A Thousand Splendid Suns

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"A Thousand Splendid Suns" is a second novel by Khalled Hosseini, the author the international best seller which has been made into a movie, "The Kite Runner". It mainly discusses the issue of vast discrimination against women in Afghanistan. I sobbed and had t stop reading to calm myself down at least 3 times while I was reading the novel. It really touches my heart to learn how bad is women are being discriminated in Afghanistan.They were not granted access to education, were forced to marry a stranger at a certain age (in which in most circumstances the suitor is way older than the girls; for example Mariam, one of the main characters in the novel is forced to marry a man who is 20 years older than her, old enough to be her father!) and were denied from getting proper health care service in the hospital. If I were to live there, I probably could just survive only 5 minutes of my life there! The two main characters in the novel, Mariam and Laila are just two examples of Afghan women who have to suffer from the consequences of war and tradition (which is upheld by religious extremists in the country). The story really reminds me of how I should be thankful that even though there are many things in my life that upset me (for example for having to be far away from my friends and losing freedom), these things or circumstances are not comparable at all as to what Laila and Mariam are going through in their life; being forced to marry a stranger who is 20 years older than them, suffer from physical abuse from their husband (they share a husband, Mariam is the first wife and Laila is the second wife. Laila married Mariam's husband after she lost both of her parents from war and because he was being tricked by Mariam's husband, Rasheed), being beaten from walking on the street without a "Mahrim" (husband) just to get to see her 7 year-old daughter at the orphanage and having to see their parents tragic deaths at an early age( Mariam's mother commited suicide by hanging herself from a tree; Laila's parents died from war, Laila saw her father's headless torso flying in the air from their bombed house).