The Breadwinner

For the next few days, Parvana stays home from the market. She takes Nooria and the little ones outside, but she tells Mother that she doesn’t want to see anything ugly for a while. Mother and Mrs. Weera already know about what goes on at the stadium on Fridays from other people in their women’s group. Mother asks what century they’re living in. Parvana wants to ask if Father will end up in the stadium, but she stays quiet. Instead, she fills her time helping Maryam learn to count, listening to Mrs. Weera’s stories, and trying to learn how to mend from Nooria. When the bread runs out, nobody says anything. Parvana gets up and goes to work anyway. She knows she must.

Shauzia is happy to see Parvana again and wishes she could get a few quiet days for herself—her grandparents don’t like her mother, and her mother hates living with the grandparents, so everyone is grumpy at her house. Shauzia leads Parvana to a low wall to share a secret: she’s saving money so she can escape. She explains that she’ll stay until next spring, and she insists that she wants to still be a boy then—if she goes back to being a girl, she’ll be stuck at home. She wants to go to France and says brightly that in all the pictures of France, there’s sun and flowers. Bad days must not be so bad there. She’ll get there by traveling to Pakistan with nomads and then getting on a boat when she reaches the Arabian Sea.

Parvana can’t imagine going on a journey like this alone, but Shauzia insists that no one will pay attention to a little orphan boy. Her only concern is that she hasn’t waited too long. Her body is already starting to change, and if she starts to look too much like a girl before she leaves, she’ll be stuck here forever. Thinking hard, Parvana remembers how Nooria’s body changed and says that she thinks Shauzia has time. She asks how Shauzia’s family will eat without her. Shauzia is clearly upset, but she insists she has to escape—leaving might make her a bad person, but she’ll die if she stays. Parvana remembers how her parents used to fight. Mother wanted to leave Afghanistan. Parvana wonders why Mother didn’t just go, but then answers the question herself: Mother couldn’t leave her four children.

Parvana laments that they can’t be normal kids anymore. She wants to go to school and not have to work for her own food. Shauzia insists she could never go back and asks if Parvana wants to come with. Parvana declines—she doesn’t think she can leave her family—but she tells Shauzia about the Window Woman and her gifts. Shauzia wonders if the woman is a princess and Parvana briefly imagines herself saving the princess and riding away with her to safety.

As summer arrives, Parvana spends her days running through the market with Shauzia, selling dried fruit and nuts alongside her cigarettes. The girls are shy, so they prefer for their customers to notice them and don’t like to get in people’s way. Parvana is exhausted and wants to be a bored student again. The marketplace no longer seems interesting or funny, and everyone she sees is hungry and sick. Flowers bloom just like they used to, but Parvana’s small apartment gets hot and stuffy. On days when Parvana makes a little extra, she purchases fruit from the fertile valleys that the Taliban hasn’t bombed. As tribal people flood Kabul with goods to sell, some stop to purchase cigarettes or to have Parvana read or write a letter. She always asks them about their homes and tells their stories to her family when she gets home.

Mother and Mrs. Weera start their school and are very careful to avoid the Taliban. Nooria teaches five girls about Maryam’s age, never in the same place or at the same time. However, Nooria can only do so much with her students with so little time and such limited supplies. Every few weeks, another gift from the Window Woman lands on Parvana’s blanket. It’s like she’s telling Parvana that she’s there in the only way she can. One afternoon, though, Parvana hears an angry man shouting and a woman screaming inside. When she hears thuds, she stands up but can’t see through the painted window. A man behind Parvana holds out a letter and tells her to forget about what goes on in other people’s homes. Though Parvana plans to tell her family about it that night, Mother announces that Nooria is getting married.