A Thousand Splendid Suns

In April 2001, shortly before Laila’s 23rd birthday, the Taliban are on international suicide bombing missions and destroy the two enormous Buddhas in Bamiyan, the ones Laila visited with Tariq and her father. However, Laila cannot care too much about statues “when her own life was crumbling dust” (306).

Little Aziza has to go to a rundown orphanage because Rasheed declares they cannot afford to keep her. The owner of the orphanage seems kindly and when Laila has to pretend that her husband is dead and she is ashamed in not being able to feed her children, he tells her that she is not alone: There are many “mothers […] who can’t feed their children because the Taliban won’t let them go out and make a living”(311).

Nevertheless, the moment of goodbye is painful and Aziza screams and Laila is overwhelmed with a sense of loss. On their visits to the orphanage, they have to be accompanied by Rasheed, who is stingy with the time they are allowed to spend there. Sometimes he complains that his lungs are hurting and they have to go home and not visit the orphanage at all.

When Rasheed refuses to go, Laila says she will go alone, risking being discovered by the Taliban. “And so Laila’s life suddenly revolved around finding ways to see Aziza” (313). She is often caught by the Taliban and beaten, but it is always worth it when she manages to see Aziza, who is learning a lot at school, though she has her clandestine lessons with drawn curtains. Aziza is talkative with her guests, in the manner of “a hostess embarrassed in front of guests by the squalor of her home” (316). Traumatized, she begins to stammer.

When Rasheed becomes a doorman for the Intercontinental, he says that Aziza can move back home when he makes enough money.

At the end of the chapter, Tariq, who was presumed dead, shows up at the house. Laila runs towards him. 

Mariam is in her room with a wound-up Zalmai. Zalmai has taken an instinctive dislike to Tariq. Zalmai asks Mariam who the man is and she explains that he is Laila’s childhood friend. Zalmai drops his basketball and screams until Laila comes upstairs to comfort him.

Mariam waits outside the room and glances at Tariq. Taking in “his long legs, the real and artificial one”, Mariam now realizes why the doorman at the Continental hotel looked familiar on the day she and Rasheed had gone to call Jalil (321). On that occasion he had been wearing a cap and sunglasses. All types of questions run through Mariam’s mind, namely, how much Rasheed had paid Abdul Sharif to fabricate the story of Tariq’s death. 

As Tariq and Laila talk, she contemplates how “she’d thrown her arms around his neck and wept into his chest, how she’d said his name over and over in a slurring, thick voice” and how she “longed to touch him again, to prove to herself again that he was really here” (322).

As Tariq jokes, Laila is conscious not to laugh, lest she show “her yellowing teeth, the missing incisor” from Rasheed’s beatings (323). She notices how Tariq at the age of twenty-five has become an adult. He is handsome, but “weathered” and beginning to lose his hair (323).

He hands her a block of cheese, “compliments of Alyona”, a goat he named after the heroine of the Soviet film they saw together (324). He has been living in Pir Panjal, Pakistan, a former colonial British hill station. They both concede that they find Kabul unrecognizable.

Tariq explains what happened to him, saying that he and his parents stayed a while at Nasir Bagh refugee camp near Peshawar. At the time of the Cold War, the camp was well-funded. However after the Soviets fell apart, the West lost interest in Afghanistan as there was nothing at stake for them anymore. So the camp soon became afflicted with dysentery and many children died. His father died the first winter in a refugee camp and Tariq vowed that he and his mother will not spend another year there. It was difficult for Tariq to find work because there was prejudice over his leg. A man offered to pay Tariq to take a coat full of hashish to Lahore, but the police discovered him and put him in prison for seven years. He wrote Laila volumes while he was there. Assisted by a man called Sayeed, Tariq then found a job as a handyman and when he saved enough money, bought a goat.

Laila then tells him that she thought he was dead and the real reason why she married Rasheed. As he is leaving Tariq says he wants to see his daughter. She invites him to return the following day and they will go and see Aziza. As they are saying goodbye, Tariq notices what Rasheed has done to Layla’s tooth.

That night Zalmai tells Rasheed that Laila has a new friend, “a man” with a limp (325). At dinner Laila accuses Rasheed of lying to her about Tariq’s death and he accuses her of lying to him, having a “harami” and calls her a whore (329). Zalmai admits that Laila let Tariq see her face. 

Rasheed accuses Mariam and Laila of “teamwork” during Tariq’s visit (336). He orders Zalmai to go upstairs and locks him in his room. He comes downstairs with his belt. At which point, he lashes at Laila so many times that “Mariam lost count how many times the belt cracked” (338). Then in another display of teamwork, Mariam and Laila fight against Rasheed. Rasheed has his hands on Laila’s windpipe and means to strangle her. Mariam surprises him with the blow of a shovel. There is “ murder for them both” in Rasheed’s eyes and before he can go upstairs and get his gun, Mariam raises the shovel and brings it down on him, giving the blow “everything she had” (341).