rocks later One thing Afghanistan had was plenty of rocks Rise yourself up now boy one of the men said to her Parvana’s hair was clipped short and she wore the plain blanket shawl and shalwar kameez of a boy There is no point staying in the dirt Leave him alone another man said He is mourning for his father We all have dead to mourn but we do not have to do it in the dirt Come on boy get to your feet Be the strong son your father would be proud of Go away Parvana thought Go away and leave me alone with my father But she said nothing She allowed herself to be pulled to her feet She brushed the dust from her knees and looked around at the graveyard It was a large graveyard for such a small village The graves spread out in a haphazard pattern as if the villagers thought that each person they buried would be the last Parvana remembered digging up bones in a graveyard in Kabul with her friend Shauzia to earn money I don’t want anyone digging up my father she thought and she resolved to pile so many rocks on his grave that no one would bother him She wanted to tell people about him That he was a teacher that he had lost his leg when his school was
bombed That he had loved her and told her stories and now she was all alone in this big sad land But she kept silent The men around her were mostly old The younger ones were damaged somehow with an arm missing or only one eye or no feet All the other young men were at war or dead A lot of people have died here the man who had helped her said Sometimes we are bombed by the Taliban Sometimes we are bombed by the other side We used to be farmers Now we are targets Parvana’s father hadn’t been killed by a bomb He had Who are you with now boy Parvana’s jaw hurt as she held her face tight to keep I am alone she managed to say You will come home with me My wife will take care just died from crying of you There were only men at her father’s graveside The women had to stay in their homes The Taliban didn’t like women walking around on their own but Parvana had given up trying to understand why the Taliban hated women There were other things to think about
Come boy the man urged His voice was kind Parvana left her father’s grave and went with him The other men followed She could hear the scuff of their sandals on the hard dusty ground What is your name the man asked Kaseem Parvana replied giving him her boy-name She didn’t think any more about whether to trust someone with the truth about herself The truth could get her arrested or killed It was easier and safer not to trust anyone We will go first to your shelter and retrieve your belongings Then we will go to my home The man knew where Parvana and her father had set up their lean-to He had been one of the men who had carried her father’s body to the graveyard Parvana thought he might have been one of the men who had checked in on them regularly helping with her father’s care but she couldn’t be sure Everything about the past few weeks was blurry in her memory The lean-to was on the edge of the village against a mud wall that had crumbled from a bomb blast There wasn’t much to retrieve Her father had been buried in all the clothes that he owned Parvana crawled into the lean-to and gathered her things together She wished she could have some privacy so she
could cry and think about her father but the roof and walls were made of a sheet of clear plastic She knew the man could see her as he waited patiently for her to go home with him So she concentrated on the task in front of her and did not allow herself to cry She rolled the blankets her extra shalwar kameez and the little cook-pot into a bundle This was the same bundle she had carried on their long journey from Kabul Now she would have to carry the other things too her father’s shoulder bag where he kept his paper pens and little things like matches and the precious bundle of books they’d kept hidden from the Taliban She backed out of the lean-to pulling the bundles out with her She took the plastic down from where it had been spread over a ragged corner of the building folded it up and added it to her blankets I’m ready she said The man picked up one of the bundles Come with me he said leading the way through the village Parvana paid no attention to the rough mud-walled houses and piles of bomb-damaged rubble that made up the village She had seen many places like it traveling with her father She no longer tried to imagine what the village might have looked like before it was bombed with homes
