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Mother
Homa is a teenager a little younger than Nooria whom Parvana finds in a bombed-out building in the Kabul marketplace. When Parvana meets Homa, the girl is too afraid, exhausted, and hungry to speak, so Parvana refers to her just as “the woman.” Once Homa is well enough to share her name, she also shares her story: she snuck onto a truck bed after the Taliban took her home city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The Taliban shot and killed her parents and brother, and they wouldn’t allow anyone to cover or bury the bodies. Homa remains in Kabul with Parvana, Mrs. Weera, and eventually, Father. She’s kind and helpful, and she’s educated, so she and Father practice their English together. Homa plans to accompany Mrs. Weera to a refugee camp in Pakistan to start a school and work more closely with Mrs. Weera’s secret women’s group.
Homa / The Woman Quotes in The Breadwinner
The The Breadwinner quotes below are all either spoken by Homa / The Woman or refer to Homa / The Woman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 14 Quotes
“I don’t like working alone. The marketplace isn’t the same when you’re not there. Won’t you come back?”
Put to her like that, Parvana knew she could not refuse. [...] Part of her wanted to slip away from everything, but another part wanted to get up and stay alive and continue to be Shauzia’s friend. With a little prodding from Shauzia, that was the part that won.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Breadwinner LitChart as a printable PDF.
Homa / The Woman Character Timeline in The Breadwinner
The timeline below shows where the character Homa / The Woman appears in The Breadwinner. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 13
...dry spot to sit, Parvana falls asleep. She wakes up much later and hears a woman crying.
(full context)
Chapter 14
...see anything in the darkness. She lights three of her matches and finally finds the woman huddled against a wall. The woman is crying too hard to give her name, so...
(full context)
...decides that they should wait until dark and then head to her apartment together. The woman doesn’t have a chador and Parvana doesn’t have her scarf, so they’ll have to hope...
(full context)
When it’s dark, Parvana leads the woman out onto the street. She tells herself that she’s Malali, though it’s hard to feel...
(full context)
Mrs. Weera hugs Parvana and the woman. Parvana quickly explains the situation and Mrs. Weera takes the woman to clean up. Parvana...
(full context)
Homa says that after a while, she went downstairs. Soldiers forbade her and others to move...
(full context)
Chapter 15
...water too, since Father’s body is covered in injuries and the dressings need constant washing. Homa keeps Mrs. Weera’s granddaughter occupied so Father can rest.
(full context)
Parvana is elated to have Father back. Homa has had some education, so one day, Parvana returns home to find Father and Homa...
(full context)
Mrs. Weera, meanwhile, makes plans to go to Pakistan with Homa. She has a cousin in a refugee camp, and they’ll meet up with other women’s...
(full context)
...tell Mother that copies are headed all over the world. Parvana hugs Mrs. Weera and Homa and hops into the truck. Shauzia appears with apricots for Parvana. She announces that she...
(full context)
