The Breadwinner

by Deborah Ellis

  “He’s getting too big to be carried around,” Nooria said to Parvana on one of their noonday walks. Mother had allowed Nooria to leave Ali at home, to get a break from him. They only had Maryam with them, and she was no trouble.

  “How are your students doing?”

  “They can’t learn much in a few hours a week,” Nooria replied. “And we don’t have any books or school supplies. Still, I guess it’s better than nothing.”

  The little gifts from the window kept landing on Parvana’s blanket every couple of weeks. Sometimes it was a piece of embroidery. Sometimes it was a piece of candy or a single bead.

  It was as if the Window Woman was saying, “I’m still here,” in the only way she could. Parvana checked carefully around her blanket every time she went to leave the market, in case one of the gifts had rolled off.

  One afternoon, she heard sounds coming from above her. A man was very angry. He was shouting at a women who was crying and screaming. Parvana heard thuds and more screams. Without thinking, she sprang to her feet and looked up at the window, but she couldn’t see anything through the painted glass.

  “What goes on in a man’s house is his own business,” a voice behind her said. She spun around to see a man holding out an envelope. “Forget about that and turn your mind to your own business. I have a letter for you to read.”

  She was planning to tell her family about the whole incident that night, but she didn’t get the chance. Instead, her family had something to tell her.

  “You’ll never guess,” her mother said. “Nooria’s getting married.”

  THIRTEEN

  “But you’ve never even met him!” Parvana exclaimed to Nooria the next day at noon. It was the first chance they’d had to talk about it, just the two of them.

  “Of course I’ve met him. His family and ours were neighbors for many years.”

  “But that was when he was a boy. I thought you wanted to go back to school!”

  “I will be going back to school,” Nooria said. “Didn’t you listen to anything Mother was saying last night? I’ll be living in Mazar-e-Sharif, in the north. The Taliban aren’t in that part of Afghanistan. Girls can still go to school there. Both of his parents are educated. I can finish school, and they’ll even send me to the university in Mazar.”

  All of this was written in a letter that had arrived while Parvana was out at work. The women in the groom’s family belonged to the same women’s group as Mother. The letter had passed from one member of the group to another until it finally reached Mother. Parvana had read the letter, but she still had a lot of questions.

  “Do you really want to do this?”

  Nooria nodded. “Look at my life here, Parvana. I hate living under the Taliban. I’m tired of looking after the little ones. My school classes happen so seldom, they’re of almost no value. There’s no future for me here. At least in Mazar I can go to school, walk the streets without having to wear a burqa, and get a job when I’ve completed school. Maybe in Mazar I can have some kind of life. Yes, I want to do this.”

  There was a lot of discussion in the following few days about what would happen next. Parvana, out at work, had no voice in these discussions. She was merely informed of the plans when she got home in the evening.

  “We’ll go to Mazar for the wedding,” Mother announced. “We can all stay with your aunt while the wedding is prepared. Then Nooria will go to live with her new family. We will return to Kabul in October.”

  “We can’t leave Kabul!” Parvana exclaimed. “What about Father? What will happen if he gets out of prison and we’re not here? He won’t know where to look for us!”

  “I’ll be here,” Mrs. Weera said. “I can tell your father where you are and look after him until you get back.”

  “I’m not sending Nooria off to Mazar all by herself,” Mother said. “And since you are a child, you will come with us.”

  “I’m not going,” Parvana insisted. She even stamped her feet.

  “You will do as you’re told,” Mother said. “All this running around wild in the streets has made you think you’re above yourself.”

  “I’m not going to Mazar!” Parvana repeated, stamping her feet again.

  “Since your feet want to move around so much, you’d better take them out for a walk,” Mrs. Weera said. “You can fetch some water while you’re at it.”

  Parvana grabbed the bucket and got some satisfaction out of slamming the door behind her.

  Parvana glowered for three days. Finally, Mother said, “You can take that awful frown off your face. We’ve decided to leave you here. Not because of your bad behavior. A child of eleven has no business telling her mother what she will and will not do. We’re leaving you here because it will be too difficult to explain your appearance. Your aunt will keep your secret, of course, but we can’t count on everyone to be so careful. We can’t take the chance of word about you getting back here.”

  Although she was glad to remain in Kabul, Parvana found herself sulking that they weren’t taking her with them. “I’m not satisfied with anything any more,” she told Shauzia the next day.

  “Neither am I,” Shauzia said. “I used to think that if only I could sell things from a tray, I’d be happy, but I’m not happy at all. I make more money this way than I did as a tea boy, but it’s not enough to make any real difference. We still go hungry. My family still argues all the time. Nothing is better.”

  “What’s the answer?”

  “Maybe someone should drop a big bomb on the country and start again.”

  “They’ve tried that,” Parvana said. “It only made things worse.”

  One of the women in the local branch of the women’s group was going to accompany Parvana’s family to the city of Mazar. Her husband would go with them as the official escort. If the Taliban asked, Mother would be the husband’s sister, and Nooria, Maryam and Ali would be the nieces and nephews.

  Nooria cleaned out the family cupboard one last time. Parvana watched her pack up her things. “If all goes well, we’ll be in Mazar in a couple of days,” Nooria said.

  “Are you scared?” Parvana asked. “It’s a long journey.”

  “I keep thinking of things that can go wrong, but Mother says everything will be fine.” They would be traveling together in the back of a truck. “As soon as I get out of Taliban territory, I’m going to throw off my burqa and tear it into a million pieces.”

  Parvana went to the market the next day to buy the family some food for the journey. She wanted to buy Nooria a present, too. She wandered through the market looking at things for sale. She finally decided on a pen in a beaded case. Every time Nooria used it at university, and later when she became a real school teacher, she would think of Parvana.

  “We’ll be gone for most of the summer,” Mother reminded Parvana the night before they left. “You’ll be fine with Mrs. Weera. Do what she tells you, and don’t give her any trouble.”

  “Parvana and I will be good company for each other,” Mrs. Weera said, “and by the time you get back, the magazine should be coming in from Pakistan, all printed and ready to distribute.”

  They left very early the next day. The mid-July morning was fresh but held the promise of hot weather to follow.

  “We’d best be going,” Mother said. Since there was no one else on the street, Mother, Nooria and Mrs. Weera had their burqas flipped up so their faces could be seen.

  Parvana kissed Ali, who squirmed and fussed, grumpy from being woken up early. Mother got him settled on the floor of the truck. Parvana said goodbye to Maryam after that, then lifted her into the truck.

  “We will see you by the middle of September,” Mother said as she hugged Parvana. “Make me proud of you.”

  “I will,” Parvana said, trying not to cry.

  “I don’t know when we’ll see each other again,” Nooria said just before she climbed into the truck. She had Parvana’s gift clutched in her hand.

  “It won’t be long,” Parvana said, grinning even
though tears fell from her eyes. “As soon as your new husband realizes how bossy you are, he’ll send you back to Kabul as fast as he can.”

  Nooria laughed and climbed into the truck. She and Mother covered themselves with their burqas. The women’s group member and her husband were sitting in the front seat. Parvana and Mrs. Weera watched and waved as the truck drove out of sight.

  “I think we could both use a cup of tea,” Mrs. Weera said, and they went upstairs.

  Parvana found the next few weeks to be a strange time. With only herself, Mrs. Weera and Mrs. Weera’s grandchild, the apartment seemed almost empty. Fewer people meant fewer chores, less noise and more free time. Parvana even missed Ali’s fussing. As the weeks went by, she looked forward more and more to everyone coming back.

  Still, she did enjoy having more free time. For the first time since Father’s arrest, she took his books out of their secret place in the cupboard. Evenings were spent reading and listening to Mrs. Weera’s stories.

  Mrs. Weera believed in trusting her. “In some parts of the country, girls your age are getting married and having babies,” she said. “I’m here if you need me, but if you want to be responsible for yourself, that’s fine, too.”

  She insisted that Parvana keep some of her wages as pocket money. Sometimes Parvana would treat Shauzia to lunch at one of the kebab stands in the market. They’d find a sheltered place to go to the bathroom and keep working all day. Parvana preferred to come home at the end of the day, rather than at noon. It meant that one more day was over, and her family would soon be home.

  Toward the end of August, there was a bad rainstorm. Shauzia had already gone home. She had seen the darkening sky and didn’t feel like getting wet.

  Parvana wasn’t so clever, and she got caught in the rain. She covered her tray with her arms to keep her cigarettes dry and ducked into a bombed-out building. She would wait out the storm there and go home when it was over.

  The darkness outside made the inside even blacker. It took awhile for her eyes to adjust. While she waited for that to happen, she leaned against the doorway, watching the rain turn Kabul’s dust into mud.

  Gusts of wind mixed with driving rain forced Parvana deeper inside the building. Hoping there were no land mines, she found a dry spot and sat down. The pounding of the rain beat a steady rhythm as it hit the ground. Parvana began to nod. In a little while, she was asleep.

  When she woke up, the rain had stopped, although the sky was no lighter.

  “It must be late,” Parvana said out loud.

  It was then that she heard the sound of a woman crying.

  FOURTEEN

  The sound was too soft and too sad to be startling.

  “Hello?” Parvana called out, not too loudly.

  It was too dark to see where the woman was sitting. Parvana rummaged around on her tray until she found a box of the matches she sold with the cigarettes. She struck one, and the light flared up. She held the flame out in front of her, looking for the crying woman.

  It took three matches before she saw the figure huddled against the nearby wall. She kept striking matches so she could see as she made her way over to the woman.

  “What’s your name?” Parvana asked. The woman kept crying. “I’ll tell you my name, then. It’s Parvana. I should tell you that my name is Kaseem, because I’m pretending to be a boy. I’m dressed like a boy so that I can earn some money, but I’m really a girl. So now you know my secret.”

  The woman said nothing. Parvana glanced out the door. It was getting late. If she was going to be home before curfew, she’d have to leave now.

  “Come with me,” Parvana said. “My mother is away, but Mrs. Weera is at home. She can fix any problem.” She struck another match and held it up to the woman’s face. It suddenly dawned on her that she could see the woman’s face. It wasn’t covered up.

  “Where is your burqa?” She looked around but couldn’t see one. “Are you outside without a burqa?”

  The woman nodded.

  “What are you doing outside without a burqa? You could get in a lot of trouble for that.”

  The woman just shook her head.

  Parvana had an idea. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go home and borrow Mrs. Weera’s burqa and bring it back to you. Then we’ll go back to my place together. All right?”

  Parvana started to stand up, but the woman grabbed onto her arm.

  Again Parvana looked out the door at the coming night. “I have to let Mrs. Weera know where I am. She’s fine with me being out during the day, but if I’m not back at night, she’ll be worried.” Still the woman did not let go.

  Parvana didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stay in the building all night, but this frightened woman clearly did not want to be left alone. Groping in the dark for her tray, she found two little bags of dried fruit and nuts.

  “Here,” she said, handing one to the woman. “We’ll think better if we eat.”

  The woman downed the fruit and nuts in almost one swallow. “You must be starving,” Parvana said, passing her another bag.

  Parvana chewed and thought and finally decided what to do. “This is the best suggestion I have,” she said. “If you have a better idea, let me know. Otherwise, this is what we’ll do. We’ll wait until it gets very, very dark. Then we’ll head back to my place together. Do you have a chador?”

  The woman shook her head. Parvana wished she had her pattu, but it was summer, so she had left it at home.

  “Do you agree?” Parvana asked.

  The woman nodded.

  “Good. I think we should move close to the door. That way, when it’s time, we can see our way out to the street without lighting a match. I don’t want to draw any attention to us.”

  With a bit of gentle pulling, Parvana got the woman to her feet. Carefully they made their way to a spot just inside the door, but still hidden from the view of anyone passing by. They waited in silence for night to fall.

  Kabul was a dark city at night. It had been under curfew for more than twenty years. Many of the street lights had been knocked out by bombs, and many of those still standing did not work.

  “Kabul was the hot spot of central Asia,” Parvana’s mother and father used to say. “We used to walk down the streets at midnight, eating ice cream. Earlier in the evening, we would browse through book shops and record stores. It was a city of lights, progress and excitement.”

  Parvana could not even imagine what it had looked like then.

  Before long it was as dark as it would get. “Stay right with me,” Parvana said, although she needn’t have bothered. The woman was gripping her hand tightly. “It’s not far, but I don’t know how long it will take us tonight. Don’t worry.” She smiled, pretending to be brave. She knew it was too dark in the doorway for the woman to see her smile, but it made Parvana feel better.

  “I’m Malali, leading the troops through enemy territory,” she murmured to herself. That helped, too, although it was hard to feel like a battle heroine with a cigarette tray hanging around her neck.

  The narrow, winding streets of the marketplace were very different in the dark. Parvana could hear their footsteps echo along the narrow corridors. She was about to tell the woman to walk more softly, that the Taliban had made it a crime for women to make noise when they walked, but she changed her mind. If the Taliban caught them out after curfew and with the woman without a burqa or a head covering at all, the noise they were making would be the least of their problems. Parvana remembered the scene in the stadium. She didn’t want to know what the Taliban would do to her and her companion.

  Parvana saw headlights approaching and pulled the woman into another doorway until the truck filled with soldiers moved on down the street. Several times they almost tripped on the uneven pavement. For one long, heart-stopping minute, Parvana thought she was lost. Finally she got her bearings, and they kept moving.

  When they got to Parvana’s street, she started to run, and she pulled the woman along with her. She was so
scared by this point, she thought if she didn’t get home right away, she would collapse.

  “You’re back!” Mrs. Weera was so relieved, she hugged both Parvana and the woman before she realized what she was doing. “You’ve brought someone with you! You are very welcome here, my dear.” She took a critical look at the woman. “Parvana, you didn’t bring her through the streets like that? With no burqa?”

  Parvana explained what had happened. “I think she’s in trouble,” she said.

  Mrs. Weera didn’t hesitate. She put her arm around the woman. “We’ll get the details later. There’s warm water for you to wash in, and hot food for supper. You don’t look much older than Parvana!”

  Parvana took a good look at her companion. She hadn’t seen the woman in the light before. She looked a little bit younger than Nooria.

  “Fetch me some clean clothes,” Mrs. Weera told Parvana. Parvana took a shalwar kameez of Mother’s out of the cupboard, and Mrs. Weera took the young woman into the wash-room and closed the door.

  Parvana restocked her tray for the next day, then spread the meal cloth out on the floor. By the time she had put out the nan and the cups for tea, Mrs. Weera emerged from the wash-room with their guest.

  Dressed in Mother’s clean clothes, her hair washed and pulled back, the woman looked less scared and more tired. She managed to drink half a cup of tea and eat a few mouthfuls of rice before she fell asleep.

  She was still sleeping when Parvana left for work the next morning.

  “Fetch me some water, please, dear,” Mrs. Weera asked before Parvana went off to the market. “That poor girl’s clothes need washing.”

  Finally, that night, after eating supper, the girl was able to talk.

  “My name is Homa,” she said. “I escaped from Mazar-e-Sharif just after the Taliban captured the city.”

  “The Taliban has captured Mazar!” Parvana exclaimed. “That can’t be! My mother is there. My brother and sisters are there.”

  “The Taliban is in Mazar,” Homa repeated. “They went from house to house, looking for enemies. They came to my house. They came right inside! They grabbed my father and my brother and took them outside. They shot them right in the street. My mother started hitting them, and they shot her, too. I ran back inside and hid in a closet. I was there for a long, long time. I thought they would kill me, too, but they were finished killing people at my house. They were busy killing at other houses.