The novel dwells chiefly on the fate of women in Afghanistan, seen through the intertwined lives of Mariam and Laila. Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a rich man in Herat (close to Iran) too proud to bring her up in his household; he therefore gives her away in marriage to a shoemaker, Rasheed, in Kabul. The other woman, Laila, is a war orphan who becomes the second wife of the same shoemaker.
We follow them through decades of hardship and political turmoil in Afghanistan, as the author exposes their travails under puppets of the Soviet Union and the sectarian warlords, while the divisions in Afghan society tear it apart. The novel is about motherhood and sacrifice, and the resilience of these two women. Mariam as the senior wife harbours a resentment for Laila as the usurper. Then slowly, the relations thaw when a child is born to Laila and two women assume an uneasy alliance initially, which blossoms into a mother-daughter relationship as time goes on.
The sadness you feel for Afghanistan is because of the regime’s intolerance of all the arts and education, coupled with a systematic subjugation of women. The Taliban, so intent on banning, have all but forgotten the times when women were doctors, university faculty, and school teachers, playing an equal role in national life. Today we only view Afghan women as blue burqa-clad dolls silently tiptoeing behind a male family member.
The author, Khalid Hosseini, was an Afghan by birth who escaped at the age of 15 with his diplomat father and grew up in the West, settling in California as a doctor. The success of his very first novel impelled him to take up writing full-time. All three of his books have have reached the bestseller charts. He is also a UNHCR goodwill ambassador. A short profile of Khalid Hosseini is here.
The title of the novel is taken from a poem by the Persian poet Saib-e-Tabrizi who loved Kabul and wrote a poem about it in the seventeenth century; Laila’s father Babi quotes two lines in Chapter 26 when he is forced to leave Kabul: Tabrizi’s poem had been swirling in his head all day, but all he could remember were these two lines:
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.
The entire poem Kabul is a love letter to Kabul.
Tabriz is in the East Azerbaijan province of northwestern Iran
Tabriz celebrates eight famous poets (including Shams-e-Tabrizi, Rumi’s spiritual guide) with individual mausoleums erected to them. There is a graveyard in Tabriz called the Maqbaratoshoara (‘Mausoleum of Poets’) where some 400 poets and mystics are buried with famous men. We can appreciate why Persia is the origin of so much poetry and the poetic forms that have permeated the culture of of West Asia and South Asia.
Maqbarat-o-shoara, also known as the Mausoleum of Poets, built in the 1970s in Tabriz, is a monument to honour the 400 or so Iranian poets, mystics, and notable persons buried in the grounds
However Saib-e-Tabrizi is buried in Isfahan, the magical city of culture with scores of famous monuments, palaces, and mosques.
%20who%20was%20the%20greatest%20sonneteer%20of%20his%20time.%20It%20is%20home%20to%20a%20collection%20of%20around%20120,000%20couplets%20inscribed%20on%20the%20walls%20in%20marble.png)
1967 monument in Isfahan to Saib-e-Tabrizi (1592 – 1676) who was the greatest sonneteer of his time. It is home to a collection of around 120,000 couplets inscribed on the walls in marble
Khaled Hosseini, 2006 photo by Leonardo Cendamo
Afghan-American novelist Khalid Hussaini, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 4, 1965, the eldest of 5 children.
Thanks to his father being a diplomat, Hussaini lived in Kabul, Iran and France. When he was 15 his family applied for asylum in the USA where they later became naturalised US citizens. Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan till 2003 when he was 38, and acknowledged that he suffered from survivor's guilt for having been able to leave the country prior to the Soviet invasion and subsequent wars.
His debut novel The Kite Runner was both a critical and commercial success. All his other books including A Thousand Splendid Suns, our selection for this month, have been at least partially set in Afghanistan and his protagonists have all been Afghans. He thus spread awareness about Afghanistan, its people and its culture.
After graduating from college, Hosseini worked as a physician in California, a situation he likened to “an arranged marriage.” It is clear that he disliked practising medicine. Thanks to the success of The Kite Runner he was able to retire from medicine in order to write full-time. His three novels have all had success.
The Kite Runner spent 101 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, including three weeks at number one. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), spent 103 weeks on the chart, including 15 at number one while his third novel, And The Mountains Echoed (2013), remained on the chart for 33 weeks.
In addition to writing, Hosseini has advocated for the support of refugees and established the Khaled Hosseini Foundation to support Afghan refugees returning to Afghanistan. He was appointed as UNHCR goodwill ambassador.
Hosseini is married to Roya (not an arranged marriage), and they have two children. The family resides in Northern California. He is fluent in Persian and Pashto, and has described himself as a secular Muslim.
This book is mainly about two women of Afghanistan – especially the trials and the burdens that women have to bear in Afghanistan. Mariam is the first protagonist we read about; she is the illegitimate child of a very wealthy Afghan. He cares for her, but yet does not accept her into his own family, because he has other wives, and Mariam was born of his maid. His wives do not allow him to acknowledge her.
We see the confident curiosity of Mariam to discover her father's world and in spite of Nana's ( her mother, who she lives with in a hut, a kolba) warnings she arrives at Jalil's mansion in the city of Herat only to be turned away.
Nana's suicide resulting from her daughter's desertion, leads to Mariam being married off to an elderly shoemaker from Kabul.
Life starts well enough with Rasheed taking care of her. There is joy when she is expecting a baby, and the husband is good to her, but when she loses the child, and his expectations for a boy are dashed, he begins to treat her badly. The ensuing miscarriages and her barrenness leads to unbearable cruelty by her husband.
We read about the life of Laila a young girl in Kabul. The background to her family, and her relationship with a young boy, Tariq, who had lost his leg in a landmine tragedy is the beginning of the second part. We see the lives of the two protagonists, Mariam and Laila, becoming intertwined, amidst the tragic conditions of war.
The novel is centred on these two women, but it brings out the sad situation of women in Afghanistan at the time of writing; the tragedy continues.
Zakia
Zakia read from the first chapter. When the maid Nana is forced out of Jalil's house for becoming pregnant by him; she is victimised and delivers a lesson to her daughter, Mariam, that men will always blame women.
The woman, the wife was always blamed. Zakia remembered her mother-in-law would take the blame much of the time for whatever went wrong in the household. Therefore it was good advice for those days. Nowadays it won't work. Mariam was a victim and her mother even called her a ‘harami’ because she was an illegitimate child. Mariam grew up knowing that there was something not right about her.
Joe said blaming the woman goes back to the Garden of Eden!
Thomo
The woman, the wife was always blamed. Zakia remembered her mother-in-law would take the blame much of the time for whatever went wrong in the household. Therefore it was good advice for those days. Nowadays it won't work. Mariam was a victim and her mother even called her a ‘harami’ because she was an illegitimate child. Mariam grew up knowing that there was something not right about her.
Joe said blaming the woman goes back to the Garden of Eden!
Thomo
Thomo’s passage from Chapter 8 brings out how much Mariam loved her father, Jalil, and how she used to wait at their kolba every week for him to come and spend time.
After her mother, Nana, dies, she goes to Jalil’s house in the city of Herat, and finally they admit her, but then marry her off at the first opportunity to a man much older than her in Kabul.
As Geeta just mentioned, he looked after her well till they lost the child. In this passage she meets her husband for the first time and what happens thereafter is described, until her parting with her father. She tells him, ‘I don't want to see you ever again.’
So Rasheed and Mariam get into the multicoloured bus and ride off.
Mariam is let down by her father who won’t take her to see her favourite teacher Faizullah before she is packed off. Later when Jalil, her father, comes to see her in Kabul she refuses his overture. But the only saving grace, is that he leaves a bequest for Mariam, which the other wife, Laila, gets. That will help build her future.
Dhanya Ravindran
Dhanya felt bad for the women there. In Kabul, people were all at that time a happy crowd. Dhanya, Devika’s niece, was invited to attend from Wayanad where she is resting now. She had read the novel.
Dhanya has been working with the United Nations in some of the most challenging regions of the world; she is currently stationed in Afghanistan as the head of human resources for a major UN agency, the World Food Program, in Afghanistan. She engages daily with the Afghan workforce. These interactions have given her deep insight into Afghan society, making her an ideal contributor to our discussions on the subject.
The stories Dhanya hears in Afghanistan often echo the narrative portrayed by Khaled Hosseini in his book. Although the current Taliban-led government is marginally different from the one depicted by Hosseini, the social and cultural conditions continue to create immense hardships—particularly for women. Cases of domestic violence and harassment by husbands and family members are sadly widespread. Yet, what stands out is the incredible resilience of Afghan women. Despite the dire circumstances they face, their instinct to survive from a very young age is both inspiring and admirable. This resilience is a central theme of the novel, which Dhanya emphasised in her reflections on the book.
Dhanya used to have an uncle who would visit in the early days and return with fabulous fabrics and he used to talk about life there and how everything has changed now.
Devika
This is how this Mariam sees the other side of Kabul, and the very well-dressed kind of women who frequent the fashionable Kocheh-Morgha (Chicken Street).
It's sad that at that point, she was in a way happy with what was going on with her own life. But then the whole situation changes when she can't have children. She's treated badly after that in a way that makes you sad.
Dhanya was asked if she would like to contribute something. Dhanya had read the book quite some time ago but did not recall what Devika read specifically.
In the Kabul of eight years ago, there was this stark difference in how the women in the richer part of Kabul lived compared to those in the poorer districts. In Afghanistan, it was during the rule of the king that they brought in the decree that all the men should wear trousers – not the traditional longer tunic (perahan or kandahari), loose trousers (shalwar), and a variety of head coverings like turbans or caps. The king decreed that men working in the government should wear trousers. So from that time onwards, there was a big change in the social life in Kabul.
There were a lot of cinemas. Dhanya’s Afghan father-in-law said the people were advanced. Her Afghan husband in early 80s used to go to school, and the girls went to universities and wore miniskirts and had a good time.
But then, even at that time, there was a big difference in the people from the rural area and the parts of Kabul where the poor people lived. This differentiation existed, but what happened after the Taliban, which is also reflected in the book, is that everybody became uniform in their poverty.
The rich people, the elite people, the educated people all left, and those who were left behind were the people who couldn't leave for some reason, or who were not educated, and overall poverty descended upon Kabul.
So Khalid Hosseini really is reflecting reality. In that sense, his books, though they are fiction, derive from a lived reality. Dhanya felt at times it really might have been a story that happened, and KH knew the actual characters and he just put them into books. The words of KH are almost non-fiction for her, with respect to all three books that he has written.
Some books are much more than others like non-fiction but these things are also part of the life in Kabul during those days.
Joe said the ban part of Tali-ban has even been propagated to Kashmir. He remembers there was a band of girls in 2013 who got together to perform and sing in public, including songs by the mystic Lal Ded; they were cancelled and driven off the stage by the rabid criticisms of clerics. Thus Kashmir's first all-girl rock band broke up after threats.
Hence the banning passion of the Taliban has percolated from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, into Indian Kashmir also, said Joe.
Of course, the banning of education, as Devika pointed out, was a great tragedy. Joe pointed out another blow to women's equality is that they have a women's cricket team, but it is sheltered in Australia after three Australian women (one, a former cricketer, Mel Jones) were able to help the team leave Afghanistan because it would not allow them to play. They have no recognition in their own land. Their own cricket federation doesn't recognise that there is such a thing as a women's team. But some good news has arrived on April 13 on the cricket front: the International Cricket Council is to formally support Afghan women cricketers. A dedicated fund and targeted programme will be set up to help Afghan women cricketers.
The exiled Afghanistan women's team played their first game in Melbourne earlier this year
Culture in Afghanistan has undergone a major regression, of about 2,000-years. Joe has heard of a custom called Bacha Posh in Afgahistan, according to which girls live dressed as boys up until puberty and sometimes beyond. In Dari bacha posh means girl “dressed up as a boy;” it is an ancient tradition that pre-dates the Taliban in which a family designates a girl to live as a boy. That could either allow her a boy’s freedoms — like education, athletics and the right to be outside alone — or impose a boy’s duties on her, like working. See
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/04/health/afghan-girls-living-as-boys-wellness/index.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/04/health/afghan-girls-living-as-boys-wellness/index.html
But what about Iran, asked someone? In Iran also, women used to dress in contemporary fashion during the time of the Shah. They were westernised. They too are trying to throw off their mandated hijab (head covering) and are holding protests and getting persecuted. The death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini after the morality police arrested and imprisoned her for violating the hijab-wearing protocol inspired widespread protests in Iran and elsewhere.
Mahsa Amini, 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in captivity after the morality police detained her for not wearing the hijab in public
In time, the women will be liberated. These are all societies just like Iraq which were modern a few decades ago.
Joe said the Americans invaded Iraq on misleading and false allegations of harbouring WMD and completely destroyed a secular Iraq, where Sunni and Shia lived together, where Christians lived and worshipped, and Jews too lived in peace, and there was a functioning society of very educated women during Saddam Hussein’e regime. That society was completely destroyed in the name of promoting a specious American-style democracy at the barrel of a gun.
Joe said it’s beyond counting how many well-developed societies the United States of America has ruined.
KumKum
These women are so irrepressible. The minute a baby girl is born in Afghanistan, she has to fight continuously to get a portion of what their brothers get, because the brothers are given preference. Then they have to go to school. She's the first one to lose education if there is no money at home. But their adaptability helps them survive.
KumKum chose to read from Chapter 13 noticing the charming behaviour of a newly married couple, expressing their happiness at the prospect of becoming first time parents. Though there was huge age difference between Rasheed and Mariam, both were equally ecstatic about the pregnancy. Rasheed’s domineering side is hidden in this chapter, and so too the misfortunes that would fall upon Mariam. Both seemed happy and normal in this chapter. Rasheed desperately wanted a boy, and even chose a good Pashtun boy’s name. Mariam, on the other hand, was indifferent to the sex of her unborn child.
Mariam thought Rasheed “hitched his hope to its being a boy. As happy as she was about this pregnancy, his expectation weighed on her.”
Mariam’s character in the book is that pf a long-suffering woman of noble character. Rasheed’s is that of a selfish, macho bully, who is prone to cruelty. In chapter 13 the author tenderly portrayed the normal human sides of both the characters.
One good aspect is that Rasheed used to take Mariam, and later also the second wife, for a walk in the city. This is one of those times they go for an outing, and take the bus. KumKum thought this was the only chapter where both of them were normal – a child was coming and that was the reason. And she was so happy and hopeful.
I think Dhanya may be able to tell us whether ‘barani’ is biryani, said Priya. Joe replied, no, barani is fried eggplant with tomato sauce.
And what is ‘aushak’?. Dhanya replied aushak is dumplings with leek inside. Actually the word ‘biryani’ comes from Uzbekistan where they made Biryani; biryan means fried.
Barani, which is also fried eggplant mixed with tomato sauce and they may also put yogurt on the top. KumKum said In Turkiye, they call it Imam Bayaldi (‘Imam has fainted’ by eating that) – it's a favourite dish.
Mariam’s character in the book is that pf a long-suffering woman of noble character. Rasheed’s is that of a selfish, macho bully, who is prone to cruelty. In chapter 13 the author tenderly portrayed the normal human sides of both the characters.
One good aspect is that Rasheed used to take Mariam, and later also the second wife, for a walk in the city. This is one of those times they go for an outing, and take the bus. KumKum thought this was the only chapter where both of them were normal – a child was coming and that was the reason. And she was so happy and hopeful.
I think Dhanya may be able to tell us whether ‘barani’ is biryani, said Priya. Joe replied, no, barani is fried eggplant with tomato sauce.
And what is ‘aushak’?. Dhanya replied aushak is dumplings with leek inside. Actually the word ‘biryani’ comes from Uzbekistan where they made Biryani; biryan means fried.
Barani, which is also fried eggplant mixed with tomato sauce and they may also put yogurt on the top. KumKum said In Turkiye, they call it Imam Bayaldi (‘Imam has fainted’ by eating that) – it's a favourite dish.
Kavita
Kavita chose chapter 14 about Mariam losing her baby, and the trauma she goes through. She keeps on wondering what happened and even blames God for her mistake of going to the bathhouse, as a result of which she lost the baby. But then she remembers her gentle teacher Faizullah’s words and stops ascribing spite to God. Kavita took this passage because a friend of hers went through a similar experience many years back, and she too was blaming herself for not taking adequate pre-natal care. She went through severe trauma, and then later, after around 5-6 years, she had another baby – and all was right again.
Joe
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Since Kavita was not present yet, Joe went next in line with his passage from Chapter 21 where Laila’s father Babi takes Laila and Tariq in a taxi to see the famed Bamiyan Buddhas, a few hours by road west of Kabul.
This is a beautiful description of the Bamyan Buddhas. Just to imagine that 1,500 years ago this was on the crossroads of a world-famous trade route, the Silk Road, and Buddhism had penetrated to the far corners of Afghanistan and beyond!
There are actually two stone sculptures on a mountain range stretching from west to east and there is one, a taller statue on the western side and a somewhat shorter one on the eastern side. They overlook a valley from which the family have climbed up and he's describing all the activities of agriculture and women washing and so forth down below; it's beautiful to read it. The two statues are about a kilometre apart.
There are actually two stone sculptures on a mountain range stretching from west to east and there is one, a taller statue on the western side and a somewhat shorter one on the eastern side. They overlook a valley from which the family have climbed up and he's describing all the activities of agriculture and women washing and so forth down below; it's beautiful to read it. The two statues are about a kilometre apart.
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Bamiyan Buddhas – Panorama of the northern cliff of the Valley of Bamyan, with the Western and Eastern Buddhas at each end (before destruction), surrounded by a multitude of Buddhist caves
Bamiyan Buddha – the smaller, 38 meter statue, before destruction
The novel dwells chiefly on the fate of women through the intertwined lives of Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a rich man, Jalil, in Herat, which is in the west, very close to Iran. He is too proud to bring her up in his household. He gave her away in marriage to a shoemaker in Kabul. Laila, who's a war orphan in Kabul, becomes the second wife of the same shoemaker.
We follow them through decades of hardship and political turmoil in Afghanistan. The author exposes their travails under the puppet regimes of the Soviet Union, the warlords belonging to various sects and he names all of them, and the divisions in Afghan society that tear it apart. The novel is about motherhood and sacrifice and the resilience of these two women.
The sadness you feel for Afghanistan is because of the triumph of intolerance in the arts and education, coupled with the systematic subjugation of women. The Tali-ban is so intent on banning, that they have all but forgotten the times when women in Afghanistan were doctors, university professors, and school teachers, and played an equal role in national life.
Today, what do we see? The only view of Afghan women we have is as blue burqa-clad, invisible dolls creeping behind a male family member, mere marionettes. That's what they have been reduced to.
In 2001, Mullah Ammar, the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, decided that the Buddhas were an affront to his version of extreme Salafi Islam, and he decided he had to bring them down. At first, he thought he could do it with guns by firing artillery at the statues, but the Buddhas were immune to that. Finally, they had to climb all over the Buddhas, drill holes in the statues, fill them with dynamite, and then explode them apart.
How could the Buddha offend
A blind and sightless mullah?
… Even the Buddha could not mend
The blind heart of an ayatollah.
Can you imagine the sacrilege they committed? It's unthinkable that men could be so gross, so evil as to disavow and destroy a World Heritage site wilfully. It's not merely an Afghan heritage site.
Good News! – The Taliban is having a change of heart towards heritage sites in Afghanistan and now wants to preserve them:
“Since their return to power and decades of war ended, archaeological finds — particularly related to Buddhism — have proliferated, with discoveries publicised by the authorities.
Buddhist Stupa – Afghan people at a Buddhist stupa situated on the hillside of the Shewaki area near Kabul. Photo Credit - AFP
In eastern Laghman province, niches carved into rocks in Gowarjan village and carved Brahmi inscriptions have been found. “It is said that Afghan history goes back 5,000 years — these ancient sites prove it; people lived here,” said Mohammed Yaqoub Ayoubi, head of the provincial culture and tourism department.
“I think the Taliban have understood how much the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas damaged their reputation,” said Valery Freland, director of the ALIPH foundation, the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage.”
To return to the book, the passage concludes with this thought of Babi:“there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel.” Joe has had the same frisson of exhilaration when he visited the Ajanta Caves in 1996. They are an unforgettable sight. They were carved into solid rock, the oldest being about 800 years before the Bamiyan Buddhas.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/flashback-the-destruction-of-the-buddhas-of-bamiyan-409457219869
The Destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001
https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2253
UNESCO Commemorates 20 years since the destruction of two Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan
Geetha
There's a long jump in the story to the chapter that Saras chose, chapter 41. She chose this because in the story, you see Mariam as a young girl who worships her father, Jalil. However, he lets her down by not accepting her in his household.
Then she goes to Rasheed in Kabul, where she has a few months of happiness, and after she loses the baby she's not able to conceive anymore, and keeps having abortions. After that, her husband turns against her.
Mariam has had such an unhappy life. As the story goes on, you see her resentfulness at the second wife, Laila. She knows that the baby is not Rasheed's. She suspects that Laila was pregnant before Rasheed married her. But she doesn't say anything, and initially, the relationship between the two of them is very fraught. Mariam is angry with her. As time goes on they have the first child. a girl. Rashid starts having doubts whether the child is his, but he's not quite sure.
Then slowly, the two women become friends in a tenuous way, assuming an uneasy kind of an alliance initially. Slowly, they take comfort in each other. When Laila is taken to the hospital, people ask Mariam whether she is Laila’s mother. She says, yes, and they think that it's a mother-daughter relationship.
From that point on Mariam is happy to accept this girl and be known as her ‘mother.’
Mariam who has really got nothing at all in her life, is changing and the relationship with Laila is what gives her so much of happiness. And Laila's children are almost like her own grandchildren. In the end it is she who kills Rasheed to save Laila, and takes the blame – Rasheed was throttling the life out of Laila.
She says the authorities will have to find somebody as the culprit and offers herself since she killed Rasheed with a shovel. She hopes Laila can go free with the children, and have a life. Her own life has come around full circle. It was very beautiful, the way her character, completes that arc.
One sentence in the passage particularly touched Saras. Saras thought that last sentence (‘One last time, Mariam did as she was told.’) was touching – because all all her life she had been so obedient, doing what was expected of her.
Saras also admired Jalil because according to the Islamic tradition, at that time, he could have just said, ‘No, I don't care. This is not my child.’ But he took responsibility. So he was quite loving, but his other wives could not countenance accepting Mariam into the household.
Mariam was very hurt because she thought her father was the only one whom she loved. She could not understand – all she knew was every Thursday her father would come with gifts and bring her a bit of happiness, but her mother, Nana, was quite embittered.
In the end Jalil left a gift as a bequest to Mariam, which was so touching. Laila is the one who benefited from that legacy of money.
The relationship between the two women swings from antagonism between wives to an uneasy friendship and then, they really begin to have a mother-daughter relationship. That's one of the major themes of the book.
Someone asked whether women go and see these public executions? Dhanya answered that women never used to go to the public executions. The current Taliban regime doesn't have public executions in the Kabul Stadium as used to happen before, but it does have executions.
This is Tariq returning from the dead, a really uplifting, happy moment in the story. That's why Shoba chose it because this author has purposely placed the two women in the foreground. The men are in the background and throughout we are following the women’s thoughts and their life and the men just happen to be there.
Pamela
Pamela chose the passage where Rasheed is killed. A hooray went up from a reader. It gave another reader a lot of satisfaction who thought ‘Wow! she did it at last.’
It's so much like a script – you can picture each moment. It's a stunt scene in seconds, but he has written it in two pages. It's almost like KH has written a film script. He's so descriptive, when you read. You can picture that whole scene there.
The whole emotion that Mariam goes through had actually started in the previous pages where Mariam saw in those eyes of Rasheed what a fool she had been to endure and tolerate his nonsense. You remember the time when a stone was found in the food set out for Rasheed and he went out and brought pebbles, put it into Mariam’s mouth and made her chew it. It was terrible.
Pamela thought she should have done something to him at that point itself. It cost her her life in the end. There's a finality this time about it, but she knows she will go to the gallows. Somehow this situation reminded Pamela of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Her crime was justified for she was saving the life of another woman from certain death when Rasheed throttled her. So it was actually a beneficent deed.
Mariam longs to see Laila, and regrets she would not see Aziza growing up.
KumKum said apropos of the killing: ‘We don't have a shovel in the house. But we do have a sunken garden in our condo.’ Is this what one calls a non-sequitur?
Do you remember ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl where a wife kills her unfaithful husband with a frozen leg of lamb!
Priya was the last reader and this is, of course, a very satisfying ending. Mariam is dead, and all the loose ends have been tied up. Now the last event is that Laila has to go to Mariam's house, or rather the house of Mariam’s late father, Jalil. Before that she goes to Nana's place, Mariam's mother's house, which Laila has never been, but which she has heard all about. She means to get closure.
She goes up the same path. She walks, she takes time out specifically to do this because she also wants to restart her life and leave behind everything that was so horrible in her life.
Priya just loved the relationship the two women formed, during the years they were together. This was really the closure to their story. It’s really wonderful. Very touching and very painful. Laila loved Mariam too. The relationship between them was beautiful.
Priya asked to read three or four lines, which will just give us an idea of the diversity of the people of Afghanistan. Why there was in-fighting after the Soviets left and so on.
This is the conversation over the meals with Laila and Tariq and Babi and Mami:
“Over meals, conversation always flowed. Though Tariq and his parents were ethnic Pashtuns, they spoke Farsi when Laila was around for her benefit, even though Laila more or less understood their native Pashto, having learned it in school. Babi said that there were tensions between their people – the Tajiks, who were a minority, and Tariq's people, the Pashtuns, who were the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
Babi had wiped his eyeglasses clean with the hem of his shirt. To me, it's nonsense— and 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. But when one group rules over the others for so long ... There's contempt. Rivalry. There is. There always has been.”
So, all these in-fighting occurs though they are all Afghans. That is what happens to every country. It's split into these factions. It happens in India too, among the regions and states.
Priya said India should not be there at all in this category because we are so diverse, but we are so united still. Nowhere has India reached the point of splitting. But we have to be careful and treat each other with respect.
KumKum piped up that her husband, Joe, is a Mallu whereas she’s from Bengal, but they are at peace. “You are great examples,” said Priya.
But look at the even greater divides that can be bridged: Dhanya is from Kerala and her husband is from Afghanistan.
KumKum has made sure that there's no shovel, nothing dangerous, under their bed.
Dhanya said she was glad that her aunt Devika gave her the gift of joining this session. The KRG readers enjoyed having her comment and enlighten us. A big ‘Thank you’ to Dhanya.
Dhanya felt like she knew the characters, but it was really interesting for her to see how they are seen from outside by reading with this group. Dhanya thanked the group.
One reader saw the movie of his previous book, The Kite Runner on Netflix. It’s very well done. Even this book, could be made into a movie.
As Joe explained there was a civil war going on and the warlords were trying to gain supremacy in Kabul, and there was bombing and, we see Laila and family deciding to leave Kabul. Unfortunately, the explosions hit them and her parents died and Laila was wounded.
Rasheed passing by actually comes to her rescue and treats her and brings her back to health.
Mariam is a gentle and kind person and she takes care of her . Later, we see Rasheed looking upon Laila as a prospective second wife for himself.
Tariq is the boy Laila was very fond of and made out with, but he and his family were leaving Kabul, and he comes to meet her to tell her the news. Then we see Laila overwrought because he was leaving. They embraced at a final parting; it was a loving intimate embrace that got her pregnant!
When Rasheed expressed his desire to marry her, Laila realised that it was a chance for her to have Tariq’s child under a legitimate cover.
The portion Geetha selected focused on Mariam's initial antagonism and verbal aggression vented on Laila when Rasheed choses her as his second bride, hoping for a male progeny through her. In time the two women forge a lasting friendship and a mother-daughter relationship develops between them.
Saras
Then she goes to Rasheed in Kabul, where she has a few months of happiness, and after she loses the baby she's not able to conceive anymore, and keeps having abortions. After that, her husband turns against her.
Mariam has had such an unhappy life. As the story goes on, you see her resentfulness at the second wife, Laila. She knows that the baby is not Rasheed's. She suspects that Laila was pregnant before Rasheed married her. But she doesn't say anything, and initially, the relationship between the two of them is very fraught. Mariam is angry with her. As time goes on they have the first child. a girl. Rashid starts having doubts whether the child is his, but he's not quite sure.
Then slowly, the two women become friends in a tenuous way, assuming an uneasy kind of an alliance initially. Slowly, they take comfort in each other. When Laila is taken to the hospital, people ask Mariam whether she is Laila’s mother. She says, yes, and they think that it's a mother-daughter relationship.
From that point on Mariam is happy to accept this girl and be known as her ‘mother.’
Mariam who has really got nothing at all in her life, is changing and the relationship with Laila is what gives her so much of happiness. And Laila's children are almost like her own grandchildren. In the end it is she who kills Rasheed to save Laila, and takes the blame – Rasheed was throttling the life out of Laila.
She says the authorities will have to find somebody as the culprit and offers herself since she killed Rasheed with a shovel. She hopes Laila can go free with the children, and have a life. Her own life has come around full circle. It was very beautiful, the way her character, completes that arc.
One sentence in the passage particularly touched Saras. Saras thought that last sentence (‘One last time, Mariam did as she was told.’) was touching – because all all her life she had been so obedient, doing what was expected of her.
This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings
is another inspiring sentence, for by her death she had given life to anther woman whom she loved almost as a mother.
Saras also admired Jalil because according to the Islamic tradition, at that time, he could have just said, ‘No, I don't care. This is not my child.’ But he took responsibility. So he was quite loving, but his other wives could not countenance accepting Mariam into the household.
Mariam was very hurt because she thought her father was the only one whom she loved. She could not understand – all she knew was every Thursday her father would come with gifts and bring her a bit of happiness, but her mother, Nana, was quite embittered.
In the end Jalil left a gift as a bequest to Mariam, which was so touching. Laila is the one who benefited from that legacy of money.
The relationship between the two women swings from antagonism between wives to an uneasy friendship and then, they really begin to have a mother-daughter relationship. That's one of the major themes of the book.
Someone asked whether women go and see these public executions? Dhanya answered that women never used to go to the public executions. The current Taliban regime doesn't have public executions in the Kabul Stadium as used to happen before, but it does have executions.
Shoba
Even Tariq, we don't really get to know what he's doing or what he's thinking. How beautifully KH has managed to capture the feelings of the women! Most of the book is laden with sorrow, and you feel it in your heart reading about their plight. Then this particular incident which we don't expect at all – Tariq turns up in her life again. Shoba chose it as a feel-good passage.
Happiness. If this were a Bollywood movie there would have been a song at this point, said Joe, and Laila would be running toward Tariq in s-l-o-w motion. Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol would have been good in the parts.
Dhanya said that Afghans are big fans of Bollywood. They cannot live without Bollywood and are much influenced by Bollywood.
Pamela chose the passage where Rasheed is killed. A hooray went up from a reader. It gave another reader a lot of satisfaction who thought ‘Wow! she did it at last.’
It's so much like a script – you can picture each moment. It's a stunt scene in seconds, but he has written it in two pages. It's almost like KH has written a film script. He's so descriptive, when you read. You can picture that whole scene there.
The whole emotion that Mariam goes through had actually started in the previous pages where Mariam saw in those eyes of Rasheed what a fool she had been to endure and tolerate his nonsense. You remember the time when a stone was found in the food set out for Rasheed and he went out and brought pebbles, put it into Mariam’s mouth and made her chew it. It was terrible.
Pamela thought she should have done something to him at that point itself. It cost her her life in the end. There's a finality this time about it, but she knows she will go to the gallows. Somehow this situation reminded Pamela of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Her crime was justified for she was saving the life of another woman from certain death when Rasheed throttled her. So it was actually a beneficent deed.
Mariam longs to see Laila, and regrets she would not see Aziza growing up.
KumKum said apropos of the killing: ‘We don't have a shovel in the house. But we do have a sunken garden in our condo.’ Is this what one calls a non-sequitur?
Do you remember ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl where a wife kills her unfaithful husband with a frozen leg of lamb!
Priya
She goes up the same path. She walks, she takes time out specifically to do this because she also wants to restart her life and leave behind everything that was so horrible in her life.
Priya just loved the relationship the two women formed, during the years they were together. This was really the closure to their story. It’s really wonderful. Very touching and very painful. Laila loved Mariam too. The relationship between them was beautiful.
Priya asked to read three or four lines, which will just give us an idea of the diversity of the people of Afghanistan. Why there was in-fighting after the Soviets left and so on.
This is the conversation over the meals with Laila and Tariq and Babi and Mami:
“Over meals, conversation always flowed. Though Tariq and his parents were ethnic Pashtuns, they spoke Farsi when Laila was around for her benefit, even though Laila more or less understood their native Pashto, having learned it in school. Babi said that there were tensions between their people – the Tajiks, who were a minority, and Tariq's people, the Pashtuns, who were the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
Tajiks have always felt slighted, Babi had said. Pashtun kings ruled this country for almost two hundred and fifty years, Laila, and Tajiks for all of nine months, back in 1929.
And you, Laila had asked, do you feel slighted, Babi?
Babi had wiped his eyeglasses clean with the hem of his shirt. To me, it's nonsense— and 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. But when one group rules over the others for so long ... There's contempt. Rivalry. There is. There always has been.”
So, all these in-fighting occurs though they are all Afghans. That is what happens to every country. It's split into these factions. It happens in India too, among the regions and states.
Priya said India should not be there at all in this category because we are so diverse, but we are so united still. Nowhere has India reached the point of splitting. But we have to be careful and treat each other with respect.
KumKum piped up that her husband, Joe, is a Mallu whereas she’s from Bengal, but they are at peace. “You are great examples,” said Priya.
But look at the even greater divides that can be bridged: Dhanya is from Kerala and her husband is from Afghanistan.
KumKum has made sure that there's no shovel, nothing dangerous, under their bed.
Dhanya said she was glad that her aunt Devika gave her the gift of joining this session. The KRG readers enjoyed having her comment and enlighten us. A big ‘Thank you’ to Dhanya.
Dhanya felt like she knew the characters, but it was really interesting for her to see how they are seen from outside by reading with this group. Dhanya thanked the group.
One reader saw the movie of his previous book, The Kite Runner on Netflix. It’s very well done. Even this book, could be made into a movie.
Readings from A Thousand Splendid Suns
Zakia Ch 1 – Nana, forced out of Jalil’s house for becoming pregnant, is victimised and delivers a lesson to her daughter Mariam: men will always blame women.
Nana had been one of the housekeepers. Until her belly began to swell.
When that happened, Nana said, the collective gasp of Jalil's family sucked the air out of Herat. His in-laws swore blood would flow. The wives demanded that he throw her out. Nana's own father, who was a lowly stone carver in the nearby village of Gul Daman, disowned her. Disgraced, he packed his things and boarded a bus to Iran, never to be seen or heard from again.
"Sometimes," Nana said early one morning, as she was feeding the chickens outside the kolba, "I wish my father had had the stomach to sharpen one of his knives and do the honorable thing. It might have been better for me." She tossed another handful of seeds into the coop, paused, and looked at Mariam.
"Better for you too, maybe. It would have spared you the grief of knowing that you are what you are. But he was a coward, my father. He didn't have the dil, the heart, for it."
Jalil didn't have the dil either, Nana said, to do the honorable thing. To stand up to his family, to his wives and in-laws, and accept responsibility for what he had done. Instead, behind closed doors, a face-saving deal had quickly been struck. The next day, he had made her gather her few things from the servants' quarters, where she'd been living, and sent her off.
"You know what he told his wives by way of defense? That I forced myself on him. That it was my fault.
Didi? You see? This is what it means to be a woman in this world."
Nana put down the bowl of chicken feed. She lifted Mariam's chin with a finger.
"Look at me, Mariam."
Reluctantly, Mariam did.
Nana said, "Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a
man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam." (328 words)
Kolba = a small, mud-brick hut
(Did not read) Arundhaty Ch 7 – Mariam is persuaded to marry a shoemaker in Kabul
"You can't spend the rest of your life here."
"Don't you want a family of your own?"
"Yes. A home, children of your own?"
"You have to move on."
"True that it would be preferable that you marry a local, a Tajik, but Rasheed is healthy, and interested in you. He has a home and a job. That's all that really matters, isn't it? And Kabul is a beautiful and exciting city. You may not get another opportunity this good."
Mariam turned her attention to the wives.
"TIl live with Mullah Faizullah," she said. "He'll take me in. I know he will."
"That's no good," Khadija said. "He's old and so." She searched for the right word, and Mariam knew then that what she really wanted to say was He's so close. She understood what they meant to do. You may not get another opportunity this good. And neither would they. They had been disgraced by her birth, and this was their chance to erase, once and for all, the last trace of their husband's scandalous mistake. She was being sent away because she was the walking, breathing embodiment of their shame.
"He's so old and weak," Khadija eventually said. "And what will you do when he's gone? You'd be a burden to his family."
As you are now to us. Mariam almost saw the unspoken words exit Khadija's mouth, like foggy breath
on a cold day.
Mariam pictured herself in Kabul, a big, strange, crowded city that, Jalil had once told her, was some six hundred and fifty kilometers to the east of Herat. Six hundred and fifty kilometers. The farthest she'd ever been from the kolba was the two-kilometer walk she'd made to Jalil's house. She pictured herself living there, in Kabul, at the other end of that unimaginable distance, living in a stranger's house where she would have to concede to his moods and his issued demands. She would have to clean after this man, Rasheed, cook for him, wash his clothes. And there would be other chores as well-Nana had told her what husbands did to their wives. It was the thought of these intimacies in particular, which she imagined as painful acts of perversity, that filled her with dread and made her break out in a sweat.
She turned to Jalil again. "Tell them. Tell them you won't let them do this."
"Actually, your father has already given Rasheed his answer," Afsoon said. "Rasheed is here, in Herat; he has come all the way from Kabul. The nikka will be tomorrow morning, and then there is a bus leaving for Kabul at noon."
"Tell them!" Mariam cried.
The women grew quiet now. Mariam sensed that they were watching him too. Waiting. A silence fell over the room. Jalil kept twirling his wedding band, with a bruised, helpless look on his face. From inside the cabinet, the clock ticked on and on.
"Jalil jo?" one of the women said at last.
Jalil's eyes lifted slowly, met Mariam's, lingered for a moment, then dropped. He opened his mouth,
but all that came forth was a single, pained groan.
"Say something," Mariam said.
Then Jalil did, in a thin, threadbare voice. "Goddamn it, Mariam, don't do this to me," he said as
though he was the one to whom something was being done.
And, with that, Mariam felt the tension vanish from the room.
Afsoon escorted her back to the room upstairs. When Atsoon closed the door, Mariam heard the
rattling of a key as it turned in the lock. (592 words)
Thomo Ch 8 – Mariam signs the nikkah agreement and leaves for Kabul, realising her father Jalil was ashamed of her
In the mirror, Mariam had her first glimpse of Rasheed: the big, square, ruddy face; the hooked nose; the flushed cheeks that gave the impression of sly cheerfulness; the watery, bloodshot eyes; the crowded teeth, the front two pushed together like a gabled roof; the impossibly low hairline, barely two finger widths above the bushy eyebrows; the wall of thick, coarse, salt-and-pepper hair.
Their gazes met briefly in the glass and slid away.
This is the face of my husband, Mariam thought.
They exchanged the thin gold bands that Rasheed fished from his coat pocket. His nails were yellow-brown, like the inside of a rotting apple, and some of the tips were curling, lifting. Mariam's hands shook when she tried to slip the band onto his finger, and Rasheed had to help her. Her own band was a little tight, but Rasheed had no trouble forcing it over her knuckles.
"There," he said.
"It's a pretty ring," one of the wives said. "It's lovely, Mariam."
"All that remains now is the signing of the contract," the mullah said.
Mariam signed her name-the meem, the reh, the ya, and the meem again -conscious of all the eyes on her hand. The next time Mariam signed her name to a document, twenty-seven years later, a mullah would again be present.
"You are now husband and wife," the mullah said. "Tabreek. Congratulations."
Rasheed waited in the multicolored bus. Mariam could not see him from where she stood with Jalil, by the rear bumper, only the smoke of his cigarette curling up from the open window. Around them, hands shook and farewells were said. Korans were kissed, passed under. Barefoot boys bounced between travelers, their faces invisible behind their trays of chewing gum and cigarettes.
Jalil was busy telling her that Kabul was so beautiful, the Moghul emperor Babur had asked that he be buried there. Next, Mariam knew, he'd go on about Kabul's gardens, and its shops, its trees, and its air, and, before long, she would be on the bus and he would walk alongside it, waving cheerfully, unscathed, spared.
Mariam could not bring herself to allow it.
"I used to worship you," she said.
Jalil stopped in midsentence. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. A young Hindi couple, the wife
cradling a boy, the husband dragging a suitcase, passed between them.
Jalil seemed grateful for the interruption. They excused themselves, and he smiled back politely.
"On Thursdays, I sat for hours waiting for you. I worried myself sick that you wouldn't show up."
"It's a long trip. You should eat something." He said he could buy her some bread and goat cheese.
"I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you'd live to be a hundred years old. I didn't know.
I didn't know that you were ashamed of me."
Jalil looked down, and, like an overgrown child, dug at something with the toe of his shoe.
"You were ashamed of me."
"I'll visit you," he muttered. "I'll come to Kabul and see you. We'll-"
"No. No," she said. "Don't come. I won't see you. Don't you come. I don't want to hear from you. Ever.
Ever. "
He gave her a wounded look.
"It ends here for you and me. Say your good-byes."
"Don't leave like this," he said in a thin voice.
"You didn't even have the decency to give me the time to say good-bye to Mullah
." She turned and walked around to the side of the bus. She could hear him following her. When she reached the hydraulic doors, she heard him behind her.
"Mariam jo." (604 words)
Devika Ch 11 – Mariam goes for a walk with her husband Rasheed on fashionable Kocheh-Morgha (Chicken Street) where the liberated ladies walk unaccompanied and without a head covering.
But it was the women who drew Mariam’s eyes the most.
The women in this part of Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer neighborhoods – like the one where she and Rasheed lived, where so many of the women covered fully. These women were – what was the word Rasheed had used? – “modern." Yes, modern Afghan women married to modern Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walked among strangers with makeup on their faces and nothing on their heads. Mariam watched them cantering uninhibited down the street, sometimes with a man, sometimes alone, sometimes with rosy-cheeked children who wore shiny shoes and watches with leather bands, who walked bicycles with high-rise handlebars and gold-colored spokes-unlike the children in Deh-Mazang, who bore sand-fly scars on their cheeks and rolled old bicycle tires with sticks.
These women were all swinging handbags and rustling skirts. Mariam even spotted one smoking behind the wheel of a car. Their nails were long, polished pink or orange, their lips red as tulips. They walked in high heels, and quickly, as if on perpetually urgent business. They wore dark sunglasses, and, when they breezed by, Mariam caught a whiff of their perfume. She imagined that they all had university degrees, that they worked in office buildings, behind desks of their own, where they typed and smoked and made important telephone calls to important people. These women mystified Mariam. They made her aware of her own lowliness, her plain looks, her lack of aspirations, her ignorance of so many things.
Then Rasheed was tapping her on the shoulder and handing her something here.
It was a dark maroon silk shawl with beaded fringes and edges embroidered with gold thread
"Do you like it?"
Mariam looked up. Rasheed did a touching thing then. He blinked and averted her gaze.
Mariam thought of Jalil, of the emphatic, jovial way in which he’d pushed his jewelry at her, the overpowering cheerfulness that left room for no response but meek gratitude. Nana had been right about Jalil's gifts. They had been halfhearted tokens of penance, insincere, corrupt gestures meant more for his own appeasement than hers. This shawl, Mariam saw, was a true gift.
"It's beautiful," she said.
KumKum Ch 13 – Rasheed wants to celebrate the child his wife Mariam is going to have soon
Rasheed was drumming his gloved fingers and humming a song. Every time the bus bucked over a pothole and jerked forward, his hand shot protectively over her belly.
"What about Zalmai?" he said. "It's a good Pashtun name."
"What if it's a girl?" Mariam said.
"I think it's a boy. Yes. A boy."
A murmur was passing through the bus. Some passengers were pointing at something and other
passengers were leaning across seats to see.
"Look," said Rasheed, tapping a knuckle on the glass. He was smiling. "There. See?" On the streets, Mariam saw people stopping in their tracks. At traffic lights, faces emerged from the windows of cars, turned upward toward the falling softness. What was it about a season's first snowfall, Mariam wondered, that was so entrancing? Was it the chance to see something as yet unsoiled, untrodden? To catch the fleeting grace of a new season, a lovely beginning, before it was trampled and corrupted?
"If it's a girl," Rasheed said, "and it isn't, but, if it is a girl, then you can choose whatever name you
want."
Mariam awoke the next morning to the sound of sawing and hammering. She wrapped a shawl around her and went out into the snow-blown yard. The heavy snowfall of the previous night had stopped. Now only a scattering of light, swirling flakes tickled her cheeks. The air was windless and smelled like burning coal.
Kabul was eerily silent, quilted in white, tendrils of smoke snaking up here and there.
She found Rasheed in the toolshed, pounding nails into a plank of wood. When he saw her, he removed
a nail from the corner of his mouth.
"It was going to be a surprise. He'll need a crib. You weren't supposed to see until it was done." Mariam wished he wouldn't do that, hitch his hopes to its being a boy. As happy as she was about this pregnancy, his expectation weighed on her. Yesterday, Rasheed had gone out and come home with a suede winter coat for a boy, lined inside with soft sheepskin, the sleeves embroidered with fine red and yellow silk thread.
Rasheed lifted a long, narrow board. As he began to saw it in half, he said the stairs worried him.
"Something will have to be done about them later, when he's old enough to climb." The stove worried him too, he said. The knives and forks would have to be stowed somewhere out of reach.
"You can't be too careful. Boys are reckless creatures." Mariam pulled the shawl around her against the
chill.
The next morning, Rasheed said he wanted to invite his friends for dinner to celebrate. All morning, Mariam cleaned lentils and moistened rice. She sliced eggplants for borani, and cooked leeks and ground beef for aushak. She swept the floor, beat the curtains, aired the house, despite the snow that had started up again. She arranged mattresses and cushions along the walls of the living room, placed bowls of candy and roasted almonds on the table.
She was in her room by early evening before the first of the men arrived. She lay in bed as the hoots and laughter and bantering voices downstairs began to mushroom. She couldn't keep her hands from drifting to her belly. She thought of what was growing there, and happiness rushed in like a gust of wind blowing a door wide open. Her eyes watered. (569 words)
Kavita Ch 14 – Mariam is filled with guilt and grief at the thought of her still-born child
The grief kept surprising Mariam. All it took to unleash it was her thinking of the unfinished crib in the toolshed or the suede coat in Rasheed's closet. The baby came to life then and she could hear it, could hear its hungry grunts, its gurgles and jabbering. She felt it sniffing at her breasts. The grief washed over her, swept her up, tossed her upside down. Mariam was dumbfounded that she could miss in such a crippling manner a being she had never even seen.
Then there were days when the dreariness didn't seem quite as unrelenting to Mariam. Days when the mere thought of resuming the old patterns of her life did not seem so exhausting, when it did not take enormous efforts of will to get out of bed, to do her prayers, to do the wash, to make meals for Rasheed.
Mariam dreaded going outside. She was envious, suddenly, of the neighborhood women and their wealth of children. Some had seven or eight and didn't understand how fortunate they were, how blessed that their children had flourished in their wombs, lived to squirm in their arms and take the milk from their breasts. Children that they had not bled away with soapy water and the bodily filth of strangers down some bathhouse drain. Mariam resented them when she overheard them complaining about misbehaving sons and lazy daughters.
A voice inside her head tried to soothe her with well-intended but misguided consolation.
You'll have others, Inshallah. You're young. Surely you'll have many other chances.
But Mariam's grief wasn't aimless or unspecific. Mariam grieved for this baby, this particular child, who had made her so happy for a while.
Some days, she believed that the baby had been an undeserved blessing, that she was being punished for what she had done to Nana. Wasn't it true that she might as well have slipped that noose around her mother's neck herself? Treacherous daughters did not deserve to be mothers, and this was just punishment. She had fitful dreams, of Nana's jinn sneaking into her room at night, burrowing its claws into her womb, and stealing her baby. In these dreams, Nana cackled with delight and vindication.
Other days, Mariam was besieged with anger. It was Rasheed's fault for his premature celebration. For his foolhardy faith that she was carrying a boy. Naming the baby as he had. Taking God's will for granted.
His fault, for making her go to the bathhouse. Something there, the steam, the dirty water, the soap, something there had caused this to happen. No. Not Rasheed. She was to blame. She became furious with herself for sleeping in the wrong position, for eating meals that were too spicy, for not eating enough fruit, for drinking too much tea.
It was God's fault, for taunting her as He had. For not granting her what He had granted so many other women. For dangling before her, tantalizingly, what He knew would give her the greatest happiness, then pulling it away.
But it did no good, all this fault laying, all these harangues of accusations bouncing in her head. It was kofr, sacrilege, to think these thoughts. Allah was not spiteful. He was not a petty God. Mullah Faizullah's words whispered in her head: Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He Who has power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you.
Ransacked with guilt, Mariam would kneel and pray for forgiveness. (586 words)
Joe Ch 21 – Babi takes Laila and Tariq to see the Bamiyan Buddhas
"Come on, you two," Babi said. "Come outside and have a look."
They got out of the taxi. Babi pointed. "There they are. Look."
Tariq gasped. Laila did too. And she knew then that she could live to be a hundred and she would never again see a thing as magnificent.
The two Buddhas were enormous, soaring much higher than she had imagined from all the photos she'd seen of them. Chiseled into a sun-bleached rock cliff, they peered down at them, as they had nearly two thousand years before, Laila imagined, at caravans crossing the valley on the Silk Road. On either side of them, along the overhanging niche, the cliff was pocked with myriad caves.
"I feel so small," Tariq said.
"You want to climb up?" Babi said.
"Up the statues?" Laila asked. "We can do that?"
Babi smiled and held out his hand. "Come on."
The climb was hard for Tariq, who had to hold on to both Laila and Babi as they inched up a winding, narrow, dimly lit staircase.
They saw shadowy caves along the way, and tunnels honeycombing the cliff every which way.
"Careful where you step," Babi said. His voice made a loud echo. "The ground is treacherous." In some parts, the staircase was open to the Buddha's cavity.
"Don't look down, children. Keep looking straight ahead."
As they climbed, Babi told them that Bamiyan had once been a thriving Buddhist center until it had fallen under Islamic Arab rule in the ninth century. The sandstone cliffs were home to Buddhist monks who carved caves in them to use as living quarters and as sanctuary for weary traveling pilgrims. The monks, Babi said, painted beautiful frescoes along the walls and roofs of their caves.
"At one point," he said, "there were five thousand monks living as hermits in these caves."
Tariq was badly out of breath when they reached the top. Babi was panting too. But his eyes shone with excitement.
"We're standing atop its head," he said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. "There's a niche over here where we can look out." They inched over to the craggy overhang and, standing side by side, with Babi in the middle, gazed down on the valley.
"Look at this!" said Laila.
Babi smiled.
The Bamiyan Valley below was carpeted by lush farming fields. Babi said they were green winter wheat and alfalfa, potatoes too.
The fields were bordered by poplars and crisscrossed by streams and irrigation ditches, on the banks of which tiny female figures squatted and washed clothes. Babi pointed to rice paddies and barley fields draping the slopes. It was autumn, and Laila could make out people in bright tunics on the roofs of mud brick dwellings laying out the harvest to dry. The main road going through the town was poplar-lined too. There were small shops and teahouses and street-side barbers on either side of it. Beyond the village, beyond the river and the streams, Laila saw foothills, bare and dusty brown, and, beyond those, as beyond everything else in Afghanistan, the snowcapped Hindu Kush.
The sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue.
"It's so quiet," Laila breathed. She could see tiny sheep and horses but couldn't hear their bleating and whinnying.
"It's what I always remember about being up here,"
Babi said. "The silence. The peace of it. I wanted you to experience it. But I also wanted you to see your country's heritage, children, to learn of its rich past. You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you just have to see and feel." (611 words)
Geetha Ch 31 – Mariam sets out the power boundaries between the two wives of Rasheed, and assigns Laila’s responsibilities in the house
The sun fell on the girl's face, on her large green eyes and her smooth brow, on her high cheekbones and the appealing, thick eyebrows, which were nothing like Mariam's own, thin and featureless. Her yellow hair, uncombed this morning, was middle-parted.
Mariam could see in the stiff way the girl clutched the cup, the tightened shoulders, that she was nervous. She imagined her sitting on the bed working up the nerve.
"The leaves are turning," the girl said companionably. "Have you seen? Autumn is my favorite. I like the smell of it, when people burn leaves in their gardens. My mother, she liked springtime the best. You knew my mother?"
"Not really."
The girl cupped a hand behind her ear. "I'm sorry?"
Mariam raised her voice. "I said no. I didn't know your mother."
"Oh."
"Is there something you want?"
"Mariam jan, I want to … About the things he said the other night-"
"I have been meaning to talk to you about it." Mariam broke in.
"Yes, please," the girl said earnestly, almost eagerly. She took a step forward. She looked relieved.
Outside, an oriole was warbling. Someone was pulling a cart; Mariam could hear the creaking of its hinges, the bouncing and rattling of its iron wheels. There was the sound of gunfire not so far away, a single shot followed by three more, then nothing.
"I won't be your servant," Mariam said. "I won't."
The girl flinched. "No. Of course not!"
"You may be the palace malika and me a dehati, but I won't take orders from you. You can complain to him and he can slit my throat, but I won't do it. Do you hear me? I won't be your servant."
"No! I don't expect –“
"And if you think you can use your looks to get rid of me, you're wrong. I was here first. I won't be thrown out. I won't have you cast me out."
"It's not what I want," the girl said weakly.
"And I see your wounds are healed up now. So you can start doing your share of the work in this house
_"
The girl was nodding quickly. Some of her tea spilled, but she didn't notice. "Yes, that's the other reason I came down, to thank you for taking care of me—"
"Well, I wouldn't have," Mariam snapped. "I wouldn't have fed you and washed you and nursed you if I'd known you were going to turn around and steal my husband."
"Steal—"
"I will still cook and wash the dishes. You will do the laundry and the sweeping. The rest we will alternate daily. And one more thing. I have no use for your company. I don't want it. What I want is to be alone. You will leave me be, and I will return the favor. That's how we will get on. Those are the rules." When she was done speaking, her heart was hammering and her mouth felt parched. Mariam had never before spoken in this manner, had never stated her will so forcefully. It ought to have felt exhilarating, but the girl's eyes had teared up and her face was drooping, and what satisfaction Mariam found from this outburst felt meager, somehow illicit.
She extended the shirts toward the girl.
"Put them in the almari, not the closet. He likes the whites in the top drawer, the rest in the middle, with the socks."
The girl set the cup on the floor and put her hands out for the shirts, palms up. "I'm sorry about all of this," she croaked.
"You should be," Mariam said. "You should be sorry." (607 words)
Saras Ch 41 – Mariam’s regrets as she is led to her execution
Thousands of eyes bore down on her. In the crowded bleachers, necks were craned for the benefit of a better view. Tongues clucked. A murmuring sound rippled through the stadium when Mariam was helped down from the truck. Mariam imagined heads shaking when the loudspeaker announced her crime. But she did not look up to see whether they were shaking with disapproval or charity, with reproach or pity.
Mariam blinded herself to them all.
Earlier that morning, she had been afraid that she would make a fool of herself, that she would turn into a pleading, weeping spectacle. She had feared that she might scream or vomit or even wet herself, that, in her last moments, she would be betrayed by animal instinct or bodily disgrace. But when she was made to descend from the truck, Mariam's legs did not buckle. Her arms did not flail. She did not have to be dragged. And when she did feel herself faltering, she thought of Zalmai, from whom she had taken the love of his life, whose days now would be shaped by the sorrow of his father's disappearance. And then Mariam's stride steadied and she could walk without protest.
An armed man approached her and told her to walk toward the southern goalpost. Mariam could sense the crowd tightening up with anticipation. She did not look up. She kept her eyes to the ground, on her shadow, on her executioner's shadow trailing hers.
Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much, to be old and play with Aziza's children.
Near the goalpost, the man behind her asked her to stop. Mariam did. Through the crisscrossing grid of the burqa, she saw his shadow arms lift his shadow Kalashnikov.
Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.
Mariam's final thoughts were a few words from the Koran, which she muttered under her breath.
He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surely He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver.
"Kneel," the Talib said.
O my Lord! Forgive and have mercy, for you are the best of the merciful ones.
"Kneel here, hamshira. And look down."
One last time, Mariam did as she was told. (627 words)
Shoba Ch 42 – Tariq returns from the dead
On the way back, Aziza's high-spirited façade waned the closer they got to the orphanage. The hands stopped flying up. Her face turned heavy. It happened every time. It was Laila's turn now, with Mariam pitching in, to take up the chattering, to laugh nervously, to fill the melancholy quiet with breathless, aimless banter.
Later, after Rasheed had dropped them off and taken a bus to work, Laila watched Aziza wave good-bye and scuff along the wall in the orphanage back lot. She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
"Get away, you!" Zalmai cried.
"Hush," Mariam said. "Who are you yelling at?"
He pointed. "There. That man."
Laila followed his finger. There was a man at the front door of the house, leaning against it. His head turned when he saw them approaching. He uncrossed his arms. Limped a few steps toward them.
Laila stopped.
A choking noise came up her throat. Her knees weakened. Laila suddenly wanted, needed, to grope for Mariam's arm, her shoulder, her wrist, something, anything, to lean on. But she didn't. She didn't dare.
She didn't dare move a muscle. She didn't dare breathe, or blink even, for fear that he was nothing but a mirage shimmering in the distance, a brittle illusion that would vanish at the slightest provocation. Laila stood perfectly still and looked at Tariq until her chest screamed for air and her eyes burned to blink. And, somehow, miraculously, after she took a breath, closed and opened her eyes, he was still standing there.
Tariq was still standing there.
Laila allowed herself to take a step toward him. Then another. And another. And then she was running. (301 words)
Pamela Ch 45 – Mariam and Laila take down Rasheed
They crashed to the ground, Rasheed and Laila, thrashing about. He ended up on top, his hands already wrapped around Laila's neck.
Mariam clawed at him. She beat at his chest. She hurled herself against him. She struggled to uncurl his fingers from Laila's neck. She bit them. But they remained tightly clamped around Laila's windpipe, and Mariam saw that he meant to carry this through.
He meant to suffocate her, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.
Mariam backed away and left the room. She was aware of a thumping sound from upstairs, aware that tiny palms were slapping against a locked door. She ran down the hallway. She burst through the front door. Crossed the yard.
In the toolshed, Mariam grabbed the shovel.
Rasheed didn't notice her coming back into the room. He was still on top of Laila, his eyes wide and crazy, his hands wrapped around her neck. Laila's face was turning blue now, and her eyes had rolled back. Mariam saw that she was no longer struggling. He's going to kill her, she thought. He really means to. And Mariam could not, would not, allow that to happen. He'd taken so much from her in twenty-seven years of marriage. She would not watch him take Laila too.
Mariam steadied her feet and tightened her grip around the shovel's handle. She raised it. She said his name. She wanted him to see.
"Rasheed."
He looked up.
Mariam swung.
She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila.
Rasheed touched his head with the palm of his hand. He looked at the blood on his fingertips, then at Mariam. She thought she saw his face soften. She imagined that something had passed between them, that maybe she had quite literally knocked some understanding into his head. Maybe he saw something in her face too, Mariam thought, something that made him hedge. Maybe he saw some trace of all the self-denial, all the sacrifice, all the sheer exertion it had taken her to live with him for all these years, live with his continual condescension and violence, his faultfinding and meanness. Was that respect she saw in his eyes? Regret?
But then his upper lip curled back into a spiteful sneer, and Mariam knew then the futility, maybe even the irresponsibility, of not finishing this. If she let him walk now, how long before he fetched the key from his pocket and went for that gun of his upstairs in the room where he'd locked Zalmai? Had Mariam been certain that he would be satisfied with shooting only her, that there was a chance he would spare Laila, she might have dropped the shovel. But in Rasheed's eyes she saw murder for them both.
And so Mariam raised the shovel high, raised it as high as she could, arching it so it touched the small of her back. She turned it so the sharp edge was vertical, and, as she did, it occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life.
And, with that, Mariam brought down the shovel. This time, she gave it everything she had. (536 words)
Priya Ch 50 – Laila visits the hut where Mariam stayed with her mother Nana on the outskirts of Herat and remembers her unbreakable spirit.
Fifteen years, Laila thinks. Fifteen years in this place.
Laila sits down, her back to the wall. She listens to the wind filtering through the willows. There are more spider-webs stretched across the ceiling. Someone has spray-painted something on one of the walls, but much of it has sloughed off, and Laila cannot decipher what it says. Then she realizes the letters are Russian. There is a deserted bird's nest in one corner and a bat hanging upside down in another corner, where the wall meets the low ceiling.
Laila closes her eyes and sits there awhile.
In Pakistan, it was difficult sometimes to remember the details of Mariam's face. There were times when, like a word on the tip of her tongue, Mariam's face eluded her. But now, here in this place, it's easy to summon Mariam behind the lids of her eyes: the soft radiance of her gaze, the long chin, the coarsened skin of her neck, the tightlipped smile. Here, Laila can lay her cheek on the softness of Mariam's lap again, can feel Mariam swaying back and forth, reciting verses from the Koran, can feel the words vibrating down Mariam's body, to her knees, and into her own ears.
Then, suddenly, the weeds begin to recede, as if something is pulling them by the roots from beneath the ground. They sink lower and lower until the earth in the kolba has swallowed the last of their spiny leaves. The spiderwebs magically unspin themselves. The bird's nest self-disassembles, the twigs snapping loose one by one, flying out of the kolba end over end. An invisible eraser wipes the Russian graffiti off the wall.
The floorboards are back. Laila sees a pair of sleeping cots now, a wooden table, two chairs, a cast-iron stove in the corner, shelves along the walls, on which sit clay pots and pans, a blackened teakettle, cups and spoons. She hears chickens clucking outside, the distant gurgling of the stream.
A young Mariam is sitting at the table making a doll by the glow of an oil lamp. She's humming something. Her face is smooth and youthful, her hair washed, combed back. She has all her teeth.
Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too has had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts down the doll. Smiles.
Laila jo?
Laila's eyes snap open. She gasps, and her body pitches forward. She startles the bat, which zips from one end of the kolba to the other, its beating wings like the fluttering pages of a book, before it flies out the window.
Laila gets to her feet, beats the dead leaves from the seat of her trousers. She steps out of the kolba.
Outside, the light has shifted slightly. A wind is blowing, making the grass ripple and the willow branches click.
Before she leaves the clearing, Laila takes one last look at the kolba where Mariam had slept, eaten, dreamed, held her breath for Jalil. On sagging walls, the willows cast crooked patterns that shift with each gust of wind. A crow has landed on the flat roof. It pecks at something, squawks, flies off.
"Good-bye, Mariam."
And, with that, unaware that she is weeping, Laila begins to run through the grass. (654 words)
Beautifully put together
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