Free The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis Page A

it.”
    Parvana spread the blanket, wishing she were back in the market, sitting under the window where her secret friend lived.
    The two girls looked at each other, each hoping the other would make the first move.
    â€œWe’re here to make money, right?” Shauzia said. Parvana nodded. “Then let’s make money.” She grabbed hold of the bone that was sticking out of the ground and pulled. It came out of the dirt as if it were a carrot being pulled up from a garden. Shauzia tossed it on the blanket.
    Not willing to let Shauzia get the better of her, Parvana took up her board and started scraping away the soil. The bombs had donemuch of the work for them. Many bones were barely covered by dirt and were easy to get at.
    â€œDo you think they’d mind us doing this?” Parvana asked.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe people who are buried here. Do you think they’d mind us digging them up?”
    Shauzia leaned on her board. “Depends on the type of people they were. If they were nasty, stingy people, they wouldn’t like it. If they were kind and generous people, they wouldn’t mind.”
    â€œWould you mind?”
    Shauzia looked at her, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again and returned to her digging. Parvana didn’t ask her again.
    A few minutes later, Parvana unearthed a skull. “Hey, look at this!” She used the board to loosen the ground around it, then dug the rest of it up with her fingers so she wouldn’t break it. She held it up to Shauzia as though it were a trophy.
    â€œIt’s grinning.”
    â€œOf course it’s grinning. He’s glad to be out in the sunshine after being in the dark groundfor so long. Aren’t you glad, Mr. Skull?” She made the skull nod. “See? I told you.”
    â€œProp him up on the gravestone. He’ll be our mascot.”
    Parvana placed him carefully on the broken headstone. “He’ll be like our boss, watching us to make sure we do it right.”
    They cleaned out the first grave and moved on to the next, taking Mr. Skull with them. He was joined in a little while by another skull. By the time their blanket was full of bones, there were five skulls perched in a row, grinning down at the girls.
    â€œI have to go to the bathroom,” Parvana said. “What am I going to do?”
    â€œI have to go, too.” Shauzia looked around. “There’s a doorway over there,” she said, pointing toward a nearby ruined building. “You go first. I’ll keep watch.”
    â€œOver me?”
    â€œOver our bones.”
    â€œI should go right out here?”
    â€œNo one is paying attention to you. It’s either that or hold it.”
    Parvana nodded and put down her board shovel. She’d been holding it for awhile already.
    Checking to make sure no one was looking, she headed over to the sheltered doorway.
    â€œHey, Kaseem.”
    Parvana looked back at her friend.
    â€œWatch out for land mines,” Shauzia said. Then she grinned. Parvana grinned back. Shauzia was probably joking, but she kept her eyes open anyway.
    â€œKabul has more land mines than flowers,” her father used to say. “Land mines are as common as rocks and can blow you up without warning. Remember your brother.”
    Parvana remembered the time someone from the United Nations had come to her class with a chart showing the different kinds of land mines. She tried to remember what they looked like. All she could remember was that some were disguised as toys—special mines to blow up children.
    Parvana peered into the darkness of the doorway. Sometimes armies would plant mines in buildings as they left an area. Could someone have planted a land mine there? Would she blow up if she stepped inside?
    She knew she was faced with three choices. One choice was to not go to the bathroom untilshe got home. That was not possible—she really couldn’t hold it much longer. Another