A Thousand Splendid Suns

 It has been really long since I wrote something, even longer since I read anything. I always had this passion for reading. The first book I read was Totto Chan written by a Japanese writer which was then translated to Nepali, I was in 5th grade, I believe.

I read a lot of Nepali novels, by a lot I really mean a lottt! I now am shifting my reading from Nepali to English novels. For 2024 I am reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini as debut for this year. Coincidentally the last book I read THE KITE RUNNER  was also written by Hosseini, I loved that book. Maybe it was the first adult sized English novel I read (other than the self help non-fiction books) and that makes A Thousand Splendid Suns the second.

The fun part about the book is that the book has a lot of Arabic names that are way easy for me to comprehend because of the influence of language from Hindi cinema that I was exposed to since childhood. 

TO THE READERS WHO THINK THIS IS A BOOK REVIEW

this is not a book review. It is just me pouring out my thoughts in the keyboard so that whatever I wrote won't be forgotten. And it has got a lot of spoilers so read the book first and then read here. 

The book is about two girls Mariam and Laila both married to the same guy Rasheed despite having a huge age gap of around 20 years. Both of them are born in different time, different circumstances but their life entangled.

Mariam was born in some town of Afghanistan. She was a bastard from a rich guy who owns a cinema in a town named Jalil. Her mother was Nana who was not accepted by Jalil to give his name. She called her Mammy. Apparently, Jalil loved Mariam a lot but was not able to accept her as a rightful daughter because he was afraid of the society's norms and having a lowborn called the daughter of a rich man is not accepted in that society. Mariam's mother knew that Jalil will never accepted Mariam as a rightful daughter of Jalil's. She constantly tried to convince Mariam of the things she has been through and tried to teach her endurance to endure the cruel world. 

Jalil would time and again come to visit (every Thursdays) Mariam at Kolba(a hut where they lived) and give her the fatherly love that she deserves. Little did she know 'her chasing that fatherly  love' will one day kill her mother. 

When she was 15, she insisted in going to the town and visit her father's family and Jalil said OK but he didn't come to pick her up the next day so she ran to the town by her own and went to the Jalil's house and rang the bell. Upon knowing it's Mariam, he diddn't let her into the house and let her sleep out in the foot[ath for the night and the next day a driver escorted her back to the Kolba where she found her dead mother who suicided thinking that her daughter left her and went with jalil but all of that was fake.

After Mammy's death, the step-mothers of Mariam's forced her to marry a guy who is double her age for which Jalil didn't object. The guy was Rasheed who was going to make the life of Mariam and Laila a living hell in future. 

Mariam turned out to be infertile, she couldn't have any babies. Rasheed had a son with his first wife who died at the age of 10 so he was desperately in need of someone to hold his name but knowing that Mariam can't have babies he started to hate Mariam and a lot of trauma for Mariam started.