So far in A Thousand Splendid Suns we have met two women Mariam and Laila. Mariam is
a timid and weak women in her thirty’s. She married her husband, Rasheed, after
the death of her mother and has been unable to have any children in the past 20
years. When Rasheed’s second wife Laila is a strong minded, smart women who was
the daughter of a professor and also married young after tragedy struck. Both
women have lived lives of tragedy and triumph. After Rasheed married Laila the
women hated each other and refused to work together or be friends. Laila then
became pregnant with her teenage love, who has died, Tariq’s baby, and Rasheed
thought it was his. After weeks of avoiding each other Mariam made Laila baby
clothes for Laila’s child. Then the two women had tea together and began what
will become an incredible friendship. Laila gives birth to a little girl she
names Aziza, and Rasheed is disappointed of the child who is a girl. As the
days go on the women become closer and begin to hate their lives with Rasheed
more and more. Laila slowly begins stealing money from Rasheed and saving it to
run away. As she saves enough money to travel out of Afghanistan, she tells
Mariam of her plan. In 1994 the two women make the plan to go Pakistan and
start a new life. This is very dangerous because traveling alone as women
looked suspicious. After failing to leave and getting caught by the police, the
two women are returned home. Rasheed beats the two women and locks them in
rooms not feeding Mariam, Laila, or the young child Aziza. The women are
released, and then two years pass by. During
this period the government in the country is shifting also, in 1994
Dostum, an Afghan general, switched sides in the war and joined Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, together they took over the country. This caused mass violence
around the country. Two years later the Taliban entered the country and took
over, making new rules primary based around the lives of women.
This
book is fiction and really pretty different from my life. I don’t experience
gun fire in the streets, bombings of my house, or the tragic death of my family
members. But this book is more than just the struggles that these women go through
in their environment, it’s about their friendship. Brought together by tragedy
this friendship is creates a bond that is stronger than death. This somehow relates
to my life because it reminds me so much of the friendship between by grandmother
Lena and her best friend Emma. Emma married Lena’s brother and the two were
kind of forced to be friends, just like Laila and Mariam. But as the years went
on the two became inseparable. They raised children together, then became empty
nesters, played with grandchildren and great grandchildren. The two women lived
long lives, but Emma died leaving Lena alone. Lena a widow, who had lost her husband
long ago, now had lost her best friend. Lena told everyone of Emma her best
friend, and even death could not break this friendship. Which is very similar
to Mariam and Laila’s friendship which can survive the beatings of Rasheed, the
bombings, and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban.