Parvana's Journey (11 page)

TWENTY

Weeks went by. The weather grew colder. There were days without any bread because a convoy of food trucks had been bombed.

“Maybe the mine field will give us something to eat,” Leila said.

“Oh, sure, and what will we cook it with,” Parvana said roughly. “Stop dreaming and grow up.”

Leila started to cry. Parvana left her alone in the tent. Asif was visiting Hassan, who was much better but was being kept in the clinic because it was warmer there. Parvana was glad she didn’t have to worry about him.

She stomped between the tents, pretending to look for her mother, but really just trying to get rid of her anger.

The camp stank of unwashed bodies. There was no place to wash, and it was too cold to get wet, anyway. Parvana didn’t have a sweater or a shawl, and the cold made her mood worse.

“Cover up!” a man spat at her. “You are a woman. You should cover up!”

Mind your own business, Parvana thought. He wasn’t the first man in the camp to say that to her. She would cover up if she had something to cover up with, preferably something warm. She changed direction and walked away from him.

Most of the women stayed inside the tents. The men and boys stood outside wherever there was room to stand, watching and waiting because there was nothing else to do. Everywhere Parvana went she heard coughing and crying, saw children with ugly sores and runny noses, saw people without limbs and people who seemed to have lost their minds. Some of these people talked to themselves. Some of them did a strange dance, rocking and weeping.

Even after being there for weeks, Parvana hadn’t seen the whole camp. Maybe it didn’t end. Maybe it just went on and on — an endless sea of crying, stinking, hungry people.

A man walked by carrying a baby. “Someone please buy my baby so I can feed my family,” he pleaded. “My other children are starving. Someone please buy my baby!”

A loud, desperate cry reached Parvana’s ears, and she realized it was coming from her own mouth.

A woman in a burqa, her face hidden, came up to Parvana and put her arms around her. She spoke softly in Pashtu. Parvana couldn’t understand the words, but she leaned against the woman’s comforting shoulders, returning the hug. Then the woman hurried off to catch up with her husband.

Nothing had changed, but Parvana suddenly felt calmer and stronger. She went back to the lean-to to apologize to Leila and pass the hug along.

Later that day, they heard a plane overhead.

“It’s going to bomb us!” Leila cried, hiding herself under a blanket.

“It doesn’t sound like a bombing plane,” Asif said. “Let’s go and see.”

He and Parvana left the lean-to. A lot of little yellow things were falling from the sky.

“Leila, come out and see,” Parvana called, as one fell not far from where they were standing. “It’s all right. There’s no bomb.”

The people in the camp stared at the bright yellow package for a long minute, wondering if it would explode. A teenaged boy finally walked right up to it, kicked it a bit and then picked it up. He turned it around in his hands and tore open the yellow plastic covering.

“It’s food!” he exclaimed. Then he slammed the parcel close to his chest and ran off.

Food! Parvana could see a few other parcels on the ground, and she ran toward them, but so did a lot of other people. Fights broke out as a hundred people dived for one package. Parvana was jostled by the crowd. She kept a firm grip on Leila and Asif.

“We might as well go back to our lean-to,” she told them. “There’s nothing for us here.”

“There’s lots more parcels over there,” Leila said, pointing toward the mine field. “They look like flowers.”

Parvana looked. The field was dotted with bright yellow.

The children were jostled again as the frustrated crowd surged on the edge of the mine field. Parvana and the others were pushed near the front of the flimsy barrier that separated the safe place from the dangerous place.

“Get back!” Some men with sticks tried to bring order. “Stay out of the field! It’s dangerous!”

But people kept pushing.

“We need that food!”

“My family is starving!”

Parvana heard bits of cries from others, all saying the same thing.

Parvana felt a tug on her arm. She bent down.

“I can get the food parcels,” Leila said into Parvana’s ear. “The land mines won’t hurt me.”

“You stay with me.” People kept shoving and shouting around them. “Do you hear me?” Parvana yelled at Leila. “You stay with me.”

“I’ll be right back,” Leila said, and she darted away.

Parvana reached through the crowd and grabbed Leila’s arm. She held on, even though the little girl kept pulling to get away.

“We should get Leila out of here before she does something stupid,” Parvana shouted to Asif, but her words were lost in the noise of the mob.

Asif shook his head. He couldn’t hear her.

Parvana took a deep breath and was just about to shout her message out again when there was an explosion in the mine field.

Horrified, Parvana gave a great yank on the arm she was clutching, and a child came crashing against her. Parvana stared at the girl in shock.

It was not Leila.

“Leila!” she screamed, pushing her way to the barrier. She saw her sister lying in a heap on the mine field.

The crowd was now silent. Parvana could hear Leila moaning.

“She’s still alive!” Parvana cried. “We have to go and get her!”

“We must wait until the mine-clearing team gets here,” one of the men guarding the field told her.

“When will that be?”

“We expected them two days ago.”

“I have to go and get her!” Parvana started to duck under the string barrier. The guard grabbed her around the waist and held her back.

“You cannot help her! You, too, will be killed.”

“She’s our sister!” Asif started hitting the man with his crutch. “Let her go!”

When the guard raised his arms to protect himself from Asif’s crutch, Parvana broke away and slipped under the barrier.

She didn’t think about the mines planted in the ground. She didn’t think about the crowd yelling at her from behind the barrier. All she could think of was Leila.

She finally reached the little girl. Leila was covered with blood. The mine had damaged her belly as well as her legs. She looked up at Parvana and whimpered.

Parvana knelt down beside her and stroked her hair. “Don’t be afraid, little sister,” Parvana said. Then she gathered Leila up in her arms and walked back across the mine field to the camp.

Their nurse friend was waiting for them at the barrier. People helped Parvana put Leila gently on the ground. Parvana sat down and held Leila’s head in her lap. She was dimly aware of Asif kneeling beside her, and of the nurse trying to help.

Leila was trying to say something. Parvana leaned down so she could hear.

The little girl’s voice was thin with pain. “They were so pretty,” she said. And then she died.

A great deal of activity began to swirl around Parvana, but none of it touched her. She knew Asif was crying beside her. She knew the crowd was talking and that people were pushing in to see what had happened, but the grief inside Parvana was a solid blackness that kept everything away. She kept her head down, looking into Leila’s face. She closed Leila’s eyes and smoothed down her hair.

“Another dead child!” a woman cried out. “How many dead Afghan children does the world need? Why is the world so hungry for the lives of our children?”

The woman knelt beside Leila’s body.

“Whose child is this?” she asked.

“She is the sister of these two children,” someone said.

“Where are her parents? Does she have parents? What have we come to, that a girl can die without her mother?”

Something in the woman’s voice reached through Parvana’s blackness.

Parvana raised her head. The woman was wearing a burqa. Parvana reached out her hand and raised the front of the burqa.

Her mother’s face looked back at her.

Parvana started to cry. She cried and cried and did not think she ever would be able to stop.

TWENTY-ONE

Dear Shauzia:

I’m writing this letter while I sit at the edge of another cemetery. It’s the only quiet place in the camp. I’m wearing a warm sweater Mother found for me.

We buried Leila yesterday. I put rocks around her grave, just like I put them around my father’s grave so long ago.

It’s not the same, though. I’m not alone this time. I have my old family
 —
Mother, Nooria and my little sister Maryam. And I have my new family
 —
my two brothers, Hassan and Asif.

My baby brother Ali died last winter. Mother thinks he died of pneumonia, but she’s not sure. There was no doctor around at the time.

I told them how Father died. My mother says it wasn’t my fault.

There’s a lot I haven’t told her yet, but there’s time. Our stories can wait.

It was pure chance that we found each other again. Mother’s tent is on the far side of the camp. She was at the clinic with a neighbor woman who was too shy to go by herself to see the nurse. When she heard the explosion, she came running out.

I would have found her eventually, though. It just would have taken me a while.

She and Nooria are part of a women’s organization
in the camp. The Taliban are busy fighting the war so
they don’t bother women in the camp very much.

The women’s organization runs a small school and tries to match up people who need things with the things that they need. Mother said Nooria is especially good at this. I can see how she would be. She’d be good at anything that allows her to boss people around.

She hasn’t been bossy to me yet, but just wait. A mean old nanny goat doesn’t change into a dove just because a little time has passed.

It’s wonderful to be complaining about Nooria again! It makes me feel all warm inside, like there is at least something normal in the world.

I gave mother the women’s magazine I’d carried all the way from Kabul. She was very happy to see it. She’s going to pass it around to other women in the camp to cheer them up.

We hear a lot of rumors. Some people say the Americans are doing the bombing. Some people say the Taliban have left Kabul. People say a lot of things. They even say that someone sitting comfortably in one city can press a button and destroy another city, but I know that can’t be true.

“Writing another letter to your friend?” Asif hobbled over and eased himself down to the ground beside her.

Parvana didn’t answer him, hoping he’d take the hint and leave her in peace.

“I’m surprised you even have a friend,” Asif said. “You probably made her up. You’re probably writing all those letters to yourself.”

“Oh, go away,” Parvana said.

Asif, of course, stayed where he was. He gave her a few moments of silence and then said, “I’ve just been talking with your mother. I talked with your sisters, too. They’re both much prettier than you are. I don’t think you’re even from the same family.”

“You and Nooria should get along well,” said Parvana. “You’re both unbearable.”

“You’re probably going to stay here with your family now, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, if you think I’m going to stay with you and them, you can forget it.”

Here we go again, thought Parvana. “I don’t recall asking you to stay.”

“I mean, your sisters are pretty, and your mother is nice, but deep down, they’re probably all as crazy as you are.”

“Probably.”

Asif was quiet again for a moment. Parvana knew what was coming. She waited.

“You probably want me to go,” he said. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

“I want you to go.”

“You’d probably hate it if I stayed.”

“Yes, I would.”

“All right then,” said Asif. “I’ll stay. Just to annoy you.”

Parvana smiled and turned back to her letter.

It’s been a long journey, and it’s not over yet. I know I won’t be living in this camp for the rest of my life, but where will I go? I don’t know.

What will happen to us now? Will we be hit by a bomb? Will the Taliban come here and kill us because they are angry at being made to leave Kabul? Will we be buried under the snow when it comes and disappear forever?

These are all worries for tomorrow. For today, my mother is here, and my sisters, and my new brothers.

I hope you are in France. I hope you are warm and your stomach is full and you are surrounded by purple flowers. I hope you are happy and not too lonely.

One way or another, I’ll get to France, and I’ll be waiting for you at the top of the Eiffel Tower, less than twenty years from now.

Until then, I remain,

Your very best friend,

Parvana.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Afghanistan borders Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is a nation of incredible wild beauty, with mountains, deserts and fertile valleys.

For nearly forty years, Afghanistan’s people have had to endure war, from the Soviet invasion to the civil war to the brutality of the Taliban to the Allied bombing and fighting to dislodge the Taliban from power. Millions of Afghans have been injured, killed, turned into refugees or orphaned. Many have gone mad, unable to cope with the unrelenting loss and fear.

Afghanistan is one of the most heavily land-mined nations on the face of the earth. Land mines are cheap weapons. They are easy to put on the ground, effective at controlling movement over a piece of land, and they create a long-lasting demoralization of a population. Land mines are like the terrible relatives who will not leave — even now, an average of fifty Afghans are killed or injured every month by land mines that were put on the ground a generation ago.

Children are often the victims of these small bombs, as they are often the ones to gather firewood, take the goats to pasture or simply be out playing in any way they can. Afghanistan is full of children and others who have one leg or no arms or are blind because of land mines. For those who become disabled due to land mines or other war injuries, there are very few resources.

For all the difficulties Afghanistan faces, there are many heroes there, doing incredible work to try to rebuild the country. Schools are being built, teachers trained, land mines removed, wells dug, and buildings repaired from bomb damage. The youth of Afghanistan are reaching forward, wanting to embrace a future that has got to be better than the past.

When I re-read
Parvana’s Journey
, it strikes me that the book, while specifically about Afghanistan, could be about children wandering a landscape of war in way too many parts of the world.

It is possible to create a world where problems are not dealt with by dropping bombs on someone. We have the brains to make better decisions, to hold our leaders accountable to some very basic level of decency. We have the ability to recreate the world starting from wherever we are — in our schools, our homes, our communities. We can learn about each other and practice in our own lives what we want to see our leaders practice on the world stage — active curiosity about others, active kindness toward others and active compassion toward every living thing on the planet.

I look forward to the day when
Parvana’s Journey
and the whole Breadwinner series is not a reflection of a brutal reality, but reads instead like some long-ago fictional fairy tale, a story out of the past that we have put far behind us.