A Thousand Splendid Suns

Mariam is in the Walayat women’s prison for ten days, a drab, unsanitary place patrolled by Taliban guards. Most of the women are there for the offence of running away from home, rather than violent crime, so Mariam becomes a sort of celebrity amongst the inmates who share food with her. On hearing the story of Naghma, who was imprisoned for apparently seducing a mullah’s son, Mariam remembers Nana’s warning that “like a compass finger that points not, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman” (354). 

At Mariam’s trial, which took place a week earlier, there was no legal counsel, public hearing or cross-examining of witnesses as she confesses to killing her husband. She explains that if she did not, he would have strangled Laila to death. The judge decides that Mariam is “not a wicked woman” but she has “done a wicked thing” because Shari’a law is not “vague” on crime (357). She is sentenced to death.

On her last night in prison, Mariam has “disjointed” dreams of her childhood” (358). On the way to Ghazi Stadium, a young, armed Talib tells her that she should not be ashamed of being scared about her sentence, as his own father was on the day the Communists took him.

As Mariam is walking towards the southern goal post at Ghazi Stadium, she knows that for the most part, “life […] had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it” (360). She is especially sad that she will not see Aziza grow up into a beautiful young woman. And yet as the officer lifts his Kalashnikov, Mariam has a sense of “abundant peace,” because she was born into the world a harami, an unwanted thing and leaving “as a woman who had loved and been loved back” (361). The Talib asks her to kneel and “one last time, Mariam did as she was told” (361). 

The narration changes to present tense. Laila and Tariq marry the night they arrive in Murree. There, they clean and help with the upkeep of a hotel. They are contented living with Aziza and Zalmai, but “it is not a happiness without cost” (369). Laila tells Aziza the truth about Tariq and the little girl and her father bond deeply, seeming “companions reunited after a lengthy separation” (368). Zalmai, however, is defensive and fiercely loyal to Rasheed, whom he believes will return from his long trip. Laila feels guilty that she will have to lie to Zalmai about his father’s whereabouts for the rest of her life. At night, Laila still has nightmares about the house in Kabul and she imagines that she can hear Mariam. 

From their position in the Murree hotel, Laila and Tariq hear about political changes in Afghanistan, such as Ahmad Shah Massoud’s death by a bomb. On television, they watch the bombing of the twin towers in September 2001 and all of the publicity around Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, when America declares war on Afghanistan.

When Tariq says it may not be so bad to have American bombs dropping on Afghanistan and clearing out the present regime, Laila, who has known the curse of bombing on civilians, is furious. She deplores the thought that “some unsuspecting girl or boy back home has just been orphaned by a rocket as she was” (375). 

By June 2002, the Taliban have been driven out of every major city in Afghanistan and reconstruction efforts have begun. Remembering her father’s advice that “when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you” Laila tells Tariq that she wants to go back and contribute (378). She briefly wonders if she is crazy taking her young family back to Kabul, where there was so much suffering, but then she remembers the magnificence of the city in an ode her father taught her: “ One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs/ Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls” (381).

So, along with the children, Laila and Tariq decide to return to Kabul, on a detour via Herat, the town of Mariam’s father. Leaving her family in a Gul Deman hotel, Laila goes alone to visit Mullah Faizullah’s house, where his son, Hamza, now lives. She tells him her story and asks him to show her where Mariam lived with her mother. They make a pilgrimage to the kolba, which still stands.

As she navigates the kolba, Laila imagines Mariam and the fifteen years of life she spent there. Afterwards, Hamza presents Laila with a box that Jalil Khan intended to give to Mariam. When Laila opens the box back at the hotel, there is a videotape of Pinocchio, the film Jalil promised her he would take Mariam to see but never did. There is also the letter Jalil sent to Mariam in 1987, towards the end of his life, when she would not see him. Jalil writes that he has known much sorrow because most of his children and wives died in conflict. He has “oceans” of regret where Mariam is concerned, especially that he did not open the door of his house to her until it was too late (393). 

Laila and her family settle in Kabul, which is being rebuilt and generally peaceful. Nevertheless, there is not complete justice, as some warlords have been let back into the city. Tariq has found work with a French NGO that fits land mine survivors with prosthetic limbs. Laila is helping to rebuild the orphanage where Aziza was and also teaches there. Throughout her life, she keeps Mariam in her heart, “where she shines with the burning radiance of a thousand suns” (402). When Laila falls pregnant again, she knows that if the baby is a girl, she will name her Mariam.