Free My Name Is Parvana by Deborah Ellis

her friend so long ago. She had written the letters in Dari. They sounded strange as they came out of the corporal’s mouth in English for the major’s benefit.
     
    “… My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be.”
     
    “Whoever wrote that sounds very sad,” the major said. “What do you think, Corporal? Think this Shauzia is an actual person?”
    “The notebook could just be a diary, sir,” the woman replied. “Many girls give their diaries names. Anne Frank called hers Kitty.”
    “I read my older sister’s diary when we were kids,” the major said. “Dull reading. All about how she hated her hair and hated her legs and hated her nose and was sure no one would ever like her. I never teased her about it, though. I didn’t want her to know that I knew she felt so bad about herself. It was more information about her than I wanted to know.”
    “I understand, sir.”
    “Read on, Corporal.”
    The interpreter read from letter to letter. Parvana was too fed up even to be angry at this invasion of her privacy.
     
    “Dear Shauzia: We are back on the road. It almost feels like we never left. Maybe Green Valley was just a dream. I should stop dreaming. All my dreams turn to garbage …”
     
    “‘Dreams turn to garbage,’” the major quoted. “People become disillusioned, they can easily turn to violence. We’ve seen that before, haven’t we, Corporal?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    She turned a page and kept reading.
     
    “Dear Shauzia: Someone in this camp has a radio and I heard that the Taliban are gone and there is a new government in Kabul. The news is causing a lot of arguments. Some say things will get better. Others say things will get worse. Some say the foreign troops will kill all the Afghans and move into their homes. When one man heard that, he waved his arms in front of his tent made from trash bags and said, ‘They want my house? They can have it.’ Rumors are spreading faster than dysentery. No one knows what is happening. But I know. I know that whatever those important people are doing in Kabul, they are not thinking about girls like me, or about any of us who are lost and living in the mud.”
     
    More pages turned.
     
    “Dear Shauzia: I hate the foreign military. In the newspaper today there was a story about a foreign missile hitting a village and killing a bunch of children. And yesterday, a soldier was in Mother’s office. Of course, I listened at the door. He wanted Mother to give him information on all our staff. Mother told him that her job was running a school, not spying for the army. She said she personally knew all of her staff and that nothing would make them less safe than their neighbors seeing the military come to their homes. She said the army should spend more time going after the people who are blowing up schools and killing teachers and less time bothering innocent people. Then she kicked him out so fast I nearly got hit by the office door. Mother was so angry at him that she took it out on me with a long list of extra chores — another reason for me to hate the foreigners!”
     
    “Sounds to me like there’s quite a bit of anger there, Corporal. Enough to make her a terrorist? I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.”
    Parvana had to stand and listen to her life being spouted back at her, and she had to pretend that she didn’t understand a word.

TWELVE
    “ How do I know it works?”
    Parvana stood beside her mother and Asif in the small tailor shop. The tailor pulled the chair away from the table and made a gesture, inviting Mother to sit down and try the sewing machine out herself.
    Parvana laughed. Her mother had been a professional journalist before the Taliban came, and now she was the headmistress of a school. She could do many things, but she could not operate a sewing machine.
    Mother frowned and nodded at Asif. He had also never used