A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khalid Hosseini)

Summary: A Splendid Thousand Suns is a tale about the frailty of character of strong men and innate strength of frail women. The novel explores the lives of two Afghan women who belong to totally different backgrounds but are forced to share the same unhappy household. It narrates their tragedies, their unwavering endurances and sacrifices in the face of cruelty and hardships. The backdrop is, once again, the war torn Afghanistan mutilated by forces from within and without. The two women face rejection from their families and their brutal husband, suffer from domestic violence and yet find love, companionship and consolation from each other. It is the story of Mariam who is an illegitimate child of a wealthy Herati businessman. Jalil did not have the courage to marry her mother after dishonoring her. His weak will perished under pressure from his family and he married the young, innocent girl to Rasheed a brutish cobbler some thirty years her senior. Repeated miscarriages dashed all of Rasheed’s hopes of fathering a son and he subjected Mariam to torture over petty domestic issues. Unwanted, unloved Mariam soldiered on silently till Laila entered her life. Laila was the beloved daughter of a university teacher who imbibes in her his love for education, poetry, art and culture. With Kabul under fire from warlords, Laila’s childhood sweetheart Tariq departs for Pakistan, leaving Laila in a big predicament. To avoid shame, she too marries Rasheed but soon loses her place as the queen of his heart when she gives birth to a daughter. Slowly affection and friendship develops between Laila and older Mariam …a relationship so strong that it transcends all differences and enables them to withstand depravation, starvation and brutality all around them. Laila also suffers violence at the hands of her husband till one day while he was attempting to strangle her Mariam kills him to save Laila. Laila ultimately finds love and contentment and becomes a teacher in a local orphanage. But more than Laila, it is Mariam who leaves her memories in the hearts of others as bright as the brilliance of a thousand splendid suns.

 Khalid Hossieni, through the lives of these women, lays bare the underlying issues that plague Afghanistan today. The women, in an average Afghan household, are still considered worthless. We see glimpses of these in Nana’s words when she says “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.” Political unrest, deteriorating law and order situation, years of wars, first as jihad against the Soviet regime and later as warlords and Taliban took over, have left Afghanistan bleeding and made millions of Afghanis homeless and destitute. It is actually their story too as Hossieni tries to show that love and heroism can triumph over death and destruction whether of an individual or a nation

Source: http://www.shvoong.com/books/novel-novella/1637344-thousand-splendid-suns/#ixzz1QnQSqH3F

"I walk tall with my Reading habit" (by Samima)

Recalling  childhood, I found myself indulged deeply in a habit of reading. Inception was  by small stories like Aesop fables; and it ranged  from fairy tales to thrillers like Imran series. I had books on morals, historic figures like Razia Sultana, Salahuddin Ayubi, Muslim Caliphs and their justice.  Of course the choice of books (in those time) was mostly by my mother …. She used to present me books on birthdays or other occasions.

So the seed of reading was sown there in me very early and very deep. Then comes a time when the my books started to age with me. Here comes hardcore literature both  English and Urdu, there was chic feminism of Austen, Asmat Chughtai and Amrita Pritam,  refined writings of Wilde, Bernard Shaw and  Bedi , unconventional fictions by Hardy and taboo by Manto, mysteries by Conan Doyl, classic novels of Hajra Masroor, Razia Butt and Khadija Mastoor or best sellers ranging from Stanley Wolpert’s Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan to Tehmina  Durrani’s My Feudal Lord and so many more all around me, waiting  to be explored  and I took full advantage of them in my Khalid Uncle’s library. Reading habit  was fuel for me in those times .  I remember in the hardpacked  competitional  education days, but I still used to manage some time  out for this habit, don’t know why but every read book proved only a drop in the bucket.

 Today, when I look around, I hardly find a teenager having such  inclination for reading, most aren’t  great proponents . They rather consider reading as very primordial or elementary way of killing time.  Even the course books aren’t welcomed much. Cable and Internet adds fuel to fire in these circumstances. So, Is  the habit of reading dying? though a defence one can give is "World is becoming faster" but internet and other sources of entertainment can never replace books. Acquiring  habits  is always a personal choice, but  it is parents responsibility to provide their child with a stimulating environment or at least any predisposition to certain good habit should  be welcomed.  Reading  books helps not only building imagination & character, but also defines  individual’s perspective of society; along with giving  depth to his personality. During this habit my process of actualization started and was able to comprehend why  Sir Francis Bacon once said “Knowledge is Power”.

Some people these days do manifest liking for the habit, they explicitly tell  u about their  reading habit, but ironically it  only covers newspaper/ magazine reading or some articles of  famous journalist. Our  society isn’t only  lacking this regular disposition  but is  depriving  itself  from  knowledge that these books can provide  us.  We are proactive in becoming  ‘informed’ and overlooking the part called  ‘knowledge ’. Both must go hand in hand, otherwise this shortcoming can always be exploited.

(Samima)