A Thousand Splendid Suns

At fifteen, Mariam has never been to Herat. From her wooden “kolba” atop the hill, she watches the minarets in the distance and eagerly awaits Thursday, the day her father visits her and tells her about poets and wonderful gardens, rockets landing on the moon, and the films he shows in his cinema. Mariam wishes she had wings to reach her father’s house, where he will never take her because Mariam is a “harami,” a bastard, and it would humiliate his three wives and ten legitimate children to have her under the same roof. She would also like to go to school, but her mother tells her it would be useless, like polishing a spittoon. The only thing she needs to learn is endurance. Laila was born in Kabul on the night of the revolution, in April 1978. She was only two when her brothers enlisted in the jihad. That is why, on the day of their funeral, she finds it difficult to cry. For Laila, her true brother is Tariq, the neighbor’s boy, who lost a leg to a landmine but knows how to defend her from her peers’ teasing; the playmate who teaches her swear words in Pashto and says goodnight to her every evening with flashes of light from his window. Mariam and Laila could not be more different, but war will bring them together in an unpredictable way. From the intertwining of two destinies comes a story that traces the history of a country searching for peace, where friendship and love still seem to be the only salvation. Author: Khaled Hosseini