The Essay: Walk with Amal

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The Essay: Walk with Amal: Milk of the World, by Sema Kaygusuz

Walk with Amal

Milk of the World, by Sema Kaygusuz

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Walk with Amal, Milk of the World, by Sema Kaygusuz

Sema Kaygusuz writes in response to puppet refugee Little Amal's walk across Europe.

As the puppet Little Amal walks across Europe to reflect the journey made by many child refugees, five European writers respond in fiction. Sema Kaygusuz writes from Turkey.

Little Amal is a 3.5m high puppet who has been walking nearly 9000 kilometres across Europe this summer in recognition of the journey made by thousands of child refugees every year in search of family members, safety and a new home. To mark this extraordinary project, five award-winning European writers have written short stories inspired by Amal’s walk. Each one has responded imaginatively to the puppet’s journey through their own country, reflecting the hopes and fears of both Amal herself and the people she encounters on her way. 

As she strides through the stories and across Europe, Amal takes on many guises. She’s a refugee child from a camp on the Turkish Syrian border, who sets off in search of her mother, accompanied by an alter-ego puppet guide; she’s befriended by a seagull in Greece; she strikes fear into the heart of a small, lonely boy in Italy; becomes the target for a kidnapping in Belgium… 

The Walk has been created by Good Chance Theatre, who started the theatre in the Calais Jungle and Handspring Puppet company, who created the puppets for War Horse. Little Amal began her walk in Turkey at the end of July and, helped by a team of puppeteers, performers, local people and arts organisations, she’ll walk nearly 9000km  across Europe, finishing in Manchester in November. She arrives in the UK, at Folkestone, on 19 October.

This episode is Milk of the World by Sema Kaygusuz. A young refugee girl is rescued from a camp on the Syrian Turkish border by a huge puppet, who becomes her protector and alter ego as they set off to find the girl’s mother. 

Sema Kaygusuz is one of Turkey’s leading fiction writers, whose novels and short stories have been widely translated and won many awards, including an English PEN award for Every Fire You Tend, which also won the TA First Translation Prize for her translator, Nicholas Glastonbury, who translated this story. The story is read by Sirine Saba.


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Five commissioned short stories from Europe marking a refugee puppet's astonishing journey

As the puppet Little Amal walks across Europe to reflect the journey made by many child refugees, five European writers respond in fiction.

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