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

are hardly credible as issues, except perhaps for outsiders.
The book is also written through a kind of Christian filter. This 'dumbing down' or simplifying of Islam
again contributes to the generation of reader outrage. It means we don't have to try to work too hard to
understand any perspective other than our own. It is explained to Parvana that 'the word Taliban meant
religious scholars, but Parvana's father told her that religion was about teaching people how to be better
human beings, how to be kinder. The Taliban are not making Afghanistan a kinder place to live' (16).
Overall, the Taliban in this book are, to a man, thugs. The one 'good' (albeit illiterate) Talib in this book
is good because he is also oppressed - his wife is dead, presumably at the hands of the Taliban. We are
told the Taliban hate all music. The most memorable scene in the books is one where the girls try to sell
their wares in a stadium, only to find the Taliban cutting off the hands of thieves en masse. We are told
that 'dogs had started eating some of the bodies, so there were pieces of people on the sidewalks and in
the streets. I even saw a dog carrying a person's arm in his mouth' (154). This image of inhumane
monstrosity has the tone of propaganda. The Taliban, in this book, is an irrational, barbaric Thing.
This portrayal of Arabic savagery is not new, of course. An Australian young adult novel called Jihad:
A Girl's Quest to Settle the Past voices a similar cultural stereotype. The Mujahadeen are described as
'such hotheads that fervour spread through a group of them like a summer bushfire'. This image,
interestingly, echoes again recently in the Weekend Australian Magazine, with reference to David
Hicks, the Australian currently detained at Guantanamo Bay for fighting with The Taliban. 'He's a
hothead,' says Lieutenant-Colonel Bernie Liswell. Guilty by association.
The book makes use of some very Western narratives and genres in its form. This is, in essence, a
Cinderella story – Parvana, the member of the family with the least power (her sister is particularly
unkind to her) becomes the recognized heroine. There is also a tradition of the regulation of the body,
in literature, and more specifically, girls dressing as boys (Yentl springs to mind). Parvana dresses as a
boy to become more acceptable, more powerful, more 'useful' - but the entire family 'dresses up' as
Westerners, and this has the same effect on the reader. Parvana needs to do it to 'fit in'. The family
needs to do it to be accepted by the reader. Parvana is transformed into a more acceptable version of
herself.
In the aftermath of September 11, Kabul is described as not having a 'single intact building in the whole
area, just piles of brick, dust and rubble' (107). It is simple to see this book as a film, and in fact the
cover is already perfectly filmic, constituting terror: a photograph of a young girl's dark eyes,
surrounded by faceless women in burqas.
Parvana ends on a note of ambiguity. The girl and her father leave Kabul to go searching for her
mother and sister, who have by then disappeared, possibly to a refugee camp.
It will be interesting to have a closer look at the endings of children's literature in the years to come.
Henry Giroux, in his new book Public Spaces, Private Lives: Beyond the Culture of Cynicism, written
prior to September 11, suggested that Westerners no longer have much hope for the future, that
Americans have an increasing inability to believe in a happy ending. In the midst of the current 'crisis'
we may see more of this loose-ended resolution, as uncertainty increases with little hope of conclusion.
But we the implied readers, thankfully remain safely (for the moment) at home.
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