A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
On September 11th of 2001, I was 5 years old. I was in Korea. I did not know who Osama Bin Laden was. I had never heard of terrorist attacks. To be quite frank, the September 11th attacks sounded like an event that is completely irrelevant to me, that happened in a distant country on the other side of the world. After I moved to the United States, I learned more about the attacks, about Al-Qaeda, and about the Taliban. I learned about how the United States was involved in this global affair, and I admit (with embarrassment), that I had developed stereotypes about Islam, muslims and Afghanistan.
But I did not know that the struggles of Afghanistan began as early as 1960, and I had never imagined how theses struggles would influence the lives of the individuals in Afghanistan. Most importantly, I had never imagined what the women of Afghanistan were going through during this period of political turmoil, violence, and brutality. |
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini quickly became the liaison that connected me to the once-distant reality of Afghanistan. Through the lives of two women in Afghanistan, Mariam and Laila, I learned that women in Afghanistan were going through the same plights; young and old, educated and uneducated alike. Mariam, the 'harami' of her family, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman who has to "apologize for the manner of her own birth," and Laila, the young and beautiful, born and raised by a father who believes that "a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated," both become the subjects of the brutal institution of the Taliban, and the unreasonable abuse of their husband. When Mariam and Laila, raised from two completely different backgrounds, finally meet each other as the wives of Rasheed, they become inseparable as they go through the same struggles of being whipped and strangled by their own husband. Mariam and Laila are forced to send their beloved daughter to an orphanage, and they can't even visit their daughter unless they are accompanied by a male relative.
Interestingly, Hosseini, in his own way, manages to seek hope in the middle of this ugliness. Similar to the two protagonists of his other famous work The Kite Runner, Mariam and Laila become friends, and even more, a mother and a daughter to each other. Through A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini suggests that the struggles of Afghanistan is not yet still over, but he also remains hopeful that friendship and love may be the answer.
Interestingly, Hosseini, in his own way, manages to seek hope in the middle of this ugliness. Similar to the two protagonists of his other famous work The Kite Runner, Mariam and Laila become friends, and even more, a mother and a daughter to each other. Through A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini suggests that the struggles of Afghanistan is not yet still over, but he also remains hopeful that friendship and love may be the answer.