SIX

Parvana swept out the little cave using her sandal as a broom. She liked the dirt floor to be smooth, even though it never stayed that way for long.

“We could fix it up,” she said to herself. She would have said it to Hassan, but Hassan was with Asif down by the stream. Even though she was alone, she spoke out loud. She liked the way her quiet words bounced around in the little cave.

“We could put some shelves up in this corner,” she said, running her fingers on some jagged bits of rock that could hold boards, if she could find any wood. “Maryam and I could sleep at the front, and Mother and Ali could sleep in the back so that Ali couldn’t get out without crawling over us.”

What about Nooria? Parvana frowned as she measured the little space with her eyes. Then she shrugged. Nooria could sleep outside.

Satisfied for the moment with the cave floor, Parvana put her sandal back on before joining the others at the stream.

“What were you doing?” Asif asked. He was twisting grass together, trying to make a little boat. Hassan was watching him.

“I was cleaning out the cave.”

“Why? It’s just a cave. It’s stupid to clean it.”

“You think you are so right all the time,” Parvana said, folding her arms across her chest. “There’s a lot you don’t know. Maybe it’s not just a cave. Maybe it’s a treasure cave.”

“What are you babbling about? Hassan makes more sense than you do. There’s no such thing as a treasure cave.”

“There is,” Parvana insisted, her voice rising. “In fact, it’s exactly the sort of cave Alexander the Great would have used to hide his treasure in.” She waited for Asif to ask her who Alexander the Great was so she could show off how much she knew, but he just kept working on his boat.

She tapped her foot several times and then told him.

“Alexander the Great was an army general who lived a long time ago. He took treasures from every place he conquered.”

“You mean he was a thief. He should have had his hands cut off.”

“He wasn’t a thief,” Parvana insisted, although even as she was talking, she wondered if that were true. “People loved him. They gave him their treasures.”

“You mean he’d ride through a town and people loved him so much they just gave him their things?”

“They did,” she insisted.

“Then they were all stupid,” Asif declared. “If I had treasure, I wouldn’t give any of it away.” He finished twisting the grass and put the little boat in the stream. The children watched it float away with the current.

“Why would he bury his treasure anyway?” Asif asked. “Why wouldn’t he keep it with him?”

“Probably there was too much to carry,” Parvana said. “He had so much treasure his horses were weighed down with it, and he had to bury some or their backs would break.”

“So why didn’t he come back for it?”

“Maybe he forgot which cave it was in. Maybe he had so much treasure that he didn’t even need to think about it once he buried it. How should I know?” Parvana’s mind flashed briefly on the memory of her father’s books, stuck in a hole in the ground, covered up with dirt. How would she ever find them again? She chased the question from her head. It was making her sad, and she didn’t want to be sad when she was busy being annoyed at Asif.

“You think there’s treasure in that dirty old cave?”

“I’m sure of it,” Parvana said. Why wouldn’t there be? The more she thought about it, the more she was certain that a box of gold coins and big jewels lay under the ground in the cave, just waiting for her to dig up.

“If there’s any treasure there, it belongs to me,” Asif insisted. “I found the cave first.”

Parvana sputtered with anger. “You’re wearing my clothes, eating my food, and that’s how you say thank you? You really are a terrible boy.”

“All right, all right. I’ll share it with you.”

“You certainly will.”

Asif pulled himself up with his crutches. He only got halfway up, when he started to fall back. Parvana put her hands under his arms and gave him a boost.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“To the cave. To start digging.” He shook his head with disgust. “What did you think I was talking about? Better find something to dig with.” He hobbled off.

The treasure was by now so real in Parvana’s imagination that she barely minded being ordered around. She found a couple of good-sized rocks with points at the ends, picked up Hassan and joined Asif in the cave.

The floor soon lost its smoothness as Parvana and Asif scraped away at it with their rocks. Sometimes one of their rocks hit a clunk, and they got very excited until they realized they had only hit another rock.

“What will you do with your share of the treasure?” she asked Asif.

“Horses,” he answered. “I’ll buy lots of horses, fast ones. I’ll ride and ride, and when the horse I’m riding gets tired, I’ll buy another one, then another, then another. I’ll never have to stop moving.”

“What about food?”

“What will I need food for? I’ll be riding, not walking.”

“I’ll buy a big house,” Parvana said. “A magic house where bombs just slip off the roof without exploding. It will be a white stone house just like the one I used to live in, only bigger, with a separate house in the yard for my sister Nooria, so I wouldn’t have to see her all the time. And I’ll wear beautiful clothes and lots of jewels, and I’ll have lots of servants so I’ll never have to do housework again.” She could see herself in her mind, dressed up in a glowing red shalwar kameez like the one her aunt made her that she had to sell, long ago in Kabul, so that her family could buy food to eat.

“All the jewels in the world wouldn’t make you look pretty,” Asif said. “What good are jewels, anyway? You can’t eat them or burn them to keep you warm at night, or — ”

Parvana’s rock suddenly clunked against a hard surface.

“I think I’ve found something.”

“It’s just another rock.”

She scraped away some more dirt. “No, I don’t think so.” She dug in harder. “I think it’s a box!”

Asif dug his rock in close to hers. “It is! It is a box!”

They dug faster and faster, dirt flying up and around the cave.

“Watch out for Hassan. He’s right behind you,” Parvana managed to say while she was huffing and puffing with exertion. Asif adjusted his digging so the dirt wouldn’t fly near the baby.

Bit by bit, the box emerged. Parvana got up onto her knees to pull it out, and Asif leaned in to help. With a giant grunt, they pulled the box out of the ground. It was made of green metal, twice as long as Parvana’s sandal and one sandal width wide.

“It’s smaller than I thought a treasure box would be,” Asif said.

“Diamonds don’t have to be big,” Parvana replied. “Let’s take it out in the sun so that the jewels will really sparkle when we open it.” She dragged the box out of the cave into the sunshine. While Asif scooted out on his bottom, she went back for Hassan, so he could be there for the treasure-box opening, too.

Asif pounded on the dirt-encrusted lock with a rock until it broke apart.

“It’s rusty,” he said.

“It’s been under the ground for thousands of years,” Parvana said. “You’d be rusty, too.”

Asif pulled the broken pieces of padlock away from the clasp.

“Ready?”

“Ready.” She put her hands near his, and they opened the box together.

It was full of bullets.

The children looked down and stared, too shocked to speak. Hassan gurgled and reached out to touch the shiny little objects.

Asif slammed the box shut.

“Some treasure,” he yelled. “Why do I listen to you?” He pulled himself up on his crutches, yanking away from Parvana’s offer of help. He knocked her with his shoulder as he hobbled away from the cave.

Parvana opened the box again. Maybe her eyes had played tricks on her.

But they hadn’t. All she saw were rows of tightly packed bullets, and when she ran her hands through them, no jewels winked out at her. Only bullets.

They weren’t buried by Alexander the Great. Bullets hadn’t been invented back then. They were probably buried by the men who had fought in the war that had started long before she was born. Maybe the man who buried them had died. Maybe he forgot which cave they were in. Maybe he had so many bullets he didn’t need these.

It didn’t matter. There was no treasure.

With great effort, Parvana lifted the box over her head and threw it as far away as she could. It landed with a thud, the bullets spilling out over the ground. They looked like seeds on the earth, but Parvana knew they would not turn into food.

She picked up Hassan and sat with him, looking away from the cave. She turned Hassan so that he couldn’t see her face. She was ashamed of herself for getting caught up in a stupid dream, as though she were still a child.