A Thousand Splendid Suns

*SPOILER ALERT*



This book is more serious than what I usually read. It takes place in Afghanistan from the 1950s to the present (well 2005 anyway). The title is actually an except from a poem that is mentioned in the book. Basically the poem conveys the idea that Afghanistan is so beautiful that it's worth enduring all the hardships in life there because of the beauty of life there. I can't say I agree. The characters in this story experience every hardship imaginable and there are only a few happy parts to this book. Mariam is an illegitamate child of a wealthy businessman and she betrays her mother and goes to live with her father but her father, who seems so loving during his visits rejects her, sends her back to her mother but her mother has killed herself because of the heartbreak caused by Mariam leaving. Mariam's father quickly marries her off to Rasheed, a man 30 years older than she who lives across the country. Mariam's husband is rough with her and even makes her chew rocks as a punishment for a mediocre dinner she cooks, breaking several of her teeth. Mariam also suffers several miscarriages which make Rasheed more and more distant as time goes by. After 20 years of surviving, Mariam is insulted by Rasheed taking another wife (he is 60 by now) who is 15 years old. Laila is beautiful, but her heart is heavy - she was orphaned by a missile that struck her house. While recovering from the attack on her house, she learns that her childhood sweetheart was wounded and died while trying to escape into Pakistan. Laila gives birth to a girl and Rasheed wants nothing to do with the child. Laila and Mariam become friends and try to escape their terrible life with their abusive husband, but they fail because they are not allowed to travel outside the country without a male relative. They are returned to Rasheed and he abuses them even worse than before - beating them and denying them food and water to the point they almost die (this is not even a crime). Laila becomes pregnant again, but when she goes into labor, they have to go to the new women's hospital (for treating only women), which is so ill-equipped they don't have clean gloves or even anesthetic for a c-section Laila has. Eventually Rasheed becomes too much for the women to bear; Mariam kills him with a shovel to the head to protect Laila and her children and she is executed by beheading in front of a stadium full of people gone to watch the punishments given to people who break the strict rules of the Taliban. Laila finds out her childhood sweatheart was not killed (a man was paid by Rasheed to tell her that so she'd marry Rasheed). They mourn Mariam together and Laila becomes pregnant again - if it's a girl she will name her Mariam. The ending wraps things up nicely, but the book is just so laden with sorrow that the ending hardly makes up for all the things that go wrong. I know that people in America suffer hardships, but I do not believe that someone in America would have suffered all of these problems in their life (and if so then it certainly happens less frequently than in Afghanistan). This book really opened my eyes to the faces behind the Iraq war (which is in Afghanistan too). It's more than counter-terror; it works to protect people and their future. I am not making a pro-war stance with this blog - I am simply stating that the war does have some good facets.