Includes index.

Part one: To lose a country. Foreigners in our own land ; The walls of Aleppo ; The girl on TV ; Days of rage ; A city divided ; A war of our own ; Gone with the wind ; Forgive me, Syria -- Part two: The journey. Widen your world ; In search of a people smuggler ; The route of death ; Freedom like a normal person ; Through the beautiful gate ; Hungary, open the door! ; The hardest day ; The sound of music ; Thank you, Mama Merkel -- Part three: A normal life. Foreigners in a foreign land ; A schoolgirl at last ; A scary new year ; A place called home.

Confined to a wheelchair by cerebral palsy and denied formal schooling in Syria because of her disability, Nujeen taught herself English by watching American soap operas. When ISIS set up its headquarters in Raqqa, less than 100 miles from her small town of Manbij in northern Syria, she and her family were forced to flee. The grueling sixteen-month odyssey by foot, boat, and bus took her across Turkey and the Mediterranean to Greece, through Macedonia to Serbia and Hungary, and finally to Germany. Yet in spite of the tremendous physical hardship she endured, Nujeen's extraordinary optimism never wavered. Refusing to give in to despair or see herself as a passive victim, she kept her head high. As she told a BBC reporter, "You should fight to get what you want in this world." Written by British foreign correspondent Christina Lamb, this is a unique and powerful memoir that gives voice to the Syrian refugee crisis, offering a vision of hope and inspiration from unlikely circumstances. Nujeen now lives in Wesseling, a suburb of Cologne in Germany.