child when she bleeded profusely at the bathhouse, “it’s normal, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Isn’t it
normal? (P-89)” Rashid mourns over this incident and starts to avoid her and becomes
extremely shrewd. It was then she recalls her mother’s words, “each snowflake was a sigh
heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky,
gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silenly on the people below.... how
quietly we endure all that falls upon us. (P-90)” four years passes during which she suffers
six more miscarriages. She turns 19 on april 17, 1978. All these years, she takes in her
husband’s dominance, insults and disrespect towards her. It wasn’t easy for her to tolerate his
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He was of the
view that it was a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan. In this part of the story, civil war
is so active in Kabul that buildings have started to blow away, in the course of time Laila and
tariq are separated, since his family decides to move away from Afghanistan, and laila’s
house too gets blown away in one of the explosions, she is left orphaned, the next time she
opens her eyes, she finds herself in a hospital covered in gashes attended by Mariam and
Rasheed. Here is where, the two heroes of the story come together, maraiam and Laila. Two
women in the same house, both are the victims of bad fortune. Rashid now is the husband to
both. Laila discovers that she is six weeks pregnant by tariq’s baby, the part of their love
growing inside, part of her love, tariq still alive inside her, but before Rasheed would get
suspicious about the baby she’ll have to sacrifice herself if she has to give life to her baby.
“She knew what she was doing was dishonourable. Dishonourable, disingenuous,
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And spectacularly unfair to Mariam..... Laila already saw the sacrifices a mother
had to make. Virtue was only the first. She put a hand on her belly. Closed her eyes. (P-213)”
Laila as a women was now completing the role of a mother, another sacrifice, “lying beneath
his cold sheets that night, she watched him pull the curtains shut” On the other hand Mariam
was dying from inside seeing her husband being shared by another woman. Rashid had been
unfair to her wife. To him, if he as a man keeps relations with other women is not a sin, but,
his wife even showing up to people without being clad in a burqua is the biggest crime. She is
looked down upon by Rasheed in front of Laila, now being addressed like a village girl, and
worse than that, “ have you told her, Mariam, have you told her that you are a harami? (P-
216)” Mariam was thirty three old, but that word still had a sting. She sees her husband
taking care of Laila just the same way he did for her years back when she had his child. Laila
gives birth to tariq’s child, whom Rashid thinks belongs to him. Its a girl, whom Rashid
denies to even see but on the other side Laila rejoices the birth of tariq’s and her
In chapter 18, Mariam is introduced to the monstrous man, Rasheed. Rasheed is an aggressive abusive man that is married to Mariam. His monstrous qualities are expressed in the novel when it states “Mariam chewed. Something in the back of her mouth ‘Good,’ Rasheed said. His cheeks were quivering. ‘Now you know what your rice tastes like. Now you know what you’re giving me in this marriage. Bad food, and Nothing else.’ Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and fragments of two broken molars”(Hosseini 104). In Chapter 15, Rasheed feeds his wife pebbles to eat and breaks two of her molars. He abuses Mariam, and she can not do anything to stop him. Taking this abuse made Mariam a stronger person. Another example of the monstrous quality in Rasheed is when he says “There is another option… she can leave. I won't stand in her way. But i suspect she won’t get far. No food, no water, not a rupiah in her pocket, bullets, and rockets flying everywhere. How many days do you suppose she’ll last before she’s abducted, raped or tossed into some roadside ditch with her throat slit? Or all three?” (Hosseini 215). When Rasheed speaks about Laila, he is willing to throw Laila onto the streets if Mariam will not let him marry her. He is willing to leave her with nothing to survive, and he would not think twice about the situation. The abuse Rasheed puts on others particularly Mariam hurts them
Social injustice is revealed throughout the novel and Hosseini really goes in depth and indulges the reader by portraying every aspect of the life of women in Afghanistan at the time period. He also reveals most of the social injustice women still have to deal with today. This novel is based on two young women and the social injustices they face because of their gender. Gender inequality was very common in Afghanistan
From start to finish, one could see how much Mariam values Laila, Aziza, and their friendship. The first example is when Mariam vows to help Laila while they are in the hospital for Laila’s unborn child: “I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise” (287). This simple promise is a deep portrayal of Mariam’s desire to help Laila find a doctor and deliver her baby. Additionally, one can see Mariam’s love for Laila when she protects her from Rasheed’s grip of death, “‘Rasheed.’ He looked up. Mariam swung. She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila” (348). Rasheed was going to kill Laila, but Mariam steps in and knocks him off of her with a shovel to save her life. Mariam forms a tight-knit bond with Laila, and when Hosseini includes their relationship, one can see how Mariam values Laila enough to kill another man. The author also describes their relationship after Mariam and Laila discuss plans for leaving: “When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” … “Laila crawled to her and again put her head on Mariam’s lap. She remembered all the afternoons they’d spent together, braiding each other’s hair, Mariam listening patiently to her random thoughts and ordinary stories with an air of gratitude, with the expression of a person to whom a unique and coveted privilege had been extended” (358). The love Mariam has for
Originally, Mairma would acquiesce to Rasheed’s demands: if he said “shut up,” she would (98). If she was beaten, she would take it. She felt no hope of freedom from his brutish acts so she endured through them. Wallowing in despair would only make her marital-situation worse. Later, out of routine, Rasheed’s abuse is prevented because of Laila. She pleads “please Rasheed, no beating!” over and over until he forfeits his attack against Mariam; feeling loved, it is a kindness that Mariam cannot forget (241). In Mariam’s final resistance to the churlish man, she shows her love for others. Aiming to kill, Rasheed acts violently upon Laila, and Mariam fights back. As he once beat her, she beat him back. The scene juxtaposes how she once accepted the abuse, and now she fights back because she does not want to lose the one who makes her feels that she “had been loved back”: Laila (224). After being controlled by Rasheed for the majority of Mariam’s marriage, she takes control of her own life for once by making he decision to kill him in order to protect Laila. Mariam’s fight back shows her willingness to sacrifice to prevent Rasheed’s cruelties further. Risking worse abuse, Mariam chooses to save Laila’s life in exchange for her own. Laila brought Mariam an unmistakable happiness: “[Mariam] was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. ... It was not so bad ... that she should die this way ... This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings” (224). Mariam gives Laila the opportunity to live a life sans of Rasheed’s barbarities to plague them after learning herself how inhumane he was. Moreover, the cruelties Mariam faced against Rasheed revealed her endurance as a woman. Mariam remained strong throughout her marriage and fought back against her husband, an act
The narrator searches for recovery after the death of his daughter and his failure to protect his brother as he promised his mother he would. In his “condition” he is not unlike the narrator in “Zaabalawi” who claims to have “a disease before which men are powerless” (Malfouz 809).... ... middle of paper ... ...
In the story “In Camera, Saadawi illustrated how women were treated by the legal system in Arabic country when they did something against the system. The protagonist, Leila Al-Fargani, who was a young woman on trial for calling the “mighty one”, which is a respective title for the President of their country, a stupid man. Moreover, during the time she was waiting for the court date, she was brutally beaten and raped by ten men who seem to be the guards. At the time she was in the court, she was still suffering from the pain both in physical and mental way, but she did not collapse. When the time the judge and those with him declared that ten men raped Leila and also her father’s honor got trampled. (This is the way we torture you women- by depriving you of the most valuable thing you possess”). For the response she said: “You fool! The most valuable thing I possess is not between my legs. You are all stupid. And the most stupid among you is the one who leads you.” In one hand, this quote completely showed that the man thought this sexual violence was totally right when the woman had committed a crime. In anther hand, it also showed that in the very deep of Leila, the...
Ahmed’s mother is the first to fall into playing her stereotypical social construct after her husband; Hajji Ahmed beats her for not supplying him with an heir, a son. “One day he struck he struck her, because she had had refused to subject herself to a last, desperate ordeal…” This act shows Ahmed’s mothers weakness, a gender normative of women, compared to her husband. However instead of lashing back she accepts the fate she has put herself into. She punishes herself similar to the acts her husband acts onto her. “She, too, began to lose interest in her daughters…and struck her belly to punish herself.” At this point in the novel, it is evident that Ahmed’s mother is adjusting her own belief to match that of Hajji. His reoccurring distaste for his seven daughters has rubbed onto his wife. This compliance to accept her husband’s belief fits into that mold that says that women are not assertive and follow with what their husbands want. The next section femininity is seen in it’s natural essence is seen at the end of chapter three when Ahmed has been attacked and his father confronts him about his girlish ways.
In The Kite Runner, Hassan’s briefly mentioned wife, Farzana, was beaten as Hassan watched helplessly for speaking out to a man in the marketplace (Hosseini). Women were not to speak loudly or out of turn, and no woman should walk outside of the home unless escorted b...
The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is separated into four sections with the first part told from Mariam’s perspective and the second part from Laila’s perspective. Thus, Part III alternates between Mariam’s and Laila’s point of view with each chapter. In Part III, we begin with Mariam’s perspective. Rasheed digs Laila out of the rubble of their home, and Mariam slowly nurses her back to health. Laila is essentially a stranger to Mariam, which helps to explain why Mariam calls her simply “the girl”.
Rasheed was not pleased with her having a girl, so he began to mistreat her. “Usually, the bickering ran its course after a few minutes, but half an hour passed and not only was it still going on, it was escalating…”. Rasheed and Laila began arguing often after Aziza's birth. Now Laila and Mariam had a common enemy; Rasheed. Once it was clear to Laila that it was Rasheed who was the enemy, and not Mariam, Laila stood up for Mariam.
Khaled Hosseini made his point very vivid when he wrote this book. This story wasn’t just a story he made up and wrote, it was more. It was to explain a whole other hidden side of the women that they can’t explain or say for women in the Middle East. He wrote this for the women, this point of view is from women, education, children, religion and humanity. Hosseini writes how the women really feel when he explains the vulgar comments and beatings and how scared they really were just trying to survive day by day.
As a young teenage girl, Mariam was arranged to marry Rasheed, Jalil's older friend. Rasheed, is a widowed shoemaker from Kabul. This is not the ideal marriage for Mariam, but she has no choice; her father defends the marriage: “True that would be preferable that you marry a local, Tajik, but Rasheed is healthy, and interested in you. He has a home and a job. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”
The author does a great job establishing what the characters are going through and how they feel and react in that situation. In the beginning of the book Mariam is a young girl who has bigger dreams than what her mother thinks she can achieve which makes her view herself in a negative light. As she grows into a woman Rasheed still makes her feel this way, however when Laila comes into her life she becomes a whole new woman with a totally different attitude towards things. After reading the novel I think the author’s main purpose is to inform readers of the woman and their hardships in Afghanistan. The women had very specific rules they had to follow such as, no jewelry, no makeup, they can’t speak unless spoken to and must always be accompanied by a male relative when going outside their homes.
She was educated & well taken care of in the childhood. In the third part, author shows how they both live together and develops an understanding to live together & shared their life experiences. Laila stands for Mariam which helps her win Mariam confidence and also Aziza (Laila’s daughter) melted Mariam’s heart who already lost her child before they arrived in this world. All in all, amazing must read I would