A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS BY Khalid Hossaini

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A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS BY Khalid Hossaini

  It is almost unbelievable that how much pain my country and my people have endured for the last seventy years. How my people lost their lives, their families and their sweet homes. How they have been forced to leave their home towns, to live a miserable and pathetic life in refugee camps of neighboring countries for years without knowing anything about their fate, to tolerate the worst of the worst pain and sorrow in the world; all in the name of religion and jihad( the truth is they(local warlords ) were fighting for power, while using religion as a shiled to legitimize their unspeakable action). those vicious people made my country a land of dead bodies all using name of ISLAM.

    In this book Afghan American author writes simultaneously about social and political situations of Afghanistan in the second half of twenty century starting from 1960s. It is the story of two misfortune girls who experience the worst of the worst problems and trauma; Mariam and Laila. Mariam is from Herat a northwestern province while Laila is from Kabul, capital city. He writes about their life story, their childhood, their family dramas and how they meet each. How they become great friends who face challenges of those nightmares together. while describing their lives he also write about political changes in Afghanistan. changes of regime; collapse of monarchy, announcement of democratic republic of Afghanistan, rise of communists, invasion of Afghanistan by soviet union, rise of mojaheddin and era of jihad against soviet union, withdrawal of soviets, the painful era of civil war( local warlords killing each other and civilians), invasion of Afghanistan by bloody Taliban( the worst era), attacks of September 11, Invasion of Afghanistan by US troops and so on till now....

    Mariam and Laila see really bad days. During novel you will say that this would be last bad thing happening to them but no the worse is on its way and the worst away form it. He write about all the pain and sorrow women have endured because of their men, how men have been so reckless about their rights and feelings. How women have been denied from their basic rights.

    This was the best piece I have ever read maybe because  It was  about my country or maybe because the writer described events so nice that almost everyone can feel those tragic events which had happened on Afghanistan's people. I recommend this book to every single Afghan and of course to those who appreciate a nice literary work and those who wanna know about Afghanistan's bloody modern history.

   MAY THE PEACE FIND MY COUNTRY SOON

and here are some beautiful sentences and quotes from this exceptionally captivating book....

# "One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."

# "Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting."

# "A society has no chance of success if it's women are uneducated..."

# "Behind every trial and sorrow that he makes us shoulder, God has a reason."

# "A man's heart is wretched, wretched thing. It is not like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you."

# "I will follow you to the ends of the world...."

# "Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a moan's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam."

# "Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami(bastard) child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings."

# "You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel."

# "You changed the subject,

      From what?

        From empty-headed girls who think you're sexy.

          You know!.

            Know what?

              That I only have eyes for you."

# "Perhaps this is just a punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone."

# "And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it's accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched alnd of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold."

# "Boys, Laila came to see, treated friendship the way they treated the sun: it's existence undisputed; it's radiance best enjoyed, not beheld directly."

# "I know you are still young but I want you to understand and learn this now. Marriage can waite, education cannot. You're a very very bright girl. Truly you are. You can be anything you want Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over Afghanistan is going to need you as much as it's men maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if it's women are uneducated Laila. No chance."

# "Mariam lay on the couch hands tucked between her knees, watched the whirlpool of snow swisting and spinning outside the window. She remember Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure al that falls upon us."

# "Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that is all she can do. That and hope."

# "Yet love can people to act in unexpected ways and move them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with startling heroism."

# "I'm sorry, Laila says, marveling at how every Afghan story is marked by death and loss and unimaginable grief. And yet, she sees people find a way to survive, to go on."

# "The past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it's accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion."

# "With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find in increasingly exhausting to conjure up , to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later. when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by[his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion--like the phantom pain of an amputee."

# "She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed."

# "And that,... is the story of our country, one invasion after another... Macedonians. Saddanians, Arabs, Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing."

# "Though there were moments of beauty, Mariam knew for the most part that life had been unkind to her."

# "Laila watched Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden other, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of limeston. Something that, in the end, will be her undoig and Laila's salvation. The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles."

# "Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila So weak I just want to collapse somewhere."

All the best