Reflection On A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a tale of two women, Mariam and Laila, who came from different backgrounds. But both lived through the harrowing era of war and invasion in Afghanistan. Mariam is a harami, an illegitimate daughter of a famous business owner named Jalil. Her mother used to be Jalil’s servant. Jalil himself already had three wives and nine legitimate children. To avoid shame, Mariam and her mother, or Nana, casted out from his house to live on the outskirt of town in a small shack. Living in poverty, Nana had already felt enough as long as she had Mariam. Still, Mariam wanted more. Everytime Jalil visited them to bring some supplies or gift for Mariam, her need for her father only grew more. She longed for a life where she could live

I think it’s one of the best books I’ve read. It’s a title that’s difficult to top. Yet, A Thousand Splendid Suns manages to go beyond that. Different from The Kite Runner, this book revolves more around mother-daughter relationship and women’s role in society, especially Afghan society. This speaks more to me than The Kite Runner because I’m a woman and I’m a daughter so I could relate more to this story. Set in Afghanistan during war and invasion, their tragic story becomes even more tragic with all the death around the characters. It’s an eye opener to the horrible events in Afghanistan years

This book shows how damaging a patriarchal society to women and children can be. Moreover, since Afghanistan is a country with Islam as an official state religion, people often perverse the religion to fit their agenda. They twist the teaching of Islam to justify their mistreatment towards women. One prominent example of this comes in the character of Rasheed. Rasheed in the first part of the book was a forty something year old man who married Mariam. His first wife died years before and he lost his son to a drowning accident. Being 25 years older than Mariam didn’t stop him from marrying Mariam. At first, he showed affection towards Mariam. But when Mariam lost their child due to miscarriage, Rasheed began to resent Mariam and abused her. Rasheed is such a hypocrite in his belief. He told Mariam to wear burqa as it’s a husband’s duty to protect his wife’s honor, yet he hit her and abused her whenever she did the tiniest mistake; which, in my opinion was actually not a mistake at all. It’s almost like he always searched for a reason to hit her. He used his role as a husband to justify his mistreatments towards Mariam. I’ve never read a character that makes me as angry as he does. It also scares me a bit, because people like him are still exist nowadays. It’s just scary how realistic he