Middle-Grade Review: Amil and the After by Veera Hiranandani

In this sequel to The Night Diary, we get to follow the family as they settle in India after being forced to leave Pakistan. Amil, who doesn’t do particularly well in school but loves to draw, doesn’t keep a diary the way his twin sister Nisha does, but draws scenes of the family’s new life as a way to stay connected to the mother he never knew. Kazi is still cooking and taking care of the family, but after the horrible journey to Bombay, is now considered more of a family member. Dadi misses her home terribly, and this has a bad impact on her health, since she is sixty. While the father is working in a hospital as a substitute for another doctor, he is a little worried that he won’t be hired on permanently, and that the family will have to move again. Amil struggles with the feeling that while he should feel lucky that all of his family survived and they are now in a good place, he sometimes feels trapped, or unhappy, or wants something, like a bicycle. When he meets Vishal, he admires the boy’s ability to draw, and trades his classmate parts of his lunch in exchange for drawing instruction. When he starts to suspect that Vishal doesn’t have enough to eat, he starts to bring more food, and the two become friends. Vishal lives in a refugee camp, and has no family of his own. Amil brings him home to wash up, and lends him clothing, but the family’s position is still too precarious to take in another person. When Dadi falls and breaks a hip, she spends time in the hospital. At one point, Kazi goes to the hospital to get news, and doesn’t come back for some time. It turns out that he has met a teacher from Pakistan and helped her out. Things are very bad in India, and there is concern that Mahatma Ghandi might starve to death during one of his fasts. Vishal returns to the camp, but when he doesn’t come to school, Amil is concerned enough to go to find him. Vishal is very sick, and Kazi and Amil’s uncle Ashok get him to the hospital. Amil is worried that he might cause his father to loose his job in his attempts to save his friend, but in the end, everything works out fairly well, and Amil even gets a bicycle that he has been coveting.