Parvana's Journey by Deborah Ellis

plastic sheeting to build some mouse-proof containers. He used rope to bind them together when he couldn’t find enough nails.
    “You girls clean out the rest of the rice and flour,” he ordered, “and I’ll make plastic pouches for the food that’s still good.”
    Parvana noticed that Asif was always cheerful when he was giving orders.
    Parvana and Leila hauled the mouse-tunneled sacks up to the top of the look-out hill.
    “We can watch for my mother while we clean the rice,” Leila said. “We can watch for your mother at the same time.”
    “Why not?” Parvana replied, flicking a mouse turd down the hill.
    “Maybe your mother and my mother will meet each other, and they’ll come walking across the field together. Wouldn’t that be great?”
    “It would be great, but it’s not likely to happen.”
    “But it could happen,” Leila insisted. “Don’t you think so? Don’t you think it could happen?”
    “All right,” Parvana relented. “It could happen.”
    This set Leila off on a long, detailed fantasy about how their mothers would meet and mysteriously know their children were together and decide it was time to come back to them. By the time she stopped to catch a breath, Parvana almost believed her.
    “Asif’s mother is dead,” Leila said. “So is his father. So is everyone else.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “He told me. He was living with an uncle who beat him, so he ran away.”
    “Why did he tell you? He never told me,” Parvana said, but Leila was already talking about something else. Parvana stopped listening. She was too busy being annoyed at Asif.
    As the days went by, Green Valley began to look better, and so did the children. Leila’s sores started to heal, and one day Parvana washed and combed out the little girl’s long hair. She didn’t have a real comb and had to use her fingers, but Leila’s hair looked much better when she was finished. Parvana tied it in two long braids and laughed as Leila swung her head from side to side, feeling the braids move.
    Hassan lost the floppy-baby look.
    “He’s like a plant,” Parvana said. “If you don’t water a plant, it wilts, but then when you start watering it again, it bounces back.” He started crawling. “You were much easier to look after when you stayed where we put you,” Parvana told him. They had to watch him carefully, as he put everything he found into his mouth, whether it was good for him or not.
    Hassan would allow himself to be fed by anybody, but he clearly prefered Asif. When he got bored with Asif, he crawled around looking for other fun things. He loved to watch the pigeons, and when the children couldn’t find him, that’s usually where he was.
    “Hassan is standing up!” Asif yelled one day. The others came running. Hassan had hauled himself up by holding onto the wires of the pigeon cage. He grinned and laughed as he reached for the pigeons, but when he let go of the cage, he fell back on his rump. He looked surprised, then reached out and hauled himself back up again.
    Then one morning, the children couldn’t find Hassan. He wasn’t at the pigeon cage or inside the house. Parvana got a cold feeling in her stomach.
    “He can’t be in the mine field!”
    “Well, don’t just stand there. Run after him!” Asif yelled.
    Leila was faster. Hassan had crawled through the little canyon and was right on the edge of the mine field. Leila snatched him up.
    “You can’t go there,” she said, as Hassan screeched. “You’re not protected yet.” She handed him over to Parvana as he squirmed and fussed.
    The children discussed the problem. “We can’t let him crawl into the mine field,” Parvana said, “but we don’t want to chase after him all day, either.”
    Asif came up with a solution.
    “Tie a long rope around his waist. Then he can crawl around without going anywhere he shouldn’t.” They tried this, and it worked fine.
    As long as he had something to lean against, Asif found that he was