Who Is Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns?

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is breaking-taking, realistic and outstanding. The story focuses on the struggle of Mariam and Laila, two Afghan women from a different path of life. Mariam is an illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, Jali, and his former servant. After her mom commits suicide Mariam is forced into marrying Rasheed a forty-five-year-old shoemaker. At first, thing seem to be lovely with the newly-wed couple, but after an agonizing miscarriage, Rasheed becomes physically and verbally abusive toward Mariam. In the same community as Mariam and Rasheed is Laila, a young and smart girl from a stable household, where education is the number one priority and marriage can wait. However, she lives in the shadow of
her brothers, who were sent off to fight in the war. After losing both parents to a bomb explosion, Laila is taken care of by Mariam and Rasheed.
Once Laila found out she was pregnant, Laila agrees to marry Rasheed in order to protect her baby. Throughout the book, Mariam is not the only one who experiencing abuse. Laila is also being abused after attempting to run away. While reading the pages of A Thousand Splendid Suns, I comprehend that when the Taliban came into power, men knew they would not be punished for their behavior toward their wives. Fortunately, I was not the only reader that felt this way. I was able to expand my perspective of the novel through book club debates. By engaging in a “community of readers,” my peers and I came to the same conclusion that religious groups such as the Taliban made some men more powerful while women were discriminated against. Eventually I came to understand that religion can be used to control
women.
Frist, when the Taliban came into power, it made some men such as Rasheed more authoritative. Before book club, I thought Rasheed was a horrible human being. He is a man who use his hands and his word to hurt is wives. For example, in chapter 15 Rasheed and Mariam are eating dinner, when Rasheed took a ball of rice into his mouth. Rasheed spit the rice onto the sofrah, saying Mariam had undercook it before pushing the plate away and storming out. A shaking Mariam picks up the rice grain and put them back on the plate. When Rasheed return, dropping a handful of pebbles in front of Mariam forcing her to put the pebbles into her mouth.
When she refuses, he grasped her jaw and pushed the pebbles into her mouth forcing her to chew it. Rasheed quote “Now you know what your rice taste like. Now you know what you’ve given me in this marriage. Bad food, and nothing else” (Hosseini 104) before walking away, leaving Mariam to spit out the bloody pebbles. Rasheed is an example of how the Taliban influence some men in the Afghan society when they came into power. Rasheed knows that the Taliban would not punish him for his mistreatment of his wives. He knows he can say or do anything to his wives and the authorities would be okay with it. For example, in chapter 39 Rasheed says, “Let me explain,” he said. “If the fancy should strike me-and- I’m not saying it will, but it could, it could -I would be within my right to give Aziza away. How would you like that? Or I could go to the Taliban one day, just walk in and say that I have my suspicions about you. That’s all it would take. Whose word do you think they would believe? What do you think they’ do to you?” (Hosseini 282). In this passage Rasheed has no problem with the Taliban. He tells Laila about civilians that were punished for their crimes.
Rasheed mention the color of Aziza’s eyes is neither his or Laila’s. He warns Laila that he can tell the Taliban about his suspicions about her and Aziza and that there is nothing she could do about it. This shows the type of man Rasheed is. He knows if he went to the Taliban and told them about his suspicions about Aziza. Laila and Aziza could be executed, but if Laila tells the Taliban about the abuse she had been getting from Rasheed. The Taliban would mostly believe Rasheed. Participating in book club, my peers and I discuses the Taliban allow men to get away with mistreating women. A man can get away with putting his hand on his wives without being punished under the Taliban, yet a woman who pleaded for help after being abused by husband would probably be called a liar. If a woman's attempt to run away from her husband, she is committing a crime. The reason I said this because in chapter 36, when Laila, Mariam, and Aziza try to run away to Pakistan, they were caught but the authorities. The officer told Laila “You do realize, hamshria, that it is a crime for a woman to run away. We see a lot of it. Women traveling alone, claiming their husband have died. Sometime they’re telling the trust, most times not. You can be imprisoned for running away, I assume you understand that, nay?” (Hosseini 265-266). In the novel, when the Taliban came into power, I notice all women could do was take on the traditional female role such housewives”. I realize it when the Taliban said “Attention women: you will stay inside your homes at all home. It is not proper for a woman to wander aimlessly about the streets, if you go outside, you be must accompanied by a mahram, a male relative” (Hosseini 278). A simple thing such as walking outside a woman can’t do because it's not “proper”. The only thing a woman can do without it being a problem for the Taliban was house duties. “In book club my peers and I agree that men are more dominated than women while Islamic law is harsh on women right” (Book Club Response 1). This does not only happen in A Thousand Splendid Suns; this has been going on in Afghanistan since the Taliban came into power in 1996 to 2001. The Taliban has been controlling Afghanistan for 5 years. There was no law that defends women and men was not punished for mistreating their wives. Women could not go to school or have a job. There had to cover their body and can only speak when spoken to. Women would be beaten or worst killed if caught disobeying the law. In my opinion, no human being should live like that. Religion is what people look to as source for comfort and dealing with the problem. After reading A Thousand Splendid Suns I realize when the Taliban came into power, the Islamic religion made men more powerful to control the way their wives should live their life. As a result religion can be used to control women.