July 24, 2009

A Thousand Splendid Suns: Another Gripping Novel of Khaled Hosseini
By Syed Arif Hussaini

This is the second novel of Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan-American writer, a physician by training but a superb storyteller by choice, that is perhaps a shade better than his maiden work, the Kite Runner, which had universally earned laurels, translated into numerous languages, and remained for months on the best-seller list of the New York Times. Its film version made millions at the box office. Columbia Pictures have already bought the right to produce a film version of his second novel too. This goes to show that his maiden work was no flash in the pan, and that he is truly a master writer of fiction and that too not in his mother tongue but in the adopted language.
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul in 1965, the son of a career diplomat and a schoolteacher mother, who moved to Fremont, California in 1980, on political asylum sought after the Soviet invasion of their homeland. A precocious student, Hosseini earned his medical degree and set up a lucrative practice in internal medicine in 1996. Yet, he avidly pursued his love of writing fiction and produced The Kite Runner to worldwide acclaim. (My review of the book and the film appeared in this column exactly a year back.)
The Kite Runner recalled to my mind Joseph Conard’s classic “Lord Jim”, while A Thousand Splendid Suns bears some resemblance to Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”.
Like officer Jim, who abandoned his ship fearing that it would sink after hitting a floating derelict, and atoned for this timidity by living on an island amid primitive villagers, the hero of Kite Runner too suffers mental anguish his entire life for his cowardice of abandoning his friend at the most crucial time of his need. A Thousand Splendid Suns unfurls, on the other hand, the fallout that Afghanistan’s violent history has had on the characters in the story leading to death for one and the promise of a new life for the other.
The Kite Runner focused on friendship and betrayal between men, the Splendid Suns focuses on friendship between women. The villains in both are equally loathsome.
In the Splendid Suns, the author makes it clear at the very beginning of the story that he intends to portray the plight of women in Afghanistan. The mother of one of the two heroines talks portentously about ‘our lot, the lot of poor, uneducated women like us is to endure the hardships of life, the slights of men, the disdain of society’.
The heroine, Marium, on growing up and experiencing life, remarks, “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”
The villain makes the offensive observation that it embarrasses him “to see a man who has lost control of his wife.” He treats his first wife with ill-disguised contempt, “walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat”. She lives in fear of “his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasions, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks….”
The story starts decades before the Taliban came into power in 1996 and ends after the era of Taliban rule. The principal character, Mariam, starts life as a “harami”, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man and one of his domestic servants. The three wives of the philanderer ensure the expulsion of the pregnant servant to a shack outside the town. Marium is born and grows up there. Every Thursday her father visits her making it a special day for her. But when she claims entry into his mansion, he spurns her perhaps for fear of offending his wives therein. Broken hearted she returns to the shack to find that her mother had hanged herself perhaps as she feared that even her own daughter had abandoned her. Marium is allowed to enter the family house but is quickly married off to a much older shoemaker, Rasheed. His views on the rights of women, already mentioned above, mirror those that the Taliban would soon enforce. Marium has no choice but to endure the torturous treatment. Meanwhile a girl is born in her neighborhood who is called Laila. By the time she is 9, Laila grows into a charming blond with green eyes, high cheekbones and dimples.
The anti-Soviet Mujahideen defeat the communists in 1992 but the country falls a victim to the internecine strives for power by the former commanders of freedom fighters. By this time Laila has matured and starts seeing his childhood friend, Tariq, in a different way. The bombing of Kabul is forcing Tariq, who had already lost a leg to a hidden bomb, to leave for a peaceful place. The pangs of forthcoming separation leads them to physical intimacy and Laila’s consequent pregnancy. Her parents are killed in the bombing, and Laila takes refuge in Mariam’s house. Soon she discovers that she is pregnant besides being an orphan with no family or friend. She had thus to readily agree when the villain, Rasheed, offers to take her as his second wife. To force the matter, the evil incarnate Rasheed lies to her that Tariq had been killed in the prevalent violence.
At first Marium sees Laila as a rival and blames her of stealing her husband, but after Laila’s baby, Aziza, arrives Marium begins to soften. Gradually, she and Laila become allies, trying to shield each other from Rasheed’s misogynist cruelties. Marium becomes a second mother to Aziza, and she and Laila become best friends. They plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul, but they are caught at the bus station. Rasheed beats them and deprives them of water for several days almost killing Aziza.
A few years later, Tariq, who had gone to Pakistan with his family, returns to Kabul and appears outside the house. When Rasheed discovers this, he starts savagely beating Laila, so Marium kills Rasheed with a shovel. Marium confesses to the crime and is executed. She makes this ultimate sacrifice for her love of Laila and Aziza.
Tariq and Laila get married and leave for Pakistan. After the fall of Taliban, they return to Kabul and to a normal family life. Laila is pregnant again and intends calling the child, Marium, should it be a girl.
The novel is in tragic form and portrays the interaction of flawed characters of the type that Aristotle famously defined as requisite to true tragedy.
The author has captured many important historical and contemporary themes in a way that will make the reader’s heart ache again and again. The story is so riveting that the reader finds himself deeply inside it throughout, and keeps wondering where the author is going next with the plot. Hosseini is indeed a master storyteller.
- arifhussaini@hotmail.com