Parvana's Journey

Fittingly, the novel begins with a sad event: the funeral of Parvana’s father. This somber beginning sets the tone of sorrow and despair that continues throughout the book. From the very beginning, Deborah Ellis shows that this will not be a light, cheerful read. Ellis uses cultural words such as mullah (religious teacher) and jenazah (prayer for the dead) to describe the funeral from Parvana’s point of view and to note the Muslim traditions involved in a burial (11).

Ellis establishes a description of the novel’s setting in Afghanistan throughout the first chapter. She describes the physical surroundings: a dry landscape full of rocks and a small village of mud houses and rubble. In addition, she explains the way of life for contemporary Afghan citizens. Many villagers rebuilt their houses several times after each bombing. Clearly, the people are poor to live in such meager circumstances, a fact underscored when the village men are willing to turn Parvana over to the Taliban for money.

War has taken its toll on this land and its people. The small village has a disproportionately large graveyard, and the men who remain in the village are either elderly or already maimed from the war. All of the other young men either fight in the war or have already died. Even the village children are deeply influenced by war; they play on a nearby abandoned Soviet tank and proudly show it to Parvana, saying, “We are the only village in this area with its own tank” (19). The children play war with each other, shooting with “finger guns until they [are] all dead” (19). Wars—both past and present—have been such a constant aspect of life in Afghanistan that violence and death became normalized. For these children, living in the midst of war is all they know. Finally, we see another result of war when Parvana finds the wailing woman in Chapter 2 who is beyond the reach of her help. Like this woman, many lost so much that they simply shut down internally. Ellis shows the way wars have shaped both the physical and emotional landscape of Afghanistan and introduces the reader to this war-ravaged nation through which Parvana journeys.