*A Thousand Splendid Suns--Week3.

Once again, in A Thousand Splendid Suns, the reader delves into a melancholy tone. The war continues on in Afghanistan, and although moments of gaiety occur when Laila’s parents agree to move from Kabul, the jovial tone is interrupted with a “whistling” and then a “flash of white” and an explosion that sends Laila “twisting and rotating in the air.” When Laila lands, she sees a “bloody chunk of something” and on it, the “tip of a red bridge” illustrating the death of Laila’s dad due to the war. Once again, when a character was so close to perfection in life, it is brutally interrupted. The death of Laila’s parents leads Laila into guilt, which shows the parallel between Mariam and Laila. Just as Mariam felt guilt for her mother’s death, Laila feels culpable for Hakim’s death because Laila believes that she “should have been the one inside the house when it happened.” The correlation that the reader discovers in Mariam and Laila advances the reader into the upcoming events of Mariam and Laila living together.

Since Mariam and Rasheed are the couple that discover Laila, Laila then lives with the two, and ultimately is asked if she will marry Rasheed, even though Rasheed is “much older” than Laila. Surprisingly, Mariam and Laila do not get along at all. At first, the reader thinks that maybe this is because Mariam doesn’t agree with the wretched and iniquitous manner of Rasheed’s and Laila’s marriage. However, the reader then understands Mariam’s reasoning for disliking Rasheed having another wife and “stealing [her] husband.” Because of Mariam’s past of not having a true father and losing her mother, Mariam is afraid that Laila will “steal” Rasheed away from Mariam. Although Mariam does not truly love, or really even like, Rasheed, he is all that Mariam has ever had. However, when Rasheed attempts to “whip” Mariam with a “leather belt”, Laila steps in front and “holds back Rasheed” protecting Mariam over herself. It is then when Mariam realizes that Laila married Rasheed not to steal him away, but to protect herself from the war and from loneliness, just as Mariam did. This is just the beginning of the relationship between Mariam and Laila.

As the reader continues, the relationship between Laila and Tariq grows stronger. Tariq symbolizes protection and comfort for Laila, and now that Tariq is gone, the protection is gone, along with Laila’s parents, home, and innocence as it was taken from the marriage to Rasheed. Just like Mariam believed her mother’s death was her own fault, Laila blames Tariq’s death on herself, because of her “lack of emotion” and sorrow when her brothers died. Laila believes that she is being punished because she wasn’t able to correlate to Fariba’s feelings and help Fariba during her time of sorrow. Tariq dying symbolizes the end of Laila’s protection, as she is now truly alone.

Before Laila and her family moves, Hakim reminisces back to a line he remembers in a poem about “the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” Up until this point, the reader could not make a correlation from the title to the novel until now. Hakim remembering the town of Kabul as a “thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls” symbolizes that through all the grief and pain that one suffers in Kabul from the war and personal vendettas, memories will always remain in Kabul, even if the good memories appear to “hide.” The line also foreshadows that although Laila is unhappy in Kabul right now, that eventually Laila will realize a bigger meaning to her life, and figure out the “thousand splendid suns” that exist in Kabul.