The Breadwinner – by Deborah Ellis

NINE

"Shauzia?" Parvana whispered.

"Call me Shafiq. And what do I call you?"

"Kaseem. What are you doing here?"

"The same as you, silly. Look, I have to get back to the tea shop. Will you be here for a while?" Parvana nodded. "Good, I'll come back."

Shauzia picked up her tea things and ran back to the shop. Parvana sat there stunned, watching her old classmate blend in with the other tea boys. It was only by looking at them very carefully that Parvana could distinguish her friend from the others. Then, realizing it wasn't a good idea to stare in case someone asked what she was looking at, Parvana looked away. Shauzia melted back into the market.

Shauzia and Parvana had not been very close in school. They had different friends. Parvana thought Shauzia had been better at spelling, but she couldn't remember for certain.

So there were other girls like her in Kabul! She tried to remember who was in Shauzia's family, but didn't think she knew. Her mind was not on the last two customers of the day, and she was glad when she finally saw Shauzia jogging over to her blanket.

"Where do you live?" Shauzia asked. Parvana pointed. "Let's pack up and walk while we talk. Here, I brought you these." She handed Parvana a small twist of paper holding several dried apricots, something she had not eaten in ages. She counted them. There was one for everyone in her household, and an extra one for her to eat now. She bit into it, and a wonderful sweetness flooded her mouth.

"Thanks!" She put the rest of the apricots in her pocket with the day's wages and began to pack up. There was no little gift left on the blanket today. Parvana didn't mind. Seeing Shauzia was quite enough excitement for one day!

"How long have you been doing this?" Shauzia asked as they walked out of the market.

"Almost a month. How about you?"

"Six months. My brother went to Iran to find work nearly a year ago, and we haven't heard from him since. My father died of a bad heart. So I went to work."

"My father was arrested."

"Have you had any news?"

"No. We went to the prison, but they wouldn't tell us anything. We haven't heard anything at all."

"You probably won't. Most people who are arrested are never heard from again. They just disappear. I have an uncle who disappeared."

Parvana grabbed Shauzia's arm and forced her to stop walking. "My father's coming back," she said. "He is coming back!"

Shauzia nodded. "All right. Your father is different. How's business?"

Parvana let go of Shauzia's arm and started walking again. It was easier to talk about business than about her father. "Some days are good, some days are bad. Do you make much money as a tea boy?"

"Not much. There are a lot of us, so they don't have to pay well. Hey, maybe if we work together, we can come up with a better way to make money."

Parvana thought of the gifts left on the blanket. "I'd like to keep reading letters, at least for part of the day, but maybe there's something we could do for the rest of the day."

"I'd like to sell things off a tray. That way I could move with the crowd. But first I need enough money to buy the tray and the things to sell, and we never have extra money."

"We don't, either. Could we really make a lot of money that way?" Often there was not enough money for kerosene, so they could not light the lamps at night. It made the nights very long.

"From what the other boys tell me, I'd make more than I'm making now, but what's the use of talking about it? Do you miss school?"

The girls talked about their old classmates until they turned down Parvana's street, the one with Mount Parvana at the end of it. It was almost like the old days, when Parvana and her friends would walk home from school together, complaining about teachers and homework assignments.

"I live up here," Parvana said, gesturing up the flight of stairs on the outside of her building. "You must come up and say hello to everyone."

Shauzia looked at the sky to try to judge how late it was. "Yes, I'll say hello, but after that I'll have to run. When your mother tries to get me to stay for tea, you must back me up and tell her I can't."

Parvana promised, and up the stairs they went.

Everyone was surprised when she walked in with Shauzia! Everyone embraced her as if she was an old friend, even though Parvana didn't think they had ever met before. "I'll let you leave without eating this time," Mother said, "but now that you know where we are, you must bring your whole family by for a meal."

"There's only my mother and me and my two little sisters left," Shauzia said. "My mother doesn't go out. She's sick all the time. We're living with my father's parents and one of his sisters. Everybody fights all the time. I'm lucky to be able to get away from them and go to work."

"Well, you're welcome here any time," Mother said.

"Are you keeping up with your studies?" Mrs. Weera asked.

"My father's parents don't believe in girls being educated, and since we're living in their house, my mother says we have to do what they say."

"Do they mind you dressing like a boy and going out to work?"

Shauzia shrugged. "They eat the food I buy. How could they mind?"

"I've been thinking of starting up a little school here," Mrs. Weera said to Parvana's surprise. "A secret school, for a small number of girls, a few hours a week. You must attend. Parvana will let you know when."

"What about the Taliban?"

"The Taliban will not be invited." Mrs. Weera smiled at her own little joke.

"What will you teach?"

"Field hockey," Parvana replied. "Mrs. Weera was a physical education teacher."

The idea of holding a secret field hockey school in their apartment was so ridiculous that everyone started to laugh. Shauzia was still laughing when she left for home a few minutes later.

There was much to talk about that night at supper.

"We must pay her mother a visit," Mother said. "I'd like to get her story for our magazine."

"How are you going to publish it?" Parvana asked.

Mrs. Weera answered that. "We will smuggle the stories out to Pakistan, where it will be printed. Then we'll smuggle it back in, a few at a time."

"Who will do the smuggling?" Parvana asked, half afraid they were going to make her do it. After all, if they could turn her into a boy, they could have other ideas for her as well.

"Other women in our organization," Mother answered. "We've had visitors while you've been in the market. Some of our members have husbands who support our work and will help us."

Nooria had ideas for the school. She had been planning to go to teacher's college when she finished high school, before the Taliban changed her plans. Father had given her and Parvana lessons for a while when the schools first closed, but his health was not good, and the practice fell away.

"I could teach arithmetic and history," Nooria said. "Mrs. Weera could teach health and science, and Mother could teach reading and writing."

Parvana didn't like the idea of learning from Nooria. As a teacher, she'd be even bossier than she was as a big sister! Still, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Nooria excited about something, so she kept quiet.

Almost every day, Parvana and Shauzia would see each other in the market. Parvana waited for her friend to come to her. She was still too shy to run among the pack of tea boys, looking for Shauzia. They talked about some day having enough money to buy trays and things to sell from them, but so far neither could come up with a way to make it happen.

One afternoon, when she was between customers, something landed on Parvana's head. She quickly snatched it off. After checking to make sure no one was watching, she took a look at the latest present from the Window Woman. It was a lovely white handkerchief with red embroidery around the edges.

Parvana was about to look up and smile her thanks at the window, in case the Window Woman was watching, when Shauzia ran up to the blanket.

"What do you have there?"

Parvana jumped and stuffed the handkerchief in her pocket. "Nothing. How was your day?"

"The usual, but I've got some news. A couple of tea boys heard of a way to make money. Lots of money."

"How?"

"You're not going to like it. Actually, neither do I, but it will pay better than what we've been doing."

"What is it?"

Shauzia told her. Parvana's mouth dropped open.

Shauzia was right. She didn't like it.