The Breadwinner (3 page)

Ali was dozing on Mother's lap, a piece of nan in his little fist. Every now and then he would realize he was falling asleep and would rouse himself, as if he hated the thought of missing something. He'd try to get up, but Mother held him quite firmly. After wiggling for a moment, he'd give up and doze off again.

Father, looking rested after his nap, had changed into his good white shalwar kameez. His long beard was neatly combed. Parvana thought he looked very handsome.

When the Taliban first came and ordered all men to grow beards, Parvana had a hard time getting used to her father's face. He had never worn a beard before. Father had a hard time getting used to it, too. It itched a lot at first.

Now he was telling stories from history. He had been a history teacher before his school was bombed. Parvana had grown up with his stories, which made her a very good student in history class.

“It was 1880, and the British were trying to take over our country. Did we want the British to take over?” he asked Maryam.

“No!” Maryam answered.

“We certainly did not. Everybody comes to Afghanistan to try to take over, but we Afghans kick them all out. We are the most welcoming, hospitable people on earth. A guest to us is a king. You girls remember that. When a guest comes to your house, he must have the best of everything.”

“Or she,” Parvana said.

Father grinned at her. “Or she. We Afghans do everything we can to make our guest comfortable. But if someone comes into our home
or our country and acts like our enemy, then we will defend our home.”

“Father, get on with the story,” Parvana urged. She had heard it before, many times, but she wanted to hear it again.

Father grinned again. “We must teach this child some patience,” he said to Mother. Parvana didn't need to look at her mother to know she was probably thinking they needed to teach her a whole lot more than that.

“All right,” he relented. “On with the story. It was 1880. In the dust around the city of Kandahar, the Afghans were fighting the British. It was a terrible battle. Many were dead. The British were winning, and the Afghans were ready to give up. Their spirits were low, they had no strength to keep fighting. Surrender and capture were starting to look good to them. At least they could rest and maybe save their lives.

“Suddenly a tiny girl, younger than Nooria, burst out from one of the village houses. She ran to the front of the battle and turned to face the Afghan troops. She ripped the veil off her head, and with the hot sun streaming down on her face and her bare head, she called to the troops.

“‘We can win this battle!' she cried. ‘Don't give up hope! Pick yourselves up! Let's go!' Waving her veil in the air like a battle flag, she led the troops into a final rush at the British. The British had no chance. The Afghans won the battle.

“The lesson here, my daughters,” he looked from one to the other, “is that Afghanistan has always been the home of the bravest women in the world. You are all brave women. You are all inheritors of the courage of Malali.”

“We can win this battle!” Maryam cried out, waving her arm around as if she were holding a flag. Mother moved the tea pot out of harm's way.

“How can we be brave?” Nooria asked. “We can't even go outside. How can we lead men into battle? I've seen enough war. I don't want to see any more.”

“There are many types of battles,” Father said quietly.

“Including the battle with the supper dishes,” Mother said.

Parvana made such a face that Father started to laugh. Maryam tried to imitate it, which made Mother and Nooria laugh. Ali woke up,
saw everybody laughing, and he started to laugh, too.

The whole family was laughing when four Taliban soldiers burst through the door.

Ali was the first to react. The slam of the door against the wall shocked him, and he screamed.

Mother leapt to her feet, and in an instant Ali and Maryam were in a corner of the room, shrieking behind her legs.

Nooria covered herself completely with her chador and scrunched herself into a small ball. Young women were sometimes stolen by soldiers. They were snatched from their homes, and their families never saw them again.

Parvana couldn't move. She sat as if frozen at the edge of the supper cloth. The soldiers were giants, their piled-high turbans making them look even taller.

Two of the soldiers grabbed her father. The other two began searching the apartment, kicking the remains of dinner all over the mat.

“Leave him alone!” Mother screamed. “He has done nothing wrong!”

“Why did you go to England for your education?”
the soldiers yelled at Father. “Afghanistan doesn't need your foreign ideas!” They yanked him toward the door.

“Afghanistan needs more illiterate thugs like you,” Father said. One of the soldiers hit him in the face. Blood from his nose dripped onto his white shalwar kameez.

Mother sprang at the soldiers, pounding them with her fists. She grabbed Father's arm and tried to pull him out of their grasp.

One of the soldiers raised his rifle and whacked her on the head. She collapsed on the floor. The soldier hit her a few more times. Maryam and Ali screamed with every blow to their mother's back.

Seeing her mother on the ground finally propelled Parvana into action. When the soldiers dragged her father outside, she flung her arms around his waist. As the soldiers pried her loose, she heard her father say, “Take care of the others, my Malali.” Then he was gone.

Parvana watched helplessly as two soldiers dragged him down the steps, his beautiful shalwar kameez ripping on the rough cement. Then they turned a corner, and she could see them no more.

Inside the room, the other two soldiers were ripping open the toshaks with knives and tossing things out of the cupboard.

Father's books! At the bottom of the cupboard was a secret compartment her father had built to hide the few books that had not been destroyed in one of the bombings. Some were English books about history and literature. They were kept hidden because the Taliban burned books they didn't like.

They couldn't be allowed to find Father's books! The soldiers had started at the top of the cupboard and were working their way down. Clothes, blankets, pots—everything landed on the floor.

Closer and closer they came to the bottom shelf, the one with the false wall. Parvana watched in horror as the soldiers bent down to yank the things out of the bottom shelf.

“Get out of my house!” she yelled. She threw herself at the soldiers with such force that they both fell to the ground. She swung at them with her fists until she was knocked aside. She heard rather than felt the thwack of their sticks on her back. She kept her head hidden in her arms until the beating stopped and the soldiers went away.

Mother got off the floor and had her hands full with Ali. Nooria was still curled up in a terrified ball. It was Maryam who came over to help Parvana.

At the first touch of her sister's hands, Parvana flinched, thinking it was the soldiers. Maryam kept stroking her hair until Parvana realized who it was. She sat up, aching all over. She and Maryam clung to each other, trembling.

She had no idea how long the family stayed like that. They remained in their spots long after Ali stopped screaming and collapsed into sleep.

Mother gently placed the sleeping Ali on an uncluttered spot on the
floor. Maryam had fallen asleep, too, and was carried over to sleep beside her
brother.

“Let's clean up,” Mother said. Slowly, they put the room
back together. Parvana's back and legs ached. Mother moved slowly, too, all
hunched over.

Mother and Nooria replaced things in the cupboard. Parvana got the whisk
broom down from its nail in the lavatory and swept up the spilled rice. She wiped up the
spilled tea with a cloth. The ripped toshaks could be repaired, but that would wait
until tomorrow.

When the room looked somewhat normal again, the family, minus Father,
spread quilts and blankets on the floor and went to bed.

Parvana couldn't sleep. She could hear her mother and Nooria tossing
and turning as well. She imagined every single noise to be either
Father or the Taliban coming back. Each sound made Parvana hopeful and fearful at
the same time.

She missed her father's snoring. He had a soft, pleasant snore.
During the heavy bombing of Kabul, they changed homes many times to try to find a safe
place. Parvana would wake up in the middle of the night and not remember where she was.
As soon as she heard her father's snoring, she knew she was safe.

Tonight, there was no snoring.

Where was her father? Did he have a soft place to sleep? Was he cold? Was
he hungry? Was he scared?

Parvana had never been inside a prison, but she had other relatives who
had been arrested. One of her aunts had been arrested with hundreds of other schoolgirls
for protesting the Soviet occupation of her country. All the Afghan governments put
their enemies in jail.

“You can't be truly Afghan if you don't know someone
who's been in prison,” her mother sometimes said.

No one had told her what prison was like. “You're too young to
know these things,” the grown-ups would tell her. She had to imagine it.

It would be cold, Parvana decided, and dark.

“Mother, turn on the lamp!” She sat bolt upright with a sudden
thought.

“Parvana, hush! You'll wake Ali.”

“Light the lamp,” Parvana whispered. “If they let Father
go, he'll need a light in the window to guide him home.”

“How could he walk? He left his walking stick here. Parvana, go to
sleep. You are not helping the situation.”

Parvana lay down again, but she didn't sleep.

The only window in the room was a small one, high up on one wall. The
Taliban had ordered all windows painted over with black paint so that no one could see
the women inside. “We won't do it,” Father had said. “The window
is so high and so small, no one can possibly see in.” So far, they had gotten away
with leaving it unpainted.

For short periods, on clear days, the sun would come through the window in
a thin stream. Ali and Maryam would sit in that ray of sunshine. Mother and Nooria would
join them there and, for a few moments, the sun would warm the flesh on their arms and
faces. Then the planet would continue its spin, and
the sunbeam
would be gone again.

Parvana kept her eyes on the spot where she thought the window was. The
night was so dark, she could not distinguish between the window and the wall. She kept
watch all night, until the dawn finally pushed the darkness away, and morning peeked in
through the window.

At first light, Mother, Nooria and Parvana stopped pretending they were
asleep. Quietly, so they didn't wake the young ones, they got up and dressed.

For breakfast they chewed on leftover nan. Nooria started to heat water
for tea on the little gas stove in the bathroom, but Mother stopped her. “There is
boiled water left from last night. We'll just drink that. We don't have time
to wait for tea. Parvana and I are going to get your father out of jail.” She said
it the way she might say, “Parvana and I are going to the market to get
peaches.”

The nan fell from Parvana's lips onto the plastic cloth. She
didn't argue, though.

Maybe I'll get to finally see what the inside of a jail looks like,
she thought.

The prison was a long way from their home.
Buses were
not permitted to carry women who did not have a man with them. They would have to walk
the whole way. What if Father was being held somewhere else? What if they were stopped
by the Taliban in the street? Mother wasn't supposed to be out of her home without
a man, or without a note from her husband.

“Nooria, write Mother a note.”

“Don't bother, Nooria. I will not walk around my own city with
a note pinned to my burqa as if I were a kindergarten child. I have a university
degree!”

“Write the note anyway,” Parvana whispered to Nooria, when
Mother was in the washroom. “I'll carry it in my sleeve.”

Nooria agreed. Her penmanship was more grown-up than Parvana's. She
quickly wrote, “I give permission for my wife to be outside.” She signed it
with Father's name.

“I don't think it will do much good,” Nooria whispered,
as she handed Parvana the note. “Most of the Taliban don't know how to
read.”

Parvana didn't answer. She quickly folded the note into a small
square and tucked it into the wide hem of her sleeve.

Nooria suddenly did something very unusual. She gave
her sister a hug. “Come back,” she whispered.

Parvana didn't want to go, but she knew that sitting at home waiting
for them to return would be even harder.

“Hurry up, Parvana,” her mother said. “Your father is
waiting.”

Parvana slipped her feet into her sandals and wound her chador around her
head. She followed Mother out the door.

Helping Mother down the broken stairs was a little like helping Father, as
the billowing burqa made it hard for her to see where she was going.

Mother hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. Parvana thought she might be
having second thoughts. After that moment, though, her mother pulled herself up to her
full height, straightened her back and plunged into the Kabul street.

Parvana rushed after her. She had to run to keep up with her
mother's long, quick steps, but she didn't dare fall behind. There were a
few other women in the street and they all wore the regulation burqa, which made them
all look
alike. If Parvana lost track of her mother, she was afraid
she'd never find her again.

Now and then, her mother stopped beside a man and a woman, or a small
group of men, or even a peddler boy, and held out a photograph of Father. She
didn't say anything, just showed them the photo.