The Breadwinner (11 page)

“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.

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.

“Finally I left the closet and went downstairs. There were bodies
all over the street. Some soldiers drove by in a truck. They forbade us to move the
bodies of our families, or even cover them up. They said we must stay inside.

“I was so scared they would come back for me! When it got dark, I
ran outside. I ran from building to building, looking out for the soldiers. There were
bodies everywhere. The wild
dogs had started eating some of the
bodies, so there were pieces of people on the sidewalks and in the streets. I even saw a
dog carrying a person's arm in its mouth!

“I couldn't face anything else. There was a truck stopped on
the street. Its motor was running. I jumped into the back and hid among the bundles.
Wherever the truck was going, it couldn't be worse than where I was.

“We traveled a long, long time. When I finally got out, I was in
Kabul. I went from the truck to the building where Parvana found me.” Homa started
to cry. “I just left them there! I left my mother and my father and my brother
lying in the street for the dogs to eat!”

Mrs. Weera put her arms around Homa, but the girl could not be comforted.
She cried until she collapsed into an exhausted sleep.

Parvana couldn't move. She couldn't speak. All she could do
was picture her mother, sisters and brother, dead in the streets of a strange city.

“There's no evidence your family is hurt, Parvana,” Mrs.
Weera said. “Your mother is a smart, strong woman, and so is Nooria. We must
believe they are alive. We must not give up hope!”

Parvana was fresh out of hope. She did what her
mother had done. She crawled onto the toshak, covered herself with a quilt and resolved
to stay there forever.

For two days she stayed on the toshak. “This is what the women in
our family do when we're sad,” she said to Mrs. Weera.

“They don't stay there forever,” Mrs. Weera said.
“They get up again, and they fight back.”

Parvana didn't answer her. She didn't want to get up again.
She was tired of fighting back.