Safiyyah’s War
This is a very unusual take on the events of World War Two. Safiyyah’s family are Muslims and therefore the story centres around the Grand Mosque in Paris, of which Safiyyah’s father is a prominent and active member.
Safiyyah used to enjoy typing up communications from the Mosque for her father but suddenly her access to those meetings stops without explanation. Her father begins to look drawn and haggard and she rarely sees him. Her curiosity is aroused, and she decides to snoop in her father’s study to figure out the reason for this sudden change. Safiyyah is then drawn into the perilous world of her father’s Resistance work, providing false documents for Jewish families and hiding them and providing safe passage out of France, which is now Nazi-occupied. After all, no one will suspect an eleven-year-old child.
This is a high-octane venture suffused with sheer terror that Safiyyah’s family’s activities will be discovered by the wrong people. There are two important relationships which stand out, particularly the evolution of Safiyyah’s interactions with her father and of her growing respect for him and his work. The other one is with her beloved grandmother, Setti, who exerts a calming and wise presence and has some of the most profound ideas of the novel.
This book showcases the importance of community and how people of all faiths need to work together in times of adversity. It is a rarely told story from this period.
