A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns is one of those books where you should be required to have multiple resources by your side to enhance the reading. Here are my recommended tools:

• An atlas. And not just any atlas. It turns out my version from college was not a huge help. It featured countries by region, and Afghanistan and Pakistan did not appear in their entirety on any given page. I guess that is what the internet is for. Turns out B&N has a gorgeous National Geographic atlas for the price of $80.
• A notebook. I kept track of the regime changes and timelines with a rough outline. It did not come as big news that the country has been through much turmoil, but I learned, in detail, of some of the large of the political parties that ruled Afghanistan from the 1960s to early 2000s. It was no easy feat to keep track of, especially with the intricate, foreign sounding names.
• A dictionary or glossary. Seriously, this book would have benefited greatly with a map in the front and glossary in the back. Again, I guess the internet should suffice.

This was not a 100% joyful to book to read. In fact, I found myself reading large portions of it during the day. While reading in the evening, my brain had a hard time letting go and falling asleep while mulling over the graphic, and often sad, scenes. This is one of the benefits of book club - pushing ourselves to read challenging literature.

One of the main themes that stood out was Mariam and Laila's issues with their mothers. Both of the daughters were very different from their mothers, and had different expectations out of life. There weren't the in your face dramatic outbursts that may characterize some American mother daughter relationships. I found myself appreciating when Mariam and Laila found friendship, and then a sisterhood with each other. After all, Mariam was separated from her half siblings during her childhood and Laila didn't know her brothers well before they became casualties in the war. Some of the sweetest moments were when they bonded over Laila's child, Aziza.

Mother-daughter relationships are universal. But another new concept for me with this book was the burqa. Through their childhood and adolescent years, Mariam and Laila went unveiled. In fact, Laila's parents were on the opposite end of the spectrum as her future husband Rasheed. It was flinchingly hard to read Rasheed's demand for them both to wear the burqa after marriage. Nothing about him was likeable, but that was one more log on the fire with his awful treatment of his wives. Both Laila and Mariam had their outgoing, adventureous moments before marriage, but both characters mention how the burqa brought welcomed anonymity. Yet the one time they try to flee, while veiled, the initial anonymity did not save them in the short run.

With the way most of the book proceeded, I did not expect a happy ending. None-the-less, Khaled Hosseini brought as much resolution and peace to the characters as I could have hoped for.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

It is a good time of year for lists of blessings and things we are thankful for. After having read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, I’ve come up with a rather sober one:

1. I am thankful for having had the fortune and opportunity to partner myself with a person who does not hit me, rape me, isolate me, threaten me & my children, or shame me in any way, shape, or form. He has never put a loaded gun in my mouth, made me eat gravel, or kept me from my family.

2. I am thankful that I live in a country where the government values the equity of people regardless of their gender (in broad terms); that as a woman I am extended the right of an education, a profession, rights to my body, my children, my home, and the vote.

3. The simple fact that I am writing this, adding hyperlinks to other sites, and posting it on the Internet without fear of retaliation by my government is actually quite remarkable in the global climate that we live in. I’m allowed to do keyword searches of “Taliban” and “Al-Qaeda” in safety (although questionable anonymity).

Reading A Thousand Splendid Suns did not make me aware of these things for the first time. Rather, it magnified the political and social climate in Afghanistan in a way that reinforced a previously held, though perhaps underappreciated, gratitude. It is the story of relationships between women and the sacrifices many women in war zones are forced to make. It plots the trajectory from rival to friend to ally that many relationships can take. It is absolutely outrageous that women anywhere in the world are treated as Laila and Maryam, the protagonists in Hosseini’s illuminating tale. This seems like a story that one might introduce as not being true, but nonetheless has happened; truth through fiction.

In the book, we follow Laila and Maryam alternately as they come of age in Kabul and Herat (respectively). Their paths begin on different slopes of the same hypothetical mountain, and when their lives cross, it seems they’ve arrived at the same poisoned mountain stream. The story of their survival in the face of an awful marriage and the sacrifices they make for one another and for their children is heartbreaking, and at times, covertly uplifting.

Throughout the story, Hosseini details Afghan politics. As someone with almost no knowledge of modern Middle East politics, I had a hard time keeping track of the various individuals and political groups they represent. Among the dozens of names of politicians and warlords, none of which I recognized, there are communists, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the Russians, and the US. I think this difficulty added to the story however, it created a chaotic background to set the story against: it didn’t matter who was killing whom, the point was the Afghan people were living with fear, violence, and frighteningly dwindling resources every day, for years.

This was the first book I’ve read from the flood of literature that uses the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, specifically) as a setting. I look forward to learning more and reading others. It is terrifying to process these books in the context of real wars (i.e. Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn), real US and NATO soldiers, and knowing that we might really be on the wrong side. As I think critically however, I am forced to wonder if there ever is a right side. The US isn’t at war with a country; it engages militia groups, rogue fundamentalists, and people who don’t represent anyone but themselves. The trouble consistently is that to get to our enemies, we must first step over the lives of innocents; blameless people who are our sisters and brothers and who are victims not only of the US’s retaliatory actions, but of the same global violence that inspired it.

The line by seventeenth century poet Saib-e-Tabrizi from where the title originates explains the brilliance in any community, as well as giving a context for the heartbreak of war:

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

October

Last month flew by with extraordinary speed. As a group we read The Journey to the Well by Diana Wallis-Taylor, which we decided last night was not an altogether fantastic book. A lovely story, certainly, but not well written nor uplifting. We appreciated the author's efforts at breathing life into the Samaritan woman from the Christian Gospel story of the woman at the well, but found it to be a bit out of touch with reality when, at the end, the entire cast meets Jesus and is instantly transformed into a peace loving and compassionate utopia where nothing bad ever happens. Additionally, the ending was very abrupt.

That having been said, it was with good intention that the book was chosen. After having read (and thoroughly enjoyed) The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and Mary Called Magdalene by Margaret George, we were looking for some Biblical fiction that gave flesh and soul to another marginalized female. Does anyone have other suggestions?