Free My Name Is Parvana by Deborah Ellis Page B

she looked ridiculous — a full-grown girl chasing after a pen.
    Finally, the pen came to a stop against the wall of a bedding and blanket shop. Parvana bent down and scooped it up.
    As she stood up, her heart stopped.
    There was a notice pasted on the wall. Its words were big, clear and angry.
     
    To the parents who send their daughters to the Leila School:
    This school is run by evil people. If you let your daughters go, then you are evil, too.
    Evil must be destroyed. You have been warned.
     
    Parvana stared and stared. She couldn’t move.
    “There you are!”
    Mother came up behind her, arms full of parcels.
    “Help me with these. Really, you are more trouble than Hassan and Maryam put together. If I can’t trust you not to wander — ”
    Then Mother spotted the notice. And she stopped talking.
    Parvana crammed the pen into her pocket and attacked the notice. It was stuck to the wall with glue and would not rip off, no matter how much she scraped at it with her fingernails.
    “Parvana, come …” Mother tried to pull her away.
    Parvana took out her pen and tried to stab the notice out of existence, and when that didn’t work, she started to scribble all over it.
    “Parvana. Come!”
    Mother grabbed her firmly by the arm and pulled, hard.
    Only then did Parvana realize she had drawn a crowd. A half-circle of men surrounded Parvana and her mother.
    Parvana had learned from her last mistake. This time she did not run. Instead, she looked each man in the face.
    “The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says in the Holy Qur’an that all are called to be educated, women and men alike. If you worry about what goes on in our school, come and see it for yourself. You know where we are. Knock at the gate. Ask for me. My name is Parvana. I will give you a tour.”
    Her fingers found a loose edge on the notice. She grabbed hold of it and pulled. It ripped clean through. Now nobody could read the awful message.
    “Here, Mother, let me help you carry those,” Parvana said, taking some of the parcels of fabric. Then she put her hand through her mother’s arm and they started walking. She could feel her mother trembling and remembered that while she was used to being outside in the marketplace, her mother was not.
    The men let them move through.
    Walking away, Parvana was filled with a sense of triumph. Those men would talk about her now. They would talk about what she had said, and then they would add, “That brave girl is right! Education is the duty of everyone!”
    Father used to call me his little Malali, Parvana thought.
    Malali was a girl in Afghan history, famous for leading troops into battle against the British. And now Parvana was doing the same, rallying people not to war, but to education.
    She straightened her back and raised her head higher.
    That’s when she saw the other notices.
    They were everywhere — on walls, pasted on signs, nailed onto poles. Everywhere Parvana looked, she saw the warning notices. She was walking through a forest of hatred.
    I’ll have to burn down the market to get rid of them all, she thought.
    Her confidence and celebration drained right out of her. Asif was ready and waiting at the tailor’s with a taxi to take them and the sewing machines back to the school.
    He took one look at her face and got them out of there quickly.
    For once, Parvana felt grateful when the high walls of the school compound wrapped around them, keeping out the rest of the world.

THIRTEEN
    P arvana was back in the little office, standing again, the same guard staring at her.
    She was having a hard day. She was so tired! She was even too tired to summon any thoughts to distract herself.
    They kept changing her routine. She never knew what was going on or what was going to happen next. That made it impossible for her to relax.
    They kept thinking up new things to do to her. They would not let her sleep.
    The latest thing was music. They piped music into her cell. Loud music. The same song over and