by Khaled Hosseini, 2007
Page turner! Set in Afghanistan from 1959 to present.
Main characters: Mariam and Laila. Mariam was a harami, an illegitimate child. Yet her father (Jalil) set up her and her mom (Nana) in a nice little shack in the hills by a stream near Herat and visited Mariam every week. When Mariam was 15, she was stood up on her birthday by her Dad. She had asked him to take her to the movies. He was embarrassed to be seen with her. She walked all the way into town and asked where he lived. Went to his house and he refused to see her. She spent the night outside in his yard and a servant took her home the next day where they found her mom had hung herself in the willow tree. So they took Mariam in until they could get her married to Rasheed, a widower from Kabul. He (Rasheed) took her to Kabul. He was kind to her until she lost child after child (miscarriages) and then the beatings and cruelty began.
Laila enters the picture when Kabul was experiencing daily bombings between warlords who destroyed homes and killed innocents every day. Laila is a young girl in love with Tariq, whose family leaves Kabul before they become a casualty. Laila’s family decides to leave, too, but their house is bombed that day and Laila loses her Mom and Dad. She is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam. Rasheed asks Laila to marry him. Laila says ‘yes’ immediately because she knows she is pregnant by Tariq. When she has the baby, it is a girl, and Rasheed is disappointed, starts abusing Laila too. Mariam and Laila do not get along at first but after tea and a midnight heart-to-heart they become very close. They put up with all kinds of abuse from Rasheed. The little girl is named Aziza and Mariam loves her. Aziza loves Mariam. The Taliban take over and women are no longer allowed on the street without a male relative. They try to escape by bus but get turned in. Rasheed beats them and locks them up for 3 days until they are almost dead (no water & very hot). Laila eventually becomes pregnant and has a son- Zalmai, the apple of his father’s (Rasheed’s) eye. Rasheed spoils him rotten. When Laila had him, she had to go to a hospital for women and have a C-section without anesthesia.
One day, after a few years of drought, Rasheed unemployed (lost his shoe repair business in a fire) and starving, they have to take Aziza to an orphanage. Laila gets to see her but the Taliban catch her again and again. One day, Rasheed relents to go with them to the orphanage. He waits at the bus stop. On the way home, he continues on the bus to his new job. Mariam, Laila, and Zalmai get to their home and Tariq is standing at the door. Laila was told by a man long ago that Tariq was in a hospital after getting hurt on the way to Pakistan, losing his parents, and this man befriended him in the hospital. Tariq died there, the man said. Laila realizes when she sees Tariq that Rasheed paid the man to come and lie to her. Zalmai tells his Dad that night that mommy had a visitor. Rasheed gets very angry and takes Zalmai upstairs and locks him in his room. He proceeds to beat Laila and then to strangle her. Mariam grabs a shovel and kills Rasheed. Mariam makes Laila and the children leave with Tariq. Mariam turns herself in to the Taliban and is executed. Tariq and Laila and the children go to Murree, Pakistan, in the mountains, and work for a nice little hotel. After a year, the children have come to love Tariq but Laila feels it’s time to go back to Kabul. The Taliban are gone and there is rebuilding. They all go, but on the way, they detour to Herat to see Mariam’s little home and meet people who knew her. Laila is given a box that Mariam’s father left for her, with lots of money and a letter asking for Mariam’s forgiveness. How wrong he had been to not accept her as his daughter, how sorry he was.
In the end, Laila and Tariq and the children are living in Kabul and teaching at the orphanage schoool. Laila is pregnant. If it’s a girl, she already has a name.
A fine book. Insight into the Taliban, how awful they are. Also insight into how troubled Afghanistan is. The abuse is graphic. You don’t blame Mariam for killing Rasheed – good riddance.