The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins
Review by Eleanor Updegraff
In October 2015, journalist Matthieu Aikins boarded a plane to Afghanistan. He was returning to Kabul, a city he had reported from for several years, to pack up what remained of his life there and depart again with Omar, a young Afghan man who had started out as his translator and since become a friend. Yet, like so many of his fellow citizens, Omar’s application for life in a new country had been categorically denied. He and his family would have to leave Afghanistan as refugees, smuggling themselves across borders to claim asylum in Europe. Destroying his own papers and adopting the name Habib, Aikins decided to go with him.
An account of the convoluted, almost year-long journey that followed, The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is an astonishing work of literature that lays bare life on ‘the smuggler’s road’. Taking in treacherous mountain passes, ramshackle border cities, overloaded inflatable boats and canvas-roofed refugee camps, it contains many of the elements we might expect to find in such a story, yet is far more than just a well-observed chronicle of an often life-threatening journey. At its heart lies a series of fundamental questions about freedom, equality, the lottery of birth, and how borders – no matter how vehemently idealists may wish to deny it – are as well etched into human minds as they are on our maps.
Before reading, the premise of the book may sound audacious, at worst arrogant or sensationalizing – how dare a privileged Western journalist assume the disguise of a refugee? On getting to know Aikins as a narrator, however, it quickly becomes clear that his work is based on anything but shock tactics or the desire to get a scoop. Not only does he tackle potential criticism of this nature head-on – Omar and his other Afghan friends are supportive of his plan, he tells us – but he returns time and again to the one inescapable difference between himself and his fellow travellers: that at any point he can place a phone call and be on the next plane home. It is heavy, this awareness he carries, and one of the most heart-rending aspects of the narrative. In a book that is about trying to understand another’s experience, Aikins continually comes up against the fact that true comprehension is impossible. As he puts it in the closing pages, ‘in truth, we can’t leave ourselves behind’.
That said, few people ever venture as far towards understanding as he has, and few books will ever be as border-breaking as this one. Though there is a degree of objectivity in the final product – a good deal of contextual information, literary references, careful working-in of poetry and song lyrics – Aikins captures with pinpoint accuracy the plethora of emotions felt by Omar and the many other people he meets along the way: petrifying fear, boundless hope, the crushing despair of an interminable wait. Underpinning it all is a love story (Omar’s) that may be unconventional in nature but provides another relatable dimension, and the towering theme of friendship as manifested chiefly by Omar and Aikins. For all the danger, violence, exploitation and fear inherent in the journey, The Naked Don’t Fear the Water quietly records myriad moments of kindness.
Writing in lucid, often lyrical prose, Aikins walks a considered line between personal narrative and a philosophical exploration of the unprecedented position in which we in Europe find ourselves. ‘What does it mean to be free in our world?’ he asks, going on to illustrate how circumstance can dictate the answer, but also how we are all more alike than might seem at first glance. Without preaching or becoming starry-eyed, he reminds us that we will all, at some stage, know how it feels to crave ‘the dream behind migration: a fresh start’, that no matter how different our lived experiences, being human is founded in a few common roots. It is a powerful reminder, too, that no journey can ever be over, that claiming asylum in Europe is not a happy end at which point we can stop trying to understand: ‘Life came afterward, and it might be harder’.
In an increasingly fractured, closed-off world that seems to lurch from one catastrophe to the next, there often isn’t much cause for hope. The Naked Don’t Fear the Water doesn’t provide it as such, yet even a fraction of the humanity displayed in the writing of this book could make the world a very different place. Using literature to cross physical and psychological borders, Matthieu Aikins’s book is a remarkable feat, a work of deep compassion and a portrait of an era.
The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, 15th February 2022