or the thousand splendid suns that hide beneath her walls...
chapter 1
the story of two women married the same abusive man
http://www.redroom.com/author/khaled-hosseini

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4kyalTT_wY

http://www.khaledhosseini.com/hosseini-bio.html

Mariam is a harami, an illegitimate child, who only sees her adored father once a week. On those precious days they go fishing, he reads to her and gives her beautiful presents, but she can never live with him. She decides to visit his home, a visit he does not acknowledge, and returns to find that her mother has hanged herself. Determined that she will not secure a place in their household,her father's wives marry her off to Rasheed,an elderly widower from Kabul, far enough away for Mariam to be safely forgotten. It is a marriage that soon deteriorates into brutality and misery made worse for Mariam by Rasheed's decision to also marry the orphaned Laila.When Laila disappoints Rasheed by bearing a daughter, she too finds herself the target of his cruelty. But out of this unhappy household grows a friendship which will bind the two women in a union as close as any marriage, and which will endure beyond death.

Mi se pare incredibil cum un barbat poate scrie atat de veridic despre interiorul unei femei, despre asteptari si sperante, despre dorinte si dureri, temeri. despre...emotii. Pai, da, daca se numeste Scriitor, scruteaza intai cu sufletul ca sa scrie. El are si memoria lucrurilor care nu se vad, mai mult decat a celor care se vad.
''She restrained herself, patiently watched him walk through the tall grass, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder,the breeze lifting his red necktie.
When Jalil entered the clearing, he would throw his jacket on the tandoor and open his arms. Mariam would walk, then finally run, to him, and he would catch her under the arms and toss her up high.Mariam would squeal.
Suspended in the air, Mariam would see Jalil's upturned face below her, his wide, crooked smile, his widow's peak, his cleft chin- a perfect pocket for the tip of her pinkie-his teeth,the whitest in a town of rotting molars. She liked his trimmed mustache, and she liked that no matter the weather he always wore a suit on his visits-dark brown, his favorite color, with the white triangle of a handkerchief in the breast pocket-and cufflinks too, and a tie, usually red, which he left loosened. Mariam could see herself too, reflected in the brown of Jalil's eyes: her hair billowing, her face blazing with excitement, the sky behind her.''



Chapter 2-feature
Every woman-Women of Afganistan-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDE9qxgGdJM


''In a country where 57 per cent of women are married under the age of 16 and only 10 per cent of women can read and write, education is often seen as the key to empowering the next generation.
Whilst the nation's schools have emerged as part of that solution, they have also become the battlefield in the fight for women's rights. Education has become a perilous business for both teachers and pupils.
Afghanistan's population is divided disproportionately into urban and rural. The young urbanites in Kabul are busy embracing every opportunity that comes their way. Education, public life ... and shopping.
Meanwhile the situation for women in urban areas bears little relation to the rest of Afghanistan's remote rural areas where 80 per cent of the country's population live.
Here women face the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world. Every 30 minutes an Afghan woman dies in childbirth. Few health clinics are able to provide the care needed to prevent hundreds dying every year from problems during labour.
And amidst all this, there is also a hidden enemy called Opium. Drug addiction is on the increase among women and in the absence of modern medicine, it is widely used as a painkiller. Mothers give it to children to stop them crying and to help them sleep.''

Thursday October 2, 2008 - 08:30pm (EEST) Permanent Link