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
in good repair children playing and flowers blooming Who had time for flowers now It was hard enough just finding something to eat every day She kept her head down and kicked at pebbles as she walked Here is my house The man stood before a small mud hut Five times my house has been destroyed by bombs and five times I have built it back up again he said proudly A flap of tattered green cloth covered the doorway He held it aside and motioned for Parvana to go in Here is the grieving boy he said to his wife The woman crouching over her needlework put aside her sewing and stood up Parvana was young so the woman did not put on her burqa Three small girls watched from a corner of the room As a guest Parvana was given the best spot in the dark one-room house She sat on the thickest mat on the floor and drank the tea the man’s wife brought her The tea was weak but its warmth soothed her We lost our son the woman said He died of a sickness like two of our daughters Maybe you could stay here and be our son I have to find my family Parvana said You have family besides your father
My mother my older sister Nooria my younger sister Maryam and my baby brother Ali Parvana saw them in her mind as she spoke their names She wanted to cry again She wanted to hear her mother tell her to do her chores or Nooria say something bossy or feel the little ones arms around her I have family in many places too the woman said She was about to say more when some neighbor men came into the house She quickly took her burqa down from a nail put it over her head and fetched the men some tea Then she sat in a corner quiet and faceless The men sat on the mats along the walls and looked at Parvana They had been at the graveside Do you have other family somewhere one of them Parvana repeated their names It was easier the second asked time Are they in Pakistan I don’t know where they are Parvana said My father and I traveled from Kabul to look for them They went to Mazar-e-Sharif for my sister’s wedding but the Taliban took over the city and now I don’t know where they are My father and I spent the winter in a camp north of Kabul He was ill then but when spring came he thought he was
