Monday, December 10, 2007
Wives
The two noblest men in the book — Laila's dad and Tariq's dad — each had only one wife. Do you think this was a mere matter of money (they couldn't afford more), or was Hosseini saying something about polygamy? (It's also impossible to believe that Tariq would ever take another wife, isn't it?).
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6 comments:
Hosseini also took great care to show how deeply they were in love with each other, remembering their courtship and their deep affection.
I think you're right! All of the polygomous relationships were without romance or much worse, abusive. Obviously he does not value polygamy. But anyone with an interest in women's rights, can't.
It is difficult for me to think how a lifelong covenant can be upheld with more than one partner at the same time. But that speaks to my ideas of marriage. Probably very Western.
Laila's parents were a weird mix in that way. Her dad was for women's education and absorbed by learning and literature. Was there any reference to him being religous? Yet his wife supported religious fundamentalists because her sons went off to fight the secular state.
I think he has a notion that people, in whatever combination, should be together because they love each other. They shouldn't be together because one of them (the dude) needs some domestic slaves (wives) who will give him a bunch of sons and variety in his sex life!
I don't recall any specific references to Laila's dad being religious.
Laila's mom was a really interesting character. She seemed at some level to appreciate her daughter, but she had so internalized this idea that sons are more important, that you're not really a worthwhile woman unless you have given birth to a man, that she just shut down when her sons (her self-worth) were taken from her. Her dead sons were more important to her than her living daughter who desperately needed her. Grief is one thing, but this woman was going to be a lifelong emotional cripple because of the sexism she had internalized.
She and her husband (Hakim) were close at one time. Theirs was a love match, but somewhere along the line she saw that this brainy man of her dreams couldn't protect her from the bitterness of life, and she kind of turned on him and elevated their brawny sons. One of the funniest (and saddest) lines in the book is when she's glorifying the boys, saying how they took care of everything, they got things done: "but if you have a book that needs urgent reading," she said, "then Hakim is your man."
Didn't you have the notion that people's allegiances shifted? When it became clear what the Soviets were doing, people put their hopes in the insurgents, and when they disappointed, others — eventually the Taliban — came along, and they inspired hope, too, followed by disappointment. Rory Stewart talks about how there are a couple of generations of men in Afghanistan who are just basically mercenaries, disillusioned and selling their military services to whoever will pay. War has become a way of life there, a profession, not a cause.
And an interesting — and ironic — thing about the polygamy is that it brought together women who would otherwise be isolated. Cognizant that "sisterhood is powerful," sexist societies always seek to isolate women, to keep them out of the workplace, to keep them in the home devoted to wifely duties, ad in the case of Afghanistan, to keep them uneducated, like slaves. If this were a monogamous culture, Laila and Mariam would have been completely isolated, each with their own Rasheed. The irony is that polygamy, this most misogynist of institutions, is the thing that brought them together and ultimately proved its own undoing.
I think people's alliances did shift. For me that was proof that most people's view of politics is based in self-interest, what is good for me and my family? The ideological shift that occurred with each government change was much less important than, "Can I eat?" "Are my children safe?" though the answer to the 2nd question would vary greatly between some of the men in the book
Polygamy was the vehicle for the women's relationship, and this is indeed ironic, but I think the abuse by Rasheed was the catalyst. The women in Jalil's house, though forced (I assume) into being co-wives developed no greater empathy for either Laila or her mother. They were as complicit, if not more so, in her abandonment.
Can't we say that being co-wives was the best thing that happened to Mairam and Laila (aside from Laila and Tariq)? A curious choice to me by Hosseini since he obviously loathes the practice of polygamy. Anyone heard/read his own refelctions on this?
Yes, good point, the women in Jalil's household did not have to unite in the face of oppression because Jalil was more of a selfish playboy than a wicked tyrant. The wives couldn't prevent him from impregnating the servants, he being the man, but they could bully him into banishing the evidence of his flings.
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