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    The Breadwinner
    The Breadwinner
    The Breadwinner
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    The Breadwinner

    By Deborah Ellis

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    About this ebook

    "All girls [should read] The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis." — Malala Yousafzai, New York Times

    The first book in Deborah Ellis’s riveting Breadwinner series is an award-winning novel about loyalty, survival, families and friendship under extraordinary circumstances during the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

    Eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. Parvana’s father — a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed — works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left without someone who can earn money or even shop for food.

    As conditions for the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy, and become the breadwinner.

    The fifteenth anniversary edition includes a special foreword by Deborah Ellis as well as a new map, an updated author’s note and a glossary to provide young readers with background and context. All royalties from the sale of this book will go to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. Parvana’s Fund supports education projects for Afghan women and children.

     

    Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3
    Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

    CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3
    Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGroundwood Books
    Release dateSep 1, 2000
    ISBN9781554980079
    The Breadwinner
    Author

    Deborah Ellis

    DEBORAH ELLIS is the author of The Breadwinner, which has been published in thirty languages. She has won the Governor General’s Award, the Middle East Book Award, the Peter Pan Prize, the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award. A recipient of the Order of Canada, Deborah has donated more than $2 million in royalties to organizations such as Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Mental Health Without Borders and the UNHCR. She lives in Simcoe, Ontario.

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      Book preview

      The Breadwinner - Deborah Ellis

      Cover: The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. Reccomended by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai, 15th Anniversary Edition, First Book in the Breadwinner SeriesTitle page: The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. Published by Groundwood Books.

      Copyright © 2000, 2015 by Deborah Ellis

      First published in the USA in 2001

      Fifteenth anniversary edition with foreword and revised note published in paperback in Canada and the USA in 2015 by Groundwood Books

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

      Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

      or c/o Publishers Group West

      1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

      We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Ontario Arts Council.

      Logos: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Ellis, Deborah, author

      The breadwinner / by Deborah Ellis.

      First published in 2000; fifteenth anniversary re-issue with updates.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-55498-765-8 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-55498-007-9 (epub).—

      ISBN 978-1-55498-581-4 (mobi)

      I. Title.

      PS8559.L5494B73 2015 jC813’.54 C2014-906799-2

      C2014-906800-X

      Cover illustration by Aurélia Fronty

      Design by Michael Solomon

      To the children of war

      FOREWORD

      It’s been thirty-six years since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. It’s been twenty-six years since their departure marked the start of the bloody civil war. It’s been nineteen years since the capture of Kabul by the Taliban army, and fourteen years since that terrible day in September that unleashed events leading to the Taliban’s removal from power.

      That’s an awful lot of war for a country that’s barely the size of Texas.

      My involvement with Afghanistan began when the news of the crimes of the Taliban hit the Toronto newspapers back in 1996. Since then, I have been trying to understand what war does to people.

      War is made by people living in safety who make the decision to take risks with the lives of others whose opinions on the matter are not even solicited. War is made by those who profit from the manufacturing of weaponry. War is made by people who are too lazy to put the creative work and compassion into coming up with a solution to their problems that does not involve murder.

      I’ve seen the way bombs and bullets shatter human bodies and devastate families. I’ve learned what happens when the destruction of infrastructure leads to bad water, food shortages and the lack of medical care. And I’ve learned from refugees about how their lives have been derailed and reduced to Waiting — for food, for shelter, for documents, for peace.

      Through all the tales of crime and chaos, there have been heroes — giants of courage — who, in big ways and small, put human decency above all else.

      I’ve met teachers around the world who carve out little niches of safety and childhood for kids in need. I’ve met librarians who remind us that human beings are capable of creating things noble and sublime. I’ve met builders and farmers, health workers and home workers who go through incredible difficulties just to make the next day, the next hour, a little bit better for those around them. I’ve met parents of dead children who take in children of dead parents, raising them with love and care.

      And I’ve met children who cast aside the hatreds of the older generation and work toward building a world of radical kindness and beauty.

      In today’s warfare, ninety-five percent of the casualties are civilians. This means that when we give our governments permission to go to war, we are giving them permission to kill people who are just like us — who complain about the weather, love their children and wonder what to have for dinner. People who have done us no harm.

      Books can help us remember what we have in common as humans.

      That’s what I try to do with mine.

      In this fifteenth anniversary edition of The Breadwinner, I would like to thank all the readers who have embraced Parvana and her companions, who have followed her journey with compassion as though she were a close friend. I thank all the teachers, librarians and parents who have introduced the book to the readers in their care. And I thank, most deeply, the people of Afghanistan. They deserve, like we all deserve, to live in peace forever.

      Deborah Ellis

      2015

      Map of Afghanistan

      ONE

      I can read that letter as well as father can, whispered Parvana 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

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