The Glass Collector by Anna Perera
Puffin Books, February 2011, 304pp
Why should you be interested in the story of a fifteen-year-old glass collector from the slums of Cairo? What even is a glass collector – someone who races around festivals picking up the empties? Oh he wishes.
It turns out that Aaron is a Zabbaleen, the lowest of the low in Cairo, a population that lives on other people's trash, trawling through their rubbish for anything worth recycling, and therefore selling. In his family, Aaron collects the glass.
Every morning at 5:30 Aaron and his bullying stepbrother Lijah ride into the city on a pony and cart to fill enough rubbish bags to make a living. It's filthy, dangerous and back-breaking work.
So far, so depressing, you may be thinking. But no, this is not one of those books. And as you quickly find out, Aaron is not one of those tragic figures.
The Glass Collector is a fabulous book; not unputdownable, but unforgettable. Think Slumdog Millionaire meets City of Joy in Cairo! You can feel the heat, the dust, the pace, the sweat. I loved it.
The star of the show is Mugattem, the waste-lined slum where Aaron and the thousands of his fellow trash-collectors live. Like Aaron, you come to love it; to resent the screeching chaos of the city of Cairo and yearn for its quiet, good-hearted neighbourliness. Its inhabitants are unforgettable: melodramatic husband-hunter Shareen, dreamy pony-carer Rachel, violent stepbrother Lijah and the drug-addicted medical waste collectors.
I spent the first half of the book desperately hoping for a happy ending for Aaron, for someone to come along and pluck him from his miserable life. And so it was quite a surprise when I came to – almost – envy it.
Why should you be interested? Because, apart from being a powerful, well-written story of the triumph of the human spirit in the bleakest of circumstances, it's a damn good read.
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