“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
“A Thousand Splendid Suns Quotes by Khaled Hosseini.” Goodreads, Goodreads, 2014, https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3271379-a-thousand-splendid-suns.
Last year, when the pandemic was in the early stages of its infancy, I found myself with a lot more free time than I had previously. With this new found free time, as a result of the dissolution of many of my time consuming activities (i.e. school, athletics, all non-essential activities), I decided to get back into reading. I became a very avid reader at a young age, but as I got older and was thrown into more activities to “prepare” me for my future, the amount of books I read annually began to taper off. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stay away from the beauty of books for long. During this time I decided to get into more “mature” books, or books that strayed outside of the young adult romances I knew all too well. So, it was with this revelation that I went to my older sister. Three years my senior, and slightly more versed in the world of mature literature she led me to a book by the name of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Before I talk about how this book impacted me let me just say one thing: wow. I have read a lot of books for an eighteen year old, but none have had me so captivated, impacted, emotional, and overall immersed as this book has.
Just to give a little perspective about how, engulfed, no, how obsessed I was with this book, think about the best book you’ve ever read in your life. What why was it so good? What things made it so important to you? Now imagine a book with all of those things to the tenth degree. It took me a mere two days to finish this 432 page masterpiece. The only reason it took me even that long was because my mom had to force me to put it down and do other things like eat or help around the house. I personally think the best books are the ones that take me the furthest away. The ones that make me really feel like I am watching, or even living the story in that moment. It’s no longer words on a page but a movie playing out in my head. I can feel everything the characters feel, I am thinking the same things they are, I am a part of their world. This book did nothing short of that.
From the perspective of two different women with completely different beginnings, we watch as they end up coming together under the same roof married to the same, horrible man. The book takes place in Afghanistan from the early 1960’s to the early 2000’s. Within this time we follow the lives of Mariam and Laila. They are completely different. Mariam is bastard born out of wedlock between a rich and influential businessman and a lowly maid. Although Mariam was provided for on the farm her father set up outside the city for her and her mother, her childhood was not easy. Her mother blamed Mariam for everything that went wrong in her life and manifested her hatred into cruel words and sometimes abuse. Laila on the other hand grew up in a very loving home with both of her parents and her older brothers. She was very beautiful with light eyes, light hair and dark skin. She had a best friend that would grow to be her lover, and an education because of her professor father. Laila’s only downside in her background was when her brothers passed fighting in Afghanistan’s civil war. It drove her mother into a severe depression to the point of not leaving her room for weeks, even months at a time. The ways in which the two women end up together is definitely a big spoiler that you’ll just have to read to find out, but the two women end up married to the same man.
He was a very traditional and religious, gross, old man who only wanted to bear sons and have his wives cook and clean for him. He wasn’t terrible in the beginning. He just turned sour on Mariam, the main character, when she could not bear him a child. It was in his disappointed and frustrated rage that he abused, raped and harassed his child bride for years and years until one day, after a bombing in the city, he found a beautiful and injured girl in the rubble. He took this girl home and made Mariam nurse her back to health. As you could probably guess, this girl is Laila, the other main character and second protagonist. For his kindness and other personal reasons, Laila decides to marry the man, Rasheed. Because Laila is younger, more beautiful, and more fertile, Rasheed dotes on her. This only makes Mariam despise her more. As time passes Laila has two children, a boy and a girl. Rasheed dotes on the boy of course, and really doesn’t care for the girl at all. For a little while things are okay. Until Laila decides to stop sleeping with Rasheed and the two women try to run away. In a heated moment the two women and the little girl almost end up dying, yet thankfully they make it out. Many, many other things happen throughout the book to make it such a powerful lesson, but it ends with Laila leaving Afghanistan for a while, then eventually going back to her hometown of Kabul to dedicate herself to the children there.
This was such an impactful book to me because of the reality of it, the culture shock. Although author Hosseini said the book was in fact fiction, he said he based his characters and their stories off of real events and things that were common to happen in Afghanistan at the time. To me, a young woman who has spent her whole life in the shelter and freedom of the United States this was really shocking, the things that happened to these women in the book were unfathomable. Sure, you see and read things in the media about what’s going on in other parts of the world, but to be let in on their thoughts and feelings as they went through these situations, also described in such vivid detail, is completely different. To be indulged in a different culture, one so different from my own was also a powerful part of why I loved this book so much. Not only did I come out of reading it feeling so much more informed and empathetic, but I felt like I could look at the world around me and my own situation so much differently. I am not the biggest fan of the United States. What with all of the injustice and inequality I’ve seen these past several years, it’s been hard to love a place that some of my friends can’t feel safe in; that I sometimes can’t feel safe in. But after reading this book and taking a little bit of a step back, I can appreciate the freedoms and safeties I do have. I can, for the most part, wear whatever I want, I can say whatever I want, and I can make my own life without the approval of a man, or the head of the household first. It’s the little things, but it’s something. It’s something I can take away from A Thousand Splendid Suns and something I can hopefully put forward as well.
Comments by Hollie Perdue