The Thousand Streams Sparknotes

The novel “The Thousand Streams”(2006) by Khaled Hosseini captures the sorrows, tears, and joyous moments of the women and children living in war-torn Afghanistan, a tribal society dominated by patriarchy and religion which offers little to no compassion to the women. Born in such society, Hosseini introduces a female character, Mariam, who grows up with war and chaos. Society, after offering decades of violence and isolation, tries to steal Mariam’s happiness, feeling she lacked since childhood, which results in sudden alteration of all her hardships and frustrations into courage that saves her happiness at cost of a life. Hosseini introduces Mariam as an innocent, jubilant little girl who, after maturing psychologically, morally, and physically, grows up to be one’s savior and someone else’s death.
Mariam was born a harami, a bastard: product of a rich man, Jalil, and his servant, Nana. Jalil covered up his mistake by isolating Mariam and her mother to a place far away. Isolation protected Mariam’s innocence and left her unexposed to the cruelty society had to offer. But soon, Jalil’s deniance of Mariam into his house made her realise the truth -- the fact that she was not actually loved by her father, but she was just a being taken care of. For her situation to get worse, Mariam faced Nana’s death just after realising she only “belong[ed] in..rejection and heartache..with her mother”(19). Bursts of completely unexpected events turned Mariam’s life upside down. She lost her precious childhood left with a life with certain contrasting traits: unexposed, innocent, lonely and sad. Mariam gains experience from the mournful events through which she learns to endure and distrust other people, especially men, compiling the physiological and all the negative emotions in a remote corner of her