Khadra Mohammed was reading a picture book to a group of Afghani refugee children who had settled in Pittsburgh when one of them, a 7-year-old girl named Zanib, asked: "Are there any stories for children like us?"

"What do you mean?" replied Ms. Mohammed, executive director of the Pittsburgh Refugee Center.

"You know, kids who had to leave their homes," Zanib said.

Ms. Mohammed was at a loss for words. Dejected, Zanib walked away from the story circle.

Saddened by the girl's pain, Ms. Mohammed scoured the bookstores and found children's books on special needs children, biracial children, adopted children, children who live with stepparents, children of same-sex parents, immigrant children -- all types of children, it seemed, but refugee children.

It was that moment, about three years ago, when Ms. Mohammed resolved to write a picture book refugee children could call their own.

The result is "Four Feet, Two Sandals," a soulful collaboration between Ms. Mohammed and Karen Lynn Williams, a children's author from Squirrel Hill. The picture book tells the story of two girls who meet at a refugee camp and share one pair of sandals, trading them back and forth.

Ms. Mohammed, who has volunteered in refugee camps in Afghanistan and Africa, centered her story on a coveted pair of shoes because it is such luxury for a refugee child.

"You see kids with torn clothes, kids with dirty clothes -- but it is the feet, the little cracked feet, the dirt and dust rubbed into so many of these little feet that you wonder if they have ever seen shoes. I remember talking to children age 10 or 11 who have never owned a pair of shoes."

In the book, Afghani girls, Lina and Feroza, each get one yellow sandal with a blue flower on it at a refugee camp. Instead of fighting over the one precious pair of shoes, they agree to wear them on alternate days, forging a friendship during a traumatic time. The book reads:

Everyone in the book was waiting for a new home. Mama went to meetings about being resettled ...

"My father and sister were killed in the war," Lina told her friend. "Mama and I had to run with Ismatu and Najiib in the night."

Feroza nodded and two tears ran down her cheek. "I only have my grandmother now."

In another scene, the girls stare at the beautiful night sky and "shared memories and whispered their dreams for a new home."

"It is very hard to write picture books about difficult subjects and write it compassionately," Ms. Williams said, "but not scare children."

Ms. Mohammed wanted to create a book that speaks to refugee children because of the pain that goes beyond just poverty.

"They are being forced out by their own people, their own country," she said. "There is no room for them in their own soil. ... These poor kids never chose war. They never chose displacement."

Ms. Mohammed jotted down the plot for the book in just three hours. "It just came to me." But she had no idea how to write a children's book or how to navigate the bewildering world of publishing.

So a mutual friend introduced her to Ms. Williams, who ordinarily turns down such requests to co-write books. But Ms. Williams, the author of many multicultural books, was intrigued by a refugee book. And she hit it off immediately with Ms. Mohammed and realized she was a natural storyteller and a quick study.

"Most people don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear how it will work in written form. But she never argued. She would say, 'You are the writer, and I am the storyteller.'"

The two women, who shared a passion for Third World culture and children, became such good friends that they finish each other's sentences. Ms. Williams started volunteering at the Pittsburgh Refugee Center.

The two girls in their book also forge a close friendship. Unlike feel-good picture books that depict a trip to the zoo or circus, this one deals with a traumatic subject, but it is infused with hope and friendship.

Refugee children who have heard it liked it. Especially Zanib, who is almost 11. The book is dedicated to her and "for every refugee girl who has had to flee her home, leaving friends and family behind."

The authors are working on a second book for refugee boys.

Ms. Williams, whose first book, "Galimoto," is about an African toy, said there has been an interest in multicultural children's books for the past 20 years. In her view, interest waned after 9/11 but has spiked again.

Ms. Williams read the book at an elementary school, and a little boy in the front row was so moved that two tears ran down his face. "While on the one hand I was concerned that my book was making him cry, I also think we should be raising sensitive kids who understand some of the pain of the world," Ms. Williams said. "Perhaps he will be the one child who remembers that reading and some day will act with compassion in a difficult situation."

Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed will have a book signing and reception at 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday at MonTage Interior Design Studio, 201 North Braddock Ave., Point Breeze. Fifty percent of book sales will be donated to the Pittsburgh Refugee Center.