I must now be about sixteen years old. Of my beginnings, of my home, there is not much to tell, and I do not like to speak of it or think of it, because it makes me sad to remember. My home was a quiet place, in a peaceful town in the countryside. We lived on the edge of town. My father was a shepherd, our flock was our livelihood. We never went hungry or thirsty. I had a little sister, Hanan. She and I were much loved in our home. We were together. We were all happy.

School was school. All my friends were there. We learnt our lessons, played together. But I was always small and thin, and at school I was never allowed to forget it. ‘Tiny’, they called me. Little I may have been, but I was by far the best at cricket. No one hit the ball harder. No one bowled faster. The pitch was always bumpy, but it was the same for us all, and it was fine. Everything was fine. I could read the bounce of every ball they bowled at me, see it on to the bat. I lived for my cricket, and my family. Everything was good – well, mostly.

Every night I went to sleep wishing I would score more runs the next day or take more wickets, and I prayed I would be a little taller in the morning. I would measure myself against the mark Mother had made on the wall. The next day I would often score more runs, or take more wickets, or both, but I was never any taller. Hanan was still taller than me every morning and she was two years younger than me.

Then the war came to our town and I had other worries, more serious worries. I do not know to this day why the war came. It was on the morning of my tenth birthday, I remember. We heard the planes in the sky, and then the bombing began. We were in school. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to. At the end of that day our home was in ruins, our school too. Many of my friends had died. I was there when they were buried. I helped to bury them. Father died too, when the planes came again the next morning, and so did most of our sheep. Then we discovered Hanan was missing. We looked and we called, but we never found her. Only Mother and I were left. We had nothing, no shelter, no food, no father, no sister, no daughter.

The aid workers came after that, and they brought us food and tents, and built us a refugee camp. We weren’t a family any more. We were refugees. We lived in that camp a long time. The aid workers were from England, and they were kind to us. They smiled at us, and we liked that. It cheered our hearts. There were doctors and nurses, who were good to us. It was cold through that winter, but we survived. The refugee camp was never a home for us. It was a place of shelter – that’s all. Sometimes we played football and cricket with the aid workers, and they taught me to speak a little English. They were amazed at how good I was at cricket. I liked to amaze them. It made them smile.

But then one day Mother said it was not safe for us to stay, that she was sure the planes would come again, or the soldiers. Many in the camp had decided to leave, and we would go with them.

So Mother and I, and a few others, we left the camp in the middle of the night and began to walk. We walked for weeks and weeks. We walked over the mountains, through the desert, followed where others went, all of us with only one thing on our minds. To find somewhere far away from the war, anywhere, that was a place of peace where there was food and water and shelter, where we could be safe. How long and how far we walked I do not know.

Sleep was our only comfort. You can forget when you are asleep. Waking up was the worst part of every day. I wanted only to stay where I was, curled up on the ground, and never get up again. I was so tired, too tired to care any more.

Mother saved my life every morning. She would never let me lie there. She always said that if I didn’t get up, and walk on, I would die, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. She would tell me sometimes that she could smell the sea, that I had to be strong and brave, like Father and Hanan had been. She promised me that beside the sea there would be a boat waiting for us, to carry us to safety, to a new life in a new home where there would be lots of smiling people like the aid workers and doctors and nurses in the camp, and where there was no more war and no bombing. All I had to do, Mother said, was to put one foot in front of the other. Her love and her promises were all that kept me walking.

There were wire fences, there were lorries, there were trains, there were more refugee camps. The police beat us. There were people who yelled at us to go home, others who took us in and fed us and gave us warm clothes, and smiled at us. We never knew what to expect.

But Mother and me, we put one foot in front of the other, and we walked.

Sure enough, after a year or more of wandering, one day we came over a hill, and there – just as Mother had promised – was the sea, and some houses and people, and, like a miracle, there was the boat waiting for us. Mother told me, her arm around me, that God was good to us, and that I should always believe that.

She had little enough left to sell, the bracelets on her arms, the rings on her fingers. They were enough to pay the men to allow me on to their boat, but not Mother. None of her tears, nor mine, were enough to persuade them to let her go with me.

I had to go on alone, she told me. She would follow on later. We would find one another in England. She promised me faithfully. And Mother always keeps her promises.

I remember her last words to me. ‘Go to your Uncle Said in his café in Mevagissey,’ she told me. ‘Fore Street. Mevagissey. Remember, Fore Street. Remember, Mevagissey. Say it over and over in your head, Omar, so that you do not ever forget. Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street, Mevagissey. Wait for me there. I will come. Go now, Omar. Say to the people in England that you are his nephew, and they will let you stay. Uncle Said told me they would do this. Tell them where he lives, where he works in his café. They will let you stay with him. Do not worry. They will have smiling eyes, and there is no war there either. This way you will live, and if you live, so will I. We will meet again, we will, God willing.’

I clung to her. I cried into her.

She whispered in my ear that she loved me more than life itself, but I had to be a man now like Father had been, that I had to be brave like Hanan, that I was to go and cry no more. ‘Smile for me,’ she said, ‘so I will remember you this way.’ I tried, tried so hard, but I did not succeed. My tears would not let me.

The last time I saw Mother she was standing there on the shore watching the boat take me away. She was becoming smaller before my eyes. Soon she was not there at all, and then nor was the shore.

I was in a big rubber boat with an engine that coughed and spluttered. The boat was so full of people that it was difficult for all of us to find anywhere to sit down. To begin with the sea was calm about us, lapping but calm. People were telling one another that it wasn’t far, that it was a good boat, that we would soon be there, soon be safe.

I had seen the sea in photographs, on films, and it had always been blue. But this sea was not blue. It was grey, and wide, and darkening, and threatening, and seemed to go on forever into the distance, where it became sky, a sky that was as grey as the sea.

I do not know how many nights and days I spent on that boat. I found at last a place to sit on the side. There I passed the long cold hours, trying all the while to calm my fears. I made myself imagine Mevagissey, the place where I was going. I tried to think of Uncle Said in his café in England. I had never met him. I had seen his photograph, the one Mother kept with her all the time. I had spoken to him only once, a long time before, on Skype. But then he was pixelated, so I could not see him at all well. I could tell that he had a moustache, and not much else. I remember his voice quite well, though. He told me I should come to see him one day, and help him in his café.

‘I’m coming, Uncle Said!’ I shouted out loud. ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey! Fore Street, Mevagissey!’ Some people around me on that boat looked at me as if I had gone mad. But I didn’t mind what they thought. I was going to Mevagissey! Fore Street, Mevagissey!

Mevagissey, Fore Street, Mevagissey. I kept saying those words out loud to myself on the boat, so I should never forget them, but also because I wanted to practise them. I practised all the English words I knew, that the aid workers had taught me: Hello, son. Goal! Foul! Chocolate. High five! Manchester United. Chelsea. Goodbye. See you. Come back soon. And of course all the cricket words I knew, like: bowler, batsman, over, wicket, out, not out, four, six and owzat!

Owzat was my favourite word. It cheered me up every time I said it. I wanted to speak as many English words as I could before I arrived in England. I wanted to show off to Mother, when I saw her, how well I could speak English. And practising my English words kept my mind off the sea and the waves and the cold and sound of all the moaning and crying around me in the boat.

Hope kept me going too. I hoped everyone in England would be smiling as Mother had said they would be. I hoped we would be happy there, and safe. Just thinking about it made me happy. I would have a home again and go to school, have friends again, play cricket again. I tried only to think most about Uncle Said, and cricket, not of Mother, not of Father or Hanan. I knew that if I thought of Mother too much I would cry. And I would not cry. I wanted to be a man, like Father had been. I wanted to be brave as Hanan had been. Father had never cried. Hanan would not cry. So I would not cry.

Within a few days the last of any drinking water was gone. The engine had long since broken down. There were waves now that towered over us, and with them always a biting wind. Sitting up on the side was no longer safe. I sat huddled now with the others in the bottom of the boat. The cold shivered me, numbed my hands and feet. All around me there was crying and whimpering and praying. I could see – we all could see – that all the time the boat was lower and lower in the sea. With every wave, more seawater was coming over the side. Some of us cupped our hands and did our best to bail it out. But the water was filling the boat faster than we could get rid of it.

In the end we gave up. We were sitting in water, lying in it, many of us more dead than alive. Every one of us there realised by now that soon enough we would all be drowning in it. We knew that no help was going to come. The boat was filling up, and I could not swim. None of us could swim. They prayed to God. I prayed to God, and I tried to think of Mother and Uncle Said, of how wonderful it would be to live with them in Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street, Mevagissey.

The great storm came at night, the waves tossing us, each of them trying harder than the one before to lift the boat up and flip us over. The sea was playing with the boat, playing with us, teasing us before it drowned us and swallowed us up forever. Too weak now, unable to hold on, all of us helpless, we were being thrown one by one out of the boat.

I knew my turn had to come soon. There was crying and screaming all about me. I had no hope left of ever seeing Mother again, no hope of seeing Uncle Said or Fore Street, Mevagissey.

Lying there in the water at the bottom of the boat, I remember reaching out for something, anything to cling on to, so that I would not be tossed out by the next big wave, when my hand found a piece of rope under the water. I grasped it, pulled and pulled at it. It was long, but at last it held firm. I managed to tie it around my waist, and I lay there, praying for Mother, praying for me.

In the end I was too cold and too exhausted to even pray. Darkness was closing around me. I knew I would never see morning. I did not care any more. I gave myself up to the darkness and the cold and thought only of Mother and Father and Hanan. I promised myself I would think of them till my last breath. That way we could all be together at the end.

I must have fallen into sleep, because next thing I knew, I found myself waking up.

The storm had passed. There was the warmth of sunlight on my face, and I could hear a sound of chattering and whispering, like the murmuring of a flock of birds flying about me. But I could see no birds. I realised then that I was no longer lying in the boat at all, that the sea was no longer surging beneath me. I was on land, dry land. I could feel it under me. I tried to move my head, to discover where I was, but I could not move it. My arms would not move either, nor my legs. All I could move were my fingers. I clutched at the ground beneath them. It felt as if I was clawing at sand. I must be on a beach somewhere. But I had no idea where I was. I did not care. I was alive! I had survived.

I discovered I could wriggle my toes. But try as I did, I could not find the strength even to lift my head to see them. I could swivel my eyes, but my neck I could not move however hard I tried. I was overwhelmed by terror, and I was shivering uncontrollably, yet I did not feel cold. I did not feel anything. This was what the beginning of dying was like, I thought.

In my panic, I cried out, calling for help, louder and louder, until my throat ached with it. Hearing myself at least lifted my spirits. If my voice worked and my throat ached, then that must be good. I was still alive. There was hope. But I knew I needed help. I could hear the waves tumbling on to the sand not too far away, they were rushing up towards me, every wave coming closer. I feared the worst. Sooner or later the sea would reach me, and then cover me. I had to find a way to move or I would drown. I shouted for help again, and again. But no one came.

I did hear that strange whispering again, and a chirruping and a chattering like a flock of thousands of birds gathering to roost at sunset. It was a sound that reminded me of evenings at home when we were out playing cricket in the last of the daylight. My hearing worked, and my memory worked. I could see the sun, and the sky. My seeing worked too. And there was more feeling now in my legs and feet. Every new sign of life in me gave me hope.

I felt something tickling my toe, then crawling up my leg. An insect, I thought, a scorpion maybe and it might sting me. But I didn’t mind. I could feel it. I could feel it.

I heard that whispering sound again. It wasn’t bird noise after all, but voices, small voices. I thought at first in my muddled head that these might be scorpions talking. I tried again to lift my head to see, and still could not move it. Then I was drifting away, down into a deep sleep. It was a comfortable sleep, a warm sleep. There was no more shivering. If this was dying then I did not mind a bit, not any more.

I woke to more whispering and murmuring. It was certainly not birds, I decided, nor was it the hush of waves washing back over the sand into the sea. It was not birds. It was not waves. It was people, lots of them, and they were speaking in small voices, voices that were all around me. When I tried to lift my head now, I found to my surprise I could do it, just a little, just enough.

Then I felt something on the forefinger of my right hand. I looked down, expecting to see a scorpion. Instead, there was a little man there, standing on my finger. Minute he was, too small to be real, I thought. He was wearing a three-cornered hat, a long coat, and he had buckles on his shoes. I never saw anyone dressed like this before. I imagined at first I must be dreaming. But then I knew I wasn’t asleep. I could smell the sea, and there were clouds in the sky, and birds, white birds flying above me, crying and cawing. I could feel the breeze on my face. None of this was imagined, none of this was a dream, and nor were the crowds of little people I could now see all over the beach, nor were the horses and carts imagined, nor were the little coloured blankets that I saw covering me like patchwork from my ankles up to my chest. The little man standing now in the palm of my open hand might have been no bigger than my little finger. But he was real. I was not imagining him. This was not a dream.

He was helping a little old lady up on to my hand, and then they were both making their way slowly up my arm and over my shoulder and across my chest, towards the point of my chin. The little old lady was walking with a stick and wore a long blue dress and feathers in her hat. They stood there together side by side, peering down in silence at me for a long while.

And when she spoke it was in a thin tremulous voice, which reminded me at once of how my grandmother’s voice had been. There was hushed silence all around me. Everyone was listening. I had no idea to begin with what she was saying to me. But then I began to recognise a word here, and a word there. The sound of the language was oddly familiar. It was how the aid workers in the camp used to speak. The little old lady was definitely speaking English. Her tone was warm, and hospitable, so I presumed this must be a speech of greeting, like an elder back home in my town might have given to a visitor. I could tell that she was assuming I understood every word she was saying, which I was not.

When the little old woman had finished speaking everyone clapped, and the children amongst them were jumping up and down cheering wildly.

A thousand thoughts were running through my mind and none of them made any sense. Was all this really happening to me? My shivering had stopped entirely. My whole body was tingling now with life, warmth and feeling. The old lady standing before me was breathing hard after the exertions of her speech, leaning heavily on her stick. I did not know what to say, but I felt I had to say something, that it was expected. The silence all around me told me that much. But I was struck dumb, still trying to take it all in, to believe what I was seeing. These people were all living, breathing creatures, but all were impossibly small, and dressed like no one I had ever seen before. They were real, as real as I was. So if they were real, and if they all spoke English, I thought, then maybe I had been washed up in England. But the aid workers that I had got to know near my town in Afghanistan were not small like these people, and neither did they dress like them.

I decided to try on them some of my English words I knew, to be sure I was right, that they did really speak English. I tried cricket words, then some words the aid workers had taught me. ‘Owzat,’ I said. ‘Not out, high five, hello, goodbye, chocolate, see you, doctor, you all right, son?’

No one seemed to be understanding a word I was saying. So I tried something else, the only other English words I could think of, hopeful that maybe they would know where it was. ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street, Mevagissey.’

They just looked at me, bewildered.

I tried again, louder this time. ‘Mevagissey! Mevagissey! Fore Street … Four! Six!’ The numbers did it.

I saw sudden recognition on the faces all around me and some alarm too. Perhaps I had spoken too loudly, I thought. I tried the same words again, softer this time, and then a few different words to see if they would understand. ‘Football. Manchester United. Chelsea. Joe Root. England. Afghanistan.’

The more I said, the less surprised they were looking, but the more puzzled and amused they became. They were whispering amongst each other, and some were laughing. Encouraged by this I tried again, and soon they were all laughing. ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey! Chocolate! Owzat!’ They particularly seemed to love it when I said ‘owzat’. So much so they were echoing it back to me.

‘Owzat! Owzat!’

But then I noticed that the old lady was not laughing any more, not smiling either. She was standing there staring at me. I had the strange feeling that she was not just trying to work out who I was, and where I had come from, but she was trying to remember me, to remember who I was. It was as if she thought that she recognised me, which I knew was not possible. Anyway, with some difficulty, and helped by her companion, she turned away from me, and made her way along my arm, over my hand and back down on to the sand. I watched her being led across the beach to a rock not far away. There she sat down, her hands folded in her lap, looking up at me, her eyes never leaving my face.

Meanwhile, the little people, led by the children, were crowding all around me, reaching out to touch my feet, my hands, my clothes. I was being examined, investigated. Then, more confident now, they were beginning to clamber up on to me. I did not feel in the least threatened by them. I could tell they meant me no harm. It didn’t seem to be in their nature. The girls and boys amongst them were much more daring than the grown-ups, and were already all over me, shinning easily up every nook and cranny of me. I was thinking that I must have been like a mountain to them.

‘Me? A mountain?’ I laughed aloud at the thought of it. Little Omar was a mountain! Tiny was a mountain! If my friends could see me now. If Mother could see me now! Oh how I wished Mother could see me now.

Then they were pulling all the blankets off me, and rubbing me vigorously all over. I lay back and closed my eyes as the blessed warmth flooded me from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair. These little people were bringing me back to life.

I started to hum. Maybe it was because I was reminded of the comfort and warmth I remembered as a small boy at bedtime when Mother had held me close and sung to me. It was her song that came back to me then, her lullaby, that I found myself humming.

After a while they began to hum along with me, and I loved that. I knew then for sure that I was amongst friends, and safe at last. Exhaustion and relief, the rhythm of the waves lapping on the beach and the sound of Mother’s tune in my head must have been enough to send me off to sleep again.

But I did not sleep for long. I felt my eyelids being prised open. The children had decided to wake me. I woke to find hundreds of these little people crawling all over me. Some were doing handstands and backf lips, some had taken to tumbling off me for fun, and then climbing back up again.

Down the beach I saw that the old woman was still sitting on her rock, her companion beside her. A few others were gathering around her, and kept glancing back up at me as she was talking to them.

After some time the old lady at last got to her feet and began to walk up the beach towards me, her companion holding her elbow to steady her as she came. The children were called away. They jumped down off me, some of them reluctantly, and were soon standing in amongst the grown-ups, quietened down and waiting. I felt something important was about to happen.

I raised myself up on to my elbows. A silence had fallen over the beach. They were all looking expectantly at the old lady now, as I was too. For long moments she said nothing. Then, as she came closer, I saw that there were tears in her eyes, and I could see now that they were tears of recognition.

‘Gulliver,’ she said softly, pointing her stick up at me. Then louder, and louder, ‘Gulliver?’ she cried. ‘Gulliver?’

What ‘Gulliver’ meant I had no idea. Not then, anyway.

But from the way the old lady was talking and the way she was looking at me, the way they were all looking at me, I had the distinct feeling that I really was being welcomed home, as if I was some long-lost relative. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure that was who they believed I was. I must be ‘Gulliver’ – I was someone they all already knew and loved.

‘Gulliver! Gulliver!’

They were all shouting it out now, chanting it. I was some kind of a hero to these little people, to the children especially. Who they thought I was I could not imagine, nor did that bother me at all. I was quite happy to bask in such a joyous welcome. I responded by lifting my hands in the air and waving to them, which caused them to cheer and shout even louder. And then in amongst the chants of ‘Gulliver! Gulliver!’ I began to hear ‘Welcome, Gulliver. Owzat! Owzat!’

The more they chanted, the more I was sure they were using English words, spoken differently maybe, but definitely English words. It was the language of cricket, the language of aid workers in the camp. So, getting to my feet – and I was still unsteady at first – I raised my arms again and chanted back at them, ‘Gulliver! Gulliver! Owzat! Owzat!’

And then I thought of another word the aid workers in the refugee camp had taught me. ‘Hello!’ I shouted back. ‘Hello!’

I could tell from the delight on their faces that this was a word they knew, that they recognised, an English word. So this had to be England! And if I was in England, then Uncle Said and his café might not be far away. Mevagissey was not far away.

These people may be little, I thought, and all the doctors and aid workers I had known had been giants compared to them. But you could have ordinary-sized people and tiny people living in England, in the same country, couldn’t you? Why not? I told myself. I had arrived! I was safe and I was in England, where Mother had promised we would be. I had only to wait for her here, as she had said. Mother had been right about something else too. These English people were smiling people, welcoming people.

I was filled with relief, bursting with happiness. I punched the air again and again and cried out, ‘Owzat! Owzat!’

The tiny people were joining in, echoing every word. ‘Fore Street! Mevagissey! Four! Six! Not out! High five!’

Whenever I shouted out, punching the air, the name they had given me – ‘Gulliver! Gulliver!’ – they went wild. And they went wilder still when I began chanting ‘Owzat! Owzat!’

But then I noticed that the old lady was not joining in all this excitement. She was sitting there on her rock, looking up at me, her brow furrowed. She got to her feet then, and began to walk towards me, on the arm of her companion. I crouched down to be closer to her, holding out my hand in friendship. I was worried I had angered her somehow, and wanted to make it up to her.

She said nothing for a while, but was looking at me long and hard. Then she reached out and took my finger, gently drawing my hand towards her, so that she and her companion could step up on to it. Once they were balanced, I lifted them up very carefully, keeping my hand steady, so that they would not fall over. We were face to face now. The crowd had fallen quite silent.

The old lady and her companion were standing side by side in the palm of my hand. There was no fear in their eyes, only intense curiosity. Beckoning me closer she reached out her hand to touch my face. Then she was brushing the hair away from my forehead. A sudden smile came over her.

‘Not Gulliver,’ she said softly. ‘Son of Gulliver.’ Then she turned and proclaimed it out loud to the crowd. ‘Son of Gulliver! He is Son of Gulliver!’

There was a gasp of amazement at this, from all around. So now I was a son of this Gulliver. And I knew what ‘son’ meant. One of the aid workers in the refugee camp – Jimbo he was called – had shown me photographs on his phone of a boy about my age, obviously his son, holding a cricket bat – he liked cricket too, and Jimbo was the one who used to call me ‘son’. ‘Hello, son,’ he’d say to me sometimes. ‘You all right, son?’

So now I was ‘Son of Gulliver’. I could think of nothing else to do but look as pleased as the old lady was, as her companion was, as everyone seemed to be. I called out, ‘Son of Gulliver! Son of Gulliver! Owzat!’

The old lady seemed happy with that. They all were, so I thought I must have said the right thing.

From then on, that’s who I was to these people, ‘Son of Gulliver!’ But the children usually preferred to call me Owzat. I still did not understand who Gulliver was, nor why I should be his son. That, and everything else about this strange place, which had to be England – I was sure of it by now – was still a complete mystery to me. But I did not mind this, nor how confusing and strange everything was.

Another confusion was the language they spoke. I had already heard many of them speaking amongst themselves in another language that did not sound at all like English. So they must speak in two languages. Strange again, but what did it matter? All I knew was that I was amongst people who were kind, and I was safe. What else could matter?

But something else did matter. I was suddenly feeling weak with hunger and I was dying of thirst.

It was as if the old lady could read my mind. At that very moment she clapped her hands, and at once everyone seemed to know exactly what to do. Within moments they were all fetching and carrying, all the horses and carts on the beach were on the move, and the little people, children too, were busily unloading them.

They reminded me of the armies of ants on the march that I had often watched back home in my town. Every one of these little people seemed to have a task to do, and they all understood their part in it.

The task, I was very pleased to see, was to bring me all the food and water I could ever have wanted.

Once I had lowered the old lady and her companion down on to the sand again, I watched as the little people brought me fish and bread and grapes and nuts, all I could eat, and some berries and then some water, which came in barrels too. A barrel of water was no more than a mouthful to me, but there were lots of barrels, and they kept coming, and I kept drinking.

They came and laid at my feet all the food and drink I needed. And I needed a great deal. They never once tired and every one of them would say something in greeting as they presented me with yet another gift of some fish or a grape or a barrel of water. ‘Hello, Son of Gulliver,’ or ‘Owzat!’ or ‘Welcome.’

I saw such a kindness and open-hearted generosity in their eyes. I could not help thinking what a difference this was from the other world I had left behind me, from the world of suffering, and sadness, from the ruined town that had once been my home, from the family and friends I had lost, from the sprawling refugee camp where we had to live. How strange it was to be surrounded now by all this warmth and loving care and attention. How I wished Mother and Hanan and Father could be here with me to see how good and kind people could be.

I thought then of Mother standing there on the shore watching me leave in that overcrowded boat, and my mind went back to the terrible journey across the sea, the fear that had gripped my heart, the cold in my bones, the endless skies, the endless sea, the frantic efforts we had made to save ourselves, to bail that water out from the bottom of the boat, cupping our frozen hands and scooping out what we could, but watching helpless and, as the waves came again over the side, how the boat had sunk lower and lower into the water, and how one by one the others who had been with me were no longer there, how I had been left on my own, lying in the cold of the water for days and nights on end praying to be saved, calling out for Mother, and keeping her last words in my head, the words she told me never to forget, ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey’.

Without my meaning to, those words spoke themselves out loud again on the beach in front of all the little people. ‘Fore Street, Mevagissey. Fore Street, Mevagissey.’

I began to cry then, whether in grief or relief or joy I did not know. I do know that many a little hand reached and tried to comfort me, and I remember that brought me such joy and helped drive away my sorrows and in time stopped my tears. I had food, drink, and hundreds of little friends, I thought.

What more could I need? I was safe with these little people, safe at last, and for some reason much loved too. And that meant the world to me, the whole world.

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