Crocodiles · friendship, provisional home and interrupted return
Trace separation and reunion without turning either into a final ending · Distinguish the first expulsion from the later roadside detention · Explain how repeated details alter expectation
Section 2025-P3-CROCODILES · 2025–2027 · Crocodiles · whole-book pathway
Exam scope and assessment notes
0408 preparation for exam year(s) 2025, 2026, 2027. The assessment changes in 2028; follow the component and selected texts for your year. Original StudyForA teaching for the 2025–2027 Paper 3 option In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, by Fabio Geda, translated by Howard Curtis. Twenty-eight lessons teach the Author’s Note and all six country chapters, with passage, whole-book essay, voice and retrieval workshops. All three complete 2025–2027 selected-work entries link this whole-book teaching pathway. Reading completion, qualified teacher assessment and calibrated full papers are not certified by these self-review exercises. Read the entire unabridged centre-selected book; lessons and models do not replace it. The public reader is a reflowed 133-page version; its page numbers are locators, not certified centre-edition pagination. Use your copy for exact wording, typography and paragraph breaks. The protected book is linked, not reproduced here. Questions and models are original self-review and do not award Cambridge marks or grades. Other well-supported readings can be valid. Qualified literature-teacher review and calibrated full papers remain unfinished. In 2025–2027, Paper 3 is closed book: 90 minutes, one extract response and one whole-text essay, 25 marks each. This book is not a 2028–2030 Paper 3 option. It is excluded from 2025–2027 coursework because it is on those years’ Paper 3 lists; private candidates cannot enter 0408. The lessons analyse a narrative of past experience, not present-day travel, legal or personal-safety advice.
Before you begin
- Read the Author’s Note and the named chapter scenes in the centre’s complete Howard Curtis translation. Use the linked reader’s text version if needed; its page numbering differs from print editions.
- Distinguish the experiencing child, the later narrating Enaiat, Fabio’s conversational questions and the authorial/translation process. Reconstructed dialogue is not a certified recording.
- Read all six country chapters before the whole-book workshops. Teaching availability does not certify individual reading, mastery or an official assessment result.
Work on paper. Try each question before revealing help, and explain why your method works.
Quick readiness check
What should support a claim about a literary text?
What you will learn
- Trace separation and reunion without turning either into a final ending
- Distinguish the first expulsion from the later roadside detention
- Explain how repeated details alter expectation
Crocodiles · departures that do not have one meaning
- Read the named scenes in the complete centre-selected book or the linked public reading before answering. The protected book is not reproduced here.
- Reader page numbers identify this web version only. Use chapter and scene locators when working with another edition.
- Write your own developed response before opening the model. Use brief accurate evidence from your copy; paraphrase plainly when exact wording is uncertain.
Original whole-book teaching and self-review, not official Cambridge questions, marks, coursework or a calibrated full paper. The lessons and models do not replace reading the complete centre-selected book or qualified assessment.
What is close enough to feel?
Read Sufi’s departure, the television and the later reunion, reader pp.54–57.
1. How does the telling distinguish the child’s immediate priorities from the later voice’s knowledge?
Compare after trying
The missing companion is registered in sleep and play, so the child’s loss is repeatedly present in his own body and day. His first reaction to the television belongs to that limited position, and Hamid must explain what he is seeing.
The later narrator acknowledges the wider tragedy rather than asking the reader to share the initial ignorance forever. I find the distinction useful because it preserves the scale of a lonely child’s life without making that scale the book’s only possible judgement.
Why this response fits
- Keep the earlier experience and later acknowledgement separate.
- Use the concrete routines of friendship.
Two interruptions and different kinds of knowledge
Compare the Baharestan raid and return with the bus detention, reader pp.57–63.
1. How does the repeated threat avoid becoming a mechanically repeated episode?
Compare after trying
The raid interrupts a growing sense of home and produces an expulsion, followed by return to possessions guarded by others. The later journey begins with a different hope of joining Sufi and a mistaken expectation that a stopped bus may only mean sheep.
The roadside room and detention then distinguish imagined horror from actual coercive work. Release is unexplained, and the other boys’ future remains outside the account. These differences make insecurity recurrent without making each occurrence identical or all consequences known.
Why this response fits
- Keep the three-day detention separate from expulsion.
- Analyse the altered expectation and limits of knowledge.
An absence changes the scale of what matters
Sufi’s departure is felt through the missing body beside the sleeping child and the shared games no longer available. The television account of the attacks in New York is initially mistaken for a film; the later voice acknowledges their seriousness while explaining the child’s more immediate loss. That is a distinction between then and later, not a claim that the event never mattered. Hamid’s exercise book preserves the contact through which reunion becomes possible. The visit to Sufi lasts a week; Enaiat returns to the place he is beginning to regard as home.
Belonging is interrupted rather than simply disproved
Baharestan offers language learning, everyday kindness and a nickname, but the police raid exposes the fragility of that position. The first expulsion sends the workers to Afghanistan through a camp other than the two feared centres. On returning, Enaiat finds his stored money protected by the two workers left behind. He waits to say goodbye to Hamid before moving towards Qom. This sequence keeps individual solidarity distinct from institutional force. The raid does not prove that every earlier friendly act was false, just as friendly acts could not guarantee that it would never happen.
A repeated journey produces a changed outcome
On the later bus, Enaiat expects another harmless interruption like the earlier flock of sheep, but this stop is a roadblock. The feared names recur as a verbal pattern. The room he imagines as a torture chamber turns out to be a dirty kitchen; this does not make the forced work benign. He is held for three days, then released for a reason he does not know, while four other boys remain. This roadside detention is not another completed expulsion to Afghanistan. Do not invent the others’ later fate or make the unexpected release an explained legal entitlement.
Sources for this lesson
- Cambridge World Literature 0408 · 2025–2027 · Version 2
- Cambridge 0408 · revised 2025–2027 component weightings
- Cambridge World Literature 0408 · 2028–2030 · Version 1
- Geda · In the Sea There Are Crocodiles · Howard Curtis translation · public 133-page reading and text version
- Howard Curtis · first-person account of translating Geda’s book · English PEN
- In the Sea There Are Crocodiles · publisher’s edition and translator record · Penguin
Pause and explain
Is the three-day roadside detention the same event as the first expulsion from Baharestan?
Worked example
Improve “All three police encounters send him straight back to Afghanistan”.
Show the worked solution
- Separate the Baharestan expulsion, roadside detention and later factory expulsion.
- The roadside scene ends in unexplained release and continuation to Qom.
Answer Repeated threats have different narrated outcomes; collapsing them removes the changing expectations.
Try a topic test
Choose Easy, Normal or Difficult. Save your answers and open worked review after finishing.
Test this topic →From guided practice to a new situation
Write your answer and reasoning first. Use a hint only if you are stuck. The model solution is for self-checking; your written work is not automatically marked.
What makes Sufi’s absence concrete?
Give me a hint
Use a routine rather than a general statement of sadness.
Compare my reasoning
- The familiar place beside the sleeper is empty.
- Break-time activities lose a companion.
Small repeated actions give the loss an everyday scale.
Look for these in your work
- Choose a precise detail
- Explain its emotional work
How does the return of the stored money qualify the expulsion episode?
Give me a hint
Separate the raid from the workers who remain.
Compare my reasoning
- Institutional action removes the group.
- Other workers protect what has been left.
The narrative preserves solidarity within an experience of dispossession instead of making all people interchangeable.
Look for these in your work
- Distinguish agents
- Avoid a total judgement
Explain the later bus stop through the earlier sheep.
Give me a hint
Track the expectation and its failure.
Compare my reasoning
- An earlier sudden stop was harmless.
- The later stop produces a real removal and detention.
The echo lets a momentary reassuring assumption sharpen the interruption that follows.
Look for these in your work
- Connect the two scenes
- Keep their outcomes distinct
Common mistakes
- Do not claim that the four boys left at the roadside station are later killed; their fate is not given.
- Do not treat the childhood response to the television as the later narrator’s final assessment of the event.
What can you explain now?
Is the three-day roadside detention the same event as the first expulsion from Baharestan?
Compare with the explanation
No; it happens later on the way to Qom and ends in release, not that expulsion.
A repeated fear or place name does not make different encounters the same occurrence.
After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.
Your review choice appears on Today. Sign in to sync it across devices.
Make it stick
Is the three-day roadside detention the same event as the first expulsion from Baharestan?
If you needed the solution, close it and solve the problem again from a blank page. A correct answer is stronger when you can explain the reason for each step.