Crocodiles · finding Payam and learning how to be welcomed
Trace a chain of help rather than a single rescuer · Distinguish initial hospitality, institutional placement and later fostering · Analyse ordinary domestic details as signs of unfamiliar security
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 a chain of help rather than a single rescuer
- Distinguish initial hospitality, institutional placement and later fostering
- Analyse ordinary domestic details as signs of unfamiliar security
Crocodiles · a name, a network and a room
- 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.
The future given a person’s name
Read the search for Payam, telephone verification and reunion, reader pp.119–121.
1. How does the narrative make reunion depend on both shared history and new connections?
Compare after trying
The name carries hope because it belongs to someone from Nava, but it is not an address or a guaranteed identity. Other people supply contacts, and the questions about home test the connection before a meeting is arranged.
Practical help on the train makes the reunion possible, while changed appearance and qualified ages show that shared childhood has not frozen either person in place. I read the familiar past as a resource within a new network, rather than an automatic return to the life before separation.
Why this response fits
- Trace the actual chain of help.
- Retain changes and uncertainty at the reunion.
The unfamiliar ordinary
Read the temporary accommodation and first family stay, reader pp.122–124.
1. How do domestic details make the first welcome moving without making it effortless?
Compare after trying
The dogs and slippers, elaborate meal and private bed give care forms a reader can picture. Enaiat’s copying of gestures and uncertainty about night clothes show that these ordinary comforts are unfamiliar to him.
His fear of being a nuisance and the children’s own questions keep the household from becoming a simple image of immediate harmony. I find the welcome moving because people make room for a relationship which must be learned, rather than because the journey has already made him at home everywhere.
Why this response fits
- Use precise objects and gestures.
- Distinguish this initial stay from the later fostering arrangement.
A familiar name does not remove the work of finding someone
Payam gives the future a personal name, but Enaiat has neither an address nor a direct contact. The search moves through other people, a call to England and a number in Turin. Questions about the village establish identity before reunion. Even then, both have changed, and the narrator qualifies the ages rather than supplying newly certain birthdays. Help continues through a ticket-buying companion and a woman who arranges the meeting. The sequence resists a solitary-hero account and a single miraculous rescuer: a network makes the reunion possible, including people whose full stories are not told.
A welcome takes more than an available bed
Payam takes him to the Office for Foreign Minors, but no immediate place is available. A friend’s temporary hospitality ends after three days, with a stated fear about papers; this is a reported concern, not a lesson in current law. Payam refuses the park as a solution and contacts Danila, who invites Enaiat to her family. He initially resists because he fears being a nuisance and does not know how to behave. Such hesitation does not mean he prefers mistreatment. Familiar independence and unfamiliar care can pull in different directions.
Ordinary objects acquire unfamiliar meanings
Dogs, rabbit-shaped slippers, table manners, a separate bed and unfamiliar night clothes give welcome a concrete domestic scale. Copying gestures shows anxious attention rather than instant ease. The children also have uncertainties, so the new relationship is not told only from one unchanging side. His ability to use family names is contrasted with other names that cause pain; it does not erase his first family. Later, an available hostel bed interrupts the stay. Do not merge this first invitation with the subsequent fostering request, or assume that going into institutional housing completes what belonging needs.
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 initial invitation to Danila’s house already the later formal fostering arrangement?
Worked example
Refine “Danila adopts Enaiat as soon as he reaches Turin”.
Show the worked solution
- Payam first tries official and temporary accommodation.
- The initial family stay is followed by a hostel before a later fostering request.
Answer The relationship develops through distinct stages, and fostering should not be silently renamed adoption.
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.
How is the search for Payam more than a lucky name?
Give me a hint
Trace the people and acts between hope and reunion.
Compare my reasoning
- A chain of contacts supplies a number.
- Questions and travel arrangements make a meeting possible.
The reunion depends on a social network and practical help, not on knowing a name alone.
Look for these in your work
- Use the chain
- Retain changed identities
Why might welcome produce anxiety?
Give me a hint
Use his stated worry about conduct.
Compare my reasoning
- A family home has unfamiliar expectations.
- He fears causing trouble despite the offer of help.
The hesitation shows how safety can be unfamiliar after prolonged self-reliance.
Look for these in your work
- Use the stated fear
- Avoid an invented rejection of kindness
What can a pair of slippers show?
Give me a hint
Connect a domestic object with his uncertainty.
Compare my reasoning
- The household offers an ordinary comfort.
- He watches and copies ways of behaving.
The detail makes entry into family life tangible without pretending that comfort is immediately understood.
Look for these in your work
- Analyse an object
- Retain the developing relationship
Common mistakes
- Do not change the narrated fostering into adoption.
- Do not turn the uncertainty about ages or the reason for temporary hospitality ending into verified legal facts.
What can you explain now?
Is the initial invitation to Danila’s house already the later formal fostering arrangement?
Compare with the explanation
No; the initial stay precedes a hostel placement and a later fostering request.
The sequence matters to how the family comes to understand and answer his needs.
After trying it yourself, choose your next review. This is your self-assessment.
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Make it stick
Is the initial invitation to Danila’s house already the later formal fostering arrangement?
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.