This is a book that is set in Afghanistan from the 1970s through the present time. It follows the rise and fall of different forces and how it impacts the every day life of every day people. The two main characters are women and the violence and pain that they experience is hard to read about.
Mariam is born as an illegitimate child to a rich father who makes weekly visits to see her where she lives alone, with her mother, isolated from society and the rest of her father’s family. A tutor comes to teach her every week and that is her primary contact to the outside world. On her fifteenth birthday she asks to go to her fathers movie theater with her father. He does not come to get her and she sets out to her father’s home on her own. He does not accept her into his house and when she returns home her mother is dead after commiting suicide.
Mariam goes to her father’s home where she is quickly arranged into a marriage with a man much older than her. She travels to his home and begins making a home for him and hoping for children. She travels there and initially has some hope that life will be better and that she will have a family of her own to love and care for. Mariam suffers many miscarriages and her marriage quickly falls apart. Her husband is abusive and he also keeps her in isolation believing that he does so to protect her from the outside world.
The second woman this book focuses on is Laila. She is born during the time that Mariam is trying to have children to a neighbor woman. Laila’s mother is not well after her two brothers leave to fight in the war. She and her father are very close. She also has a best friend named Tariq that she spends most of her time with and eventually falls in love with. After 9/11 the bombs start to fall and many people leave Kabul, including Tariq. Laila stays behind with her parents and her parents are soon killed by a bomb. Laila is injured and Mariam’s husband rescues her from the rubble and begins to take care of her. During this time someone comes to visit Laila and tells her that he met Tariq in a hospital and he has died. Laila is very depressed and agrees when Mariam’s husband suggests that she become his second husband to make the living arrangement appropriate.
Laila and Mariam initially have a difficult time living together in the same home but they soon become very close, united together against the rules and abuse that they suffer from their husband. Laila has two children and the children bring great joy to both women. Eventually the situation gets so bad in both Kabul and in that it is unbearable. During a particularly bad beating where Mariam is afraid Laila will be killed, Mariam ends up killing their husband. Mariam is punished for this and Laila is able to take the children and starts a new life. She does so always remembering Mariam who gave her life so that she could start fresh.
This book was excellent. There were many parts that stood out but what I took away most was the daily hardship that these women suffered and that with changes there was still hope that life could get better.
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