About This Lesson
Soldiers of the Kashmir Freedom
Fighters are in search of new recruits
at nine-year-old Rafiq’s school in rural
Kashmir. They scrawl a line in chalk on
the schoolroom wall. Any boy whose
height reaches the line will be taken
to fight. Rafiq is tall for his age and
becomes the first boy to cross into a
life of brutality and terrorism. So begins
Rafiq’s transformation from child to boy
soldier, indoctrinated into a cause of
fanatical belief. But even when he no
longer recognises himself, his family
remembers the boy he was and hopes
he will return.
