In the open­ing chap­ter of “The Bread­win­ner,” we meet Par­vana, an eleven-year-old girl liv­ing under the oppres­sive rule of the Tal­iban in Kab­ul, Afghanistan. She silent­ly wish­es she could read as well as her father, who is blind in one leg due to a bomb­ing inci­dent while teach­ing at a local high school. Par­vana has been forced to stay indoors for a year, along with her moth­er and younger sib­lings, due to the Taliban’s ban on women and girls in pub­lic life and edu­ca­tion.

Despite the restric­tions, Par­vana helps her father nav­i­gate the crowd­ed mar­ket­place, where he reads let­ters for illit­er­ate cus­tomers. She sits qui­et­ly, her face bare­ly vis­i­ble beneath her chador, anx­ious about the sol­diers who patrol the mar­ket. Par­vana’s fam­i­ly has suf­fered immense­ly, los­ing their home and sta­bil­i­ty due to the con­tin­u­ous vio­lence in Afghanistan. The chap­ter high­lights the con­trast between Parvana’s past life—filled with edu­ca­tion and normalcy—and her cur­rent exis­tence, cen­tered around sur­vival amidst destruc­tion.

As cus­tomers come and go, Par­vana admires the bustling mar­ket filled with men shop­ping and street ven­dors sell­ing tea. She longs to par­tic­i­pate in life out­side her home and miss­es her friends and school, espe­cial­ly her favorite sub­ject: his­to­ry. She recalls the many con­querors of Afghanistan and feels a con­nec­tion to her resilient cul­ture, despite the dif­fi­cul­ties of liv­ing under Tal­iban rule.

The author cap­tures Par­vana’s day-to-day real­i­ties, includ­ing her bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ries of a rich­er life, now replaced by a strug­gle for sur­vival. As she and her father pre­pare to return home, the scene illus­trates their pre­car­i­ous existence—scholarly ambi­tions damp­ened by oppres­sion. Final­ly, as they nav­i­gate the unsafe and dam­aged streets back to their apart­ment, we see the emo­tion­al weight of liv­ing in con­stant fear as well as their fad­ing mem­o­ries of a once-vibrant Kab­ul .

In Chap­ter One, the nar­ra­tor reflects on their inter­view for a high-secu­ri­ty job they’ve nev­er been qual­i­fied for before. The inter­view­er, Adela, Vice Sec­re­tary of “Expa­tri­a­tion,” has an eye patch and hay-like blond hair, and abrupt­ly asks about the narrator’s Cam­bo­di­an her­itage, specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enc­ing their moth­er as a refugee. This leads to a dis­cus­sion about the ter­mi­nol­o­gy used for dis­placed peo­ple; Adela prefers the term “expats” despite the impli­ca­tion of their trau­mat­ic his­to­ry. The con­ver­sa­tion reveals that the nar­ra­tor’s moth­er, though a refugee, nev­er iden­ti­fied her­self as such, empha­siz­ing the com­plex­i­ties of iden­ti­ty inter­twined with cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions.

As the nar­ra­tive pro­gress­es, it is revealed that the British gov­ern­ment has devel­oped time trav­el, plan­ning to extract indi­vid­u­als from his­tor­i­cal moments of crisis—wars and epidemics—yet doing so only as a method to pre­vent alter­ing his­to­ry. The nar­ra­tor is to serve as a “bridge,” assist­ing these “expats” as they adjust to con­tem­po­rary life. This unortho­dox project intends to main­tain their human rights while track­ing their adjust­ment under mon­i­tor­ing.

The nar­ra­tor express­es their excite­ment for the job, feel­ing stag­nant in their posi­tion as a trans­la­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in South­east Asia. They recall their ear­ly child­hood ambi­tions shaped by their moth­er’s aspi­ra­tions for them. How­ev­er, the job aligns more with their her­itage and the skills they’ve devel­oped. Ten­sion aris­es among the staff regard­ing ter­mi­nol­o­gy, high­light­ing the philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions of how lan­guage shapes iden­ti­ty and per­cep­tion.

The meet­ing shifts to an urgent brief­ing about their first expat, Com­man­der Gra­ham Gore, a fig­ure from the 19th cen­tu­ry. He arrives with a dis­tinct pres­ence, strug­gling to com­pre­hend the world he’s been thrust into after being extract­ed from his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances.

Gore, who is grap­pling with mod­ern life, embod­ies a tran­si­tion­al fig­ure, both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly. The nar­ra­tor intro­duces him to con­tem­po­rary cus­toms and tech­nol­o­gy, lead­ing to moments of humor and reflec­tion on soci­etal changes. As they bond, the jux­ta­po­si­tion of their vast­ly dif­fer­ent back­grounds unfolds, fos­ter­ing humor and dis­com­fort, which nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of his­tor­i­cal trau­ma and mod­ern iden­ti­ty .