5/20: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Category: F
Rating: 5/5
Date finished: February 11, 2012

Summary: A story set in Afghanistan from its Soviet invasion to the Taliban regime to 2003ish with post-Taliban rebuilding of Kabul. The story stars two girls Mariam and Laila, separated by one generation, as they live through the harsh reality of being a woman in Afghanistan. It’s a story of friendship, family, love, and most of all, hope.

My thoughts: This is another ABG-assigned reading, probably one of the best ones I’ve read this year. We split the book up in two parts (two months/discussions), and I was the lead facilitator on the first part, so I actually started the book right after I finished Bossypants, but I stopped myself after about the halfway point so I wouldn’t get too far ahead. Then I had my discussion this past Thursday, so right after, I voraciously plowed through the last half of the book.

First, the book is super fast to read. The plot is extremely depressing. I could probably write for days about the book since I had to analyze it deeper for my discussion, but I won’t. The main thing you need to know about the story is that’s it’s several cycles of hopes and disillusionment. As an optimist, this is pretty depressing and maybe inspiring seeing how many times the girls’ hopes get dashed and yet they continue to dream. The historical background was okay… it was probably one of the things I didn’t like so much about the book. I understand why it was there (to give context to the story) but a lot of it was glossed over. Some might say that’s better so that you aren’t drowning in a history lesson, but I was left feeling confused about what was actually happening, and I would’ve preferred a more in-depth explanation of what was happening in Afghanistan if Hosseini decided that’s what he wanted to do. Of course, as with The Kite Runner (which was also fantastic), the main seller of this book is the FREAKING CHARACTERS. The characterization is absolutely real and fantastically heartbreaking at the same time.

I felt so bad for Mariam throughout the entire book. She didn’t have a great childhood, she was constantly hoping and longing for love, and when she finally got it, it was too late. She had possibly the most tragic storyline I’ve read in a long time. I wanted to cry (and almost did) so many times for her. She’d occasionally have these lines about how she has nothing to offer, and it was just so sad. I connected most with Laila, however, probably because she was the younger, more “modern” Afghani girl who was raised with education. She had struggles too, though. She also had a pretty great childhood but then an awful middle-of-life in which she was damaged, physically and emotionally, something I can easily relate to, finally pulling out in the end with a good life yet still bearing the scars.

Of course, I can’t talk about the characters without bringing up Rasheed…. Without delving too much into it, I’ve had a rough past few years of learning to have relationships with men. My last relationship was awful and ruined most of my feelings toward males in general (not to mention I have a history rampant of father issues), so it’s been a thing I’ve been working on. I think I’m doing pretty well, but after reading a book like this, seeing how Afghani men treated their women, and ESPECIALLY reading about Rasheed, I almost felt like I was lapsing again. He was so evil, rude, misogynistic, violent, arrogant, conniving, suspicious, etc. I’m someone who believes that everyone is good on the inside. Even though this is fiction, I want to believe that the characters are realistic enough that you can’t have one archetype. So I tried to sympathize with Rasheed, I really did. I felt bad that he lost his first son, and I guess he eventually did learn to “love” again (albeit with a new son), but he was just so awful. The other route I went was thinking that maybe he was so awful because he felt incompetent in some way (shameful) so he tried to compensate by putting down the girls. In the end, I cannot feel any kind of empathy for Rasheed, though. (There are a few redeeming men like Tariq, Laila’s dad, and Mariam’s Mullah Faizullah [sp?] teacher. And Mariam’s dad Jalil was quite the opposite from Rasheed in that he was a very weak man.)

In our discussion someone brought up a point about how mother-daughter relationships are different from father-daughter relationships. I thought that was interesting because it somehow suggests inherent parenting styles in our gender. For example, daughters tend to take more harshly to their mothers than their fathers, and I definitely think this is true in everything I’ve seen in my life (people, books, movies/TV). Even though I never really had a “father”, the guy who functioned as my father figure for most of my life did get away with more things from me than my mom did.

On that note, I wanted to mention something that Hosseini mentioned in an interview. Many Americans, esp. right after 9/11, regarded Afghanistan in a negative light and certainly looked down on the burqa-clad women. Hosseini said that he hoped that readers of this book would learn to think about the woman behind the burqa, her struggles to endure, her story. I think that this book really accomplishes that for me. I sympathize so greatly with the two women who are just victims of customs of their country and time period.

I really appreciate this. One of the reasons I’m going into medicine is because I love peoples’ stories. I think everyone has something to share, and medicine is one of the few professions in which you can get full access to those stories through someone’s body, their words, their family. I found out when doing research for my facilitation that Hosseini actually got a medical degree (from UCSD too!). Someone asked him to compare being a doctor and a writer, and he said this, which I believe is very apt: “I have not found many similarities between my two crafts, except that in both it helps to have at least some insight into human nature. Writers and doctors alike need to understand the motivation behind the things people say and do, and their fears, their hopes and aspirations. In both professions, one needs to appreciate how socioeconomic background, family, culture, language, religion, and other factors shape a person, whether it is a patient in an exam room or a character in a story.“