Breadwinner

By AM Saturday, January 29, 2011

Share Tweet Share Share Email

I picked up this book one day while browsing through a Dublin bookshop on the hunt for something that my 9 year old daughter might like. She reads voraciously and it is hard to keep up with her appetite for new material. A novel blurbed as ‘starvation or survival – a girl’s life under Taliban rule’, it was the story of a young girl in Afghanistan who had to become a ‘boy’ in order to ensure the survival of her family after her father had been imprisoned by the theocratic authorities.

While I reckoned it would be ideal for my daughter I thought it best to browse through a few of its pages before letting her have it. Once started I did not leave it down until I had finished such was its beautiful simplicity. When she got to it she read it just as quickly and then asked for the remaining books in the series.

The Taliban are a crowd of religious thugs who have oppressed Afghan society since first seizing control of Kabul in 1996. Even whey they were displaced as a result of the US invasion they continued to target those who would not succumb to their superstitions. A particular target for their religious wrath has been women. They were compelled to stay indoors and if they needed to go out they were either to be accompanied by a male or have a note from a male giving them permission to be outdoors. When on the street they had to wear a burka. Females had been banned from obtaining schooling, education being a men only area. Religions always seem to privilege men. Perhaps it is all to do with blaming Eve.

Parvana, the novel’s central character, is part of a family that in the past had been both educated and lived outside the poverty trap. But due to homes being continuously wrecked by bombing they were now reduced to living in a tiny flat; and education, for the females at least, was now history.

Age allowed the young Parvana to turn the tables on the Taliban. During the arrest of her father the religious thugs had beaten her mother to a pulp. The family had to be sustained but with no male to go onto the streets the task ahead was formidable. The oldest daughter was too physically mature to disguise herself as a male so the task fell to Parvana. She took to the streets as the breadwinner. At such a tender age her skills were limited but she could read and as a result people would ask her to read letters they had received and were unable to read themselves. She also sold cigarettes from a tray she had strapped to her neck and which perched at her waist, much like used to happen at soccer games or cinemas in Ireland. Survival was the name of the game and survive she did along with her family.

I did not pick the book because I wanted my daughter to have some acquaintance with violent religious zeal. I purchased for her John Steinbeck’s The Pearl at the same time. Having read it when I was about her age I wanted her to share something from my history. Breadwinner was more to broaden her reading horizons. Since then she has merely said she enjoyed the book but has mentioned nothing about its religious dimension. She will in time discover for herself how religious zealots will try to constrain her and dictate to her how she shall live her life. She will be well warned to disregard them and permit them no encroachment. But for now the book is one that has a character she might identify with, an eleven year old girl who pushed back against prejudice and shackles for the better of her family.

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. Oxford: OUP. 2004.