1989 Soviet pullout of Afghanistan
This BBC News timeline of Afghanistan provides an excellent chronology of that country’s modern political events. It will help you easily situate A Thousand Splendid Suns within the sweep of history to better understand the book’s national context. Here is the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1162108.stm
Dr. Janis Judson, Professor of Political Science
Major Afghan ethnic groups
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini brings to light a culture in which tribal affiliations are the defining characteristic of personal identity, even more important than national identity. One thing that is worth noting is that in the seventies and eighties, there seemed to have been a slowly developing national pride, at least in Hosseini’s vision of Afghanistan. Laila’s father tells her that “… it is a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan,” because women can study and become doctors, professors and lawyers. This pithy statement presages, however, the dismal years that lie ahead that we already know as readers. Likewise, during the seventies and eighties when Mariam moves to Kabul and speaks Tajik with a Herati accent, national pride begins to be more important than tribal identity. So it is perfectly normal at this time that all the clans of Afghanistan work together for the good of their country. Of course, we know that all this changes in the 1990s when the Taliban (with strong Pashtun roots) once again moves to the forefront.
What I find fascinating in Hosseini’s way of narrating his story is that he is constantly making the reader confront a foreign language. Words are often given in Pashto or Farsi and then immediately translated into English. How many novelists writing about a foreign land dupe us into believing that the predominate language everywhere is English? That is not the case here. The reader has to constantly break the flow of reading and be prepared to sound out the difficult syllables–written in Latin script, of course. Sometimes, however, the English translation is not given, which leaves the reader wondering as to the precise meaning of the word. When Mariam is in prison before her execution, a fellow inmate, Naghma, recounts how she was promised to a man thirty years older than her who smelled like goh (p. 354). We never really find out what goh means, much less what it smells like. Another example is when Mariam is saddened by the fact the she would not see Aziza as a young woman, would not be present to throw noqul candy at her wedding (p. 360). We know that noqul is a kind of candy, but precisely what kind is left to our imagination.
Finally, Hosseini’s use of language clearly demonstrates just how brilliant of a writer he is. An essential part of the dénouement of the book involves our learning elements of this foreign language. When Laila and Rasheed fight over Aziza, Rasheed calls Aziza a haramy. Of course no translation is necessary, because we know exactly what haramy means having learned it from Mariam’s story at the beginning of the novel. That is to say that when the story is at its most intense, Hosseini makes sure that we have integrated a small piece of this world inside of ourselves through language, the essential building block of identity.
Dr. Donald Wright, Professor of French and Arabic, Director of Middle Eastern Studies
Concrete road barriers block a street in a newly-rich Kabul neighborhood. These type of barriers are most often erected privately by someone powerful enough to go unchallenged. They make local roads impassable and add to the daily frustrations of living in Kabul.
What happened to Kabul from the end of A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2003 to today? In this short article from The Washington Post, journalist Pamela Constable returns to this city to reminisce about that magical moment described at the conclusion of Hosseini’s novel. She remembers it as a time when “hope and the promise of change…burst forth in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban liberation nearly a decade ago.” In contrast to those times, she details today’s landscape of “security barriers and fantasy palaces” and an atmosphere where “optimism and energy vanished long ago, gradually replaced with cynicism and fear.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dysfunction-and-dread-in-kabul/2011/07/13/gIQAQpBlGI_story.html
What are your feelings after reading Constable’s article about Kabul? Has this new information affected the way you perceive the ending of the novel? What do you think about her startling end statement?
Dr. Martha Bari, Director, First Year Experience
