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CHAPTER 1
Summary
The story begins with the word that Mariam comes to hate her entire life – harami or bastard - which she heard
for the first time when she was only five years old. She has never forgotten the day it happened even though she
was quite young when she first heard it. It occurred on a Thursday, the day Jalil always visited her at the kolba
(hut). To pass the time while she waited for him, imagining him waving as he crossed the knee-high grass in the
clearing, Mariam decided to climb a chair and take down her mother’s Chinese tea set. Mariam loved the set
almost as much as her mother did. Her mother loved it, because it was the sole relic that she still had that had
belonged to her own mother who had died when she was two. Just as she was climbing down, Mariam lost
control of the pot, and it fell to the floor and shattered. When her mother, Nana, saw what had happened she
became so angry that Mariam thought she might be possessed by a jinn., as she had been once before. Nana
gritted her teeth and proclaimed her a clumsy little harami. She added that this was her reward – an heirloombreaking clumsy little harami. At the time, she didn’t understand the meaning of the word. “Nor was she old
enough to appreciate the injustice, to see that it is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami,
whose only sin is being born.” Even though she didn’t understand the meaning, Mariam knew from the way her A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - MonkeyNotes by PinkMonkey.com
For the complete study guide: http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/
For the complete study guide: http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/
mother spit out the word that it meant she was an unwanted thing: an illegitimate person who would never have
a legitimate claim to such things as love, family, home, and acceptance.
Mariam was reminded that Jalil never called her by this name, but instead, called her his little flower. He would
sit her on his lap and tell her stories of Herat, the city where Mariam was born in 1959. He would tell her about
how it was the cradle of Persian culture, the home of writers, painters, and Sufis. He told her about Queen
Gauhar Shad who had raised the famous minarets in the 15th
century. He told her about a pistachio tree beneath
which was buried the great poet Jami and that he had taken her there once when she was very little. Mariam
didn’t remember the pistachio tree. In fact, even though she would live the first fifteen years of her life within
walking distance of Herat, she would never see this famous tree. Nonetheless, she would listen to him with
enchantment, filled with pride that she had a father who knew such things.
When Jalil would leave, Nana would tell Mariam that he told rich lies – a rich man telling rich lies. She told
Mariam that he had never taken her to see the tree and that he had betrayed them both by casting them out.
Mariam hated herself for allowing Nana to speak this way about Jalil, because she never felt like a harami when
she was with him. She loved him even if she had to share him. He had three wives and nine legitimate children,
all of whom were strangers to Mariam. He owned a movie theatre where he bought the children who came to
the movies ice cream. Of course, said Nana, he never bought ice cream for Mariam. He was one of Herat’s best
- connected men with other businesses and a home with a cook, a driver, and three housekeepers. Nana had
been one of those housekeepers until her belly began to swell. Jalil’s family was outraged by her and ordered
that Jalil throw her out. Nana’s own father had also disowned her and moved away. Sometimes, Nana wished
that her father had had had the stomach to sharpen one of knives and do the honorable thing. It might have been
better for her. Jalil didn’t have the courage, either, to do the honorable thing: stand up to his family and accept
the responsibility for what he had done. Instead, he made her pack up her things and moved her into the kolba
outside the city. Nana often told Mariam that he had told his wives that Nana had forced her self on him and
that it was her fault. “This is what it means to be a woman in this world,” she would say. This prepares the
reader for what will follow in this novel. Nana says, “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing
finger always finds a woman.”
Notes
This first chapter introduces the reader to the basic premise of the novel – the lives of women in the Islamic
world, in this case, Afghanistan. Mariam is an illegitimate child, the product of a servant and a wealthy man.
Her mother is the one who emphasizes this idea the most, because she is bitter about the circumstances of her
life. She has paid the full price for having a child out of wedlock while Jalil has seemingly paid nothing more
than money to support her and Mariam in little more than a hovel outside of Herat. She has been ostracized
even by her own father and now is doomed to a life of loneliness. In the meantime, Mariam also pays for having
even been born, because she is a reminder of all Nana has lost.
CHAPTER 2
Summary
Chapter Two is one of “he said – she said.” Nana tells her side of the story, and Jalil has his side. Nana tells
Mariam that to Jalil and his wives, she was a mugwort or a weed that is ripped out and tossed aside. However,
unlike a weed, she had to be replanted and given food and water on account of Mariam. That was the deal Jalil
made with his family. Nana insisted that she wanted to live somewhere removed, detached, so that she didn’t
have to see Jalil parade around town with his wives. She also refused to live in her father’s old house because of
the way he had treated her. And so, after his oldest son suggested building a kolba in the clearing which
overlooked all of Herat, Jalil agreed to build a kolba there. It was nothing more than sun-dried bricks with a dirt
floor, two sleeping cots, a table, two straight-backed chairs, and one window. They must use an outhouse some A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - MonkeyNotes by PinkMonkey.com
For the complete study guide: http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/
distance from the house. Jalil could afford to have others build this hut, but he and his sons did all the work.
Nana says that it is his idea of penance, and she calls the hut a rat hole.
Nana had almost married when she was fifteen to a young parakeet seller. When she tells Miriam this story, her
daughter can tell that “perhaps for the only time in her life, during those days leading up to her wedding, Nana
had been genuinely happy.” Then, a week before the wedding, a jinn had entered her body, causing her to have
severe seizures. It was no doubt epilepsy, but for these superstitious, uneducated people, it was a deal-breaker
and the parakeet seller’s family called off the wedding. After that, Nana had no more suitors.
Nana also frequently tells Mariam about the day she was born. She says that no one came to help her, and Jalil
never summoned a doctor or midwife to attend the birth. She said she lay on the cold dirt floor for two days
trying to push Mariam out and that when the baby was finally born, she cut the cord with a knife that she had
kept beside her. At this point in the story, Nana would always give a slow, burdened smile, one of lingering
recrimination or reluctant forgiveness. Mariam never realized until she turned ten that it was unfair to have to
apologize for the manner of her own birth.
Of course, Jalil tells Mariam that none of this ever happened. He had been out of town, just as Nana said, but he
insisted that he had already made arrangements for the birth and that Mariam had been born in a hospital.
Furthermore, the birth was all over within an hour, he said, so that “even in birth, she was a good daughter.”
When he had been informed of the birth, he hadn’t just shrugged and kept on riding his horse. Instead, he had
rushed right back to bounce her in his arms and a hum a lullaby to her. Nana insists that she had chosen the
name Mariam, because it had been her mother’s name. However, Jalil says that he chose it, because it was the
name of a lovely flower. Because Jalil doesn’t fill her with recriminations, Mariam tends to believe him instead
of her mother.
Notes
This chapter is so sad, because it is reminiscent of a divorced couple and how they use their children to hurt
each other. Nana passes on her bitterness to Miriam for whom she is responsible for all but one day a week,
while Jalil plays the loving father who only has to spend a few hours a week with his daughter………
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