Parvana teaches her how to help gather buckets of water from the community tap over time, the task helps Maryam rebuild her strength and stamina. Having not left the home in months, Maryam's body is weak and tired. Feeling little attachment to the family she must support, Shauzia saves money in order to escape to Paris. Shauzia is bold and feisty, with little regard for consequences. Shauzia is Parvana's old classmate who also disguises herself as a boy in order to work at the market. At the end of the novel, Nooria leaves Kabul to marry a man whose family used to live next door. Before the Taliban took over, Nooria planned on attending college after graduation, specializing in education with the intention of becoming a teacher. While Nooria finds Parvana annoying, Parvana finds her sister shallow, bossy and obnoxious.

Nooria is Parvana's seventeen-year-old sister, with whom Parvana often has friction. She used to coach sports teams she applies the same motivational spirit to helping Parvana's family overcome their burdens and oppression. She has a no-nonsense, resilient attitude. Weera is an old friend of Parvana's family who moves in with them following Parvana's father's arrest. The two also start an Afghan women's magazine. Weera, a member of a women's resistance group, gets her involved in an underground school, continuing to teach young girls who are forbidden to go to school. Mother enters a depression following her husband's arrest. Parvana's mother is a college graduate who used to work as a journalist before the Taliban forbade women to work and confined her to the house. Before his arrest, he encourages his daughters to be courageous and proud despite the oppression under which they live. Father walks with a limp, requiring Parvana's help getting up and down stairs.

Early in the novel, he is imprisoned by the Taliban for having a foreign education. Parvana's father works reading letters for illiterate people at the Kabul market. She longs to return to a normal, boring life in which she would be in school. Parvana is often frustrated by the amount of responsibility she must take on as the family breadwinner. By doing so, she is able to leave the home to make money and buy groceries. At eleven years old, her body is not recognizably a woman's, which allows her to disguise herself as a boy named Kaseem.

The breadwinner ellis