i can read that letter as well as Father can," Parvana whispered into the folds of her chador. "Well, almost." She didn't dare say those words out loud. The man sitting beside her father would not want to hear her voice. Nor would anyone else in the Kabul market. Parvana was there only to help her father walk to the market and back home again after work. She sat well back on the blan- ket, her head and most of her face covered by her chador. She wasn't really supposed to be outside at all. The Taliban had ordered all the girls and women in Afghanistan to stay inside their homes. They even forbade girls to go to school. Parvana had had to leave her sixth grade go to class, and her sister Nooria was not allowed to her high school. Their mother had been kicked out of her job as a writer for a Kabul radio sta- tion. For more than a year now, they had all