Thoughts On “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

Assalamu alaikum, well, I’m not that good at writing book reviews, so I’ll start by referring you to Aaminah’s review of the book.

Secondly, before I get into the meat of what I wanted to say, I want to give a spoiler warning, because I may inadvertently give some of the plot/ending details away (I’m always bad about that). So, just wanted to forewarn anyone before they continued reading.

The names of the central characters of the book are Mariam, Laila, and their husband Rasheed. OK, so I’m still trying to process the book in my head, Aaminah was sure right about this, that you’d be pondering the book for a long time. And so I am.

Firstly, well, the first thing that sort of stood out for me was the portrayal of the men in the book. For the most part, the men were either portrayed as weak or tyrants. I mean, you had Rasheed, abusive, tyrannical, etc., on one hand, and Mariam and Laila’s fathers on the other, giving the impression that they were too weak to stand up to anyone. I mean, in the case of Mariam, her father could have protected her from the forced marriage, but no, he was too weak to stand up to his wives on this account.

Another thing that stood out for me was how the Taliban was portrayed for me! I don’t know what is or is not true about their regime, how they really treated women and others who didn’t conform to their guidelines. However, the way they were portrayed in this book, well, if that is supposed to be how an Islamic state is run/administered, I’d have to say that I, as a Muslim, and an orthodox one at that, would not want to be part of it. Especially if it means that the women get relegated to ill-equipped hospitals where C-sections are performed without anestesia (I actually flinched during that part of the book), just to name one example. It felt like a totalitarian state, like Russia, rather than well, I started to say, what an Islamic state *should* be, but hey, I don’t even know how to define that, but in any case… It made Islam seem very ugly and rigid. Like there was no beauty, mercy, etc. And it sure didn’t seem like any Islamic state I’d want to live in! But I digress.

Getting back to the men in the book, I’d started to recommend the book to my mom, but stopped short of doing that, because well, there’s still that fear that if she reads this, it will instill in her the “Muslim men are like this” or “Islam condones this” feeling in her. And the two central women in the book are terribly abused by their husband, and that makes me sad, because I’d have really liked to have told her about the book.

Anyway, speaking of abuse, Aaminah brings up a good point about so much abuse being packed into these two women’s lives (not to mention Mariam’s mother too), that you get the idea that most women are abused in this particular country/culture and most men are tyrants to their household. And for the most part, you are not presented with the “it’s not always like this” examples. And that did kinda bother me, because I wondered, “My goodness, are *all* women here treated like this? Are they this expendable?” And then I felt bad, because then I was like, “Of course not, this must just be a generalization or something. The characters were just there to make a point, maybe they symbolize something.”

Now before I go on, please don’t write in and say, “but hey, there’s this charcter or that character”, yeah, I know htat, but the *main characters* in the book, the ones upfront, for *most of the book* anyway, were either portrayed as tyrants, weak, or just plain not there, as far as the men were concerned. Anyway, I really don’t want to give away any more of the story than I’ve already done. Perhaps I’ll write more later on this, but I wish I could discuss the book with someone else who’s read it. And perhaps I’m just being too sensitive, knit-picking. All in all, it was a very good book, and I’d recommend it highly.