I: The Collection – Textual Passages •She turned to Jalil again. “Tell them. Tell them you won’t let them do this.” “Actually, your father has already given Rasheed his answer,” Afsoon said. “Rasheed is here, in Herat; he has come all the way from Kabul. The nikka will be tomorrow morning, and then there is a bus leaving for Kabul at noon.” (Hosseini 57) •“You try this again and I will find you. I swear on the Prophet’s name that I will find you. And, when I do, there isn’t a court in this godforsaken country that will hold me accountable for what I will do.”(Hosseini 289)
•”God has made us differently, you women and us men. Our brains are different. You are not able to think like we can. Western doctors have proven this. This is why we require only one male witness but two female ones.” (Hosseini 391) •“Learn this now and learn this well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”(Hosseini 12) •“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.”(Hosseini 33)
•She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sign heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she’d said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.(Hosseini 100) •In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too has had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl’s eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila’s salvation.(Hosseini 427)
•These women were—what was the word Rasheed had used?—”modern.” Yes, modern Afghan women married to modern Afghan men who did not mind that their wives walked among strangers with makeup on their faces and nothing on their heads.(Hosseini 83) •Babi thought that the one thing the communists had done right-or at least intended to-ironically, was in the field of education, the vocation from which they had fired him. More specifically, the education of women. The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. Almost two-thirds of the students at Kabul University were women now, Babi said, women who were studying law, medicine, engineering. Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they’re probably more free now, under the communists, and have more rights than they’ve ever had before. (Hosseini 145)
•“Mariam did not sleep that night. She sat in bed, watched the snow falling soundlessly. 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 dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. 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.
But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza-a harami like herself, as it turned out-had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable. We’re leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam. The years had not been kind to Mariam. But perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still. A new life, a life in which she would find the blessings that Nana had said a harami like her would never see. Two new flowers had unexpectedly sprouted in her life, and, as Mariam watched the snow coming down, she pictured Mullah Faizullah twirling his tasbeh beads, 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. It is His will, my girl.” (Hosseini 270-271)
Genuine Questions •Why is the Taliban accepted? •How does Hosseini use films throughout the novel to symbolize relationships between people and the state of the country? •Mariam’s mother says: “Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have.” How does this sentiment echo throughout the history to women in Afghanistan over time? •In what ways are the men featured in the book as much victims of Afghan culture as the women? •What is the significance of the phrase “a thousand splendid suns” in the novel?
Reflection A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story of the three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny in Afghanistan through the eyes of two women, born a generation apart. The novel tells us, of the endurance that women must possess in order to survive, but also the love and sacrificial relationship that Laila and Mariam develop together. The novel depicts the destruction of Afghanistan in terms of culture and sophistication. Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, scorned for this ever since she was five by the term harami.
At the age of fifteen, she’s forced into marrying Rasheed, a 45 year-old shoe maker for political power figures and people of that class, after her mother commits suicide after Mariam goes in search for Jalil to be part of his family and be accepted into his life. Rasheed soon after becomes increasingly violent towards Mariam, after she fails to produce a child. Eighteen years later, Rasheed marries 14-year-old Laila after rescuing her from her home that was hit by a stray rocket, which killed her parents. Laila chooses to marry him due to her only options being prostitution or starvation. Mariam and Laila are at first rivals, but soon form a loving bond between each other; knowing that is the only way to survive the violent abuse by Rasheed, which is supported by custom and law.
The love and sacrificial relationship that Leila and Mariam develop together represent the refusal to yield to despair no matter how difficult and challenging the situations they face become. In a sense, they are two of the “splendid suns” that the novel refers to as the women of Afghanistan. This is exemplified in the book by this quote, “…. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl’s eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone.” The title A Thousand Splendid Suns is an allusion to the poem by the same name, written by Saib-e-Tabrizi, a 17th-century Persian poet.
In the poem, Tabrizi uses the expression “A Thousand Splendid Suns” to illustrate the beauty of Afghanistan by personifying as a beautiful woman. It is therefore it is ironic that a novel that depicts the destruction of Afghanistan’s culture and the power structure, as in how much they value men to women. In the poem, it says, “May Allah protect such beauty from the evil eye of man!” This along with the concept of female endurance and survival from her own country shows just how corrupt the Afghanistan culture has become from then to now. The title highlights the tragedy of what happen to Afghanistan by making us remember precedent of what happens in the novel. Like the visit to the giant Buddha statues before their destruction.
II: The Collection- Biographical Connection •Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. oAlthough the novel takes place outside Kabul, the novel itself was written after Hosseini traveled back to Afghanistan to examine for himself the aftermath of decades of turmoil as he wrote the book. •The Hosseini’s sought and were granted political asylum in the United States, and in September 1980 moved to San Jose, California. oIn the novel, Babi admits to Laila that at times he considers leaving Afghanistan from a better life in either Pakistan or America. But Hosseini and his family did leaving Afghanistan for America.
•In 1980, he and his family were to return to Kabul, but by then their homeland had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet Army. oIn the novel, part 2 chapters 16-18 overview life in Kabul during the Soviet Union occupation. Hosseini and his family experienced an event that changed the lives of Afghans by fleeing to the US. •In 2006, Hosseini was named a Goodwill Envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. oThe UN refugee agency is one of the world’s foremost humanitarian agencies. UNHCR provides assistance to more than 20 million displaced people around the world, including in Afghanistan. •Inspired by a trip he made to Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
III: The Annotation
“Mariam did not sleep that night. She sat in bed, watched the snow falling soundlessly. 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 dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. 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. But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza-a harami like herself, as it turned out-had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable. We’re leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam.
The years had not been kind to Mariam. But perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still. A new life, a life in which she would find the blessings that Nana had said a harami like her would never see. Two new flowers had unexpectedly sprouted in her life, and, as Mariam watched the snow coming down, she pictured Mullah Faizullah twirling his tasbeh beads, 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. It is His will, my girl.”
