Read Online Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis - Free Book Online Page B

house to greet them.
    “Do you live here all alone?” Parvana asked.
    “Oh, no. I live here with my grandmother. Come and meet her. She’ll like you a lot.”
    She led them into the house. It was dark inside, and it also stank.
    “I’ve found some children, Grandmother. Isn’t that wonderful? Say hello to my grandmother,” she urged Parvana and Asif.
    At first Parvana thought the girl had gone completely mad, that there was no one else in the room. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the little house.
    She saw a tall cupboard, some shabby mats against the walls and a pile of clothes in the corner.
    The little girl went over to the pile of clothes, knelt down and appeared to be listening to it. “Grandmother says she’s very glad to see you, and to please stay as long as you like.”
    “We’d better take the kid with us,” Asif whispered to Parvana. “She’s as crazy as you are.”
    Parvana was about to agree with Asif when she took a closer look at the mound of clothes.
    She knelt down and put her hand on it. She felt the boniness of a human spine and the slight rise and fall of breath.
    The girl’s grandmother was curled into a ball on a thin mattress, with her back to the door. She had a dark cloth draped over her whole body. Even her face was covered. She did not move or make a sound. Only the tiny movement of her breathing and the absence of the death smell proved to Parvana that the woman was alive.
    The little girl didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong. She took them back outside.
    “Grandmother needs a lot of rest,” she said, before twirling around in a dance of activity.
    Parvana remembered that her own mother had been like that, lying on the toshak at home when her father was in jail. She remembered the woman on the hill.
    This was what happened to grownups when they became too sad to keep going. She wondered whether it would ever happen to her, too.
    She had a hundred questions for the girl, but for the moment she just asked one.
    “What is your name?”
    “Leila,” the girl said, and she fetched them some water and cold rice.
    The food and drink revived Parvana and Asif, but neither of them could coax Hassan to eat. He just didn’t seem interested.
    “He’s almost dead,” Leila said very matter-of-factly.
    “No, he’s not,” Asif insisted. “He’s going to be fine.” He soaked the edge of his shirt with water and put it in Hassan’s mouth. For a long minute it seemed as if Hassan would just let it sit there. Then he started sucking the water out. “See? He’s going to be fine.” He made a paste out of a bit of rice, and Hassan ate that, too.
    There was a well in the clearing with a hand pump, and they were able to wash. Leila brought out clean clothes for them.
    “These were my mother’s,” she said.
    Parvana felt very proud of herself for not laughing at Asif as he came out of the house dressed in a lady’s shalwar kameez until his own clothes were washed and dried. His stick-thin body was lost in the grownup clothes, and a glower covered his whole face.
    Parvana liked being back in girl clothes. The shalwar kameez Leila gave her was light blue with white embroidery down the front. It made her feel almost pretty again.
    In the yard there was a cook-fire with rocks around it that made a place to set pots on. Leila cooked some rice and meat stew for supper. Before serving it, she took a pinch of food from the pot and put it in a little hole she made in the ground with her fingers. Parvana was too tired to ask what she was doing.
    “It’s pigeon stew,” the little girl said. “I hope you like it.”
    Parvana wouldn’t have cared if she were eating vulture. Any food was good food. Asif spooned broth from the stew into Hassan’s mouth. Hassan swallowed everything, keeping his eyes on Asif’s face.
    They ate their evening meal in the one-room house with Leila’s grandmother. Leila talked non-stop as she put some food on a plate, lifted her grandmother’s head