“Parvana doesn’t know where they are, but sets out alone to find them — masquerading as a boy. Her journey only becomes more perilous as the bombs begin to fall.”
“Making her way across the desolate Afghan countryside, she meets other children who are strays from the war: an infant boy in a bombed-out village, a nine-year-old girl who believes she has magical powers over land mines, and a boy with one leg.”
“Kaseem, Parvana replied, giving him her boy-name. She didn’t think any more about whether to trust someone with the truth about herself. The truth could get her arrested, or killed. It was easier and safer not to trust anyone.”
“She wanted to tell people about him. That he was a teacher, that he had lost his leg when his school was bombed. That he had loved her and told her stories, and now she was all alone in this big, sad land.”
“A small group of mud huts -a tiny village - was in ruins. Parvana recognized the sort of damage that came from bombs. There had been a war going on in Afghanistan for more than twenty years. Someone was always bombing someone else.”