"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls." Saib-e-Tabrizi
Afghan born and US settled writer, Khaled Hosseini is world famous for his Best seller, ’The Kite Runner’ A Thousand Splendid Suns is more than a novel, but an epic, which depict the waves of pain and suffering millions undergo in each day, the value of their sacrifice and their hope!
Mariam, Laila and Aziza, these are the three leading characters on which the story is based. An illiterate and ’harami’ Mariam, her innocent childhood, her orphan status and helplessness, still hoped of a "new life that awaited her in the city, a life with a father, with sisters and brothers, a life in which she would love and be loved back, without reservation or agenda, without shame". Rejected identify and shattered hopes - she was moved in the name of marriage, which was like in a prison. She had to undergo many sufferings but she was still hopeful of a newborn baby. She carried her mother’s dream but her hoped died off as the fruits of her womb. Laila, an educated young girl, lucky to get education and love fall in natural love with one legged Tariq. Flying fires shattered their dreams and Lyla is now compelled to marry Rasheed, who is the husband of Mariam. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a dream passed from one generation to other from Mariam’s mother to her, from her to Lyla and to Aziza, Lyla’s daughter.
The story is heartening. It moves in very fast pace. The novel covers a good time span. In its each stop we are tempted to feel the emotions and sufferings it attaches, but the author never stop the pace. It flows like a typhoon in speed or as a heavy flowing river.
The story is told through 30 plus years of Afghanistan history, but it only work as a background. The author restricts the description of history and happenings to the minimum and concentrates on the main story and the message he wish to convey.
One who deeply search in the novel, there is a clear parallel drawn by the author. Mariam represents the dreams, wishes and sufferings of Afghan People, or say, the Past of Afghanistan. Lyla is the present. The life situation she has to face and the way she traveled all are the hopes of today and the need of active participation in the reform process. Aziza is still a hope, when the novel ends, she is only 10 and learning, so is the future state of the state. The author directly hints that Tariq, is a representative of millions of people who suffered due to the war. The World Trade Centre Attack, the American invasion, the Taliban administration and change of rules all are featured directly in simple words and indirectly through symbols.
Written in Simple language with heavy flow of incidents the book is a fine read! We will wish he had written more about many of such situations, but at the end he told what he wish to tell and we feel exactly what he intent.
Overall, the book is a MUST READ. A good READ TO FEEL!
The only fault I could associate with the book is that the author never attempt to explain things from the point of view of the villains. The background is well settled like a Dostoevsky novel, but the narration is just the opposite. The ’Kolba’ concept is very much taken from the ’Crime and Punishment’, the circumstances one live determines one’s fate. However, the end chapter added more value to this concept and I will say he did justice in doing so.
Few Quotes:
"In the midst of all this killing and looting, all this ugliness, it was a harmless thing to sit here beneath a tree and kiss Tariq. A small thing. An easily forgivable indulgence."
"Weak heart the doctors say. It is a fitting manner of death, I think for a weak man."
"Marriage can wait, education cannot."
"A society has no chance of success if its woman are uneducated, Laila, no chance."
"Laila my love, the only enemy the Afghans cannot defeat is himself."
"Lyla is happy here in Murree. But it is not an easy happiness. It is not a happiness without cost."
"Mariam wished her mother were alive to see this. To see her, amid all of it. To see at last that contentment and beauty were not unattainable things. Even for the likes of them."
The author observe that it is the timely action of the good people that created the problem for Afghanistan but there is no time to waste and no need of regret, but there is hope. One and all should work together to rebuild Afghanistan. The book promise never ending hope and calls for timely action, quoting a famous Gazhal from Hafiz:
"Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not,
Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not,
If a flood should arrive, to drown all that’s alive,
Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not."