I hope you enjoyed "A Thousand Splendid Suns." Shall we begin our discussion?
I have to admit it was fun reading and thinking of questions for the two of you, I'm interested to hear what you have to say.
First off, in picking the book we all seemed excited to "travel" to Afghanistan. Did you feel Hosseini managed to transport us there? What helped you feel you were in another culture? What of that was exciting? What was difficult?
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I did it enjoy it, tremendously (even more so than "The Kite Runner," which I just finished).
I think he did a fantastic job of transporting the reader to Afghanistan (I wondered — and maybe this should be a separate post — how much he was writing for a Western audience. The book was written in English, right? He seems to have a keen sense of what a Westerner might want to know about the culture. There's a lot of explication that's both informative and colorful). The things that helped me feel I was in another culture? The gender relations, the class distinctions, the descriptions of food — the qurma and naan, yum — and buildings and clothes and how people lived, the public calls to prayer, the markets, the worship of "Titanic" and other crap from the West (Why can't they import our Bill of Rights and the writings of our great feminists instead of our paltry pop culture?)
I found all of the cultural stuff exciting. The things I found most difficult were the way women were treated — somewhere on the par with slaves and/or livestock (because I know he wasn't exaggerating at all) and the brutality of sex (even the first sex scene between Tariq and Laila bothered me because it was supposed to be comparatively tender, and yet the tenderness was displayed only in his asking if he were hurting her — not if he were pleasuring her; there was no notion that women had any entitlement to sexual pleasure ... they just counted their blessings if they got a guy who was somewhat gentle ... Laila and Tariq seemed to have a satisfying intimate life later, though, although Hosseini seemed kind of coy in its description. Jeez, he could have allowed her at least one all-out great time!)
I'll second all of that. His descriptions of the food and clothing and the city settings were fantastic.
And I agree that the treatment of women was difficult. There was one moment -- after the chewing rocks episode in part 1 -- when I wasn't sure I wanted to keep reading. Fortunately, Hosseini gave us a break by turning the story to Laila's childhood. And by the time we got back around to the horrible Rasheed, I was too invested in the story to want to stop reading.
I think there is no doubt he was writing for a Western audience, evidenced first of all that whenever he would write a Farsi word, it was immediately translated for us into English.
I didn't quite feel "transported" in the way I had with Kite Runner. I am not sure why. It might have to do with my overall connection with the characters, which I will make a separate post.
He had a huge job to do, to make us feel in Afghanistan plus teach us 30 years of history plus develop his characters and their story line. Perhaps the book wasn’t long enough to accomplish all of that.
I felt the most centered in the Afghani world when we were first in the kolba with Nana and Mariam. Perhaps because there were no larger political forces acting on them at that point in the story, it was simply about one family’s struggles to live within the bounds of their cultural norms.
Erin, I like how you have named him the "horrible Rasheed." I didn't hate him that much in the story. In the end he was as impotent as anyone else in the face of the Taliban.
And what of the love he showed for Zamil? Wasn't it he that said something about "we men are different from you, our brains are different."
I don't really want to post a defense of him but that was the reality or conviction under which he operated.
He was saddled with grief like so many others in the story.
Was Jamil, in the end anyless "horrible?" with his false promises and neglect of his child?
I see your point, but I would have to say no, Jalil was not as horrible as Rasheed. Jalil bought into the system, he was callous and careless with his daughter's feelings. But he was really only bending to his wives' wishes in that regard. And he had a conscience. He was full of guilt and regrets over his choices. I can't see Jalil making anyone break their teeth chewing rocks.
Rasheed, on the other hand, enacted decades of repression and mental and physical abuse upon his wife, simply because she could not bear him a son. His love for Zalmai didn't impress me much, as it seemed to me to be just love for another version of himself.
I agree, Amy, that Rasheed was saddled with grief, and he didn't live in a culture that had a suitable outlet for that grief. Still, I think Rasheed was way worse than Jalil. Mostly I think, with whom would I rather live, and that would definitely be Jalil. It's the difference between abuse and negelct, I guess.
I wouldn't say that Jalil was just bending to his wives' will. I mean, I guess that's true, but I'd assign him way more responsibility than that. His terrible weakness and self-centeredness is to blame for Mariam ending up with Rasheed. His guilt after the fact is touching but way too little way too late. Still, it's indication that he has a heart and a conscience.
Rasheed, on the other hand, is basically a sociopath. I think in a culture like that — that gives absolute power to men over other human beings — that, yeah, you're going to end up with a nation of a-holes, but there's still a spectrum: guys who are downright decent but powerless, like Laila's dad and Tariq's dad, like Tariq himself; guys who just go along with the system without necessarily agreeing with it but because it benefits them materially, like the rich Jalil; and guys whose worst personality traits are exacerbated and encouraged by the system, guys like Rasheed.
I don't think Rasheed was necessarily as impotent as everyone else in the face of the Taliban. I know what you mean; I think your basic point is that the Taliban is terrible for everyone, men and women alike, and I agree with that. But he could still lord it over his women and children; he still had a sense of power and control, even though it was just in the confines of home. And it was at those times when he felt that power eroding (like when he sensed Laila and Mariam conspiring against him) that he became the most vicious.
I wasn't that moved by his relationship with his son. As Erin said, it was essentially selfish. He took a sick thrill in pitting his son against his mother and sister, in trying to make the demented point that those who were loved most by him were the most valuable. And his passion for his son was profoundly misogynistic. Rasheed's household was just the Taliban in miniature.
kc, I see that you didn't really like Rasheed!
Not that I liked him either...he definitely exploited the cultural system to his full advantage.
And it was obvious that women were objects to him, which is why birth of a son was the only acceptable outcome for a pregnancy.
I am not ready to write off his relationship with Zalmai though, just because he was inexcusably vicious to women doesn't mean he was incapable of love. What of this description on p 264
"His patience with Zalmai was a well that ran deep and never dried...Zalmai liked to sit beside his father at dinner, whre they played private games, as Mariam, Laila and Aziza set plates on the sofrah. They took turns poking each other on the chest, giggling, pelting each other with bread crumbs, whispering things the others couldn't hear."
Peraphs Zalmai was just a plaything, but perhaps Rasheed could have shown real love, empathy, and compassion to him. We can't really know, the story doesn't evolve that way.
Maybe I am trying too hard to find some reedemable part, but its hard to write anyone off 100%
I guess I would grant that he's not 100 percent evil and that his love for his son had some genuine and touching aspects. I would also grant that, terrible personality aside, he was largely a product of a staggeringly sexist society and that he didn't have much in his background, unlike, say Tariq, who had a loving family, to counterbalance that. He was not well-loved, not well-educated. He had suffered some personal sorrow. He obviously had issues of self-worth, despite his bullying and conceitedness. But I guess I'm one of those people who are really tired of people getting off the hook for being a-holes based on some notion that their self-esteem is so poor that they can hardly help being jerks. There are too many people who have really crappy lives (much crappier than his) who are neverthless kind and decent people. I look at all the women in that culture who not only have no self-esteem, but who have no rights, no power, no love, no say at all in what happens to them, who live their whole lives like abused chattel, and they do not become self-pitying, vicious sociopaths. (I hope that doesn't make me sound like a Republican!)
And another thing I noticed about Rasheed was that he had to act just MINIMALLY decent to earn the respect of his family. They were grateful for not being hit, for being escorted to the market once in a while, etc. The expectations of him were so low that anything within the range of "normal" made him look like a prince. He's like the guy who never lifts a finger around the house and when he deigns to wash a dish he looks like a superhero.
I've never met a republican who would say things like that. If I did I would have more hope for our "red" state of Kansas.
oh, except for all the faux-republicans I know who register R so they can vote in primaries that acutally matter, and vote against people like Phil Kline.
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