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 away 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
