"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls"
Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns is breathtaking. It makes you miserable, emotional and fills you with turbulence.
It's divided into four parts. Part One is Mariam's story, Part two Laila's. Part three has both Laila and Mariam narrating and Part four is just Laila again.
Mariam's story is painful to swallow; an insane mother, a father who is too weak willed to defend his daughter, a cruel husband and miscarriages make hers a cruel life full of misery.
Laila, younger than Mariam, has a life that is light years apart. War and cruelty takes this away from her and blinded with deceit, she's driven to a life similar to Mariam's.
Women in Afghanistan endure the unendurable; they live life being submissive to the demands of the more or less irrational male(the burqa, the abuse both physical and emotional). Some parts of the book are just sickening(the hospitals refuse to accept female patients. they are all driven to one dirty hovel with no X-ray, no medicine, no anesthesia. There are only two doctors and they are expected to perform surgery while fully covered in a burqa. It is a wonder that Laila survives.), the way Laila is brutally beaten every time she tries to visit Aziza at the orphanage that she is forced to leave her at(because they couldnt afford to feed her and didnt want her to starve. Rasheed actually suggests prostituting Aziza, a small eight year old girl. When Laila refuses, he hits her).
("I see you again, I'll beat you until your mother's milk leaks out of your bones.")
Rasheed, the forty year old man that marries Mariam and the sixty year old that marries Laila, is a cruel misogynist. The way he treats Mariam at first is heart warming(so different from Jalil) and Mariam begans to slowly warm to him with affection. With the loss of every baby and the fact that Mariam cannot bear him a boy(when she is pregnant the first time, he buys clothes for a boy even though they dont know the gender), he descends into violence and cruelly abuses his wife.
Similarly with Laila, he is gentle through out her pregnancy yet cold and vicious after she bears him a baby girl(Aziza; when Zalmai is born, he goes head over heels to pamper and spoil the brat that imitates his father). The straw that breaks the camel's back is when Laila finds out that Tariq is alive and that Rasheed paid a man to come and tell her convincingly that Tariq died.
The ending is presented in a realistic manner(there is no amnesty; murder is murder regardless of the provocation) and Laila leaves with Tariq and her children.
Jalil, Mariam's father, attempts to redeem his character(before he dies, he comes to Mariam's house and begs for her to see him-similar to how she waited outside his house as a kid-) by leaving her her inheritance and a video tape of a movie that in a way, set off the chain of events(Pinocchio, curiously.). But it is sadly too little and too late.
Tariq is the only male character that shines in this gruesome tale. He is strong(despite the loss of a leg) and yet, tender when dealing with the children and Laila. He loves and respects Laila. He tries and succeeds in getting Zalmai to trust him. He befriends his daughter and proves to us all that not all men are the same.
After years of struggle and strife, their marriage provides the sweetness to the bitter ending.
After I read this book, I couldn't sleep. I thought of everything they'd suffered(fictional or not; the plight of women in the Taliban ruled countries is pitiable) and of everything I had; a loving family that provides me with everything I need no matter what the sass or the anger I display.
There are some things that I take for granted; the little freedoms that so many girls enjoy. The freedom to dress the way I want, to say what I think, to study as much as I want and to shape my own destiny(even with the restrictions about the directions I shape it into), is something that so many girls don't have. I am grateful for this life and everything I have; so much more grateful after I read this book.
*end personal rant*
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls"
Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns is breathtaking. It makes you miserable, emotional and fills you with turbulence.
It's divided into four parts. Part One is Mariam's story, Part two Laila's. Part three has both Laila and Mariam narrating and Part four is just Laila again.
Mariam's story is painful to swallow; an insane mother, a father who is too weak willed to defend his daughter, a cruel husband and miscarriages make hers a cruel life full of misery.
Laila, younger than Mariam, has a life that is light years apart. War and cruelty takes this away from her and blinded with deceit, she's driven to a life similar to Mariam's.
Women in Afghanistan endure the unendurable; they live life being submissive to the demands of the more or less irrational male(the burqa, the abuse both physical and emotional). Some parts of the book are just sickening(the hospitals refuse to accept female patients. they are all driven to one dirty hovel with no X-ray, no medicine, no anesthesia. There are only two doctors and they are expected to perform surgery while fully covered in a burqa. It is a wonder that Laila survives.), the way Laila is brutally beaten every time she tries to visit Aziza at the orphanage that she is forced to leave her at(because they couldnt afford to feed her and didnt want her to starve. Rasheed actually suggests prostituting Aziza, a small eight year old girl. When Laila refuses, he hits her).
("I see you again, I'll beat you until your mother's milk leaks out of your bones.")
Rasheed, the forty year old man that marries Mariam and the sixty year old that marries Laila, is a cruel misogynist. The way he treats Mariam at first is heart warming(so different from Jalil) and Mariam begans to slowly warm to him with affection. With the loss of every baby and the fact that Mariam cannot bear him a boy(when she is pregnant the first time, he buys clothes for a boy even though they dont know the gender), he descends into violence and cruelly abuses his wife.
Similarly with Laila, he is gentle through out her pregnancy yet cold and vicious after she bears him a baby girl(Aziza; when Zalmai is born, he goes head over heels to pamper and spoil the brat that imitates his father). The straw that breaks the camel's back is when Laila finds out that Tariq is alive and that Rasheed paid a man to come and tell her convincingly that Tariq died.
The ending is presented in a realistic manner(there is no amnesty; murder is murder regardless of the provocation) and Laila leaves with Tariq and her children.
Jalil, Mariam's father, attempts to redeem his character(before he dies, he comes to Mariam's house and begs for her to see him-similar to how she waited outside his house as a kid-) by leaving her her inheritance and a video tape of a movie that in a way, set off the chain of events(Pinocchio, curiously.). But it is sadly too little and too late.
Tariq is the only male character that shines in this gruesome tale. He is strong(despite the loss of a leg) and yet, tender when dealing with the children and Laila. He loves and respects Laila. He tries and succeeds in getting Zalmai to trust him. He befriends his daughter and proves to us all that not all men are the same.
After years of struggle and strife, their marriage provides the sweetness to the bitter ending.
After I read this book, I couldn't sleep. I thought of everything they'd suffered(fictional or not; the plight of women in the Taliban ruled countries is pitiable) and of everything I had; a loving family that provides me with everything I need no matter what the sass or the anger I display.
There are some things that I take for granted; the little freedoms that so many girls enjoy. The freedom to dress the way I want, to say what I think, to study as much as I want and to shape my own destiny(even with the restrictions about the directions I shape it into), is something that so many girls don't have. I am grateful for this life and everything I have; so much more grateful after I read this book.
*end personal rant*
A Thousand Splendid Suns is indeed splendid! But apart from the emotional inclination the book provides, it is important to note that, it presents the entire history of talibanization of Afghanistan. The talibans were no more than a bunch of wannabe hoodlums whose convictions took root, not at fanaticism or spirituality but at their avidity to become a hegemonic superpower.
ReplyDeleteThis book has got all that it needs to prove that it is disingenuous to suggest a possible parallel between terrorism and Islam
wow. didnt know the meaning of hegemonic before :P
ReplyDeletebut i completely agree. i remember noting that the soviets were kinder to the people than the mujahideens and the mujahideens kinder than the taliban. there was a set of rules read out at the start of the taliban regime that was preposterous.
but in the end, what i carried away were the emotions it broadcasted. so that's what i chose to highlight.
err...now don't go about thinking that i am a fucking genius or something.
ReplyDeleteThe big idea behind my comment could well have been a cheap trick to seek attention
:D
attention seeker in a blog with a regular readership of 1 ? :D gee, i'd say you're in the wrong place.
ReplyDeleteWould it sound weird if i said i try to seek attention towards no one but myself in order to keep the day going? You know...being narcissistic and all..
ReplyDeleteerr..Even though I confessed that I do it for seeking attention, its a crude interpretation (of course, I gave it myself) of how I feel about it.
(alright, now i look like an idiot. everybody laugh :p)