One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid
suns that hide behind her walls.
- Saib - e -Tabrizi (a seventeenth-century Persian poet)
As a father tries to get off this line about Kabul out of his head in vain, as he flees Kabul, I could not help but see the similarity in Kabul and the women of Kabul, not only the women of Kabul, women all over.
Like flowers blooming in a discarded and emptied Mujahideen missile, Afghanistan recuperates. I sat reading, weeping towards the end at the turn of events, at the life of the woman in Kabul, in Afghanistan, in the world. No matter where they are they are the same. Buddha statues in the Bamiyan valley blown apart, the World Trade Centre Twin towers blown apart. But life goes on be it America, be it Afghanistan. And the woman fights it all, fragile yet strong.
Hosseini spins a complex story of two women independently, twisting their lives unto one another stuck with love. Set amidst the crackling and ricocheting war worn mountains and plains of Afghanistan, the story is seen and felt. The oppression of women under the Taliban regime, the oppression of human rights, the oppression of humans is as horrible as was the situation before, under the Mujahideen fighters, or even before that under the Russian attacks. Yet, after so many attacks, sieges, getting hit repeatedly in her bosom with rockets and hate, she goes on. Afghanistan. She fights back Silently. She grows on. She will make a fine lady one day.
Khaled Hosseini has outdone himself (The Kite Runner) with this gripping story. A salute to the woman. A salute to Afghanistan. A salute to the woman of Afghanistan who endures. Like the pebble in a river.
This is one among a Thousand Splendid Suns.
