The Breadwinner

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 san dals, 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 look 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 there 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 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. 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 bears, 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 in 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. 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 our 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 the 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 fee, and in an instant Ali and Maryam were in a corner on 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. There 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 solders 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 you 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 dropped 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 the grasp. One of the solders 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 solders dragged her father outside, she flung her arms around his waist. As the solders 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. There were kept hidden because the Taliban burned books they didn’t like. They couldn’t be allowed to find Father’s books! The solders 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 watching 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.