A Thousand Splendid Suns

“‘Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.’” 

Nana’s lesson to her daughter that a man always finds a way to blame a woman for whatever has befallen him proves tragically prophetic in the novel. This is true for Mariam on both a domestic and political level. The analogy with the north-pointing compass needle conveys the idea that blame will be automatic.

“‘Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure.’”

Nana’s idea that Mariam has only one lesson to learn, endurance, is born of the former’s experiences and defines much of the latter’s adult life. By the time she is 33 years old, she has had seven miscarriages and suffered Rasheed’s beatings and contempt; indeed, endurance would seem to be Mariam’s main virtue. Nevertheless, when she bonds with Laila and Aziza, Mariam’s destiny comprises love as well as endurance.

“‘A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you.’” 

In her warning to Mariam, Nana sets up a polarity between male rigidity and female flexibility. In stating that men’s hearts are “wretched” and incapable of growing, Nana implies that men will follow order and expectation rather than benevolence. Jalil’s heart, therefore, does not have the strength or capacity to accommodate Mariam, his illegitimate child.

“Two days before—when Mariam could think of nothing in the world she wanted more than to walk in this garden with Jalil—felt like another lifetime. How could her life have turned upside down so quickly, Mariam asked herself.” 

Here, Hosseini shows Mariam’s experience of the reversal of her expectations. Her wish of being in her father’s house is fulfilled just at the moment when it is invalidated. 

“She noticed that every time she breathed out, the surface fogged, and she disappeared from her father’s table.” 

Mariam is sitting at her father’s reflective dark brown table, just after she has received the news that she is to be married off to Rasheed. Noticing how her face appears and then disappears from the table’s mirror-like surface, Mariam has a sense of how dispensable she is to her father. 

“‘There’s a teacher living down the street, Hakim is his name, and I see his wife Fariba all the time walking the streets alone with nothing on her head but a scarf. It embarrasses me, frankly, to see a man who’s lost control of his wife.’” 

Long before Mariam and Laila’s destinies are intertwined, Hosseini shows how their two households lead parallel lives of mutual suspicion and hostility. Here, Rasheed sets himself up as a very different sort of man to the “soft” Hakim, who allows his wife unthinkable liberties. It also sets up the tension for a clash of ideologies once Laila becomes Rasheed’s wife. 

“From a street vendor, Rasheed bought her ice cream. It was the first time she’d eaten ice cream and Mariam had never imagined such tricks could be played on a palate. She devoured the entire bowl, the crushed pistachio topping, the tiny rice noodles at the bottom. She marveled at the bewitching texture, the lapping sweetness of it.” 

Mariam’s enjoyment of the ice cream Rasheed buys her is the closest she comes to sensual pleasure in the novel. This ice cream, with its “bewitching” texture, is the long-awaited treat from the stories Jalil told her about his cinema. Nevertheless, given ice cream’s propensity to melt, there is the suggestion that in a similar manner, Rasheed’s sweetness will not be lasting.

“On every page were women, beautiful women, who wore no shirts, no trousers, no socks or underpants. They wore nothing at all.” 

This passage registers Mariam’s shock at discovering Rasheed’s pornographic magazine. By listing what the women are not wearing, item by item, Hosseini creates a vivid impression of Mariam taking in this novelty of naked women in print. 

“A woman’s face, he’d said, is her husband’s business only. Surely the women on these pages had husbands […] at least they had brothers. If so, why did Rasheed insist that she cover when he thought nothing of looking at the private areas of other men’s wives and sisters?” 

Sexually inexperienced and sheltered Mariam’s matter-of-fact thoughts on Rasheed’s pornography consumption expose his hypocrisy and double standards. It also exposes her natural curiosity, which is soon to be stamped out by Rasheed’s brutality.

“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 had not bled away with soapy water and the bodily filth of strangers down some bathhouse drain.” 

Hosseini here expresses Mariam’s depression at her miscarriage and her sense of isolation and self-loathing when she compares herself with other women. A sharp contrast is drawn between other women’s squirming, flourishing live babies and the abject, bloody refuse of Mariam’s miscarried child. 

“But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid. And Mariam was afraid. She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence of steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path.” 

Hosseini portrays the bleak situation of Mariam’s life in Rasheed’s regime of fear and contempt. She learns to tolerate what she would have previously found intolerable and therefore abuse becomes the norm of her life. 

“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated.” 

Laila’s ex-schoolteacher father, Hakim, instils in her the belief that educated women are essential to Afghanistan’s future. While as a schoolchild in the relatively-progressive Communist era, Laila merely goes along with the motions, there will come a time when she has to hold this belief against the odds. 

“She would never leave her mark on Mammy’s heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy’s heart was like a pallid beach where Laila’s footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.” 

When Laila’s brothers die in conflict and her mother, Fariba, devotes her remaining energy to keeping their memory alive, Laila experiences fully the experience of being the less-favored child. In the simile of footsteps being washed off a pallid beach by relentless waves, Hosseini creates the impression of Laila’s helplessness. 

“‘And that, my young friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another.’” 

The driver’s dismissive comment to Laila and Tariq, when Hakim takes them on a day trip to see the Buddhas at Shahr-e-Zohak, describes the succession of invaders who have shaped Afghanistan’s fragmented history to date. It creates the impression that the conflict Laila and Tariq have experienced during the course of their short lifetime is the norm.

“Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could—a look, a whisper, a moan—to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn’t, in the end, save it all.” 

As Laila reflects on her and Tariq’s lovemaking just prior to his departure for Peshawar, she has the sense that her memory is unreliable. She longs to be close to Tariq by preserving the memory, but in the metaphor of time as fire, she discovers that her efforts are futile.

“And when Aziza woke up crying and Rasheed yelled for Laila to come up and shut her up, a look passed between Laila and Mariam. An unguarded, knowing look. And in this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew that they were not enemies any longer.”  

The look that passes between Mariam and Laila is one of understanding and a marker that they are united in their love for Aziza and their efforts to endure Rasheed. 

“Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment.” 

Hosseini shows how over the years of Mariam’s marriage to Rasheed, she has stagnated and isolated herself from the outside world to the extent that the remarkable regime changes that were taking place in her own city had barely any effect on her. Her fate of being locked in “a distant corner of her own mind,” just going through the daily motions of her domestic duties, is perhaps not only her lot, but that of any woman stuck in the totalitarian regime of a loveless, abusive marriage.

“Two new flowers had unexpectedly sprouted in her life, and […] she pictured Mullah Faizullah […] leaning in and whispering to her in his soft, tremulous voice, But it is God who has planted them, Mariam jo. And it is His will that you tend to them.” 

The two new flowers, Laila and Aziza, who have sprouted up to animate Mariam’s barren field, are exceptions to her belief that life is harsh and unforgiving and love a damaging mistake. Mullah Faizullah’s presence in her mind is significant, as not only is he religious and prophetic, but the last person who loved Mariam in a pure and reliable way.

“‘It’s true that these boys have no risha, no roots…They may know nothing of the world or this country’s history […] And compared to them, Mariam here might as well be a university professor […] At least the Taliban are pure and incorruptible. At least they’re decent Muslim boys. Wallah, when they come they will clean up this place. They’ll bring peace and order.’” 

Rasheed’s naive optimism about the incoming Taliban regime, which will be run by inexperienced, religious ideologues, demonstrates how exhausted he has become with the warring, corrupt Mujahideen and thinks that the novelty of the inexperienced could be refreshing. There is also perhaps some glee as he announces to his wives the advent of a fundamentalist regime that will enhance his authority over them. 

“You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets. If you go outside, you must be accompanied by a mahram, a male relative. If you are caught alone on the street, you will be beaten and sent home.” 

The Taliban’s rule against women walking in the streets unaccompanied by a male is printed on a pamphlet that they distribute following their invasion of Kabul. The rule is demonstrative of the new regime’s misogyny, as well as their disregard for the most practical, efficient running of a household. Nevertheless, their rule against women leaving the home is already precipitated by Rasheed’s command that Laila should not go outdoors unaccompanied by him.

“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.” 

By likening Tariq to the sort of mirage that parched desert travelers see, when they have been travelling days without the sight of water, Hosseini demonstrates just how unexpected an apparition he is in Laila’s doorway. Laila’s stillness, in not daring to breathe or blink, also heightens the dramatic tension of his return.

“When they’d found the paintings, the Taliban had taken offence at the birds’ long, bare legs. After they’d tied the cousin’s feet and flogged his soles bloody, they had presented him with a choice: Either destroy the paintings or make the flamingos decent. So the cousin had picked up his brush and painted trousers on every last bird.”

Tariq’s story of his cellmate’s flogging for painting flamingos—deemed provocative by the Taliban—is one example where Hosseini shows a darkly comic aspect to the regime. The Taliban are paranoid enough to see sin and temptation everywhere. 

“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 was loved back. […] A person of consequence at last.” 

Despite her tragic end, being sentenced to death for murdering her abusive husband, Mariam reflects that she is leaving the world in a better state than she entered it. She feels that through her love for Laila and Aziza, she was able to gain the love and legitimacy that eluded her for much of her life.