This novel follows two Afghanistan girls who grow with totally different lives, but both brought together by chance. It includes the anti-Soviet jihad, civil war, and the Taliban tyranny in Afghanistan from the 1960s up until the early 2000s. It starts with the life of Mariam. She is born in Gul Daman, a small village outside of Herat, Afghanistan. She is the illegitimate child of a wealthy businessman and a housekeeper. Mariam’s step mothers force her to marry a widowed shoemaker named Rasheed and move into Kabul, Afghanistan at fourteen. Rasheed abuses Mariam after she has many miscarriages. Laila is born a couple of years afterward in Kabul to loving parents. She falls in love with a boy named Tariq, but as the bombs rain down she ends up