A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Quote
Who – to whom
Context
“Learn this now and learn it well my daughter: Like a
compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing
finger always finds a woman.” p.7
Nana to Mariam
Explaining to Mariam the
circumstances of her
conception and their situation
“What’s the sense of schooling a girl like you? …
Nana to Mariam
There’s only one, only one skill a woman like you and
me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school…
And it’s this: tahamul. Endure.” p. 17
“She noticed that every time she breathed out, the
narration
surface fogged, and she disappeared from her father’s
table.” p. 46
When Mullah Faizullah wishes
to meet Mariam’s request for
and education.
“she looked at the ill-fitting drawers, at the
mismatched spoons and knives, the colander and
chipped, wooden spatulas, these would-be
instruments of her new daily life, all of it reminding
her of the havoc that had struck her life, making her
feel uprooted, displaced, like an intruder on someone
else’s life.” p. 56
“This man’s will felt to Mariam as imposing and
immovable as the Safid-koh mountains looming over
Gul Daman.” p. 64
narration
After Mariam is forced to
marry Rasheed.
(Third person)
narration
After Rasheed imposes upon
Mariam the wearing of the
burqa
“The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her
skull and it was strange seeing the world through a
mesh screen…. The loss of peripheral vision was
unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating way
the pleated cloth kept pressing against her mouth.” p.
65
‘…the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also
comforting. She… was buffered from the
scrutinising eyes of strangers. She no longer
worried… that people knew …the shameful secrets
of her past.” p. 66
(Third person)
narration
After Rasheed imposes upon
Mariam the wearing of the
burqa
(Third person)
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After Rasheed imposes upon
Mariam the wearing of the
burqa
Jalil and his wives sit around
the beautiful shiny table to
discuss Mariam’s future.
Language feature/What it tells us about
character or theme
“There is no shame in this Mariam.. it’s what married
people do. He ..left the room leaving her to wait out
the pain down below, to look at the frozen stars in
the sky and a cloud that draped the face of the moon
like a wedding veil.” p. 70
“When Mariam thought of this baby, her heart
swelled inside he. It swelled and swelled until all the
loss, all the grief, all the loneliness and self-abasement
of her life washed away.” p. 80
“She remembered 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 women like us suffer, she’d said. How
quietly we endure all that falls upon us.” p. 82
“Laila scrambled downstairs, hoping Mammy
wouldn’t come out for another round. She found
Babi kneeling by the screen door…. He looked
shaken, reduced, as he always did after Mammy was
through with him.” p. 98
“Babi had made it clear to Laila from a young age
that the most important thing in his life, after her
safety, was her schooling.” p. 103
Rasheed to Mariam
After Mariam’s first sexual
intercourse with Rasheed.
narration
Mariam discovers she is
pregnant.
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Mariam reflects following her
miscarriage.
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Laila’s mother Fariba has just
verbally attacked her father,
Babi.
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“You can be anything you want, Laila… And when this war
is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men,
maybe even more. Because a society has no chance of success if
its women are uneducated.” p. 103
Dialogue presented in
italics, without
quotation marks
suggesting he repeats
this to her often
narration
Babi’s attitudes and
background are presented.
Laila knows he is not going to
‘give her away anytime soon’.
Babi’s words to Laila
“She started to tell him something Babi had said,
about the troublesome marriage of guns and ego.”
p. 154
“She knew that what she was doing was
dishonourable. Dishonorable, disingenuous and
shameful. And spectacularly unfair to Mariam. But
even though the baby inside her was no bigger than a
mulberry, Laila saw the sacrifices a mother had to
make.” p. 196
narration
The Mujahideen arrive in
Kabul and begin fighting.
Laila decides to become
Rasheeds’s second wife to save
her baby.
“Mariam sat watching the girl out of the corner of
her eye as Rasheed’s demands and judgements rained
down on them like the rockets on Kabul.” pp. 200 201
“You’re safe with me, my flower, my gul. Anyone
tries to harm you, I’ll rip out their liver and make
them eat it.” p. 207
narration
Rasheed to Laila
Edicts from the Taliban are broadcast over speakers
from trucks, over the radio and written on flyers. pp.
247 – 248
“They can’t make half the population stay home and
do nothing.” “This isn’t some village. This is Kabul.
Women here used to practice law and medicine; they
held office in the government--” p. 249
“ ‘What good are your smarts to you now? What’s
keeping you off the streets, your smarts or me? …
Half the women in this city would kill to have a
husband like me.’… What turned Laila’s stomach the
rest of that night was that every word Rasheed had
uttered, every last one, was true.” p. 252
“Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made...She
though ruefully of Nana, of the sacrifices she had
made. Nana, who could have given her away, or
tossed her in a ditch somewhere and run… Instead
she had endured the shame of bearing a harami, had
shaped her life around the thankless task of raising
Mariam.” p. 256
“She thought of her entry into this world, the harami
child of a lowly villager, an untended thing, a pitiable,
regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving
this 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…. This was a legitimate end to a
life of illegitimate beginnings.” p. 329
“ ‘Kneel here, hamshira. And look down.’ For one
last time Mariam did as she was told” p. 329
Rasheed requires Mariam to
watch Laila and make sure she
(Laila) does not leave the
house without him.
The Taliban take over Kabul
Laila to Rasheed and
Mariam
She protests over the new
Taliban decrees
Rasheed to Laila
narration
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Talib to Mariam +
narration
Mariam fights to get Laila into
a hospital when she is in
labour.
“There were no tears, no wedding-day smiles, no
whispered oaths of long-lasting love. In silence, Laila
looked at their reflection, at faces that had aged
beyond their years…” p. 334
narration
“ ‘ He will never leave. … Your father will never hurt
you, and he will never leave.’ The relief on Aziza’s
face broke Laila’s heart.” p. 336
Laila to Aziza +
narration
“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs/Or
the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.…
Kabul is waiting. Needing. This journey home is the
right thing to do.” p. 347
“In a few years, this little girl will be a woman…. 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
limestone. Something that, in the end will be her
undoing and Laila’s salvation.” p. 356
“But Laila has decided that she will not be crippled
by resentment. Mariam wouldn’t want it that way.” p.
363
Babi’s oft repeated
words – italicisised +
narration
“Mariam is never very far. She is here in these walls
they’ve repainted, in the trees they’ve planted, in the
blankets that keep the children warm…She is in the
children’s laughter…But mostly, Mariam is in Laila’s
own heart, where she shines with the bursting
radiance of a thousand suns.” p. 366
narration
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Laila reflects in a dream-like
state about Mariam’s role in
her life. She imagines Mariam
making a doll by the light of an
oil lamp.
narration
Laila reflects on the injustice
of the warlords – ‘her parents’
murderers – living in posh
homes in Kabul, riding around
in SUVs and being appointed
ministers of government.
Laila wishes to find Mariam’s
grave and thinks about the
‘presence’ she has in their daily
life.