Book Review on: A Thousand Splendid Suns
By Archana Kaushik, BA prog Psychology and Commerce, 1st Year
A Thousand Splendid Suns
“Harami”.
Bastard.
It’s a kind of word that as an Indian, I have heard thrown around innumerable times. Sometimes on the road. Sometimes in the chuckles exchanged between perhaps close friends. I have heard it in the streets, in a typical scene where a fight breaks out amongst hot headed people who don’t think twice before unleashing questionable colorful vocabulary at each other. Yes, you also must have heard the synonyms of the same bright word somewhere or the other.
However, it is a completely different thing to hear something but then to see it written on a book, that too the first word of the first page of the first chapter? If that does not ignite the curiosity within you as an Asian, I don’t know what possibly could.
I find myself looking for the speaker of this first word in my favorite book in almost every person. Nana is everywhere. She is in the beggar on the street who doesn’t as much as glance at you a second time when you refuse her. She is in the face of a little girl who was sold at a young age, her dreams of having her own identity stolen-taken. She is in the face of a woman who was denied the same pay as a man not because of the difficulty of the task-no but because of her gender. She is suffering and agony combined. She is us. But this story is not about Nana. It is not about her pain which caused her to give up in such a small time in which we come to know her. No. This story is about equally formidable women. The two women I try every single day to be a fraction of alike. I know I am a long way. But it only fuels me more.
When Nana’s daughter Mariam is introduced, you don’t seem to think so much about her. I mean sure, she is a little kid. She is born out of wedlock. It seems her very existence is a huge trouble- literally, for both of her parents. Though why Nana did not embrace the girl like she should’ve, that part is also a bit unclear to me. But her father? It seems mistakes is all she makes when it comes to him.
It would be unfair to describe Mariam from the issues that stemmed between her and her father. She was and is always much more than that. She was a quite force, the picture of resilience. Throughout the early years of her life, she tried to find a place where she fit in, where she was given the love that was denied to her by her parents. When Nana commits suicide, she is quickly married off to Rasheed- a typical spineless Afghan man who wants nothing more but a male heir. It seems her life is a cycle of being hopeless, finding people who promise love and then getting her heart broken when she doesn’t fit into their little sadistic standard.
Rasheed in simple plain words, was a misogynist, a wife beater and a pedophile- all the worst and the most disgusting traits combined in a man. Nana was right when she said "Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.".
So, when twenty years go by and when the Talibs take over, what only adds more to the bleak and hopeless existence of Mariam is the second marriage of Rasheed to a young girl named Laila, in the false pre tense that the love of her life Tariq has died. Though we find out this little information way later in the story, it still felt like a betrayal that I myself has endured.
What can I say about Laila? I feel like I could write pages about her. The best way to describe her is by saying that she represents the faces of each and every Afghan woman who was stripped of her rights and power, but still managed to take on the world. She loses everybody she holds dearly. Her father Babi, her mother, the love of her life Tariq (though this was a lie orchestrated by Rasheed to marry her), she still never gave up. When Mariam refused to acknowledge her and simply ignored her, she did not submit. She was bold in a way, that no body could ever capture her fire.
When Laila and Mariam finally found sisterhood amongst each other, that was when the story really came together. A relationship that was confined to cold looks and unsaid words, turned into a blooming friendship, one that ultimately was the life of one and the death of the other. They both took care of each other. Mariam took care of Laila’s children as her own and Laila found an older sister that she never had. Throughout the rule of Taliban and the additional atrocities that Rasheed put the women through, none of them ever broke. They took on challenge after challenge, not giving up even for a fleeting moment. In a country out to torture every single woman born on the land, both of them were each other’s sacred comfort- a home in the form of a person.
This story is about women who refused to let society kill their spark. It is about people who find each other despite a thousand different things working silently against their reunion. Mariam is for the girls who were forced to give up their childhood and endure a lifetime of hard labor. Laila is for the girls who survive despite it all and make the world their oyster. This book is not about the oppressors, but about how beautifully the oppressed unite and fight for their rights.
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