When her sons are killed, Fariba lives only to see the Mujahideen win victory in Afghanistan. For a long time, Fariba refuses to leave Kabul for a safer place during the war.
After she finally agrees and they are preparing to leave the city, both Hakim and Fariba are killed by a rocket that destroys their house. Hamza is the son of Mullah Faizullah. A wealthy, handsome merchant and cinema owner in the city of Herat, Jalil has three wives and ten children. Mariam is his illegitimate daughter by one of his housekeepers. Jalil visits Mariam each week and provides for her and her mother; however, he is too ashamed of his illegitimate child to accept her into his home.
Later in life, Jalil regrets his mistreatment of Mariam and attempts to seek her forgiveness, but she rejects him. Khadim is a neighborhood bully who torments Laila, once spraying her with urine from a squirt gun. He stops harassing Laila after being beaten up by Tariq. A Soviet loyalist who teaches students communist propaganda, Khala Rangmaal also provides an example of a strong woman.
In keeping with communist ideology, she firmly believes in the equality of women and men. She refuses to wear a hijab and forbids her female students from covering as well. Later in the novel, Laila sees Khala Rangmaal teaching children at the orphanage in Kabul. One of the two main characters in the novel, Laila is an ethnic Tajik from Kabul.
A stunning beauty with blonde hair and green eyes, she falls in love with a boy named Tariq at a very young age. She is a top student and, encouraged by her father, Hakim, has plans for university. She is rescued by her neighbor, Rasheed, and nursed back to health by Mariam. Laila has two children—a girl named Aziza and a boy named Zalmai.
One of the two main characters in the novel, Mariam is an ethnic Tajik from the western province of Herat. Born as the illegitimate child of a wealthy man, Jalil Khan, and his housekeeper, Nana, she grows up in a simple mud hut in the village of Gul Daman, on the outskirts of the city of Herat.
When Mariam is fifteen, her mother commits suicide and her father marries her off to a shoemaker in the capital city of Kabul. In Laila and her daughter Aziza, Mariam finally finds love and the family she has always longed for. She makes the ultimate sacrifice for them at the end of the novel. The Mujahideen, or so-called Afghan freedom fighters, were rebels fighting against the Soviet-controlled government of Afghanistan during the civil war of — with the covert support of the United States.
Soon after the Mujahideen forces overthrew the communist government in and established an Islamic state, they began to war amongst themselves for political control, bringing ruin to the capital city of Kabul.
Mariam adores her teacher and he adores her, as well. President of the communist-led Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, he was ousted from power in by the Mujahideen and assassinated by the Taliban in September Mariam, Laila, and young Aziza are horrified to see the mutilated bodies of Najibullah and his brother being displayed in public by the Taliban.
Rejected for marriage at a young age due to her epilepsy, and later shamed for bearing the illegitimate child of her wealthy employer, Nana is a bitter woman who teaches her daughter to expect nothing but suffering out of life. She kills herself when Mariam runs away to live with her father.
Niloufar is eight years old when Mariam comes to stay with the family, and says that she does not mind if Mariam is her sister. He is a prosperous shoemaker living in the capital city of Kabul. An abusive man who enjoys having power over women, Rasheed represents the worst of men in a patriarchal society. A widower who lost his only son to drowning, he seeks a wife who will bear him another son. When Mariam fails to bear children, he treats her cruelly and eventually seeks to marry a second, much younger wife, Laila.
Laila is too scarred by her experience with war to agree. Chapter 50 Things are beginning to stabilize in Afghanistan in Things are good in Murree as well, but Laila is restless and tells Tariq that she wants to go back to Kabul help rebuild. He agrees. Laila has one more request, however: she wants to visit Herat, Mariam's hometown, on the way back.
After an emotional goodbye and a long bus ride, they arrive in Herat. Tariq spends the day in the city with the kids while Laila takes a cab to Gul Daman, the village where Mariam was raised. First, Laila visits the home of Mullah Faizullah.
She meets his son, Hamza, who tells her that the Mullah has passed. Laila tells Hamza what happened to Mariam. Hamza leads Laila to the house where Mariam grew up. Laila walks through the now-abandoned home alone, imaging what it would have looked like when Mariam lived there. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Thousand Splendid Suns , which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
He was giving an interview to a pair of supposed journalists, when a bomb hidden in their video camera went off —they were probably from Al-Qaeda. Laila recalls how Mammy had always refused to blame Massoud, even after the warring between factions. Massoud has been a constant presence in Afghan affairs for decades, most recently as an agent attempting to rally the West against the Taliban. The brutal way her parents died is still blazed into her memory.
Active Themes. History and Memory in Afghanistan. Suddenly, a plane appears and crashes into the tower next to them. Mammy knows all the names of the Mujahideen heroes, but she is especially in awe of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, who had personally overseen the funerals of Ahmad and Noor. She has a poster of him hanging in her room. This is the day she has been waiting for. At last, she can end her vigil, and her sons can rest in peace.
After she hears the news that Najibullah has surrendered, Mammy rises from her bed a new woman. She takes off her black clothes and puts on a cobalt blue dress. She washes the windows, and cleans and airs out the house. She is shrill with merriment and decides that they will have a big luncheon party the next day.
Then, she goes into the kitchen and wonders as she begins to plan the food what Laila has done with the room. She moves everything around to the way it was before the war and Laila knows to stay out of her way in case this is just one of her fits of euphoria. However, because she is now fourteen and he is sixteen, they have become the subject of gossip.
Mammy talks to her about the importance of her reputation. It is like a mynah bird in your hands. Slacken you grip and away it flies. Laila insists that Tariq is just a friend or he is like a brother.
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