Multi-layered morality tale

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; Bloomsbury; Price: Rs.585; 370 pp Some of the most enduring works of literary fiction are etched against the background of great wars and conflicts. Notable in this genre are Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dr. Zhivago (Boris Pasternak), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway), and Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell). To the long list of classic war fiction, add A Thousand Splendid Suns, a poignant narrative of two women caught in the successive wars, civil conflict and socio-economic upheavals which have convulsed the neighbouring country of Afghanistan (pop.31.88 million) during the past three decades following the deposition (after a long reign of 42 years) of King Zahir Shah in 1973. On the surface, the novel narrates the parallel lives of its two Afghan women protagonists — Maryam and Laila — two perhaps typical women of this unfortunate country who suffer untold tragedies, none of their own making, with extraordinary courage and fortitude. Yet at a deeper level, it’s a searing indictment of oppressive patriarchy endorsed by religious practice which — it needs to be boldly stated without equivocation — is the rule rather than exception, in the great majority of Islamic nation states and societies around the world. Social and religious sanction of polygamy and the abject status of women, a defining characteristic of Islamic societies, are inextricably linked, suggests Kabul-born Khaled Hosseini, author of this moving novel which highlights the open, continuous and uninterrupted gender injustice which women in Islamic societies suffer to this day. The captivating narrative begins with Maryam becoming aware of her illegitimate status. The daughter of Nana, a maidservant who is set upon by Jalil, a prosperous businessman in Herat who already has three wives and nine children, inevitably Nana is branded the transgressor of social norms and banished to live in a makeshift hut on the edge of town. Maryam grows up a lonely child, the only joy in her life being the infrequent visits to their kolba (hut) by Jalil, who mercifully is not completely devoid of filial affection. For 15 years Maryam endures a lonely, illiterate existence with her embittered mother as her sole companion, until her imagination fired by Jalil’s stories of life in Herat, one fateful day she gate-crashes into his palatial home in town, only to suffer painful rejection and humiliation as an unwanted bastard child. On her return to her kolba, she discovers that in anticipation of her daughter’s pain Nana has hanged herself. With Maryam orphaned, Jalil is obliged to take her under his roof. The women of Afghanistan — perhaps across the Islamic world — have been so brainwashed by the powerful patriarchy that instead of forming a sisterhood of the oppressed, Jalil’s three wives immediately start conspiring to get rid of the 15-year-old Maryam and arrange her marriage to Rasheed, a Kabul-based widower her father’s age. In these circumstances Maryam comes to Kabul, where she meets Laila, a neighbour’s daughter. From this stage, the novel shifts focus to the daily trials and tribulations of Maryam and Laila in a society…