a thousand splendid suns by khaled hosseini

Rasheed digs Laila out of the rubble of their home, and Mariam slowly nurses him back to health. Part III alternates between Mariam’s and Laila’s point of view with each chapter.

Not long after that, Laila’s family is preparing to leave as well when a rocket hits their home and kills both her parents.

Their relationship turns romantic just as the Mujahideen’s infighting begins, and they sleep together for the first time just before Tariq’s family flees for Pakistan. Tariq and Laila together witness the departure of the Soviets from Afghanistan. However, Laila has far more happy childhood moments than Mariam, from her walks home from school with her friends Giti and Hasina, to her lessons with Babi and, above all, her friendship with the mischievous Tariq, who lost one leg in a land mine accident when he was five. Mammy’s depression worsens even more after the two boys are killed. But Mammy, her mother, is depressed and unable to take care of Laila because she so misses her two sons, Ahmad and Noor, who have gone to fight with the Mujahideen against the Soviets. Part II shifts to the perspective of Laila, who is growing up in Kabul not far from Rasheed and Mariam’s house, but who is getting an education thanks to her progressive father, Babi. Rasheed initially shows Mariam around the city and buys her gifts, but after she suffers multiple miscarriages he grows sullen and hostile, yelling at her and beating her.

In Kabul, Mariam is astounded by the cosmopolitan atmosphere, though Rasheed makes her wear a burqa and mainly stay within the home. She loathes him even more once he marries her off to Rasheed, a shoe shop owner in Kabul thirty years her senior. She feels desperately guilty, especially now that she knows Nana was right about Jalil. Upon their return, Mariam sees her mother hanging from a rope. She is told he isn’t there, and after spending the entire night sleeping on his stoop, his chauffeur brings her back to the kolba, though not before she has a glimpse of Jalil looking down at her from the window. One day, against Jalil’s wishes, Mariam descends the hill into Herat for the very first time in order to see him. Jalil comes to visit Mariam every week, and though Nana tries to convince Mariam that Jalil is embarrassed by her and refuses to consider her a true member of his family, to Mariam, he can do no wrong. Mariam is taught to recite verses from the Koran by Mullah Faizullah, whom she looks up to and admires. We learn that Mariam is the illegitimate child or harami (“bastard”) of Nana and Jalil, a wealthy cinema owner in Herat. Part I of A Thousand Splendid Suns begins in the early 1970s, when Mariam is a teenager living with her mother, Nana, in a kolba or small hut outside of the city of Herat.

A thousand splendid suns by khaled hosseini