Exploring Mother-Daughter Relations in Afghan Literature

The novel so far really reminds me of a book I read called “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. They both take place in Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban. A significant similarity is the mother-daughter relationship Fereiba had with her stepmother and Mariam from ATSS had with her mother. KokoGul treated Fereiba as if she wasn’t her daughter right from the beginning, more like a maid than anything else. From a very young age, Fereiba has had to cook and clean for everyone in the family. She always isolates Fereiba and compares her to her own daughters. She reminds her that she is not her own right when Fereiba starts to feel like they have a relationship “...everyone knows that you lost your mother. And that makes you different.”

(Hashimi, 71). She even told her daughter Najiba after her suitor came and Fereiba cut up her dress, “...people see her as an orphan, a girl without a family” (Hashimi, 79). She says that she is not a respectable girl and lost her only chance of getting married. This is very similar to Mariam’s relationship with her mother in ATSS. Her mother often calls her a “Harami” (A bastard child) and says that her father never loves her and is only pretending to care for her. She told her that it would’ve been better for both of them if her father killed her when she was pregnant with Mariam. She tells her that she shouldn’t be alive and that she is nothing. Both Fereiba and Mariam had to deal with years of verbal and emotional abuse from their mothers and it stayed with them forever. They were both told they were illegitimate and made to feel isolated; like they didn’t belong.