A Thousand Splendid Suns

that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.

is the creators of the harami who are culpable, not the harami, whose only sin is being born.

But the game involves only male names. Because, if it’s a girl, Laila has already named her

“Kiss Aziza for me,” she said. “Tell her she is the noor of my eyes and the sultan of my heart. Will you do that for me?”

Had she been a deceitful wife? she asked herself. A complacent wife? A dishonorable woman? Discreditable? Vulgar? What harmful thing had she willfully done to this man to warrant his malice, his continual assaults, the relish with which he tormented her? Had she not looked after him when he was ill? Fed him, and his friends, cleaned up after him dutifully?

Had she not given this man her youth?

Had she ever justly deserved his meanness?

Laila allowed herself to take a step toward him. Then another. And another. And then she was running.

Laila remembered standing atop the bigger of the two Buddhas with Babi and Tariq, back in 1987, a breeze blowing in their sunlit faces, watching a hawk gliding in circles over the sprawling valley below.

Our watan is now known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. These are the laws that we will enforce and you will obey:

But it is God Who has planted them, Mariam jo. And it is His will that you tend to them. It is His will, my girl.

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,

Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”