Shooting Kabul is a middle-grade novel published in 2010 by American author N. H. Senzai. In July 2001, 11-year-old Fadi Nurzai and his family flee Afghanistan, where the Taliban are taking power, to live in San Francisco. While boarding the truck in Kabul that will take them across the Pakistani border, Fadi loses his six-year-old sister, Mariam, in the melee, and she is left behind. The novel focuses on Fadi’s struggle with his conscience over losing his sister, his transition to fitting in at an American high school, and his coming of age as a young man. Shooting Kabul is the first of the three-book series The Kabul Chronicles and is in part based on the author’s husband’s experience of fleeing Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in 1979. The novel won numerous state awards and was an NPR Backseat Book Club pick. This guide uses the Kindle edition of the text, and the references are for location numbers in the electronic text.

Plot Summary

The novel is written in the limited third-person past tense and follows the protagonist, 11-year-old sixth grader Fadi Nurzai. Most of the story takes place in San Francisco, California, where Fadi’s family emigrates after fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The events of the story take place in the months leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the popular American narrative of Islamic terrorists is contrasted with an intimate look at Fadi and his family, who are Muslims and Afghan Pukhtuns (Pashtuns), the same religious and ethnic groups that comprise the Taliban.

The novel begins with Fadi and his odyssey to escape Kabul with his family—his father, Habib, his mother, Zafoona, his older sister, Noor, and his younger sister, Mariam. As he and the other families are frantically boarding the truck that will take them illegally across the border into Pakistan, Mariam lets go of Fadi’s hand and is left behind. The Nurzais complete their journey through Pakistan and India to be granted political asylum in the United States, where they stay with Fadi’s aunt and uncle. The family is in shock from the long, dangerous journey and from losing Mariam. Zafoona’s already frail health plus the shock of losing Mariam confines her to bed.

In San Francisco, the Nurzais face the difficulties of immigration. Habib Nurzai has a Ph.D. in agriculture, but as an immigrant, he can only get a job as a taxi driver. The family moves into a small, dingy apartment and struggles to make ends meet. Noor gets an after-school job at McDonald’s to help her family with income. Fadi’s worries about Mariam interfere with his adjustment to his American middle school. Eventually, he makes a friend, Anh Hong, and begins to feel more at ease. He is especially interested in photography, a hobby he and his father shared in Kabul.

Fadi learns about the school’s photography club but becomes disheartened when he learns in will cost $50 to join. The members of the photography club will have the chance to participate in a regional photography contest for which one of the grand prizes is a trip to India. He is reluctant to ask his father for the money, but his sister, Noor, gives him the money from her McDonald’s earnings, and he is able to enter the club and the competition. Fadi becomes obsessed with taking the perfect shot, and he and Anh strategize about what kind of photo the judges will favor.

Fadi learns about the photo contest on the same day that the planes crash into the Twin Towers in New York City. The next day in school, class bullies beat him up in the school parking lot, where his camera is smashed. Instead of dwelling on his problems at school, Fadi focuses his energy on creating a plan to rescue Mariam. Winning the contest’s trip to India can get him closer to Peshawar, Pakistan, where his sister was spotted by a family friend. Fadi’s guilt eats at him throughout the novel. Little does he know that each member of his family feels that they are responsible.

Fadi enters a photo of his grandparents for the competition. He has always been impressed by their love and playfulness after decades of marriage. Fadi is sure he will win the grand prize but receives an honorable mention, which means nothing since it will not help him find his sister. Fadi is downcast when he joins his classmates to view the winning photographs and meet the judges. Contest judge Clive Murray praises Fadi’s photograph and shows him of his own shots taken in war zones around the world. To Fadi’s astonishment, in one of the photos taken on the Afghan-Pakistani border, he sees a girl in a bright pink burka holding a Barbie doll; he has found Mariam. Days later, Mariam reunites with her family.