A Thousand Splendid Suns
Nor was she old enough to appreciate the injustice, to see that it is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born.
Page: 15, Location: 216-218
Nana had been one of the housekeepers. Until her belly began to swell.
Page: 17, Location: 250-251
When that happened, Nana said, the collective gasp of Jalil’s family sucked the air out of Herat.
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Nana said, “Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”
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Nana put down the bowl of chicken feed. She lifted Mariam’s chin with a finger. “Look at me, Mariam.” Reluctantly, Mariam did. Nana said, “Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”
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It did not occur to young Mariam to ponder the unfairness of apologizing for the manner of her own birth.
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“Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure.” “Endure what, Nana?” “Oh, don’t you fret about that,” Nana said. “There won’t be any shortage of things.”
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his cleft chin—a perfect pocket for the tip of her pinkie—his teeth, the whitest in a town of rotting molars.
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She liked his trimmed mustache, and she liked that no matter the weather he always wore a suit on his visits—dark brown, his favorite color, with the white triangle of a handkerchief in the breast pocket—and cuff links too, and a tie, usually red, which he left loosened.
Page: 30, Location: 459-460
He was Mariam’s link, her proof that there existed a world at large, beyond the kolba, beyond Gul Daman and Herat too, a world of presidents with unpronounceable names, and trains and museums and soccer, and rockets that orbited the earth and landed on the moon, and, every Thursday, Jalil brought a piece of that world with him to the kolba.
Page: 32, Location: 483-485
deflated at the thought of the week that stood, like an immense, immovable object, between her and his next visit.
Page: 33, Location: 502-502
She pretended that for each second that she didn’t breathe, God would grant her another day with Jalil.
Page: 33, Location: 503-504
“Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? Everything I endured for you! How dare you! How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!”
Page: 36, Location: 546-548
Let me tell you something. A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you. I’m the only one who loves you. I’m all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You are nothing!”
Page: 36, Location: 550-552
If she could articulate it, she might have said to Nana that she was tired of being an instrument, of being lied to, laid claim to, used. That
Page: 37, Location: 559-560
You’re afraid, Nana, she might have said. You’re afraid that I might find the happiness you never had. And you don’t want me to be happy. You don’t want a good life for me. You’re the one with the wretched heart.
Page: 37, Location: 562-563
A look of confusion crossed the girl’s face. Then, a flash of recognition. There was a faint smile on her lips now, and an air of eagerness about her, of anticipation. “Wait here,” the girl said quickly.
Page: 41, Location: 627-628
But he wasn’t fast enough. Mariam saw. A gust of wind blew and parted the drooping branches of the weeping willow like a curtain, and Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of
Page: 45, Location: 682-684
But he wasn’t fast enough. Mariam saw. A gust of wind blew and parted the drooping branches of the weeping willow like a curtain, and Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of it.
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For the first time, Mariam could hear him with Nana’s ears. She could hear so clearly now the insincerity that had always lurked beneath, the hollow, false assurances. She could not bring herself to look at him.
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Like the wind through the willows around the kolba, gusts of an inexpressible blackness kept passing through Mariam.
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They had been disgraced by her birth, and this was their chance to erase, once and for all, the last trace of their husband’s scandalous mistake. She was being sent away because she was the walking, breathing embodiment of their shame.
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As you are now to us. Mariam almost saw the unspoken words exit Khadija’s mouth, like foggy breath on a cold day.
Page: 57, Location: 861-862
His harsh, raspy voice reminded Mariam of the sound of dry autumn leaves crushed underfoot.
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Pangs of longing bore into her, for Nana, for Mullah Faizullah, for her old life.
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the night so hot their shirts would cling to their chests like a wet leaf to a window.
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This man’s will felt to Mariam as imposing and immovable as the Safid-koh mountains looming over Gul Daman.
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Nana had been right about Jalil’s gifts. They had been halfhearted tokens of penance, insincere, corrupt gestures meant more for his own appeasement than hers.
Page: 81, Location: 1232-1233
A few moments later, he pushed back the blanket and left the room, leaving her with the impression of his head on her pillow, leaving her to wait out the pain down below, to look at the frozen stars in the sky and a cloud that draped the face of the moon like a wedding veil.
Page: 82, Location: 1253-1254
Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below.
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As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she’d said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.
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Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which Tariq’s father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq’s absence or presence.
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“I’ll remember that,” Laila said. “So will he.”
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Laila, my love, the only enemy an Afghan cannot defeat is himself.
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Laila lay there and listened, wishing Mammy would notice that she, Laila, hadn’t become shaheed, that she was alive, here, in bed with her, that she had hopes and a future. But Laila knew that her future was no match for her brothers’ past.
Page: 139, Location: 2121-2123
They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives’ museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. The parchment on which Mammy meant to ink their legends.
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She would never leave her mark on Mammy’s heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy’s heart was like a pallid beach where Laila’s footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.
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“If I ever do get married,” Tariq said, “they’ll have to make room for three on the wedding stage. Me, the bride, and the guy holding the gun to my head.” The man in the front row gave them another admonishing look.
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IN THE COMING DAYS and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could—a look, a whisper, a moan—to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn’t, in the end, save it all. Still, she had these: that first, tremendous pang of pain down below. The slant of sunlight on the rug. Her heel grazing the cold hardness of his leg, lying beside them, hastily unstrapped. Her hands cupping his elbows. The upside-down, mandolin-shaped birthmark beneath his collarbone, glowing red. His face hovering over hers. His black curls dangling, tickling her lips, her chin. The terror that they would be discovered. The disbelief at their own boldness, their courage. The strange and indescribable pleasure, interlaced with the pain. And the look, the myriad of looks, on Tariq: of apprehension, tenderness, apology, embarrassment, but mostly, mostly, of hunger.
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“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
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“Look! She’s reaching for the rattle. How clever she is.” “I’ll call the newspapers,” said Rasheed.
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Seasons had come and gone; presidents in Kabul had been inaugurated and murdered; an empire had been defeated; old wars had ended and new ones had broken out. But Mariam had hardly noticed, hardly cared. She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold. But somehow, over these last months, Laila and Aziza—a harami like herself, as it turned out—had become extensions of her, and now, without them, the life Mariam had tolerated for so long suddenly seemed intolerable. We’re leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam.
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She remembered something Mullah Faizullah used to say about hunger when Ramadan started: Even the snakebitten man finds sleep, but not the hungry.
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Tariq likes Mohammad. Zalmai, who has recently watched Superman on tape, is puzzled as to why an Afghan boy cannot be named Clark. Aziza is campaigning hard for Aman. Laila likes Omar. But the game involves only male names. Because, if it’s a girl, Laila has already named her.
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