The Breadwinner Read online

  DEBORAH ELLIS

  The Breadwinner

  Copyright © 2000 Deborah Ellis

  First published in the USA in 2001

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  This edition published in 2011 by

  Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press Inc.

  110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801

  Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4

  Tel. 416-363-4343

  Fax 416-363-1017

  www.groundwoodbooks.com

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Ellis, Deborah

  The breadwinner

  A Groundwood Book.

  eISBN 978-1-55498-007-9

  I. Title.

  PS8559.L5494L66 2000 jC813’.54 C00-931029-0

  Cover design: Michael Solomon

  Cover illustration: Pascal Milelli

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  To the children of war

  ONE

  “I can read that letter as well as Father can,” Parvana whispered into the folds of her chador. “Well, almost.”

  She didn’t dare say those words out loud. The man sitting beside her father would not want to hear her voice. Nor would anyone else in the Kabul market. Parvana was there only to help her father walk to the market and back home again after work. She sat well back on the blanket, her head and most of her face covered by her chador.

  She wasn’t really supposed to be outside at all. The Taliban had ordered all the girls and women in Afghanistan to stay inside their homes. They even forbade girls to go to school. Parvana had had to leave her sixth grade class, and her sister Nooria was not allowed to go to her high school. Their mother had been kicked out of her job as a writer for a Kabul radio station. For more than a year now, they had all been stuck inside one room, along with five-year-old Maryam and two-year-old Ali.

  Parvana did get out for a few hours most days to help her father walk. She was always glad to go outside, even though it meant sitting for hours on a blanket spread over the hard ground of the marketplace. At least it was something to do. She had even got used to holding her tongue and hiding her face.

  She was small for her eleven years. As a small girl, she could usually get away with being outside without being questioned.

  “I need this girl to help me walk,” her father would tell any Talib who asked, pointing to his leg. He had lost the lower part of his leg when the high school he was teaching in was bombed. His insides had been hurt somehow, too. He was often tired.

  “I have no son at home, except for an infant,” he would explain. Parvana would slump down further on the blanket and try to make herself look smaller. She was afraid to look up at the soldiers. She had seen what they did, especially to women, the way they would whip and beat someone they thought should be punished.

  Sitting in the marketplace day after day, she had seen a lot. When the Taliban were around, what she wanted most of all was to be invisible.

  Now the customer asked her father to read his letter again. “Read it slowly, so that I can remember it for my family.”

  Parvana would have liked to get a letter. Mail delivery had recently started again in Afghanistan, after years of being disrupted by war. Many of her friends had fled the country with their families. She thought they were in Pakistan, but she wasn’t sure, so she couldn’t write to them. Her own family had moved so often because of the bombing that her friends no longer knew where she was. “Afghans cover the earth like stars cover the sky,” her father often said.

  Her father finished reading the man’s letter a second time. The customer thanked him and paid. “I will look for you when it is time to write a reply.”

  Most people in Afghanistan could not read or write. Parvana was one of the lucky ones. Both of her parents had been to university, and they believed in education for everyone, even girls.

  Customers came and went as the afternoon wore on. Most spoke Dari, the same language Parvana spoke best. When a customer spoke Pashtu, she could recognize most of it, but not all. Her parents could speak English, too. Her father had gone to university in England. That was a long time ago.

  The market was a very busy place. Men shopped for their families, and peddlers hawked their goods and services. Some, like the tea shop, had their own stalls. With such a big urn and so many trays of cups, it had to stay in one place. Tea boys ran back and forth into the labyrinth of the marketplace, carrying tea to customers who couldn’t leave their own shops, then running back again with the empty cups.

  “I could do that,” Parvana whispered. She’d like to be able to run around in the market, to know its winding streets as well as she knew the four walls of her home.

  Her father turned to look at her. “I’d rather see you running around a school yard.” He turned around again to call out to the passing men. “Anything written! Anything read! Pashtu and Dari! Wonderful items for sale!”

  Parvana frowned. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t in school! She would rather be there, too, instead of sitting on this uncomfortable blanket, her back and bottom getting sore. She missed her friends, her blue-and-white school uniform, and doing new things each day.

  History was her favorite subject, especially Afghan history. Everybody had come to Afghanistan. The Persians came four thousand years ago. Alexander the Great came, too, followed by the Greeks, Arabs, Turks, British, and finally the Soviets. One of the conquerors, Tamerlane from Samarkand, cut off the heads of his enemies and stacked them in huge piles, like melons at a fruit stand. All these people had come to Parvana’s beautiful country to try to take it over, and the Afghans had kicked them all out again!

  But now the country was ruled by the Taliban militia. They were Afghans, and they had very definite ideas about how things should be run. When they first took over the capital city of Kabul and forbade girls to go to school, Parvana wasn’t terribly unhappy. She had a test coming up in arithmetic that she hadn’t prepared for, and she was in trouble for talking in class again. The teacher was going to send a note to her mother, but the Taliban took over first.

  “What are you crying for?” she had asked Nooria, who couldn’t stop sobbing. “I think a holiday is very nice.” Parvana was sure the Taliban would let them go back to school in a few days. By then her teacher would have forgotten all about sending a tattletale note to her mother.

  “You’re just stupid!” Nooria screamed at her. “Leave me alone!”

  One of the difficulties of living with your whole family in one room was that it was impossible to really leave anyone alone. Wherever Nooria went, there was Parvana. And wherever Parvana went, there was Nooria.

  Both of Parvana’s parents had come from old respected Afghan families. With their education, they had earned high salaries. They had had a big house with a courtyard, a couple of servants, a television set, a refrigerator, a car. Nooria had had her own room. Parvana had shared a room with her little sister, Maryam. Maryam chattered a lot, but she thought Parvana was wonderful. It had certainly been wonderful to get a
way from Nooria sometimes.

  That house had been destroyed by a bomb. The family had moved several times since then. Each time, they moved to a smaller place. Every time their house was bombed, they lost more of their things. With each bomb, they got poorer. Now they lived together in one small room.

  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.

  TWO

  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.