"A Thousand Splendid Suns"

"A Thousand Splendid Suns," a novel by Khaled Hosseini, is the story of two women of different ages in Afghanistan, spanning from the early 1960s through 2003. Mariam and Laila suffer, endure, love. They suffer from personal, relational and cultural hardships as well as the severe hardship of war. Many of the unendurable, to me, circumstances are simply life in Central Asia. But there is another layer of severity of life that is brought by being a buffer state, located in what some call the crossroads of East and West. Yet Mariam and Laila also find beauty and love in nature, religion, their culture and each other.

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

Two powerful themes rise from this book. Sometimes the difficulties of the present can become the pleasant remembrances of the future; live in the moment. And there is intense power in a relationship (loving and being loved) to transform a life.

She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last.

Through Hosseini's combination of dense and eloquent prose, I am transformed to another country, another culture, a world I sometimes scarce believe is the same one I live in. Though it's not a political book, the engrossing and transforming story serves a sobering reminder that the other end of the "shock and awe" on my TV screen is the rubble of a ripped apart family and the screams of an orphan.

But far more powerful than that, as I find comfort in the Koran alongside Mariam, weep with Laila on the floor, cradle Aziza with the fiery (but powerless) protection of a parent, and feel the blessing of Allah in the gentle touch of someone who knows the truth and loves me anyway, I realize our sameness. Mariam and Laila are my sisters.

Ultimately, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is not hemmed in by geopolitical or cross-cultural themes. It is a stirring and skillful story about life.

Though there had been moments of beauty in it, she knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it.