A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

Nana said, “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.”

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.

All she could hear was Nana saying, I’ll die if you go. I’ll just

For the first time, Mariam could hear him with Nana’s ears. She could hear so clearly now the insincerity that had always lurked beneath, the hollow, false assurances. She could not bring herself to look at him.

The next time Mariam signed her name to a document, twenty-seven years later, a mullah would again be present.

Jalil was busy telling her that Kabul was so beautiful, the Moghul emperor Babur had asked that he be buried there. Next, Mariam knew, he’d go on about Kabul’s gardens, and its shops, its trees, and its air, and, before long, she would be on the bus and he would walk alongside it, waving cheerfully, unscathed, spared.

I fee like she wss probs tptsly numb durong this knowing tgat he wasabout to feex her lies

“On Thursdays, I sat for hours waiting for you. I worried myself sick that you wouldn’t show up.” “It’s a long trip. You should eat something.” He said he could buy her some bread and goat cheese. “I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you’d live to be a hundred years old. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.”

“No. No,” she said. “Don’t come. I won’t see you. Don’t you come. I don’t want to hear from you. Ever. Ever.”