Chap­ter 10 of The Bread­win­ner fol­lows Par­vana and her friend Shauzia as they under­take a grim and moral­ly com­pli­cat­ed task: dig­ging up bones in a war-rav­aged part of Kab­ul to sell for mon­ey. Ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant and con­flict­ed about the ethics of their actions, Par­vana is per­suad­ed by Shauzia, who empha­sizes that their pri­ma­ry con­cern is sur­vival. The two girls trav­el to an aban­doned grave­yard, pass­ing through a land­scape scarred by bomb­ings and destruc­tion. The sight of ruined build­ings and dis­turbed graves rein­forces the des­o­late and bleak nature of their sur­round­ings, while crows pick through the bones, fur­ther empha­siz­ing the dev­as­ta­tion that has tak­en over the city. Despite their unease, the need for mon­ey push­es them for­ward, and they begin their unset­tling work.

Upon arriv­ing at the grave­yard, they learn about a bone broker—a man who buys the bones scav­enged by peo­ple like them. Par­vana, still curi­ous about the bones’ pur­pose, is reas­sured by Shauzia, who tells her that their task is sim­ple: they are there to make mon­ey, not to ques­tion what the bones will be used for. Despite the unset­tling nature of their task, the girls start dig­ging, and to their sur­prise, they quick­ly uncov­er mul­ti­ple skulls. They attempt to light­en the mood by jok­ing about the skulls, even nam­ing one of them as their “mas­cot,” try­ing to main­tain some sense of nor­mal­cy amid the grim cir­cum­stances. This moment of lev­i­ty offers a tem­po­rary reprieve from the grim real­i­ty they are con­fronting, but it also under­scores the deep emo­tion­al toll of their actions.

As the two girls con­tin­ue to dig, their con­ver­sa­tion shifts to the poten­tial dan­gers they face. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­turb­ing the dead weighs on them, and the ever-present threat of land mines lurk­ing beneath the sur­face adds an addi­tion­al lay­er of ten­sion to their task. Despite the heavy atmos­phere, they push on and man­age to col­lect a sub­stan­tial amount of bones. When they meet with the bone bro­ker, they are paid much more than Par­vana would usu­al­ly earn in three days. This unex­pect­ed wealth brings a fleet­ing sense of excite­ment, and the girls begin to make plans for more dig­ging the next day. The pay­ment offers a brief sense of relief from their ongo­ing strug­gle, but it also high­lights the harsh­ness of the world they are liv­ing in.

Lat­er, as they reflect on their day under the brief sun­light that pierces through the clouds, Par­vana and Shauzia dis­cuss the sig­nif­i­cance of their expe­ri­ence. They express a shared sense of nos­tal­gia, jok­ing that they will remem­ber this day when they are old­er and wealth­i­er, a poignant acknowl­edg­ment of how the des­per­ate cir­cum­stances of their youth are shap­ing their lives. In this con­ver­sa­tion, they rec­og­nize the stark real­i­ty of their sit­u­a­tion and under­stand that their actions are dri­ven by the neces­si­ty to sur­vive in a world filled with hard­ship and scarci­ty. The brief moment of hope for a future where they are no longer depen­dent on such grim means of sur­vival offers a bit­ter­sweet con­trast to the bleak­ness of their present real­i­ty.

As the chap­ter con­cludes, Par­vana heads home, her mind occu­pied with thoughts of how to hide a por­tion of the mon­ey she earned, secur­ing a small bit of finan­cial free­dom for her­self. Despite her efforts to wash away the unset­tling images of the day, the mem­o­ry of the grin­ning skulls and the grim task they under­took lingers in her mind. The expe­ri­ence has marked her deeply, and she is left with a mix­ture of excite­ment for the future and unease about the path she has cho­sen. This chap­ter high­lights the emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty of sur­viv­ing in a war-torn envi­ron­ment, where even the small­est vic­to­ries come at a great cost. It explores themes of sur­vival, moral­i­ty, and the loss of inno­cence, all while show­cas­ing the resilience required to nav­i­gate a world where child­hood and tragedy are inter­twined.