A Thousand Splendid Suns

“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.”

But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila's own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.

Rasheed didn't say anything. And, really, what could be said, what needed saying, when you'd shoved the barrel of your gun into your wife's mouth?

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her -walls."

She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion-like the phantom pain of an amputee.

she was furious with him for abandoning her, Tariq, who was like an extension of her, whose shadow sprung beside hers in every memory.

"You know."

"Know what?"

"That I only have eyes for you."

A 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

Laila lay there and listened, wishing Mammy would notice thatshe, Laila, hadn't becomeshaheed, that she was alive, here, in bed with her, that she had hopes and a future. But Laila knew that her future was no match for her brothers' past. They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. Theparchment on which Mammy meant to ink their legends.