42 pages • 1-hour read
Mud City
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and child abuse.
Sociohistorical Context: The Post-9/11 Afghan Refugee Crisis and Camp Life
Mud City is set in the vast and desperate refugee camps that swelled in Pakistan following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The invasion, a direct response to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, orchestrated by al-Qaeda from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians. According to the UNHCR, by early 2002, Pakistan was hosting over 2 million Afghan refugees, many in sprawling settlements around cities like Peshawar. These camps, often hastily constructed, became semi-permanent cities defined by scarcity, squalor, and social strain. The novel vividly portrays this reality through its depiction of a camp made of “yellowish-gray mud” (10), where residents compete for dwindling resources like water, shelter, and food.
The social fabric of the camps often mirror the patriarchal structures of Afghan society. For instance, the novel’s “Widows’ Compound” (6) reflects a real-world response to protect women and orphans who had lost male family members and, with them, their primary social and economic support. Shauzia’s intense desire to escape—“I didn’t leave Afghanistan just to live in mud!” (13)—is not just a personal whim but a reaction to the tangible hopelessness and systemic poverty that characterized the real-world refugee camps, which for many became long-term prisons rather than temporary shelters.
Series Context: Shauzia’s Journey in the Breadwinner Series
Mud City is the third installment in Ellis’s acclaimed Breadwinner series, and Shauzia’s character arc is a direct continuation of her journey in the preceding books. Her fierce independence, distrust of authority, and unwavering dream of reaching France are not new motivations but are deeply rooted in her past experiences.
The first book, The Breadwinner, follows Parvana, an 11-year-old girl who disguises herself as a boy to work on the streets of Taliban-ruled Kabul and support her family. At the end of the book, she meets her former classmate, Shauzia, who has also been disguising herself as a boy: Shauzia wants to flee Kabul and escape a forced marriage. The girls are on different paths, but they vow to meet in 20 years at the top of the Eiffel Tower. To Shauzia, France is a utopia: “In every picture I’ve seen of France, the sun is shining, and flowers are blooming. […] France people must have bad days too, but I don’t think their bad days can be very bad, not like here” (125). She carries a picture torn from a magazine of a “field of purple flowers” (a lavender field) in France that symbolizes her dream of freedom (126).
Shauzia’s escape from Kabul establishes her resourceful but isolated nature. Her backstory informs Mrs. Weera’s critical observation in Mud City: “You left Kabul without a thought to how your family would survive without you” (25). Shauzia’s dream of meeting Parvana in France carries over into Mud City, providing her central motivation as she tries to escape the refugee camp. Parvana does not appear in Mud City, but Shauzia still carries the magazine photo, which reminds her of the pact.
Mud City is a stand-alone novel, but understanding its literary context reveals that Shauzia is not merely a girl displaced by war, but a long-established character defined by a relentless quest for autonomy, making her clashes with Mrs. Weera and her flight from the camp a continuation of an ongoing narrative. Her return to Afghanistan completes the series’ circular narrative structure, setting Shauzia up for more danger and adventures.
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