A Thousand Splendid Suns

Laila, the novel’s second heroine, is born on the eve of the Soviet Revolution in Afghanistan and the rest of her life is shaped by political turbulence. Growing up under the Communists, as her ex-schoolteacher father says, “is a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan” because it is likely that she will have the opportunity to study at Kabul’s university and embark on a career as a doctor or engineer (133). Laila, who with her blonde curls and turquoise eyes is a “pari, a stunner” is from a young age in love with her neighbor, Tariq (108). Her sense of duty towards her parents comes in sharp conflict with her ardent feelings for Tariq, when she has sex with him before he leaves Kabul with his family.

Once she learns that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child (Tariq is imagined dead at this point by Laila), 14-year-old Laila makes the “sacrifices” of a mother and marries Rasheed in order to have protection for her baby (213). While married to Rasheed, Laila only pays lip-service to his strict rules and her sense of love and wisdom is enough to penetrate through Mariam’s initial hostility. Strong in her convictions, Laila stands up for Mariam when Rasheed beats her and is indefatigable in finding ways to visit Aziza in the orphanage, even when Rasheed will not accompany her and the Taliban enact terrible punishments on women who walk alone in the streets.

Once Laila is reunited with Tariq, she serves in the Afghani reconstruction efforts and fulfils the destiny expected of her by her father, who said that women of her intelligence will be essential to the rebuilding of Afghanistan. By teaching in the orphanage Aziza was once sent to, Laila holds both her father’s ambition and the memory of Mariam’s goodness in her heart.

Through Laila, Hosseini presents a counter to the Western stereotype of Afghan women as burqa-clad, disempowered and devoid of sexual agency. Laila’s independence and determined, passionate nature repeatedly play into conflict with the brutal misogynist regimes of the Taliban and Rasheed. This heightens the drama of her experience and enables the reader to identify with her. 

The husband of Mariam and Laila has a virile physicality; he reeks of tobacco and cologne, is tall, “thick-bellied and broad-shouldered,” with a “big, square, ruddy face […] hooked nose […] crowded teeth” and abundant hair (53). His sense of manhood is reflected in his coarse style of lovemaking, taste for pornography and manner of eating with his hands. Still, he is obsessed with the namoos,orhonor, of his wives, making them wear burqas so that their faces are reserved for him. When the Taliban come to power, he is not “bothered much” because it is little trouble to grow the requisite beard and his treatment of his wives is already in line with the regime’s misogynist views (274). He handles his suspicion that Laila has been sexually active prior to their marriage and that Aziza is not his child calculatingly, dropping threats here and there and finally sending Aziza off to an orphanage when he claims there is not enough money to feed her, while at the same time spoiling his son, Zalmai.

Overall, Rasheed, the domestic antagonist of both of Hosseini’s heroines, is an unsympathetic character. However, the reader is made to understand that his treatment of his wives, though on the extreme side, is culturally sanctioned and therefore not merely the result of his personal inclinations. Hosseini also provides insight into Rasheed’s psychology: the trauma and perhaps repressed guilt over the drowning of a son from a previous marriage and his desperate need for an heir in his subsequent couplings. Once Zalmai is born, his wish is fulfilled, and he channels his personal and material resources into helping the little boy thrive. However, he goes overboard when Zalmai becomes a disagreeable, entitled child. 

Laila’s childhood best friend, Tariq is the son of a carpenter and had his right leg blown off by a landmineduring the Afghan war with the Soviets. Still, he is mischievous, loyal and impulsive. Hosseini portrays Tariq through Laila’s eyes, so that the reader sees him as virile and heroic. Tall and handsome and muscular, he comes to Laila’s defense when she is teased by a gang of boys. Later, in his teens, he grabs hold of a gun and tells Laila that he would “kill” for her (173). He fulfils his promise when he comes back to Kabul to find Laila, rescue Aziza, and adopt Zalmai as his own son, however nostalgic the little boy is for his real father. However, Hosseini, in his tribute to Afghan women, saves the bravest act of heroism for Mariam, who sacrifices her life, and Laila, who takes the initiative to rebuild Afghanistan. 

Nana, Mariam’s mother, is a living example of a wronged, embittered woman. Nana, the daughter of a stone-carver, who was betrothed at the age of 15 to a parakeet seller, had her expected future stolen when a “jinn” entered her body and caused her to begin having epileptic fits (4). She then went on to become a housekeeper in Jalil’s household and when she was seduced by him, fell pregnant with Mariam. Secluded in the remote kolba, both to save Jalil’s reputation and by her own inclination to avoid her neighbors’ scorn, Nana lives a joyless life. She warns her daughter that the only lesson she needs is to learn to “endure” the hardships of life and forever mistrust men, who have wretched hearts and will let her down (18). Despite her apparent hard-heartedness, Nana loves her daughter and gains a sense of purpose from Mariam’s needing her. Nana repeatedly insists that Mariam will have “‘nothing’” in the world once she is gone (27). When Mariam escapes to visit her father and stays overnight without any promise of return, Nana is able to endure no longer and hangs herself. 

Mariam’s wealthy father, Jalil is the apple of her eye. Whereas Nana tells her stories of bitterness and terms her a harami, Jalil, who visits Mariam weekly, praises her, takes her fishing, and shares stories fromthe cinema and of the world with her. Nana points to Jalil’s hypocrisy when he tells Mariam that children got free ice cream on Tuesdays at his cinema: “‘The children of strangers get ice cream. What do you get Mariam? Stories of ice cream’” (6).

The truth about Jalil is more complex than Mariam’s adoring, filial view or Nana’s defamatory portrait. On the one hand, he is typical of a man in his high-status position and uses his prerogative to have multiple wives and a mistress. When Mariam asks to be seen in public with Jalil or comes to his home, he denies her out of deference to his reputation. Again, while Mariam is still traumatized from her mother’s suicide, he agrees to have her married off to Rasheed, to protect his reputation. Nevertheless, there is a part of Jalil that feels he has to atone for bringing Mariam into the world as a harami and he builds the kolba and visits her out of a sense of penance. At the end of his life, he is humbled by the misfortunes he has endured through conflict and in a letter addressed to Mariam, he apologizes sincerely to her, calling himself a “weak man” and asking for her forgiveness (394). 

Mullah Faizmullah, an elderly, educated religious man, visits Mariam and Nana in the kolba and in a manner that is ahead of his time, sees the value in educating an illegitimate village girl. He tells her stories of religious miracles and says that the words of the Koran will “‘comfort’” her in times of need (17). Though a less glamorous visitor than Jalil, Mullah Faizmullah proves a more reliable source of comfort to Mariam after Jalil rejects her and Nana kills herself. He tries to reassure Mariam that Nana’s suicide was not her fault and though she does not wholly recognize this, his words and presence stay with her at other times of her life. She realizes that the presence of Laila and Aziza in her life was the hand of God and recites a verse from the Koran for comfort, just before her execution. Although Mariam claims that she never experienced disinterested goodness before Laila and Aziza, Mullah Faizmullah was an earlier example of this and his family hold Mariam’s memory dear, even after his death. 

Laila’s father, Hakim, stands out as a different sort of man to the chauvinistic, alternately-charming-and-brutal model of the other patriarchs in the novel. Physically, he is “a small man, with narrow shoulders and slim, delicate hands, almost like a woman’s” and the spectacles that mark him as an intellectual (109). A former schoolteacher before the communists replaced him, he has a vast knowledge and a learned perspective on Afghan history and culture. Nevertheless, for the period of history he is living through (the war against the Soviets, which takes his sons to the front line), his gifts go underappreciated, especially by his wife, who wishes he was of greater practical help around the house. Rasheed, Laila’s future husband, sees Hakim as effeminate and overly lenient with his daughter.

Hakim has great regard for Laila’s intelligence and sees her gender as no barrier to her getting an education, even altruistically speculating that the communists who fired him will provide for his daughter. Even after his demise, Hakim’s standards are there to guide Laila; she is dismayedby the Taliban’s attacks on female liberties and confinement of women in the home. When the period of Afghan reconstruction begins, she once again remembers her father’s words that she, an intelligent Afghan woman, will have a crucial role to play.  

Laila’s mother, Fariba, was once an exuberant, independent woman, who in her youthclimbed the wall between her house and Hakim’s and was instrumental in eliciting a proposal from him. Robust in build, with a laugh that “bulldozed” Hakim, Fariba is a force of nature (147). She is curious when young Mariam moves to the neighborhood as Rasheed’s long-awaited second wife and is a gossip, hosting women’s teas, where all matters are discussed.

By the time Laila is 9 and her older brothers have gone away to fight with the Mujahideen, Fariba is often depressive, reclusive, and neglectful of her daughter. While Laila is certain of her father’s affection, she wishes she could be closer to her mother, though her extreme moods disallow it. Laila’s inability to share in Fariba’s grief, when her two brothers die, forges a further rift between them.

For Hosseini, however, Fariba’s neglect serves as an essential plot device. It enables Tariq and Laila to sneak off, have sex and conceive Aziza and it also provides a counterpoint to the protective, maternal relationships Laila enjoys with other women, both her daughter and Mariam.