Book: A thousand splendid suns

The book is a captivating and breathtaking story with the violent events in Afghanistan from the 1970s to 2000s in the background. The two main stories surround two female characters: Mariam and Laila. The author walks us through the injustice that the two protagonists had to suffer. The first 25% of the book was about Mariam, followed by the section on Laila and later their life together, which accounts for half of the book.

As a Vietnamese, I almost have to apply for a visa to every country that I want to travel to. It means a great deal of paperwork, time and money involved. Sometimes, it frustrates the hell out of me as I look with envy to many of my friends from the US, Canada and EU whose nationalities allow them to travel almost everywhere the very next day with little trouble. However, I felt tremendously grateful for the life I have whenever I read books on North Korea or books like this one. They really make me look at things from a perspective. Somewhere around the world, the life I am leading is a luxury to many and something I should cherish.

It’s horrifying and unthinkable to know that women in some countries in the world are treated so badly, in the way that the two characters were in the book. For all the scientific advancements we have had, we still have much on this front to solve. I hope that one day, women everywhere will be liberated and given as much freedom as men are and have always been.

If you are looking for a great page-turner, I highly recommend this. Below are a few beautiful passages I appreciate a great deal

“And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.”

“Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. 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 been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings.

“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. ”

“Marriage can wait. Education cannot…Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance.” 

She sat on the chair instead, hands limp in her lap, eyes staring at nothing, and let her mind fly on. She let it fly on until it found the place, the good and safe place, where the barley fields were green, where the water ran clear and the cottonwood seeds danced by the thousands in the air; where Babi was reading a book beneath an acacia and Tariq was napping with his hands laced across his chest, and where she could dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreams beneath the watchful gaze of gods of ancient, sun-bleached rock.”