OVERVIEW
Spanning two generations from the mid-20th century to the turn of the next millennium, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns is a riveting fiction speaking to the long-drawn-out struggles and nascent, hidden strengths of female characters in a dehumanizing atmosphere and social system. Hosseini centers his plot between two central characters rooted in a male-predominant society constantly in flux and uncertainty. The first central character, Mariam, represents a downtrodden yet eternal soul and essence of Afghanistan in its apparent simplicity. Stripped down in her initial naivety and innocent rebellion, but ultimately enduring and imposing like the country’s rugged mountainous landscape, she is the understated guiding ethos, the mirror of values and propriety. She is the illiterate ledger of history and tradition, and the hardened foundation of all that is, in another character’s semi-sarcastic appellation, the fractious nation’s “authentic” and rustic consciousness.
We have the slightly younger generation in Leila, whom Hosseini personifies as the country’s energetic and frustrated, latent future-in-becoming. Placed as the emerging ‘anti-authentic’ consciousness, Leila is articulate, forward-looking. Alternatingly rebellious and curious she challenges the ethos, the mirror of values and propriety via both emotional recklessness and intellectually inquisitive logic. The daring, more-affluent alter-ego (?)to the modest timidity of Mariam’s.
Located in the space between this apparent starkness is a spectrum of minor characters all set against the backdrop of an environment pulled, pushed, molded and ripped apart by a plethora of public and personal stimuli. Political instabilities and civil wars, social decay, economic downturns, religiously ideological rigidity and radicalization, foreign occupation, and personal loss congeal and diverge amid fleeting and rare progress, euphoric lucidity, or moments of unexpected respite. Although Mariam and Leila mainly merely observe, and respond to, their environments, there are key moments where their initiatives reshape where the novel transforms into character-driven through them.
NOVEL PLOT
From the structuring of narrative and plot, Part 1 establishes Mariam as narrator while we follow her childhood and adolescence mainly in impoverished and isolated rural village. Shifting the center of action, Part 2 begins with handing us 9-year-old Leila as urbane and upper-middle-class, lively Kabul-based narrator. In parallel with societal flux overall and with the changing pace of the novel, chapter narrators in Part 3 alternate between the two females as their lives are increasingly brought closer together through both space and time, by circumstances and by deliberate action from Rasheed. With this forced intermingling and intersection, Mariam as Afghan foundation and Leila as Afghan future find and synthesize ways to co-exist, collaborate and converge however minute and cramped the windows of opportunity. More broadly on the socio-political stage, as the country descends further into post-Soviet civil war amongst the Mujahideen, the Taliban are brought out as a major player of events. Significantly, the puritanical group is the only other notable reference to religious figures. The plot reaches its personal climax with Rasheed’s demise at the conclusion of Part three, shifting the main plot line yet again.
The skimpiest and final Part four lays out a conclusion-of-sorts for the master plot, helping to bring the novel full-circle. It is through Leila’s physical presence and through the consciousness of her surroundings and meditations that we are allowed to travel back to Mariam’s geographical and socio-economic origins. By directing the personification of the nation’s future to undertake this journey, it is as if Hosseini is giving us (in an otherwise linearly forward-moving novel) a simultaneous physical and metaphorical retrospective on Afghanistan itself.And one cannot escape the enormous weight of symbolism and reflection wrought here. Leila’s observations, contemplations, imaginations, and her presence itself are multiple manifestations —-of the country’s origins and past, the present and its essence, and a future of evasive hopefulness—-all fusing for an ephemera into one indistinguishable construct. The present cannot exist and the future cannot move without the past. Evolutions and developments must have origins and values, etc. But, a delicate synchronization also has to take place between these elements and paradigms. For Hosseini notes that a diversity of forces, from the monarchy to the Soviets and their Afghan allies to warlord-like tribalism to the Taliban and their foreign allies, failed with disaster to remold Afghanistan in their own images. Those physical and metaphorical manifestations embedded in Leila’s visit to Mariam’s hometown are also one of several nods to the importance of finding a way for Afghan harmonization to counteract against societal strife borne from and reinforcing power vacuums. Finally, by another way of demonstrating harmonization, it is also a vehicle that Hosseini uses to refute the notion posited by Rasheed that socio-economic disparities and geographic differentiations prevent (or should prevent) Afghans from relating to one other.
CENTRAL CHARACTERS AND RELATIONSHIPS
Encapsulated in the self-contained world of the mountainous village hut, the physical separation coupled with its arduous environment speak both to a sense of empowerment and to a profound sense of debilitation. On the one hand we witness the majesty of the biosphere in the Safad-Koh mountains overlooking Gul Daman, imposing itself upon onlookers as it remains unadulterated by the whims, hustle, and bustle of the metropole. On the other, we are brought before the foulness of material deprivation and the elusiveness of opportunity, re-entrenched by oppression of social shame a resentful and puzzled Mariam shares with her mother Nana over their physical and societal location in the country.
That shame and the aftermath it unfolds are central to realizing the unstable warped relationships tying together the two females and Mariam’s father. In what emerges as a rare oddity among gendered interactions in A Thousand, Jalil is weakened in front of his wife due to his fling with Nana, then a housemaid. He has no choice but to defer to his wife’s judgment that a pregnant Nana be banished to Gul Daman. This act comes accompanied with an imposed arrangement to maintain a relationship at slightly more than arms’ length: an informal and tacit sociopolitical structuring surfaces, held loosely and cynically together by sporadic visits and gifts from Jalil. Nana advises her daughter to heed it and keep a ‘respectable’ distance of self-seclusion while invoking Mariam’s status as a harami, an illegitimate child. Moreover, the arrangement is designed to save face for Jalil, for his reputation (and by extension, his upper-class nuclear family) at least amongst the general public is preserved intact.
Thus, their physical isolation accentuates the injustice of classism compounding the precariousness of Jalil’s relationship already beset by reckless patriarchy and suffocating misogyny. For it is Nana and Mariam who, as embattled lower-class females, bear the brunt of this power exercise. It is formalized more or less in Nana’s pithy admonition “like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.” When Mariam’s innocent curiosity about her extended family challenges the taboo of proximity underlying the dual-faceted stratification (misogyny and classism), it explicitly unleashes such inequities to the surface. Mariam is made to wait through a cold non-reception and inhumane non-recognition by Jalil and his household, before laying eyes upon Jalil’s face instantaneously through the window of his house. For Nana, the defiance against her prompts her into an act of hopelessness that invites further ostracism, disdain, and estrangement upon Mariam. Following Nana’s demise, once again Mariam is half-heartedly engaged only to be banished a second time by her extended family. This time, the expulsion is via coerced marriage to a much older shopkeeper farther away in Deh-Mazang, a suburb of Kabul. Setting up the confrontation between Mariam and Jalil’s wives as first conflict in the novel’s narratives, these inequities continue to shape the trajectories of Jalil’s and Mariam’s lives. Denied self-agency from the start due to her statuses, Mariam stumbles down a path of increasing dis-empowerment and dehumanization regardless of a change in setting; meanwhile Jalil , we learn later , finds himself gradually down a path in his own self-isolation, guilt, and misery (?).
Early in the novel Hosseini uses village Quran teacher Mullah Faizullah to create an interesting traditional-based religious contrast to the other standard-bearers of tradition and identity. .His role as Mariam’s mentor and bedrock portrays him as a pivotal pillar of support both for Mariam personally and for Afghanistan’s essence as a whole. Faizullah picks up on Mariam’s zest for life that shines and elusively promises to puncture through her circumstances, and unsuccessfully advocates to Nana for her admission into grade school. Doing his best to consoling Mariam during despair and being a source of guidance for her elsewhere, Faizullah was the closest person to a true father figure for her. Indeed it is the most that we ever witness in a sincere and close companionship that Mariam has with any character. In addition to teaching her basic literacy, he sees immense value, strength, resolve, and humanity in her in spite of her cast-away harami status. In contrast to many other characters in A Thousand, Faizullah is honest and unpretentious about his own shortcomings with her. Mariam reciprocates with respect, adulation, and trust. An understanding most evocatively expressed when, in a short exchange after Nana’s death which involves a semi-playful self-blame, Mariam responds to him: “You don’t need excuses. Not you.” (p.40).
But interestingly his Faizullah’s notable absence during Mariam’s deepest neediness and times of vulnerability and his old age, suggest a paralysis of such support. Similarly, his appearance makes noteworthy yet brief entrances and exits. Furthermore, there is no intersection between Faizullah and any other social ecosystem in the novel, which further circumscribes his role. We are left to ruminate fruitlessly on how Mullah Faizullah might assess the massive subsequent changes engulfing Afghanistan later on. Yet, perhaps the gap intentionally serves as a literary device on the part of Hosseini. Extrapolating on these plot developments, we might conclude that he suggests a deleterious sense of incompleteness in the core Afghan essence as represented foremost in Faizullah’s lack of support and protection for Mariam. As displayed in Faizullah’s interactions with and for her earlier, this absence is interpreted to be an irreproachable (albeit fateful) weakness, rather than a malicious betrayal of her.
In part two of A Thousand Suns, Hosseini purposefully introduces Leila , not in a separate phase but rather as accompanying and juxtaposing track of narratives. Like Mariam, we start out seeing in Leila a youthfulness robust in will, vivacity, and curiosity. But there is quickly a stark departure from Mariam’s upbringing in Leila’s urbane environment and upper-class privilege. She displays an articulate, precocious personality bolstered by a more socially nurturing relationship with her family and neighborhood. In intellect and purpose, she outshines her two classmates and best friends, Giti and Hassina. As relatively minor characters with regular occurrences in this part of the novel, they provide momentary comic relief or support to Leila, or otherwise help the novel move along. They also provide contrast: Leila lacks Hasina’s wit, Giti’s serious bookishness and thus occupying a space in between the other two. Ironically Hasina, who devises a comedic manner to disperse a potential suitor, ultimately ends up with the same fate of coerced marriage as many young Afghan females in spite of a relatively privileged background. Giti similarly is on the path of marrying too young, but willingly views it as desired purpose and future. Yet, in a dramatic turn Giti becomes one of the many victims of the Afghan civil war.
Leila’s position as both a female and the youngest member in the household relegates her in significance in the eyes of her mother Fariba who clearly favors her two older brothers Ahmed and Noor in sentiment, attention, and action. Significantly, the young girl’s status doesn’t change with the loss of her siblings during the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation. Fariba, immersed in the sadness of loss and the near-mythic and starry-glorifying martyrdom of Ahmed and Noor, slips into lifelessness and deeper into neglecting Leila’s presence. Rare moments of mammy’s acknowledgement of her are an insufficient counterbalance. This is a point that Hosseini utilizes subtly to show that the imbalances within gender relations are not restricted particularly by class, geography, or ideology: “Leila knew that her future was no match for her brothers’ past. They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives’ museum, and she Leila a mere visitor [p 128]”. (So too is the domineering nature of Leila’s mother within the household, a direct parallel drawn with Jalil’s wife.)
Though Leila is nowhere near as ostracized or isolated in her home as Mariam is in Gul Daman, Leila’s relegation (like Mariam’s isolation) is nonetheless a deeply formative experience in her social and personal development. Leila is left to her own introverted devices, perceptively observing, critiquing, questioning all that is around her. She is as skeptical towards the pro-Soviet and pro-Communist leanings of her grade school teacher’s lessons as she is towards Afghanistan’s social customs (particularly marriage at young age). That spark of intellectual and zeal is noticed by Leila’s father Hakim, more commonly denoted by the affectionate informal term babi. Hakim takes the form of secular version of an enhanced Mullah Faizullah, with the former being as open-minded and visionary as the latter is caring and compassionate. He is a cosmopolitan former high school teacher in Deh-Mazang. After a Communist coup transfers to him to a factory he still manages to dispense regular (albeit informal) lessons and references to Leila about Afghan history and art. He fortifies his attention with field trips (chapter 21).
Here, with the trip to the ancient Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, Hosseini comes closest to connecting history, the present, and the future with human identity and conduct, and with spatial geography. Moments of exploration and conversations reveal the intimacy of the relationship between the two characters. Babi explains to Leila the backstory of Afghan complex heritage via commentary on surrounding monuments. It also represents a statement of direct contrast to the relationship between Mariam and Jalil; Leila is further encouraged and empowered, not stifled, undermined or manipulated by those assumed to be among her closest loved ones. Furthermore Leila’s bond with Babi reveals itself not to be an insincere and superficial manifestation of gestures. Nor is it an afterthought replete with reluctance, apathy, and half-hearted guilt. In these ways, the trip also serves as a device for Hosseini’s literary meditation on Afghan orientation, the nuclear family, and finally personal reassessment and conviction in the debate over whether leaving Afghanistan would constitute a betrayal of Afghan martyrs’ memory and Afghan hope for independence. Hakim later continues this effort by homeschooling when the country descends into chaos.
Whereas Mariam has herself, surrounding nature and a village elder/sheikh as deep-level daily companions, Leila finds this analog in Tariq, a similar-aged neighbor crippled by a landmine. His bravery in defending her from childhood male bullies draw them together, and Hosseini takes pains to delicately elaborate the budding warmth of anticipation, solace, and comfort between the two. With Leila distant from her brothers, It is the only other relationship beside that with Babi upon which Hosseini meticulously focuses. The author describes her sickening angst in his absences, and the platonic ecstasy mixed with disappointment in their reunions. Tariq hails from a lower socio-economic background, and in spite of his personal faults, he stands out in character amongst all the male characters. Even though Leila scolds Tariq’s decisions and choices from time to time, her strong will and independent mindfulness(?) softens vis-a-vis him as their friendship molds progressively over time into passionate adolescent romance.
Interestingly Hosseini uses the final Soviet military withdrawal in January 1989 as a turning point (leaving an embattled transitional communist regime to face the Mujahideen alone) to mark the beginning of this intense emotional change, suggesting a rosy-red renewal of hope and eager anticipation for Afghanistan. Broader social and political environment is placed alongside developments in one particular where Leila’s thoughts and emotions as she sits adjacent to Tareq watching a poorly-dubbed old Soviet movie. With mismatched intonation in the movie, the poor editing implies the unquestionable collapse of a dysfunctional Soviet Communist hegemony over the society, while humor and levity in the reaction to its awkwardness represents a rejection of that hegemony. Meanwhile Leila, perhaps oblivious to her surroundings, is immersed in cloud-nine thoughts and emotion towards her companion. Although this example is somewhat of a cliched painting of setting in literature, in that moment Husseini succinctly captures the jubilee, the anxiety, the beginning murmurs of desire barely masked behind a half-hearted sarcasm at both the political situation and the gender social customs.
As with the contrasts in parent-child relations, so too do the origin and the trajectory of Leila’s relationship with Tariq represent a departure point in narration from Mariam’s spousal life. Leila’s friendship/romance is part-intensity, part-mutual understanding. Mariam’s marriage devolves into recurring moments of duty-bound and robotic physical intimacy that are repulsive to her, followed by or accompanied with emotional barrenness and finally total mutual estrangement. Leila’s physical convergence with Tariq is a single outburst of a long-held longing for exercised out. In the midst of this physical convergence is a building up of an intimate liaison in which desired pain and bliss are extracted and repetitively and fondly contemplated on. One may wonder what exactly Hosseini’s thoughts are regarding extramarital intercourse in and of itself (I.e.absent consideration of all other circumstance and elements). We cannot recall other instances beside this one mentioned. Noteworthy, however, is that Hosseini reflects less upon Leila’s personal moral sentiments than upon her considerations of the social implications her liaison with Tariq stands to invite. Perhaps this is his intent. First, to create and utilize this event to the extent that provides contrast with the relational/relationship turbulence Mariam encounters. Secondly, that it helps moving the action forward in the novel in other directions—broader themes on gender inequity informed by, among other things, cultural norms and religious interpretations, despite the particularities of both characters’ cases.
Planted, budding, and intensifying in the midst of ugliness from civil strife, it is also a reflection on what Hosseini stress as the need to seek out beauty or permit it to happen when it emerges. That beauty must be tasted and relished as a medium through which the willpower to carry on is justified; that mere existence is redeeming and facilitated. Yet what comes with that search and experience, Hosseini isn’t too far from reminding us, are taxing socio-cultural costs. The extremely pivotal point here is that once again the burdening fallout of cost—- marginalization, exposure to the potential of victimization and abuse (as well as its methods in judgement/condemnation and action)—-is imposed arbitrarily, unidirectionally, unrelentingly without consideration of nuance to character or circumstances. It is a theme of inequity in sanction and punishment, and of inequity in the very definition of both public and private spaces where greater circumscription is encountered, that Hosseini begins to address.
In this light, the two females are once again brought together thematically by abrupt, abject disempowerment. Circumstances and societal pressure force Mariam into an undesirable relationship which ultimately devolves into an uncertainty of doubt, recrimination, low self-esteem, and unfulfillment (?). Civil war and the loss of family and Tariq force Leila out of her relationships. Combined with the sting of her origins and the lack of a support structure, the prospect of a childless marriage produces a very public shame for Rasheed and Mariam. This haunts her with guilt and further weakening of leverage vis-a-vis Rasheed, rendering her irredeemable as a member of society and helping to confine her indoors. In the context of societal norms, they also simultaneously enable her husband with opportunity to exercise harshness and abuse towards her with regular impunity. Much as in the relationship with Jalil Khan, Mariam’s marriage could not provide her any sense of safety, measurement, or nurturing. And in both relationships, so too does classism compound misogyny. In the absence of loved ones, the fear towards exposure of a shame born in private from the prospect of an illicit arrival confines Leila and paralyzes her with few desperate options. Despite the tensions evident in the differentiation between the private and public contextualizations in the two situations, the panic of trajectory heading towards the same ultimate outcome---arbitrary, unequal evaluation and punishment, and the marginalization which stems from such---bear down heavily on Mariam and Leila alike.
It is in this height of similarities——personal weakness and debilitating circumstances—-that the worlds of the two women collide. As yet another reminder of the commanding male status embedded with Afghan patriarchy. Hosseini presents Rashid, Mariam’s husband, as the catalyst.
He is a much simpler character that hardly undergoes any development from the author. Mostly patriarchal and condescending in the best of times, his whims and the downturns in circumstances push him towards violence and abusiveness. Though moments of tenderness and understanding arise in his demeanor and thinking, they are often employed alongside duplicity in expedient and calculated fashion towards his interests or appetites. Or, in the other contexts which nonetheless reflect a chauvinistic bias that runs parallel to broader Afghan political and social relations, as described by Hosseini. Rasheed derives his strength (and weakness) from such non-self-appraising, brutish intransigence and near-impenetrable immutability.
One may fault Hosseini for giving us such a shallow, unsympathetic character in Rasheed. But maybe that is precisely the author’s intent. Though he risks a reductionist personification of Afghan decline, Hosseni manages nevertheless to counterbalance the risk with character-development juxtaposition to more rounded interlocutors. Rasheed’s coarse obtuseness and short-sighted wiliness is the anti- Mariam as well as the anti-Leila. He takes advantage of the ‘steady’ soul and essence of Afghanistan (Mariam) despite much proclamations of fealty to its foundation. Similarly he is also the anti-future (i.e. the anti-Leila), concealing his skepticism and disdain towards a conceptualized (more thoughtful) future (and present) behind what he views as societal preservation and personal pragmatism. For Hosseini, in order for the entirety of Afghanistan itself to thrive, let alone survive, all Rasheeds must be decisively knocked down. The author apparently suggests reforming, mitigating, or preempting their corrosive corruptions would be little more than acts of futility. Rasheed’s incorrigibility is as solid and formidable as Afghanistan’s towering mountains, Mariam’s near-impeccable steadfast calm endurance, and Leila’s thoughtful inquisitiveness.
Much of Rasheed’s demeanor and attitudes are simply borne out of naked opportunism. Yet, even here exists a slight depth to this pivotal character. As if by another method for humanizing him, with a particular emphasis on fragility, Hosseini describes a second significant impulse in survival instincts. Indeed, Rasheed frequently cajoles, advises, exhorts, and finally scolds the members of his household about the urgency of vigilance in protecting themselves (and him) against the brutality and selfishness of society. He, in other words, is simultaneously abuser and guardian of household at-large.
At a more fundamental level, they also reflect a vigilance in the face of existential and primordial concern. It is in part a self-rebuking of a previous carelessness that translated into tragic loss—-a stinging failure to preserve and prevent that what must not, at all costs, be repeated. Here we can trace broader analogies Hosseini draws upon about how male predominance is continuously fearful of losing Afghanistan, and about how survivability instincts (multiplied into the aggregate) is forcing through an aggregated sense of vigilance from multiple angles. Rasheed loses his beloved and prized son to preventable accident. Afghanistan loses its sons to war unleashed by foreign invasion. Afghan males perceive a loss of some public space to female socio-economic and political advancement. And finally their country and its storied history and cultures deteriorate in the face of internal post-Soviet strife and more foreign meddling. However questionable and misplaced are the specific modes of implementation of such vigilance, the anxiety is undeniable. Carried on its back is a vexing dilemma about how to properly cope with that loss in the meantime and then turn into a positive blueprint for going forward.
Nonetheless, aside from Fariba’s lamentations and social dejection, once again, the female voice is not as present or prominent as Rashid’s. To the extent that after his son’s drowning Rasheed returns to his profession, and re-marries and resumes family life, he is considered functionally successful in Afghan society. But for the Afghan woman Hosseini poses: What is her tragic loss in all of this rupture and turbulence? How does she define, and cope with, it? Where is her survivability other than in the context of an object being acted upon, or ultimately sidelined n individuality and in the aggregate? In trying to carve out a stake and a role in hostile social environment, where, when and how does she seek the fulfillment, contentment, and the integrity of personhood? To return to wholeness, humanity, after the sensation of setback or devastation? To help us get an inkling of an answer for these questions, Hosseini guides us towards the complex relationship he crafts between Mariam and Leila.
Mariam and Leila begin their relationship in the distance accorded by a host providing shelter to a destitute and bereaved guest. Though sought out and brought by Rasheed to their home, Mariam patiently obliges to nurture Leila back into awareness and physical strength. This hospitality develops into into guardianship, then slowly into companionship, and finally a sort of surrogate motherhood. Beyond merely a situation brought to her doorstep, why else would Mariam display such attentiveness and care to Leila? We notice there is something more to a predictable reaction on her part to surface-level change in plot. Mariam sees in Leila’s abrupt vulnerability a manifestation of her childhood helplessness; the lack of a stable support structure in which she had no part. Though Mariam approaches Leila cautiously, and is unsure of what to say or do to console and comfort her—indeed, demonstrated by third-person label (“the girl”) signifying Mariam’s unfamiliarity wth Leila—it is still clear that the former’s sympathy for the latter radiates through the scarce pages describing the initial momentary exchanges.
The pattern of relationships in the household then begins to shift numerous times rather quickly. Soon enough, uncharacteristically jubilant and attentive transformations in Rasheed’s mood and attitude trigger suspicion in Mariam about his intentions for saving Leila. In turn, a mutual hostility emerges between the two women, each fearful and uncertain of her position in the home, of the status she finds herself in. Like Hasina earlier, Leila makes a rational decision to disrupt her childhood. Unlike her late friend, it is out of self-preservation against the options that societal chaos imposed upon them which Rasheed, as a relatively-prosperous male and head-of-household, exploits. Leila is deprived of any safe haven but this home; Mariam is powerless to negotiate a way out; and Rasheed refuses any alternative arrangement of family (for instance, treating Leila as a daughter or a foster child to him). The state-of-affairs (“the mutually orchestrated dance of avoidance” p 198) continues as Rasheed effectively renders Mariam subordinate and servile to Leila, denigrating the former and playing up on the latter’s more privileged upbringing. Further setting the tone for the new environment are a reinforcement of the chauvinism and possessiveness expressed more explicitly when Rasheed compares the two women directly to automobiles. Away from Rasheed’s sight, Mariam pushes back, but in displaying cold authority and cruel words towards an uncomfortable Leila.
The environment trajectory changes upon a new stimulus when Leila gives birth to a girl, Aziza. Like the loss of his son and Mariam’s miscarriage, Rasheed views the new addition as a misfortune. Having committed a “graver sin” than Mariam’s childlessness, Leila falls out of his favor. But this brings neither concrete change to Mariam’s relationship with Rasheed, nor any substantive satisfaction for her.
Hosseini does, however, use this as departure point to create a stark change in the relationship both the two women and in plot of the novel. After some private gloating, Mariam begins to feel a sympathetic pity towards the new mother. Concurrently, Leila’s care for Aziza triggers an intense jealousy in Rasheed, who irrationally blames Mariam and simultaneously holds the innocent infant in contempt. (Perhaps Hosseini had read Freud beforehand, pointing to the psychiatrist’s controversial Odepidus Complex.). Leila intervenes to prevent Rasheed from exercising his anger in physical abuse of co-spouse; meanwhile, Mariam unexpectedly has a brief tender moment with Aziza while the latter’s mother is sleeping. The proximity continues to expand as each side takes the initiative with low-key friendliness or assistance: Mariam furnishes a pile of unused clothes for Aziza; Leila reciprocates by inviting Mariam to sit with her for afternoon tea in the front garden. Cementing closer cooperation, they begin doing chores together. In the end, Hosseini stresses that two the two co-spouses consciously locate in the space between one other—a space whose parameters are confined by Rasheed’s patriarchy inside the home and by war and socio-cultural codes outside—a support structure and the young blooming of a sense of empowerment they have longed for. For Mariam, it is also her decades-awaited arrival at an opportunity for self-contentment, an unlikely partial redemption or deliverance from all her quiet suffering. Above all, though the author paints a utopia of surreal serenity, he embarks upon a theme that women can and will find strength and humanity in themselves reinforced by the solidarity with each other.
The self-contained utopia vanishes when the new-found empowerment ignites a misplaced hope for actual liberation. Leila convinces Mariam to risk a daring escape with her to Pakistan. By this time, the Taliban have consolidated more control over the country especially the border areas, adding another wrinkle to Leila’s plan. In this fraught political environment and against the whims of personal preservation, ultimately they find themselves betrayed by contacts during their journey. The attempt crashes into a new depth of depravity and abuse from Rasheed. Finding his authority challenged and his reputation besmirched, Rasheed clarifies that he’s not only master of the household, but one who lords over the very lives (and deaths) of the family members by isolating Mariam and subjecting the remainder to perilous harm. While Hosseini uses the brief descriptions of interrogations of Mariam and Leila at the border police station to demonstrate once more the injustice emanating from the disadvantaged position of Afghan women. This time however, it comes explicitly with the veneer of legality and formal policy (backed up, as it is implied by particular theological interpretation), not social mores or culture.
When Rasheed finally gets his wish for a second opportunity at paternity over a male child, one would hope for a softening of attitude and demeanor. That the answering of Rasheed’s long tortured and mostly reticent (albeit tense) patience would allow for a space of compassion and understanding to open up. And that that opening would join up with the positive change between Mariam and Leila. Once again the trajectory of narrative shifts awkwardly, and any essence of beauty within it fails to materialize in full form. Depressingly, it is insufficient to change the fundamentals of the relationships involving the three central characters. In fact, if anything, the new arrival Zalmai further reinforces the worst inclinations, dispositions, and biases in Rasheed. It also brings out a marked negative change contradistinctive to Leila’s being. With highly descriptive detail Hosseini contrasts the immense perilous and pained suffering encountered (and equally the awe-inspiring bravery displayed) by the young mother during a difficult labor involved in giving birth to Zalmai to the pleasurable pain with Tariq earlier. Similarly, Leila increasingly transforms into a loathing person struggling to love and care for Zalmai as much as she relishes Aziza’s presence. A male Zalmai, the legitimate child, is seen as an oppressive burden in all its physical and emotional proportions. At this point, a natural Impression by readers may be that Leila’s attitude is borne out of a counter-reaction to her own upbringing. She is granted an opportunity, however vaguely and rhetorically, to avenge herself and Afghan womanhood by denying emotional warmth to her son. Or is this a metaphorical opportunity to rectify who and what he represents?
In embodiment and action, Zalmai’s irascible neediness (on the one hand) and pampered bolstered hegemony (on the other) reproduce patriarchy and male privilege within the home. With active encouragement and reckless pampering from his father, Zalmai gauges Leila’s weakened stature— and through a mixture of childish naughtiness and verbal intimidation—-seeks to impose his will with impunity on her and his half-sister. Against Aziza, who exhibits independence and precociousness inherited from Leila, Rasheed’s jealousy towards them has now turned to blunt neglect . The children in Rasheed’s household hence reflect the qualities, positions, and treatment of the adults. Economic downturns befalling the family and the advent of Taliban consolidation over the Afghan nation-state exacerbate such dynamics. Rasheed forces Leila to put up Aziza in an orphanage/boarding school (under-resourced due to continuing war and Taliban policy). Like other females it is Aziza the “cherished”, not Zalmai, who must suffer most through the developments. As a result her health and personal growth deteriorate, marked by a worsening speech impediment and by deplorable conditions at her new domicile. Back at the Rasheed home, little else changes. We may note that It is in the immense ironic gulf between the character’s name and fate here that Hosseini reveals the continuing disintegration of both Afghanistan as a societal construct with institutions and as a set of values. In a parallel to Mariam as fallible symbolism for Afghan origins and nationalisms, Hosseini appears to suggest that the entire country is yet again (via Aziza) metonyzed and symbolized in its femininity over which gendered and socio-economic positions are exercised, with multiple dimensions of stratifications bearing out unjust and unequal outcomes. For how can Aziza—and in turn, femininity in the country and the future of Afghanistan itself — be “cherished”, if she is forced in the status quo to sacrifice family care for herself?
Here, the author points to a hint: solidarity amongst womanhood is once again stressed, this time reinforced generationally by the fact that it is Leila who gives Aziza her name—that her daughter is indeed cherished in spite of the patriarchy that deems her otherwise. And with Mariam’s assistance Leila repeatedly strives to back up in action for her daughter, despite the dangers, what she had already established through a few symbolic yet significant letters and syllables in naming her. Similarly, perhaps Hosseini is implying that it will ultimately rest upon Afghan women’s shoulders to “cherish” Afghanistan—-to safeguard, to develop and take it forward. In this way, Hosseini also suggests that “Zalmai” (as a metaphor for the present and future of Afghanistan’s men and masculinity) cannot be cherished, cannot be cared for without care and cherishing for “Aziza”. And it is “Aziza” that ultimately charges up the strength in Leila, that reorients Leila towards drawing from her deep well of compassion, care,and resolve—-sourced from, and mentored by, Mariam. In spite of her apparently undersized role as a character, as a literary device, “Aziza” is a potent metaphor, and the real-time physical embodiment of it. This circle which connects “Zalmai” to all this is thus complete: Mariam lies at one end of the diameter; Leila is at the other; Aziza is the center. Zalmai also exists in the circle, not at the its tangent—a position imposed upon women Hosseini blames and rebukes Afghan conventional wisdom for establishing and upholding.
Heading back to the status quo, I interpret this decline as a statement on part of the author on gendered disparities in social relations. Taken against the backdrop of previous ephemeral periods of limited socio-political liberalization cited by Hosseini (Soviet-era professionalization of female labor, but political deliberalization and indoctrination overall). I also interpret it as a statement on a cyclical reproduction of hope and despair.
Presented with this exacerbated pattern, and with the closing off of all pressure-release valves, Hosseini’s novel reaches a troubled climax which logically cannot be resolved peaceably. Three separate incidents in particular reignite Rasheed’s temper and lead him into a new depth of cruelty and abuse toward Mariam and Leila. Before Zalmai’s birth, the family’s failed attempt to escape from him is met with imprisonment of the two women, especially of Leila in life-threatening condition and in her bloody beating by him (239-43). Leila’s refusal of Rasheed’s attempt to parade Aziza as a street child and her response to his assault leads to him shoving a gun down her throat 266-7). A final episode in this pattern of abuse (pp 307-11)unfolds the novel’s climax: a surprise reunion between Leila and Tariq violently brings out all of Rasheed’s insecurities once again to the surface. From the conversation with Tariq, Leila’s learns of Rasheed’s duplicity and machinations over her vulnerability that led her in the first place to continue seeking shelter in the Rashid household. In the confrontation between Leila and Rasheed afterwards, Mariam unsuccessfully intervenes with pleas to stop the beating, juxtaposing an interesting reversal to Leila’s intervention earlier to save the former near the beginning of their polygamous relationship.
Mariam however, does not continue to resign in despair and—in a resumption of a new-found strength and confidence—makes a more assertive attempt, as the focus of Rasheed’s rage alternates between the women with murderous resolve. Hosseini uses the stark transformation to mark a turning point for personal reflection by Mariam over herself as an individual and over her marriage life. As mentioned above, it was a process that commenced much earlier, in the space of reconciliation and solidarity that began to sprout up between her and Leila. Now, Rasheed’s final act of rage forces the culmination of that assessment out as assertively as her physical effort. Rasheed, she concludes, always cared more about his domination over her (and Leila) than her own being, sentiments, and interests, and that not even her sacrifices for him could exempt her from his condescension and cruelty. With such an epiphany and concerted action, Hosseini notes that Mariam is purging out what the author heretofore has described her innate docility and meekness. Furthermore Hosseini, once again, uses this incident to elaborate on a maternal proximity from Mariam with Leila, with the former comforting the latter at the sight of climatic result from the day’s confrontation. Mariam is depicted as decisive throughout with clarity of mind and spirit. Simultaneously, it is resumption of the solid essence and the unshakeable Afghan origins temporarily taking over, but with improvement, to lay the cornerstone for what is to come. The two characters are brought together discussing the family’s future excluding Rasheed, albeit against the backdrop of an eerily darker mood. In reverse to their attempt to flee from Rasheed, a frail Leila is relatively anticipatory but doesn’t partake in the planning. Mariam limits herself to finding a way out of the day’s mess, and her solution for the aftermath of their final encounter with Rasheed —-much like her decisiveness during the encounter itself—-will ultimately re-transform the present and the future for them.
Hosseini makes a poignant statement here that essence and origin don’t have an immutable and permanent grip on society. Mariam sacrifices herself, but this time it is different. The aim is to break the cycle of flashes of intermittent hope crushed by marginalization and despair. What follows is not, rather a relinquishment to a doomed status-quo. but a somewhat-Shakespearean sense of self-purification and redemption given the limitations of circumstance and environment. For Mariam individually. it is utterly a full circle of travel touching nodes of loss and gain. Of arbitrarily imposed order and fits of rebellion. Of tyranny and liberation. Of finding herself rendered a lowly creature condemned by ostracism and then of developing into person radiating with initiative. But, in a twist, it is also a circle which ends with a sober or stoic personal satisfaction. In her downfall being “back in the kolba” and the once-again target of “a man’s accusing finger”, **she** senses that she—with all that this “she” comprises and implies—-has unearthed triumph and fulfillment however understated. Though Mariam’s demise is both metaphorical and physical, her resolve even here is an unleashing of liberation, dignity, equality through a display of indomitable spirit. It is a resolution (unexpected) to the conditions suffered in her trial and subsequent developments. Hosseini draws a significant parallel between her signature affirming a trial lacking due process and her signature affirming her marriage to Rashid. Simultaneously, it is a resolution to the entire **trajectory** of her life—to all the layerings of history, class, gender, stigma and social mores, and geography that had invalidated her. At Mariam’s final moments, however, stressing that she was seeking validation from no one for her action, Hosseini describes the distillation and crystallization of such triumph at which arrives (pp 329):
“... it was not regret any longer ... She thought of her entry into his world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. ... And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. .. a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. ... This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.”
In the meantime, the novel reflects on the broader trials and tribulations the country has been facing. It is unclear how the society is taking steps to move forward as the country stumbles from convulsion to convulsion. Reflecting on the aftermath of Talibans’ quick downfall at the hands of American military invasion, he is hesitant on a physically gung-ho approach. By pointing to re-empowerment and entrenchment of fractious warlords and to the naked legitimization of their financial and political influence, what emerges here is a hint of euphoric liberation to resumption of old ethnic and geographical jealousies and rivalries left open by the creation of the modern Afghan nation-state. All is set against a backdrop of dire impunity drawing upon legacies of war, and power vacuums. A concern about a return to pre-Taliban status quo marked by tribalistic cronyism and factional distrust, wide-scale violence and strife worries Hosseini deeply. He ironically posits that the outlier ultra-conservative movement nevertheless spared the country some measure of instability and gained some level of acquiesce if not support by the populace. Hosseini mentions that no such parallel breadth of acceptance could be found towards the emerging/resurgent non-Taliban elites. [There is a brief mention of the foreigners’ ascendancy here who operate as murky, mysteriously, and suddenly as they appear.] Perhaps almost axiomatically, he ultimately seems to conclude that persistent, resolute outreach, dialogue and negotiation are the only certain key to salvation here.
The emphasis on dialogue and cooperation is also buttressed by Hosseini’s accounts and reflections on interactions of the Mujahideen following the Soviets’ departure from Afghanistan. Giving way to mutual suspicions and corrosive greed for power and influence, complete breakdowns surface in the transitional governing structures, the jirgas, and complete disintegrations take over the roadmap processes they and other Afghan representatives create in the transitional period. Gradually and increasingly, the Mujahideen transform from actors with valiant heroics to fickle factional gangs. Weapons and blunt might replace public discourse and reasoned argumentation as the modes and instruments of negotiations Despite its brevity and fragmented presentation, Hosseini is careful to point out these crucial developments of opportunities being squandered as further cautionary tales. He tries to strike a measure of neutrality in recalling them, and few escape Hosseini’s voice of condemnation. In the end, Hosseini faults both the failures to take a decisive stand towards transgressors and to resolve conflict through a dialogue and political solution.
There are shimmers of hope for a new trajectory for the country, and Hosseini exerts to demonstrate it as if microcosmically on the level of the central characters’ personal relationships. In a slow but assured manner Tariq develops rapport with Zalmai. Hosseini implies that Tariq has the capacity to bear down on Zalmai with values of compassion, respect, and even equity towards fellow Afghans. Despite an initial slump, Aziza continues to excel and flourish both at school and personally. We see possible breaks in the cycle of intermittent hope and near-permanent despair
Yet the novel ends too abruptly. We don’t get the opportunity to see the relationship between Tariq and Zalmai fully develop and evolve, and the mysteriousness of Rasheed’s absence to Zalmai’s knowledge looms and lingers as a shadow over the novel’s progression. And we also to continue to see glimpses of fractional tribalism and warlordism being politically and economically legitimized. Employing it as another metaphor for the state of the country and its people, Hosseini sets up this conundrum of determinism (via finding oneself in hard-molded environments and values) and nurture (via conscious action) as an unresolved problem. Much like the emphasis on cooperation and tolerance and on the fusion of essence and future, the author seems to suggest that these other paradigms had always been fusing and simultaneously clashing with each other.
Novel is peppered throughout with conversational references in Pashtun and Farsi. For fuller flavor, there are also sprinklings of historical, literary, cultural, and political references to ancient poets, contemporary statesmen, traditional folk-singers. More effort could have been exerted to contextualize these references with appendexed glossary or margined footnotes for unfamiliar readers, given the broad scope and semi-standalone nature of the work.
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