The Breadwinner (2 page)

There had been a war going on in Afghanistan for more than twenty years,
twice as long as Parvana had been alive.

At first it was the Soviets who rolled their big tanks into the country
and flew war planes that dropped bombs on villages and the countryside.

Parvana was born one month before the Soviets started going back to their
own country.

“You were such an ugly baby, the Soviets couldn't stand to be
in the same country with you,” Nooria was fond of telling her. “They fled
back across the border in horror, as fast as their tanks could carry them.”

After the Soviets left, the people who had been shooting at the Soviets
decided they wanted to keep shooting at something, so they shot at each other. Many
bombs fell on Kabul during that time. Many people died.

Bombs had been part of Parvana's whole life.
Every day, every night, rockets would fall out of the sky, and someone's house
would explode.

When the bombs fell, people ran. First they ran one way, then they ran
another, trying to find a place where the bombs wouldn't find them. When she was
younger, Parvana was carried. When she got bigger, she had to do her own running.

Now most of the country was controlled by the Taliban. The word Taliban
meant religious scholars, but Parvana's father told her that religion was about
teaching people how to be better human beings, how to be kinder. “The Taliban are
not making Afghanistan a kinder place to live!” he said.

Although bombs still fell on Kabul, they didn't fall as often as
they used to. There was still a war going on in the north of the country, and that was
where most of the killing took place these days.

After a few more customers had come and gone, Father suggested they end
their work for the day.

Parvana jumped to her feet, then collapsed
back down
again. Her foot was asleep. She rubbed it, then tried again. This time she was able to
stand.

First she gathered up all the little items they were trying to
sell—dishes, pillow cases, household ornaments that had survived the bombings.
Like many Afghans, they sold what they could. Mother and Nooria regularly went through
what was left of the family's belongings to see what they could spare. There were
so many people selling things in Kabul, Parvana marveled that there was anyone left to
buy them.

Father packed his pens and writing paper in his shoulder bag. Leaning on
his walking stick and taking Parvana's arm, he slowly stood up. Parvana shook the
dust out of the blanket, folded it up, and they were on their way.

For short distances Father could manage with just his walking stick. For
longer journeys he needed Parvana to lean on.

“You're just the right height,” he said.

“What will happen when I grow?”

“Then I will grow with you!”

Father used to have a false leg, but he sold it. He hadn't planned
to. False legs had to be specially
made, and one person's
false leg didn't necessarily fit another. But when a customer saw Father's
leg on the blanket, he ignored the other things for sale and demanded to buy the leg. He
offered such a good price that Father eventually relented.

There were a lot of false legs for sale in the market now. Since the
Taliban decreed that women must stay inside, many husbands took their wives' false
legs away. “You're not going anywhere, so why do you need a leg?” they
asked.

There were bombed-out buildings all over Kabul. Neighborhoods had turned
from homes and businesses into bricks and dust.

Kabul had once been beautiful. Nooria remembered whole sidewalks, traffic
lights that changed color, evening trips to restaurants and cinemas, browsing in fine
shops for clothes and books.

For most of Parvana's life, the city had been in ruins, and it was
hard for her to imagine it another way. It hurt her to hear stories of old Kabul before
the bombing. She didn't want to think about everything the bombs had taken away,
including her father's health and their
beautiful home. It
made her angry, and since she could do nothing with her anger, it made her sad.

They left the busy part of the market and turned down a side street to
their building. Parvana carefully guided her father around the pot holes and broken
places in the road.

“How do women in burqas manage to walk along these streets?”
Parvana asked her father. “How do they see where they are going?”

“They fall down a lot,” her father replied. He was right.
Parvana had seen them fall.

She looked at her favorite mountain. It rose up majestically at the end of
her street.

“What's the name of that mountain?” she had asked her
father soon after they moved to their new neighborhood.

“That's Mount Parvana.”

“It is not,” Nooria had said scornfully.

“You shouldn't lie to the child,” Mother had said. The
whole family had been out walking together, in the time before the Taliban. Mother and
Nooria just wore light scarves around their hair. Their faces soaked up the Kabul
sunshine.

“Mountains are named by people,” Father
said. “I am a person, and I name that mountain Mount Parvana.”

Her mother gave in, laughing. Father laughed, too, and Parvana and baby
Maryam, who didn't even know why she was laughing. Even grumpy Nooria joined in.
The sound of the family's laughter scampered up Mount Parvana and back down into
the street.

Now Parvana and her father slowly made their way up the steps of their
building. They lived on the third floor of an apartment building. It had been hit in a
rocket attack, and half of it was rubble.

The stairs were on the outside of the building, zigzagging back and forth
on their way up. They had been damaged by the bomb, and didn't quite meet in
places. Only some parts of the staircase had a railing. “Never rely on the
railing,” Father told Parvana over and over. Going up was easier for Father than
going down, but it still took a long time.

Finally they reached the door of their home and went inside.

Mother and Nooria were cleaning again. Father kissed Ali and Maryam, went to the bathroom to wash the dust off his feet, face and hands, then stretched out on a toshak for a rest.

Parvana put down her bundles and started to take off her chador.

“We need water,” Nooria said.

“Can't I sit down for awhile first?” Parvana asked her mother.

“You will rest better when your work is done. Now go. The water tank is almost empty.”

Parvana groaned. If the tank was almost empty, she'd have to make five trips to the water tap. Six, because her mother hated to see an empty water bucket.

“If you had fetched it yesterday, when Mother asked you, you wouldn't have so much to haul today,” Nooria said as Parvana passed
by her to get to the water bucket. Nooria smiled her superior big-sister smile and flipped her hair back over her shoulders. Parvana wanted to kick her.

Nooria had beautiful hair, long and thick. Parvana's hair was thin and stringy. She wanted hair like her sister's, and Nooria knew this.

Parvana grumbled all the way down the steps and down the block to the neighborhood tap. The trip home, with a full bucket, was worse, especially the three flights of stairs. Being angry at Nooria gave her the energy to do it, so Parvana kept grumbling.

“Nooria never goes for water, nor does Mother. Maryam doesn't, either. She doesn't have to do anything!”

Parvana knew she was mumbling nonsense, but she kept it up anyway. Maryam was only five, and she couldn't carry an empty bucket downstairs, let alone a full bucket upstairs. Mother and Nooria had to wear burqas whenever they went outside, and they couldn't carry a pail of water up those uneven broken stairs if they were wearing burqas. Plus, it was dangerous for women to go outside without a man.

Parvana knew she had to fetch the water
because there was nobody else in the family who could do it. Sometimes this made her resentful. Sometimes it made her proud. One thing she knew—it didn't matter how she felt. Good mood or bad, the water had to be fetched, and she had to fetch it.

Finally the tank was full, the water bucket was full, and Parvana could slip off her sandals, hang up her chador and relax. She sat on the floor beside Maryam and watched her little sister draw a picture.

“You're very talented, Maryam. One day you will sell your drawings for tons and tons of money. We will be very rich and live in a palace, and you will wear blue silk dresses.”

“Green silk,” Maryam said.

“Green silk,” Parvana agreed.

“Instead of just sitting there, you could help us over here.” Mother and Nooria were cleaning out the cupboard again.

“You cleaned out the cupboard three days ago!”

“Are you going to help us or not?”

Not, Parvana thought, but she got to her feet. Mother and Nooria were always cleaning something. Since they couldn't work or go to
school, they didn't have much else to do. “The Taliban have said we must stay inside, but that doesn't mean we have to live in filth,” Mother was fond of saying.

Parvana hated all that cleaning. It used up the water she had to haul. The only thing worse was for Nooria to wash her hair.

Parvana looked around their tiny room. All of the furniture she remembered from their other houses had been destroyed by bombs or stolen by looters. All they had now was a tall wooden cupboard, which had been in the room when they rented it. It held the few belongings they had been able to save. Two toshaks were set against the walls, and that was all the furniture they had. They used to have beautiful Afghan carpets. Parvana remembered tracing the intricate patterns of them with her fingers when she was younger. Now there was just cheap matting over the cement floor.

Parvana could cross their main room with ten regular steps one way and twelve regular steps the other way. It was usually her job to sweep the mat with their tiny whisk broom. She knew every inch of it.

At the end of the room was the lavatory. It
was a very small room with a platform toilet—not the modern Western toilet they used to have! The little propane cookstove was kept in there because a tiny vent, high in the wall, kept fresh air coming into the room. The water tank was there, too—a metal drum that held five pails of water—and the wash basin was next to that.

Other people lived in the part of the building that was still standing. Parvana saw them as she went to fetch water or went out with her father to the marketplace. “We must keep our distance,” Father told her. “The Taliban encourage neighbor to spy on neighbor. It is safer to keep to ourselves.”

It may have been safer, Parvana often thought, but it was also lonely. Maybe there was another girl her age, right close by, but she'd never find out. Father had his books, Maryam played with Ali, Nooria had Mother, but Parvana didn't have anybody.

Mother and Nooria had wiped down the cupboard shelves. Now they were putting things back.

“Here is a pile of things for your father to sell in the market. Put them by the door,” Mother directed her.

The vibrant red cloth caught Parvana's eye. “My good shalwar kameez! We can't sell that!”

“I decide what we're going to sell, not you. There's no longer any use for it, unless you're planning to go to parties you haven't bothered to tell me about.”

Parvana knew there was no point arguing. Ever since she had been forced out of her job, Mother's temper grew shorter every day.

Parvana put the outfit with the other items by the door. She ran her fingers over the intricate embroidery. It had been an Eid present from her aunt in Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in the north of Afghanistan. She hoped her aunt would be angry at her mother for selling it.

“Why don't we sell Nooria's good clothes? She's not going anywhere.”

“She'll need them when she gets married.”

Nooria made a superior sort of face at Parvana. As an extra insult, she tossed her head to make her long hair swing.

“I pity whoever marries you,” Parvana said. “He will be getting a stuck-up snob for a wife.”

“That's enough,” Mother said.

Parvana fumed. Mother always took Nooria's side. Parvana hated Nooria, and she'd
hate her mother, too, if she wasn't her mother.

Her anger melted when she saw her mother pick up the parcel of Hossain's clothes and put it away on the top shelf of the cupboard. Her mother always looked sad when she touched Hossain's clothes.

Nooria hadn't always been the oldest. Hossain had been the oldest child. He had been killed by a land mine when he was fourteen years old. Mother and Father never talked about him. To remember him was too painful. Nooria had told Parvana about him during one of the rare times they were talking to each other.

Hossain had laughed a lot, and was always trying to get Nooria to play games with him, even though she was a girl. “Don't be such a princess,” he'd say. “A little football will do you good!” Sometimes, Nooria said, she'd give in and play, and Hossain would always kick the ball to her in a way that she could stop it and kick it back.

“He used to pick you up and play with you a lot,” Nooria told Parvana. “He actually seemed to like you. Imagine that!”

From Nooria's stories, Hossain sounded like
someone Parvana would have liked, too.

Seeing the pain in her mother's face, Parvana put her anger away and quietly helped get supper ready.

The family ate Afghan-style, sitting around a plastic cloth spread out on the floor. Food cheered everyone up, and the family lingered after the meal was over.

At some point, Parvana knew, a secret signal would pass between her mother and Nooria, and the two of them would rise at the same instant to begin clearing up. Parvana had no idea how they did it. She would watch for a sign to go between the two of them, but she could never see one.