A Thousand Splendid Suns

In September 1996 the Taliban arrive in Kabul to a chorus of “whistling, firecrackers and music” (266). Mariam hears of the Taliban first from Rasheed. They are a guerrilla force made up of young Pashtun men whose families fled to Pakistan during the war against the Soviets. Most of them were raised in refugee camps on the Pakistani border and schooled in the Shari’a, strict fundamentalist Islamic law. The Taliban are rootless, with little knowledge of Afghani history, but according to Rasheed they are “‘pure and incorruptible […] decent Muslim boys’” who will bring peace and order (267). Unlike the Mujahideen, the Taliban are united and so have been able to make a conquest of the country.

In the home, Mariam and Laila have“become one and the same being” to Rasheed, “equally deserving of his distrust, his disdain and disregard,” and he addresses his thoughts to an “invisible presence,” rather than to either of them (267).

Rasheed takes his family out to “greet their new world, their new leaders” (268). The Taliban are given a warm welcome by Kabul’s inhabitants, who view them as harbingers of peace.

Their first glimpse of the new leaders at Pashtunistan Square is a violent one. A man with a loudspeaker holds a rocket launcher and next to him two bloodied corpses hang from ropes—one of them is the communist Najibullah. Najibullah is paraded as an example of what the Taliban will do to infidels who commit crimes against Islam. The Taliban spread their message through propaganda, taking over the radio through the Voice of Shari’a and the messages written on flyers and tossed into the streets.

Mariam reads one of the flyers. It specifies strict laws, with punishments for everything from the wrong beard-length for men to complete confinement for women, who are no longer allowed to go outside of the home without a male relative.

Laila is stunned that the Taliban could enforce such oppression on the female population of Kabul, which used to practice “‘law and medicine’” (271). Rasheed tells her that Kabul is now catching up with misogynist practices in the rest of the country. Mariam realizes that Najibullah’s being a communist and head of the secret police made him “only slightly more contemptible than a woman” (272). 

Laila is grateful that her father is not alive to witness the Taliban’s war on non-Islamic culture, which includes book-burnings, the closure of universities and cinemas, and the transformation of the Marco Polo restaurant into an interrogation center.

Unlike the women, a newly-bearded Rasheed regards the Taliban “with a forgiving, affectionate kind of bemusement, as one might regard an erratic cousin prone to unpredictable acts of hilarity and scandal” (274). On Wednesday nights, he listens to the Voice of Shari’a, during which the Taliban announces the names of those to be punished. On Fridays, he goes to Ghazi Stadium to watch the spectacle.

He taunts Laila in bed about the violence he has seen and says the acts of vengeance “‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’” are in the Koran and therefore justified (275). He then turns to the subject of Aziza and says that her eye colour is “interesting,” and is neither Laila’s nor his own. He threatens that “‘if the fancy should strike’” him, he could give Aziza away and explain his “‘suspicions’” about Laila to the Taliban (275).

Laila finds that she has the symptoms of pregnancy again and lying on her bedroom floorconsiders aborting the baby with a metal spoke. She wonders if she could ever love Rasheed’s child as she had Tariq’s. However, Laila, who has seen enough “killing of innocents” cannot go through with the abortion (277). 

In September 1997, when Laila goes into labor, she cannot go to the old women’s hospital because the Taliban insists that men and women must be seen in different places. They go to an unsanitary hospital at Rabia Balkhi, which is armed by Talib guards.

In the crowded delivery room, women are tended to by burqa-clad midwives and Laila is given a bed “beneath a window that someone had painted black” (281). Laila has to wear a burqa even in the act of delivering a baby. As the baby is in a breech position, Laila needs to have a caesarean. This is a dangerous procedure in an underfunded hospital with no suction, oxygen or antibiotics. The midwife explains how the Taliban’s misogyny leads them to spend the money they receive from NGOs for women’s hospitals on other things. Mariam is at Laila’s bedside all this time and admires Laila “for how much time passed before she screamed” (285). 

Two years later, by the fall of 1999, life is extremely tough in Kabul because of a drought that began in 1998 and the ensuing water shortages. Laila’s 2-year-old son, Zalmai, is doted on by Rasheed and therefore is mischievous and reckless in his presence. When Zalmai is born, he is moved into Rasheed and Laila’s bed and lavished with gifts they cannot afford. Rasheed even takes Zalmai to the shoeshop and father and son bond as “people who share a secret do” (289). Rasheed keeps Laila away from her son, not letting her hold him in his presence.

Aziza, who resembles Laila more and more, is the “even-tempered peacemaker to her volatile sibling” (290). Rasheed buys Zalmai a television, an object banned by the Taliban, from an underground bazaar.

Rasheed tells Laila that his shop cannot sustain them and that Aziza could become a street beggar. When Laila slaps him, he puts the barrel of a gun into her mouth. Laila has a nightmare that she is lowering Aziza’s body into the ground.