Australian Women's Book Review Volume 14.1 - School of English ...

him - for having been educated in Britain. Oddly, the independence so proudly expressed in one
paragraph is almost immediately dissipated as the British are now portrayed as the heroes - the nation
that 'educated' the father and that the Taliban resents and punishes. Do the Afghans benefit from
Independence then, or not? This book would suggest that they are much worse off without the 'help'
they receive.
Parvana's father (and then Parvana herself) reads letters for people in the market. So his symbolic link
with the outside (Western) world is well established, and again proves his value. We can once more be
safely outraged at his treatment, since he is more like us than not. He fits into a long tradition of poor
but noble peasants. He is worthy as a role model Afghan, because he is educated and has been, it may
be implied, (almost) as badly treated as Americans on the date.
Parvana and her siblings are also substitute Westerners. She is often confused by what she sees around
her (women in burqas), totally befuddled by the politics of the war, naïve about the circumstances in
her own country. The only reason she knows about land mines is because someone from the United
Nations once came into her class to talk about them (167). Even her father seems totally bemused by
Afghani politics ' I don't know why they arrested me. How would I know why they let me go?' (162).
And commerce is the perceived desire. Parvana and the other girl, whom she discovers is also dressing
up as a boy to provide for her family, are singularly interested in finding ways to make more money.
Oddly, they speak remarkably like Americans, and the dialogue has them saying things like; ' Hey,
maybe if we can work together, we can come up with a better way to make money!' (100).
In addition, there is not one Afghan in this book who doesn't wish to move away, to a Western country.
The glimmer of hope for the girls is that one day they'll meet at the Eiffel Tower (167). (let's hope none
of them aspire to Australia, given the tiny percentage of those currently on Nauru assessed as 'genuine'
refugees!). No suggestion is made that life as immigrants might be just as, if not more, difficult than the
life they are leading. It's the American dream, imposed seamlessly. It's hard not to wonder, too, in what
ways this feeds into currently hyperbolised fears of immigration and the so-called 'refugee crisis'. What
if everyone in the world really does want to come to the West? Then what?
There is also an interesting politics of envy exemplified in the book … above all, Parvana says, she just
wants 'a normal, boring life'(139). It's not hard to interpret this as meaning she wants the normal, boring
White Western life that the readers (they should remember) are lucky enough to be leading. We can
walk away from this book with a great sense of superiority.
Strangely, a judgmental, almost sneering tone creeps in at various stages in the book. The authorial
ideology seems implacably one of Afghanis as essentially barbaric, certainly illogical. The father
explains history in the region in this way: 'After the Soviets left, the people who had been shooting at
the Soviets decided they wanted to keep shooting at something, so they shot at each other' (16).
Similarly, and amazingly, later in the novel someone suggests, about Kabul, 'maybe someone should
drop a big bomb on the country and start again' (140).
The author also cannot stop herself from imposing her own position on her Afghani characters. Her
outsider point of view, her judgment of Islamic women, is evident. When Parvana asks her father how
women in burqas manage to see where they're going, her father tells her 'they fall down a lot'. Similarly,
at another point in the novel, Parvana wonders how women in burqas recognize each other at all. These
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