Never truly knowing her older brothers, Laila grows close to Tariq, a carpenter’s son whose leg was blown off by a land mine. A rare beauty, Laila grows up intellectually encouraged by her ex-schoolteacher father but ignored by her unpredictable mother, who thinks only of her sons fighting in the Mujahideen’s army, against the Communists. Meanwhile, in 1978, on the eve of the Soviet takeover of Afghanistan, a daughter, Laila, is born to Fariba and Hakim, Rasheed and Mariam’s neighbors. Rasheed, who desperately wants a son to compensate for the one who drowned in a previous marriage, is violent and contemptuous towards Mariam. However, when seven of Mariam’s pregnancies end in miscarriage, relations become fraught between the couple. She slowly grows accustomed to Rasheed and begins to enjoy her status as a legitimate wife rather than an illegitimate child. Still in deep grief, Mariam goes along with the motions and moves to Kabul with Rasheed.Īlthough Kabul is a modernizing city, where women have greater liberties of expression, Rasheed proclaims himself of a traditional mindset and asks that Mariam wears a burqa. However, his wives are keen to get rid of her and so arrange for her to be married to Rasheed, a man from Kabul, who is thirty years her senior. She is barred entry and forcibly taken home, where she sees that Nana has hanged herself.Īfter this tragedy, Mariam is for a while installed in Jalil’s guestroom. Near her 15th birthday, Mariam goes for the first time to the Herat house Jalil shares with his legitimate wives and children. From her parents Mariam inherits conflicting views: Nana’s, that a harami like her must endure a lifetime of pain and Jalil’s, that there is a whole world to discover beyond the kolba. As penance for his adultery, Jalil comes to visit Mariam weekly, bringing her small gifts and news of the world. For the first fifteen years of her life, Mariam lives a secluded life with Nana in a kolba (shack), situated in a clearing away from the main town. Born in 1959 near Herat, Afghanistan, Mariam is the illegitimate child of a wealthy man, Jalil, and his one-time housekeeper, Nana.

Khalid hussain a thousand splendid suns