by Michael Robinson, award-winning
high school social studies teacher
The book begins six months after the events of 9/11 in Rochdale, a large city near Manchester, England. Khalid is an average fifteen-year-old student at Rochdale High who enjoys hanging out with his friends, watching and playing soccer, and playing video games on the family computer. His father is originally from Pakistan, and his mother is from Turkey. The family is Muslim, but his mother does not wear the Islamic veil, and the family only occasionally says Friday prayers. The family goes on a vacation to Pakistan to visit and help Khalid’s father’s sisters move to a better house. Once there, Khalid’s father goes missing, and Khalid goes to search for him. While looking for his father on the streets of Karachi, Khalid becomes part of a street demonstration. Unable to find his father, Khalid returns home, where shortly thereafter several men storm into the house and take Khalid prisoner.
Over the course of the next two years, Khalid is taken from Pakistan to Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo Bay. He is questioned relentlessly about being involved in terrorism and undergoes tremendous mental and physical torture. With the help of his family, community, and his lawyer, Khalid is released from Guantanamo Bay shortly after his seventeenth birthday and allowed to go home to England where he is finally free to live his life. This is a story of injustice, survival, and courage. Khalid was your typical average boy in almost every way, but after surviving two years of imprisonment, torture, conditions of near insanity, and severe loneliness, Khalid shows how the human spirit can overcome and survive the worst situations imaginable, proving he is anything but average.
Use the following questions and prompts relating to the overall themes in Guantanamo Boy as a basis for discussion of the book.
Family
Prison and Punishment
Terrorism
Governments
Religion