‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is a book that basically broke my heart, mended it and then broke it all over again.
There’s just something so raw, so beautiful about it, that you can’t help but cry, even when there are some happy moments.
The style of writing is such that the author, Khalid Hosseini, doesn’t hold back on the details and events. He describes each character to a great length, through anecdotes and incidents. His description of the physical attributes of his characters doesn’t make them what society would call ‘conventionally beautiful’, and yet there is something romantically alluring about them.
There are parts of this book that would literally drive you crazy. Take the first chapter for instance. The story opens with Mariam, a harami - an illegitimate child. Her father Jalil, who can only be described as a coward, is an important man in the city of Herat, where the story is based. He already has three wives, by the way, but then he also has an affair with one of the maids in his house - Mariam’s mother who she calls Nana.
The moment the story breaks, her father cuts a deal - saying she forced herself at him and saves his face by building the pregnant woman a hut on the outskirts of the city - far away from him, his wives, his children, and his scared, fragile ego. At the end of the chapter, Nana famously quotes:
Mariam, however, thinks the world of Jalil, who comes to visit her every Thursday. He brings her gifts, tells her stories, and so on. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam expresses her wish to watch a movie in the theatre Jalil owns. Hesitant at first, he agrees but doesn’t show up on the agreed-upon date.
Intent on meeting him, she ventures into the city for the first time in her life and reaches Jalil’s house. His driver informs her that the master is away on urgent business and doesn’t know when to return. However, when Mariam is being led away from the house, she catches Jalil peeking from behind the window.
Her faith in him is broken. However, her heartbreak doesn’t stop there. When she reaches back to her hut, it is found out that in fear that her daughter had deserted and betrayed her, Nana had committed suicide.
Mariam ends up having to live in Jalil’s house. However, his three wives won’t have it so they quickly find a widowed, forty-year-old man for her to marry. Here still, Jalil doesn’t say a word. And by the time the ceremonies are over and she’s leaving, Mariam realizes just how insincere and hollow Jalil’s promises, stories, and assurances had been.
Moving forward to Rasheed - Mariam’s new husband. He’s the kind of guy who insists on his wife covering her face and body, bitches about the modern women who roam around with makeup and no hijab, and yet keeps a stack of porn magazines in his room. He forces himself on her, is irritable, entitled, and frankly just annoying.
And as you move further into the story, you begin to hate him. He wants a baby boy but Mariam can’t give him one. He beats her, abuses her, and berates her. He’s basically an asshole.
Cut to the other part of the book - it tells the story of Laila. She’s a smart and beautiful girl, the daughter of an educated man. She is close friends with her neighbor Tariq, which soon transforms into a secret romance. Kabul is then bombed and Tariq’s family decides to leave the city. At their last meeting to say goodbye, the two of them end up having sex.
Laila’s family too, sometime later, decides to leave. But right as they’re about to go, a rocket destroys their house killing both of Laila’s parents and injuring her.
She wakes up only to find out that she has been taken in by none other than Rasheed and Mariam. Being the jackass that he is, not only does Rasheed cunningly expresses his desire to marry her but he also hires an old man to tell her a fable of how Tariq has died so she won’t go looking for him.
During this time, Laila also finds out that she is pregnant with Tariq’s baby and in order to protect her, agrees to marry Rasheed. When she gives birth to a baby girl named Aziza, of course, Rasheed rejects her because well, he wanted a boy.
Mariam, who is initially cold and bitter towards Laila, ends up becoming close to her. They become confidants and one day decide to run away together. However, they are caught. Rasheed beats them and locks them up without any food or water, even for the baby.
The story then shifts to the time when the Taliban began to rise to power, and severely curtailed women’s rights. Laila, who is again pregnant, gives birth to a baby boy Zalmai, under a C-section and without any anesthesia. Of course, Rasheed is delighted and greatly but predictably favors his baby boy over the girl.
There comes a time when there is a drought and Rasheed’s shop burns down. He forces Aziza into an orphanage and Laila survives a number of beatings from the Taliban to go visit her daughter.
Tariq re-enters the story and Laila realizes that Rasheed had lied to her. Later on, Zalmai lets it slip in front of Rasheed of Tariq’s visit, who savagely beats Laila. Right when he is about to strangle her, Mariam hits him from behind with a shovel, killing him.
Mariam tells Tariq and Laila to take the kids and run and confesses to killing Rasheed, for which she is publicly executed. The latter two move to Pakistan. They return only after the fall of Taliban. They visit the village where Mariam was raised and find that when Jalil died, he left behind a package for Mariam, which contained three things - a copy of the movie Pinocchio, a sack of money and a letter in which he confessed his shame, and guilt, and that he should’ve fought for his daughter.
They use the money to rebuild the orphanage where Aziza stayed, where Laila becomes a teacher. She becomes pregnant with her third child and vows to name her Mariam.
The story shows the struggle of women, and how so many Muslim men have manipulated Islam in their favour. I’m a Muslim woman myself, so I can relate to the book in a lot of ways. I’ve seen these kinds of things happen over and over again.
The book is powerful, emotional and raw.
Read it yourself- you can purchase it here.
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