A Thousand Splendid Suns

But it did no good, all this fault laying, all these harangues of accusations bouncing in her head. It was kojr, sacrilege, to t ...

"No. Of course not." "Then stop pestering me!" "I'm sorry. Bebakhsh, Rasheed. I'm sorry." He crushed out his cigarette and lit a ...

APRIL 1978 n April 17, 1978, the year Mariam turned nineteen, a man named Mir Akbar Khyber was found murdered Two days later ...

"I ask because " "Chupko. Shut up." Mariam did. It wasn't easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ri ...

north and east. Their deafening shrieks hurt her ears. In the distance, loud booms resonated and sudden plumes of smoke rose to ...

aristocracy, nepotism, and inequality is over, fellow hamwaians. We have ended decades of tyranny. Power is now in the hands of ...

"What's the matter?" he mewled, mimicking her. "What's the matter is that you've done it again." "But I boiled it five minutes m ...

PART TWO Kabul, Spring 1987 ine year old Laila rose from bed, as she did most mornings, hungry for the sight of her friend T ...

pari, a stunner, Mammy said. Her beauty was the talk of the valley. It skipped two generations of women in our family, but it su ...

ritual, like brushing teeth. Babi ran his finger through the rip. "I'll patch this as soon as I get a chance. We'd better go." H ...

She said that the Soviet Union was the best nation in the world, along with Afghanistan. It was kind to its workers, and its peo ...

grade once and fourth grade twice. What she lacked in smarts Hasina made up for in mischief and a mouth that, Giti said, ran lik ...

She said nothing of these things to Hasina, though, whose own father was an ill-tempered taxi driver who in two or three years w ...

he gun was red, the trigger guard bright green. Behind the gun loomed Khadim's grinning face. Khadim was eleven, like Tariq. ...

happened if Mammy had shown up like she was supposed to either. Sometimes Laila wondered why Mammy had even bothered having her. ...

Mammy always spoke this way about Babi. A time when her parents did not sleep in separate rooms. Laila wished she hadn't missed ...

Beneath Mammy's bed, Laila could see the corner of Ahmad's shoe box protruding. From time to time, Mammy showed her the old, cru ...

"I have a headache." "Should I fetch you some aspirin?" Mammy massaged her temples. "Maybe later. Is your father home?" "It's on ...

"So you're clean, then." Mammy turned her tired gaze to the window. "You're clean, and everything is fine." Laila stood up. "I h ...

week passed, but there was still no sign of Tariq. Then another week came and went. To fill the time, Laila fixed the screen ...