Bena’s Summer

Eight-year-old Benazir, known as Bena, may be the happiest child you could meet. She loves jalebis, limericks and raw mangoes, and she is surrounded by friends and family in a childhood that is protected, loved and edged with rainbow-gold.

One summer in the small town of Sultanpur, the sound of a chanting mob drifts toward the kitchen in Qasai Tola. The women there have lived through riots before, and they fall silent. Bena, in the middle of them and biting into a honey-soaked hazaar waraq ka paratha, takes the noise for a cheerful song about food.

Then her bubble bursts. Bena sees riots, death, destruction and abuse in a world that explains very little and expects children to forget it all. But Bena has grit and audacity, and she is not like the others. This is the story of her summer.