Book Review-A Thousand Splendid Suns

It isn’t everyday that you come across a story that chronicles the life and trials of an average women. The Namesake, Memoirs of a Geisha, Anne Frank’s Diary and Mother are titles that probably fall in that category. While “The Namesake” follows the life of an Indian immigrant woman coping with an American way of life, Memoirs of a Gesiha, Anne Frank’s Diary and Mother are set in more turbulent times. What binds these stories is the fact that the central characters, female, witness drastic societal changes that occur in one particular or a multitude of phases in their lives. These stories are also a rendition of the roles women assume or are imposed on as an outcome of the circumstances they find themselves in. The unsung heroic struggles they undertake, be it their personal conflicts or revolutions of mammoth proportions.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story that follows Mariam and Laila, two Afghan women, their travails in a land where virginity ought to be served to a husband on a platter and violence appears to be a man’s birthright. It is Mariam perhaps, of the two, whose life carries more tragedy and irony. The illegitimate child of a wealthy capitalist, Mariam grew up conflicted amidst the pent-up love of her scornful mother and the fallacious affections of a doting father. In an adolescent frenzy, her aspiration to be a part of her father’s legitimate family, leads her to his doorstep, much to her mother’s dismay. In an ironic twist, her father refuses to acknowledge her and, she returns home heartbroken, only to find that her mother had committed suicide. Before she could recover from the trauma and guilt over her mother’s death, her father marries her off to a shoe maker in Kabul. Excluding the first few days of her marriage, filled with patronized affection and painful sex, Mariam unwittingly falls into a quagmire of misery and abuse at the hands of her spouse, following underage pregnancy and miscarriages.

Laila, too grew up amidst a forlorn mother (the reason being the death of her two sons in the revolt against Soviet) and a doting father. Laila’s father was a liberal man, a teacher, who aspired to make his daughter a learned woman. Even when he lost his teaching job and was reduced to working in mines due to communism, her father strives to get Laila educated, atleast until the inter community battles emerged. Unlike Mariam, Laila was far less resilient, dared to engage in pre marital coupling and stood up for what she believed was unfair. Mariam has certainly seen more years than Laila, but what Laila lacks in years, she makes up with her experience and wit, the former for that matter never the chance to experience anything other than endurance. Mariam was a teenaged bride when Laila’s mother bore Laila, but circumstances led them both to end up being married to the same man. Although they get off on the wrong foot, the duo end up being each other’s chum, confidante and strength. It happens after Laila extends her warmth to Mariam by standing up for her against Rasheed, and she reluctantly accepts it. Hosseini writes “and in this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew they were no longer enemies” (Page 244).

A Thousand Splendid Suns occurs in the backdrop of the Kabul’s transformation into an oppressive society. When one speaks of Taliban, the immediate image that forms in the mind is of arms wielding men and burqa clad woman, a terror-stricken cemetery of sorts. The narrative of Mariam and Laila, in contrast to the per-conceived notions about demure, compliant women, is a beautiful rendition of the lives of the people who have no way out and are forced to live through ages of turmoil. Mariam, for instance, stares at awe, at women who dress in western clothes, wear make up and paint their nails (this was of course much before the Taliban regime). This reflects the stark contrast in the lifestyles of the women living in smaller villages and the urban women, lifestyles of the ones with financial constraints and the ones without. We also see, how the Taliban establishment, acts as a leveler of the status of women from diverse socioeconomic demography. They are all reduced to a subjugated breed, prohibited from the basic rights like education and outdoor activities.

Ethnic diversity triggers off most of the unwanted violence in Kabul. It is rightly predicted through Laila’s forward thinking father, “To me its nonsense, and a very dangerous nonsense at that-all this talk of I’m Tajik and you’re Pashtun and he’s Hazara and she’s Uzbek. We’re all Afghans, and that’s all that should matter.” It is evident that when communal and ethnic disharmony becomes a bottleneck to the unity of a nation, the society eventually falls out. Perhaps that is what Khaled Hosseini tries to express through him. Religion again is a very important theme in the book. It is religion what people fight over, it is the religious laws based on which the entire social spectrum is altered. It is religion again that helps the central character Mariam get going. Her prayers, her Quran and the little morsel of faith that her teacher Mullah Faizullah packs her off with, are all that she could call her own, look up to in terms of despair.

Family ties could be considered yet another dimension to A Thousand Splendid Suns, placed with utmost subtleness and sensitivity. Khaled Hosseini skilfully lets us into the lives of these two women, makes us walk the same paths they do, and tells us that inspite of the drought and the holocaust atmosphere the people hold together, as a unit, as a family and celebrate every time they can sneak in a little happiness into their lives. Let’s take a look at Mariam, as a child although she was content with her father’s weekly visits, the longing to become a part of his ‘real’ family like her mother would say, become overpowering. Despite her mother’s warnings against her father’s insincerity, she adores him and considers him to be someone who walked out of a fable, and sets out hoping to get accepted into his world. She names pebbles after her half siblings and places the one named after her aside, much aware that she might be the odd one out, and yet having unconditional love towards her father. Likewise, Laila bears whips and beating of guards, every day, in the hope of spending a few moments with her daughter, tucked away in an orphanage. We come across dysfunctional families like Laila’s with both her brothers dead and mother crestfallen; we see close knit families like Tariq’s with whom Laila senses a kinship, much before the two fell in love. Later as the women begin to empathize with each other, we witness an inseparable bond develop between Laila and Mariam.

The title is inspired by a line in the Josephine Davis translation of the poem "Kabul", by the 17th-century Iranian poet Saib Tabrizi.

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

What it signifies could be a question with many possibilities. The first being the state of Kabul itself, the very fact that Kabul’s scenic exquisiteness seems to be on the decline with the rise of Taliban, the people who continue to live there, have to struggle to survive through a day, that relishing on the splendour of Kabul is unfathomable. Mariam’s ironic life- every time she comes close to happiness situation only worsens, could also be embodied in the thought a thousand splendid suns went past her, unnoticed, as she struggled with her own existence. A Thousand Splendid Suns could also be the splendid sun that Laila witnesses, and gives a closure to Mariam’s tragic saga.

The story ends on a shocking note, yet in its twisted way, feels like the only acceptable closure. For years Mariam’s lived with the guilt of being a harami, an unwanted weed, and through her whole life, tried to make up for it by being compliant. Nonetheless when she does something unthinkable for her own nature, and gets convicted by Taliban, she finally feels dignified. In Hosseini’s won words ‘a legitimate end to an illegitimate beginning’.

Khaled Hosseini proves his mastery in story telling, by using multiple narratives to bring forth both domestic and national turmoil, and the impact it has on those who live through that. As a reader, be prepared to be stunned, heart-broken and completely moved by A Thousand Splendid Suns.