Chap­ter 7 of The Bread­win­ner begins with Par­vana start­ing her day with a sense of pur­pose, head­ing to the mar­ket­place after break­fast. Fol­low­ing her moth­er’s advice, she car­ries her father’s writ­ing tools and a blan­ket, hop­ing to earn mon­ey the way he once did. The pre­vi­ous day’s expe­ri­ence, although chal­leng­ing, inspired her and gave her a new sense of pur­pose. She rel­ished the oppor­tu­ni­ty to escape the house­hold chores and respon­si­bil­i­ties, feel­ing a sense of free­dom as she dis­guised her­self as a boy. With­out her chador and with her hair flow­ing freely, Par­vana felt lighter and more lib­er­at­ed, as if she had momen­tar­i­ly escaped the weight of her real­i­ty.

Arriv­ing at the same spot her father had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied, Par­vana laid out her blan­ket, metic­u­lous­ly recre­at­ing his set­up with pens, paper, and her fan­cy shal­war kameez for sale. Her moth­er had coached her to say she was Kaseem, her father’s nephew, and to tell cus­tomers that her father was ill. This sto­ry was designed to pro­tect them from unwant­ed atten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly because of her father’s arrest. Despite know­ing her own skills, Par­vana was unsure whether she could attract cus­tomers, as doubt lin­gered in her mind. She sat qui­et­ly for what felt like an hour, with no one approach­ing her, feel­ing uncer­tain about her abil­i­ty to suc­ceed. Just as she was begin­ning to lose hope, a Tal­ib sol­dier approached her, send­ing a surge of fear through Par­vana. How­ev­er, she man­aged to main­tain her com­po­sure and con­firmed that she was indeed the let­ter read­er, as she had been instruct­ed.

The sol­dier hand­ed her an old let­ter, addressed to his deceased wife, Fati­ma Azi­ma. Par­vana read aloud the let­ter, which was filled with emo­tion and sor­row, reveal­ing the deep love and loss felt by the man for his wife. She was struck by the raw grief in the let­ter, which paint­ed a pic­ture of a family’s pain and long­ing. After she fin­ished read­ing, the Tal­ib sol­dier spoke of his wife’s death, his grief evi­dent. He thanked Par­vana for read­ing the let­ter and asked if she could write a response. In return for her ser­vice, he hand­ed her some mon­ey before leav­ing, mark­ing a rare moment where Par­vana saw vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and sor­row in some­one who, in oth­er cir­cum­stances, might have been seen as cold and cru­el.

The remain­der of Parvana’s day was filled with unease as she processed her ear­li­er encounter. The inter­ac­tion with the Tal­ib sol­dier had been unset­tling, yet she also felt a sense of accom­plish­ment and pride in her work. After a brief trans­ac­tion where she sold her shal­war kameez, Par­vana expe­ri­enced a mix of sat­is­fac­tion and lin­ger­ing emo­tions from the day’s events. As exhaus­tion began to over­take her, she felt a wave of nos­tal­gia for her father and the life they once shared. Pack­ing up her belong­ings felt like an echo of her past with him, stir­ring a deep sense of long­ing for his pres­ence. The weight of miss­ing him was pal­pa­ble, yet Par­vana con­tin­ued on, deter­mined to car­ry the torch he had left behind.

On her jour­ney home, car­ry­ing the small amount of mon­ey she had earned, Par­vana caught a fleet­ing glimpse of move­ment from a blacked-out win­dow near­by. For a moment, she won­dered if her imag­i­na­tion was play­ing tricks on her, but she could­n’t shake the feel­ing that some­thing was amiss. Despite her uncer­tain­ty, Par­vana felt a new sense of pride and accom­plish­ment, the weight of her actions ground­ing her in a real­i­ty that was both dif­fi­cult and empow­er­ing. With a new­found sense of inde­pen­dence, she ran home, eager to share her day’s expe­ri­ence with her fam­i­ly. In that moment, Par­vana under­stood the sig­nif­i­cance of her work and the strength she had gained through it, know­ing that her jour­ney was just begin­ning.