Chap­ter 4: After a long and exhaust­ing vis­it to the prison, Par­vana and her moth­er returned home, their bod­ies weighed down by fatigue. Par­vana, drained from the jour­ney, leaned heav­i­ly on her moth­er for sup­port, feel­ing every ache in her body. As she removed her san­dals, Par­vana was hor­ri­fied to see the state of her feet, cov­ered in blis­ters and blood. Her mother’s con­di­tion was far worse, and it became clear to Par­vana that her moth­er hadn’t stepped out­side since the Tal­iban had tak­en con­trol of Kab­ul a year and a half ago. She had cho­sen to stay inside, com­fort­ed by the idea her hus­band had giv­en her—to stay home and write when she could, rather than risk ven­tur­ing out into the increas­ing­ly hos­tile world out­side.

Parvana’s father had always insist­ed that Fatana, her moth­er, need­ed to observe the world around her to cap­ture its essence in her writ­ing. He believed it was cru­cial for her to stay informed and engaged, despite the grow­ing dan­ger. Despite his gen­tle encour­age­ment, a truce had emerged between them; he had believed that the edu­cat­ed, like his wife, should stay and help rebuild Afghanistan rather than flee­ing the coun­try. Par­vana hadn’t been aware of the toll that their trek had tak­en on her moth­er, nor the emo­tion­al strain she had been endur­ing. Now, as her mother’s exhaus­tion and despair became clear, Par­vana real­ized the weight of her mother’s deci­sion to stay, one that had been marked by silent sac­ri­fice and the slow ero­sion of her spir­it.

When they final­ly reached home, her moth­er col­lapsed onto the toshak, too over­come with exhaus­tion and emo­tion to even respond to Nooria’s attempts to assist her. Par­vana, though exhaust­ed her­self, was too focused on the con­cerns sur­round­ing their miss­ing father to pay much atten­tion to her mother’s break­down. Instead, Maryam, Parvana’s younger sis­ter, did her best to com­fort her, though her efforts seemed insuf­fi­cient to alle­vi­ate Parvana’s pain. Par­vana shared her wor­ries with Noo­ria, con­fess­ing that no news had come about their father. The family’s uncer­tain­ty about his where­abouts weighed heav­i­ly on them all, and Par­vana was left to grap­ple with the immense emo­tion­al toll of not know­ing if her father was alive or dead. As night fell, Par­vana’s trou­bled sleep was filled with dreams of sol­diers, their harsh­ness echo­ing in her mind, while her moth­er con­tin­ued to show signs of dis­tress.

The next morn­ing, Par­vana was shocked to find her moth­er still lying on the toshak, unre­spon­sive to the family’s attempts to offer her food. The days passed slow­ly, with the atmos­phere in the house grow­ing more tense as their sup­plies dwin­dled. Par­vana and Noo­ria did their best to keep the younger chil­dren calm, but the bur­den of their sit­u­a­tion weighed heav­i­ly on them. With food becom­ing scarce, Par­vana was forced to con­front the harsh real­i­ty that they had no more pro­vi­sions. In an attempt to rouse her moth­er from her depres­sion, Par­vana spoke to her soft­ly, but Noo­ria stopped her, telling Par­vana that their moth­er was far beyond the reach of com­fort or rea­son. Their moth­er was in the grip of a deep sad­ness, one that couldn’t be eas­i­ly over­come, and Noo­ria explained that they would need to face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sur­vival with­out her imme­di­ate help.

Frus­tra­tion began to build between the sis­ters as the prospect of star­va­tion loomed clos­er. Parvana’s feet, still sore from the jour­ney, ached with each step, but the press­ing need to feed her fam­i­ly moti­vat­ed her to act. See­ing the des­per­ate faces of her younger sib­lings, Par­vana made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to ven­ture out into the world beyond their home in search of food. This moment marked a sig­nif­i­cant shift in her role with­in the fam­i­ly, as the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide for their sur­vival began to fall on her shoul­ders. It was no longer just a mat­ter of sur­vival for her moth­er and father—it had become Parvana’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to care for the fam­i­ly, no mat­ter the cost. The weight of this new role was immense, but Par­vana knew it was some­thing she had to do to keep her fam­i­ly alive, mark­ing a turn­ing point in her own jour­ney toward inde­pen­dence and resilience.