Chain Reading

It is difficult to write a review about A Thousand Splendid Suns without wanting to make comparisons to Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, even though the two books are mutually exclusive. One doesn't have to have read The Kite Runner to understand A Thousand Splendid Suns, and in fact the two books are quite different.

The similarities lie in the way the story is told, in that Hosseini begins the story in an Afghanistan very unlike the one we read about in the newspapers today. A Thousand Splendid Suns begins in the 60's with Mariam, a harami, the illegitimate child of a rich man. Her father is never able to fully claim her and when her mother dies she is forced into an arranged marriage that will move her far away from her father and enable him to forget the shame that lies in her very being. Mariam is moved to Kabul, where she is treated kindly at first by her new husband. However, he is very strict, expecting her to where Burqa long before the Taliban comes to power and makes it mandatory for all women.

In the book we see Afghanistan transformed from a very modern city, where women are treated as equals with (most) men. It then goes through the period where Afghanistan is at war with Russia, and the story changes from Mariam to Laila. Laila is only 14 when her friends have all moved from her childhood neighborhood to escape the war. Just as her family is preparing to leave themselves, their home is shelled and both of her parents are killed. She is rescued by Rasheed, Mariam's husband, and forever after their lives are entwined.

Once the book reaches this point it takes on a much quicker pace, switching back and forth from Mariam to Laila, telling the story of their life together from each of their perspectives, which eventually becomes one and the same. Once the Taliban takes over we see a stark contrast between the Afghanistan of before and the Afghanistan of today.

Reading this book was difficult for me as it was told from the perspective of women. I could almost tangibly feel their anger mounting. They try everything humanly possible to get away from the horrible situation, but they are always betrayed.

For them, these experiences really put their lives into perspective. They realize they really don't have any other option. And their husband helps them to see that, always pointing out that without him they'd be out on the street or dead because neither is able to work, nor are they able to be in public without a male companion without risking being severely beaten.

If you are interested in Afghanistan, it's culture and it's people, both before and after the last 20 years of conflict, I highly recommend Hosseini's books. He tells the stories of normal people, and he tells it with a balanced hand I don't think would be possible by westerners who probably wouldn't be able to write without showing their outrage by such treatment of women.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is the deeply moving story of two women in Afghanistan during the 30 year period from the mid 70s to 2003. Politically, Afghanistan went from a secular, Communist regime in the 70s, to the period of utter chaos and war against the Soviets in the 80s, to a period of warlord conflict followed by Taliban victory in the 90s, to the invasion by the US, followed by more or less stability, briefly, in the 2000s. The condition of women followed the course of political history. The father of one of the women, a man who had been dismissed from his teaching post by the communists because he was too liberal, told his daughter, correctly, that the communist regime was a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan. Events were soon to prove him right. In the best of times women in Afghanistan are treated as unwanted chattel; in the worst times, they are treated as prisoners whose sole function is to produce sons.

In this story, Mariam is a young girl living with her mother in a one room house outside of Herat. Her father lives in town; the mother was the father's servant, so Mariam is a harani, a bastard, and rejected by the father's wives (plural). Eventually the mother dies, in tragic circumstances, and Mariam is essentially sold to Rasheed, a crude, uneducated, 50 year old man in Kabul. Her life goes downhill pretty fast from there.

Laila is a young girl with a neurotic mother and a kindly somewhat intellectual father (the ex school teacher). The mother is neurotic through grief for her 2 sons killed in the war against the Soviets. Without giving too much away, Laila too becomes the wife of Rasheed. Her life goes downhill pretty fast from there.

This is a very sad story. It has as happy an ending as one could hope for, I guess, but I couldn't help feeling both sorrow and anger at the treatment of women of Afghanistan. The tragedy of Afghanistan seems to be mostly self-imposed by the combined effects of Islamic fundamentalism, ethnic rivalry, an apparently long history of warlord fiefdoms, and a general denigration of women for reasons that are unclear to me. It seems to be the case that societies that do not treat women well and give them opportunities to succeed, are not as successful as those that do. The microcredit organization, kiva.org, has found that loaning money to women to start or expand businesses returns the most social benefit. Societies where women are kept uneducated not only waste half their human capital, they seem to encourage non-productive behavior by men, as well.

It has been a while since I've read a novel as compelling and engaging as this. I'm looking forward now to reading The Kite Runner by the same author.