A Thousand Splendid Suns

man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you.

Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam

As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she’d said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.

guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings

Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a

Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky.

this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow long after we can bear no more

dren to read. They would make new lives for themselves—peaceful, solitary lives—and there the weight of all that they’d endured would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.

…—she, Laila, the children, and Tariq too. They would leave this house, and this unforgiving city. They would leave this despondent country altogether…

almost apologetic.

Apologetic.

Mariam saw now in those same eyes what a fool she had been.