A thousand splendid suns

"What do you get to know about the society, the culture, the traditions and the way of living for the people in this book? Compare with conditions in Sweden." 

Hi! Time for my first entry – kind of hard to figure out how this thing works, ehe. Well for a starter I figure it’s of some importance that I tell you that I have read “A thousand splendid suns”, by Khaled Hosseini”.  The book depicts the conflicts in Afghanistan through two women’s perspectives – Laila and Mariam. Through these two women we get a personal insight into the afghan culture. It shows us how the country and the culture itself changes as the conflicts culminate, and how the afghan people’s lives are affected in line with the wars that succeed each other. 

We follow these two women through life, how they are forced into marriage – because of various reasons. Mariam was only fifteen years old when she was sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed, who was thirty years her senior. After almost two decades Laila, fourteen, suffer a tragedy and is forced into the household of Mariam and Rasheed.

The difference between the afghan culture and our own is immense. The perspective of how grand our choice and freedom are in the western world is striking. Laila and Mariam’s lives are determinate by the social rules of what a woman can do, and perhaps above all – can’t do. It’s about honor, and it’s about shame.

This destructive pattern in the afghan community is partly based on the vulnerable situation of the country. Afghanistan has been affected by invasions and conflicts, which have damaged the development of the society and prevented the culture to transfer into a more accepted system, in our perspective of seeing.  But although we are entitled to criticize the oppression that surely exists in the country, we also have to analyze the occurrence of this behavior. Maybe our culture’s equality has had more chances to evolve, just because the society itself has, and maybe this at the expense of countries such as Afghanistan.

The culture that Laila and Mariam have been born to live in is surely something far different from what we expect and accept. This book does not only depict the lives of two women, it depicts the beginning of understanding how, and why cultures such as the one in Afghanistan works, and can continue its existence.

/ Carolina