A thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

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

I’ve finally finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, the second book of Khaled Hosseini, and when I say that it’s heartbreaking, I mean it.

After reading it… I don’t know. A strange, melancholic feeling overwhelmed me. The thing about this book is that I disapproved of it at the start. I thought it was cliché at some parts, the writing rather essay-like and the characters unlikable. But towards the end I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t force myself to like the book at all… I didn’t want to, but then I did. I love it.

Throughout the book, Hosseini striked me as being too brutally honest; all the facts of Afganistan’s history and the struggle for survival among people and the unfair treatment between men and women. In my heart, I know that such things really happened many years ago, and is still happening now, in not only Afganistan but many other parts of the world. It is all so painful, but true. That some people out there are really living like that. Somewhere out there, people live with the fear of the possibility of dying at any moment every second of their life. I bet I will never have as much courage as them if I were to be in their position.

Reading this second book of Hosseini was like taking a roller coaster ride… through Kabul and into the lives of people living there. I felt like I was putting myself in jeopardy at one point. I asked myself, what if every time I walked out of my home, I have to risk the possibility of having a bullet fly in my face, causing me to lose everything I love and hold so closely to my heart? I bet I wouldn’t have been as brave as the characters in the book. But I know that somewhere in the world there is someone brave like them, and I admire them from the bottom of my heart.

I don’t know whether its true, but from A Thousand Spendid Suns, I could see how unfairly treated are women in Afganistan. Men are supposed to far more ‘superior’ to women, and women have to cover themselves with burqa everywhere they go because their ‘face is only their husband’s business’.

Seeing how Mariam, as a women in Afganistan, struggled through life; nothing was right for her from the start. She was a harami(meaning Bastard in english); something that shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Her fight for happiness cost her to lose the only thing she realised she have, her mother, and put herself in a even more unfortunate position as the wife of Rasheed. She was unable to conceive, and was beaten and scorned at daily by her husband, and when she finally found love from Laila and Aziza, she had to sacrifice herself for their happiness. She’s one of the most tragic and noble charactors I’ve ever come across. I pity her, yet I admire her even more. How could one have that much courage? Spectating the hardships she had to go through, I felt that I was way too lucky. Too stupid and childish and sometimes too concerned about things that don’t really matter sometimes.

Laila, on the other hand, was a prestigous child. She had a bright future planned ahead by her father, when she still had women rights when the Soviet came and took over Afganistan and made them communists. Men and women were equal then. But things changed when she lost her family to the war… Just like that. On the day when they finally had hope that things were going to get better, they just fell apart like that. But life wasn’t unkind to her as compared to Mariam. She had a chance at redemption, to redeem the things and people she really loved.

This book just made me so fucking happy that I’m living in a free and democratic country, and am given the rights that a human being is supposed to have. That women here are not treated merely slightly more contemptible than those Soviets who killed millions of Afgans.

I’ve always told myself that I wanted to experience everything in life, because looking at Singapore on the big scale, she is just like a drop of seawater in the Pacific Ocean. But I realized I just don’t have the courage. It’s one thing to admire someone who can summon the courage and really travel to places like Afganistan where people really need help, and it’s another thing to really do it.

Well, overall, I just think this book is damn good. From the Afterword, I understand that Hosseini works for the UNrefugee agency, and I could really see how much he loves his country and wants to help the unfortunate people who, like the charactors in the book, lived in fear every day during the war and had no choice but to escape to other countries to live as refugees.

I swear I must try to help this people someday, and start appreciating my life more from this minute. I love Hosseini. Thanks for bringing us this beautiful tale. (: