Non-Western Setting Novel

Wanting Mor

Khan, R. (2009). Wanting Mor. Toronto: Groundwood Books.

Death, betrayal, abandonment.  Anyone of these can be hard to deal with but all three visited upon a person in a short period of time can be devastating.  Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Mor tells the story of Jameela, a young girl growing up in post-Taliban Afghanistan.  The book opens with the death of her Mor which is the  pushto word for mother.  Pushto is the language spoken in Jameela's village.  Jameela's father is unpredictable at best but also can be very cruel. While her mother was alive, she avoided him because of his temper, but now with the death of Mor she has no protection from him.  Soon after Mor dies Baba (Jameela's father) sells all of their things and moves them to Kabul where he thinks his life and luck will be better.  He hires Jameela out as a servant in return for a place for both of them to live.  This situation works out well until one night Baba gets drunk and tries to have sex with the wife of the family they are living with.  They are thrown out in the middle of the night and the next day Jameela has a new stepmother.  The stepmother hates Jameela and soon talks her father into abandoning her in the middle of the city.

Following is an excerpt from the book when Jameela realizes that her father is not returning for her.

And that's when I realize.

When we left her house, I had all my things but Baba's hands were empty.  He hadn't taken anything of his own. (p.81)

A local butcher takes Jameela in for a few days but she is sent to the local orphanage when his wife insists they can not afford to keep Jameela.  At the orphanage Jameela finally finds the family that she has been looking for after the death of her mother.  She learns to read and write and even gets her cleft lip fixed by the Americans.  After a series of events, Baba realizes that Jameela may be valuable to him as a tutor to rich children and tries to get her to rejoin him after he is thrown out of his new wife's home.

I find myself getting more excited when we get to the head of the street and I can see the orphanage. Nothing feels more like home.  Not her house, not that first place, not even Agha Akram's. (p.177)


Jameela has found a home at the orphanage and refuses to leave with him. Jameela has found the place where she belongs and is now healed enough to begin to take care of another orphan.  As the book closes she is passing on the wisdom her gave to her.


"If you can't be beautiful, you should at least be good.  People will appreciate that." (p.183)

I really enjoyed Wanting Mor, but I did find it tedious to have to consult the back of the book to figure out what many of the words meant.  The glossary in the back of the book was helpful, but it did interfere with my flow of reading. I liked the fact that the title of the book really had two meanings.  The literal meaning would be wanting her mother (mor) after her death, and the second meaning would be wanting more out of life.  Jameela wanted to learn to read and write and experience life.  By the end of the book she is well on her way to fulfilling this need.  I would recommend this book to children twelve and up who are interested in how children live in other countries.  It would be a great book to read in a social studies class that is learning about Afghanistan. You certainly get the day to day feel of life in Afghanistan through the eyes of Jameela.

Other books that may interest you are:

• The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis
• Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan
• Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind by Suzanne Fisher Staples

To learn more about orphans in Afghanistan visit this site:

The Afghan Orphan Project

To learn more about the author Rukhsan Khan, visit her website:

Rukhsana Khan's Official Website

Below you can watch an interview with Rukhsan Khan.  She talks about Wanting Mor and other books that she has written for children.