Hosseini made his name in his depiction of the moral struggles of a young boy, growing up in Kabul with the backdrop of Afghanistan’s wars and strife, with The Kite Runner. In A Thousand Splendid Suns Hosseini’s protagonists this time face struggles inextricable from the agony of Afghanistan, and in particular the struggles of women, from before the Soviet invasion, through civil war, Taliban rule, and US invasion.

Greater freedoms for women is not a new topic to the country. Women enjoyed significant relative freedoms through large periods of 20th Century Afghanistan, including the banning of the burka and the stark rise in female education. Yet they have still too frequently been treated as cattle for trading, for wedding and birthing sons. As Hosseini notes in his epilogue, and as Ansary says in the Game Without Rules, much of rural Afghanistan, the places where revolt after revolt stirred, and the humble origins of the Taliban leadership, never modernised through those periods. For women in those areas, the Taliban regime was just another name for their husband’s authority.

Treatment of women clearly degrades as the plot progresses, and Rasheed embodies this. His early care and respect for Mariam & Laila both tail off. Mariam can’t give him a child, and initially Laila doesn’t give him a son. When they try to escape his house, this is the final straw in his view that either are even human. For Rasheed, and for much of the world, women are baby-makers. When his wives don’t fulfill this “duty”, he loses all respect for them. His abuse of them beyond this point is as brutal as the Taliban.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is about the pursuit of safety and security and love, through the eyes of two different but similar girls and women, as Afghanistan shifts dramatically beneath their feet. It is literally a look “beneath the veil”, a rich depiction of two lives, who externally would be seen as two women in burkas, their wants and fears and pains all hidden, muted. Both characters also express some relief in wearing the burka though, in the anonymity and protective barrier it affords.

From the first line of the book, we know that Mariam has been taught that she is not wanted, does not belong, illegitimate, a “harami”: a bastard. She believes she is unworthy, an outsider. When she asks for more, her father rejects her. Throughout the rest of the book we are stricken by her strength in coping with her situation, as she is abused and neglected by Rasheed. But we know that she thinks this is her place. Mariam signs her name just twice in her life, bookends to her life in Kabul. Is she signing her death sentence in both cases? At what point does she give up on living?

Laila grew up with a neglectful mother, who for the most part longed for her sons at the expense of Laila’s care. Her father gave her his time and attention though, and she has a fairly normal, loving childhood. Unlike Mariam, Laila has also known love, and Tariq lives on for her in heart, spirit, and also elsewhere. This explains why it is Laila who takes the initiative, to plan the escape. Unlike Mariam, she knows what more there is to strive for. But it also makes it harder for her to tolerate her life, while Mariam can put her head down and walk on.

Though these two women begin their relationship as perceived rivals, adversaries, their situation physically and emotionally binds them together. Their differences make them fit like jigsaw pieces, and each offers the other something that they could never have had alone. Mariam gets the love of a family, children she couldn’t bring into the world herself. Laila gets strength and care and support, a steady hand and a protective one. These two women build a loving family, that Rasheed simply dips into at a whim.

The title, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’, comes from a poem about Kabul. Laila’s father can only remember two lines:

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

The poem, for me at least, paints both the irony and the beauty of Kabul. As we see throughout much of this novel, Kabul has spent many years in turmoil. Many are forced to “hide behind her walls”, to escape war or because of female oppression. Yet Kabul through history has recovered from these times. The people have bounced back, prospered and thrived when they are allowed. Although there may be darkness there will be light, the poem says to me. For each sun that sets a new will rise, like Kabul, with a fresh chance at light and hope.

Another poem which struck me in this book was the one that Zaman places above the class room door:

""" Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. If a flood shall arrive, to dorwn all that’s alive, Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not """

It shares a similar sentiment to the previous exerted poem. That things may be going badly, to make a privileged understatement, but that hope must not be lost. Hovels shall turn to rose gardens and all will be well again, one day.

These poems support the arc of the book. What is well can turn to despair in an instant. A bomb or a suicide can take everything you loved. The gendre of a child can extinguish your husband’s love.

But the shovel that buries the infant can also put an end to the source of suffering, and then help to dig a rose garden again.

Hosseini’s style can be feel a little pedestrian at times, but in this way he never spares us a deep understanding of the pain of his characters. We feel and connect and sympathise with them, in the slow painting of their agonies. It does sometimes feel like hard work, but it has always proven worthwhile.