A Thousand splendid suns, a wonderful masterpiece of the Afghanistan life, worth reading and creates a long lasting impression. The development of the story as a whole and though it is not the one where you get lost somewhere in the middle. The links of the chain are well woven and hence it gives pleasure to the reader.
Worth its reading, Khalid Hosseini gives us a picture of the Brutality of the Taliban and gives a very clear picture of Pre, During and Post taliban scenario in Afghanistan.
I like to give you some idea of its nice write ups....
Here are some trailors of the book....................
* * * * * * * * * *
Mariam was no longer keeping track of who was saying what. She went on staring at Jalil, waiting for him to speak up, to say that none of this was true.
"You can't spend the rest of your life here."
"Don't you want a family of your own?"
"Yes. A home, children of your own?"
"You have to move on."
"True that it would be preferable that you marry a local, a Tajik, but Rasheed is healthy, and interested in you. He has a home and a job. That's all that really matters, isn't it? And Kabul is a beautiful and exciting city. You may not get another opportunity this good."
Mariam turned her attention to the wives.
"I'll live with Mullah Faizullah," she said. "He'll take me in. I know he will."
"That's no good," Khadija said. "He's old and so…" She searched for the right word, and Mariam knew then that what she really wanted to say wasHef s so close. She understood what they meant to do.You may not get another opportunity this good And neither would they. They had been disgraced by her birth, and this was their chance to erase, once and for all, the last trace of their husband's scandalous mistake. She was being sent away because she was the walking, breathing embodiment of their shame.
"He's so old and weak," Khadija eventually said. "And what will you do when he's gone? You'd be a burden to his family."
As you are now to us.Mariam almostsaw the unspoken words exit Khadija's mouth, like foggy breath on a cold day.
Mariam pictured herself in Kabul, a big, strange, crowded city that, Jalil had once told her, was some six hundred and fifty kilometers to the east of Herat.Six hundred and fifty kilometers. The farthest she'd ever been from thekolba was the two-kilometer walk she'd made to Jalil's house. She pictured herself living there, in Kabul, at the other end of that unimaginable distance, living in a stranger's house where she would have to concede to his moods and his issued demands. She would have to clean after this man, Rasheed, cook for him, wash his clothes. And there would be other chores as well-Nana had told her what husbands did to their wives. It was the thought of these intimacies in particular, which she imagined as painful acts of perversity, that filled her with dread and made her break out in a sweat.
She turned to Jalil again. "Tell them. Tell them you won't let them do this."
"Actually, your father has already given Rasheed his answer," Afsoon said. "Rasheed is here, in Herat; he has come all the way from Kabul. Thenikka will be tomorrow morning, and then there is a bus leaving for Kabul at noon."
"Tell them!" Mariam cried
The women grew quiet now. Mariam sensed that they were watching him too. Waiting. A silence fell over the room. Jalil kept twirling his wedding band, with a bruised, helpless look on his face. From inside the cabinet, the clock ticked on and on.
* * * * * * * *
"Eighteen years," Mariam said. "And I never asked you for a thing. Not one thing. I'm asking now."
He inhaled smoke and let it out slowly. "She can't juststay here, if that's what you're suggesting. I can't go on feeding her and clothing her and giving her a place to sleep. I'm not the Red Cross, Mariam."
"But this?"
"What of it? What? She's too young, you think? She's fourteen.Hardly a child. You were fifteen, remember? My mother was fourteen when she had me. Thirteen when she married."
"I...Idon't wantthis," Mariam said, numb with contempt and helplessness.
"It's not your decision. It's hers andmine."
"I'm too old."
"She's tooyoung, you'retoo old. This is nonsense."
"Iam too old. Too old for you to do this to me," Mariam said, balling up fistfuls of her dress sotightly her hands shook."For you, after all these years, to make me anambagh"
"Don't be sodramatic. It's a common thing and you knowit. I have friends whohave two, three, four wives. Your own father had three. Besides,what I'm doing now most men I know would have done long ago.You know it's true."
"I won't allow it."
At this, Rasheed smiled sadly.
"Thereis another option," he said, scratching the sole of one foot with the calloused heel of the other. "She can leave. I won't stand in her way. But I suspect she won't get far. No food, no water, not a rupiah in her pockets, bullets and rockets flying everywhere. How many days do you suppose she'll last before she's abducted, raped, or tossed into some roadside ditch with her throat slit? Or all three?"
He coughed and adjusted the pillow behind his back.
"The roads out there are unforgiving, Mariam, believe me. Bloodhounds and bandits at every turn. I wouldn't like her chances, not at all. But let's say that by some miracle she gets to Peshawar. What then? Do you have any idea what those camps are like?"
He gazed at her from behind a column of smoke.
"People living under scraps of cardboard. TB, dysentery, famine, crime. And that's before winter. Then it's frostbite season. Pneumonia. People turning to icicles. Those camps become frozen graveyards.
"Of course," he made a playful, twirling motion with his hand, "she could keep warm in one of those Peshawar brothels. Business is booming there, I hear. A beauty like her ought to bring in a small fortune, don't you think?"
He set the ashtray on the nightstand and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
"Look," hesaid, sounding more conciliatory now, asa victor could afford to. "I knew you wouldn't take this well. I don't really blame you. Butthis is for thebest. You'll see. Think of it this way, Mariam. I'm givingyou help around the house andher a sanctuary. A home and a husband. These days, times being what they are, a woman needs a husband. Haven't you noticed all the widows sleeping onthe streets? They would kill for thischance. In fact,this is. … Well, I'd say this is downright charitable of me."
He smiled.
"The way I see it, I deserve amedal."
* * *
Jignesh L Adhyaru
