Mustafa

written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay



"Mustafa and his family traveled a very, very long way to get to their new country."


We're not told where they came from, or where they settled; it's not important to this story.  What is important is that Mustafa is an immigrant, and we have a chance to learn from him.


Gay's beautiful illustrations begin the story from the copyright page, cleverly showing the long, somber journey with which she opens her text.  Fanciful details throughout the artwork suggest wonder and strangeness without compromising the essentially real story.

Composed in short, simple sentences, the narrative could seem stilted. Instead it is poetic, and effectively cryptic. Through it we experience Mustafa's fledging courage, his crippling shyness and increasing loneliness, and the security of his mother's love.  Gay also gently evokes Mustafa's alienation from everywhere - from both the old country, familiar but grim, and from this new home with its disorienting abundance and a language he doesn't know.  Perhaps this, more than anything, defines the immigrant experience.


The main thread of the story is the persistent, and ultimately triumphant, kindness of another child.  She's certainly an example for us to follow, if we're ever fortunate enough.

But there's also an underlying theme, culminating midway through story, that makes Mustafa himself our example. Because he's not familiar with changing seasons, the brilliant autumn foliage strikes Mustafa as magical.  Looking around, he spies a lady speaking with birds and concludes she must be the wonderful person responsible for such beauty.  What we see is, of course, a destitute old woman feeding pigeons.  We can smile at Mustafa's naivete; but perhaps he is actually wiser than we are.


Like Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pnin, this story for children moves us with compassion for the stranger, then moves us beyond compassion to respect and even awe.