Between the Pages: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

For a time, I have walked past copies of The Kite Runner at Barnes and Noble and sitting on my brother’s desk. Always meaning to read it, but never picking it up. Yet, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns was given to me with the warning, “you won’t be able to put it down.” So on Christmas morning, I creased back the first page.

Hosseini intertwines the stories of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, during thirty tumultuous years in Kabul and the surrounding area. In the novel, Afghanistan, a land of intrigue and unknowns, is most often described from the eyes of these two women. In one of the few panoramic views of Afghanistan, Hosseini writes, “The two Buddhas were enormous, soaring much higher than she had imagined from all the photos she’d seen of them. Chiseled into a sun-bleached rock cliff, they peered down at them, as they had nearly two thousand years before, Laila imagined, at caravans crossing the valley on the Silk Road.”

The novel traces changes of power in Afghanistan, from Soviet to Taliban to the current war. While many of the women in Afghanistan may not have a voice to speak to the Western world, Hosseini has attempted to tell their story, and has done so beautifully, humbly, and thoughtfully:

“Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it on. The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her skull, and it was strange seeing the world through a mesh screen. She practiced walking around her room in it and kept stepping on the hem and stumbling. The loss of peripheral vision was unnerving, and she did not like the suffocating way the pleated cloth kept pressing against her mouth.”

I was most intrigued to learn that Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, was “written in the early hours before setting off for his ‘day job’ as a doctor.” I wonder if he still has his doctor gig after such literary success? (Nope, his bio notes he practiced as a physician from 1996 to 2004).