Buhay Bangkok

 

 

 

Can you remember the times when you cried over a book? The times when an author has struck a familiar chord in you as he told you the story of his characters? I can’t.

 

What I remember though is the last time I did.

 

This past week I devoured Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead Books, 2007). I had been hesitant to read it. Firstly, it was an author’s second book. I usually try to read a writer’s first opus, preferably his breakthrough one, before going on to his later works. Secondly, the story is about two Afghan women. I had the impression that it might be something along the lines of Amy Tan’s works. Something for my wife, that is.

 

But the first page of A Thousand Splendid Suns simply caught me in its grip and thrust me into reading the story of several people in pre-Soviet, pre-Taliban Afghanistan. There’s the story of Mariam, the small-town businessman’s harami or bastard daughter, whose destiny was marked inexorably by the lowly status of her birth; and Laila, the orphaned city girl whose bright future was shattered by the endless wars in her homeland. It also tells the tale of Mariam’s father, Jalil, and her husband, Rasheed, two faces of the same coin. And of Laila’s childhood friend, Tariq, a young man symbolizing hope not only from the wars between the invaders and the mujahideen and the Taliban, but also from the age-old shackles that Afghan society has imposed upon its women. There are also Aziz and Zalmai, Laila’s children, who are seen as the future of their ravaged nation.

 

But beyond the big picture, beyond the backdrop of endless struggles between the people of Afghanistan and its invaders, beyond the conflicts of  the different mujahideen factions, and the oppression brought about by Taliban rule, this is a tale of the daily struggle each individual goes through: Mariam’s longing for her father’s acceptance. Her discovery of self-esteem, of the beauty of loving and being loved, even if it came only later in her life.  Likewise, Laila’s struggles against the memories of her older brothers. Her efforts to suborn her welfare in favor of her child’s. There is also Tariq’s undying love for his childhood friend, remaining steadfast in the face of bombs and betrayals.

 

For myself,  I felt drawn to the characters of Jalil and Rasheed. I am a father too, and somehow I can emphatize with the love that Jalil felt for his daughter, Mariam. Hosseini goes beyond this, though. The fact that Mariam is a bastard daughter and that their society’s mores restrict Jalil from granting her what a daughter elsewhere in the world deserves, poignantly present to us a portrait of a father torn between love for his child and his sense of obligation to his society.

 

I know, for those who have read this novel, how easy it is to loathe Rasheed, who could easily embody every Westerner’s idea of a chauvinist pig. But come to think of it, he is just the product of his milieu. He grew up in a culture that puts a premium on, and grants privileges, to males. His actions may be evil in the eyes of outsiders, but for his countrymen, his behavior is as it should be. I can try my best to understand him, yet in my heart of hearts, I am sure that I would also be in his shoes had I been born in his society.

 

It would be easy to say that this novel is just another melodramatic yarn, spun to squeeze tears from our eyes, but it is not so. Not after spending the past week with these protagonists, whose author’s pen has breathed life to. As the title, taken from a poem by the 17^th century Persian poet Saib-e-Tabrizi suggests, a thousand splendid suns indeed hide behind Kabul’s walls. Their rising will certainly not blind the reader, rather their rays will offer him enlightenment.

 

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[A word of thanks to my officemate, Pahn, who lent me his copy of the novel.]