Oh my goodness! If you thought The Breadwinner Part I was a page turner, JUST WAIT until you get to Part III. Mud City picks up right at the same place as Parvana's Journey begins, but Mud City is the story of what happens to Shauzia after Parvana leaves with her father.
If you thought life was hard for Parvana as her story unfolds in Part I and Part II, wait until you see what Shauzia must face in order to find a way out of Afghanistan to Paris and those "fields of purple flowers."
I found my heart wrenching even tighter than it did when reading Parvana's story because, while Parvana always managed to have some sort of "family" with her as she struggled to reunite with her biological family, Shauzia was very much on her own.
There are many incidents in the book that I could re-examine to explain to you how they affected me as a reader, but I would like to focus on one specific moment that continue to haunt me.
The first is an exchange between Mrs. Weera and Shauzia in the refugee camp. Shauzia is frustrated because Mrs. Weera has kept her so busy, she hasn't been able to find work to make some money:
"Mrs. Weera! " Shauzia shouted. "I need to be paid."
Mrs Weera came back. "Which is it? Want or need?...
I will not back down this time, Shauzia vowed to herself. "I told you my plans when I first came here. I told you I'd need to earn some money, but you've kept me so busy with your little jobs, I haven't had time to look for real work."
"I would have thought bringing comfort to your fellow Afghans in a refugee camp would be considered enough real work for a lifetime."
"A lifetime!" Shauzia exclaimed in horror. "You expect me to do this for a lifetime? I didn't leave Afghanistan just to live in the mud!" She flung her arms at the mud walls surrounding the Widows' Compound, knowing that on the other side of them in the regular part of the refugee camp were more mud walls. Maybe the whole world was mud walls now, and she'd never get away from them. (The Breadwinner Trilogy, Mud City, pp. 313-314).
Undergirding this fight between Shauzia and Mrs. Weeza seems to be the cultural tension between the "rights/priorities of the group" versus the "rights/priorities of the individual." Shauzia's struggle seems doubly challenging, not only because she is a young female Afghan refugee, but also because she so desperately wants to make her own destiny. I don't begrudge Mrs. Weeza for her zealousness towards taking care of her fellow Afghan women, but her overbearing righteousness -- and unwillingness to appreciate the dreams of a young Afghan woman who wants to be free -- is frustrating at times.
The funny thing is I think they are both right. I think it is right to feel responsible for the others in your community and I also think it is right to want to leave the community to do things for oneself. I am sure this is my own American values interplaying here, but for Mrs. Weeza to say that this should be Shauzia's LIFE work is taking it too far. Especially when Shauzia see that kind of life as "a world of walls" that would never end.
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