It is a story of hardships Afghani women face in the name of honor and fake society values. In the story a beautiful friendship between two women has been described, how they finally managed to accept a life of misery and compromised to a life of disgrace at the hands of their husbands. The plot starts with the life time story of Mariam who was an unwanted child and a social outcast. She would hear bad comments about her father from her mother and she would hate her for that. She did not know that her mother had been right about her Father Jalil who had sent Mariam and her mother to live in a village.. Her father was a rich man and visited her daughter weekly but he would not give her a proper family and honor in the society. After her mom’s death, Mariam realized that the love of her father was not real. When her mother died her father married her off to a stranger thirty years older then her.
The story is telling us how mistreated the women have been in the Afghani society and they are only valued for reproduction. The way the writer has conveyed the message in the novel ones feel like we should do something for the society where morality is decreasing each day. Mariams life became a prison for her; she suffered many miscarriages and her life became a complete hell. She lived in the fear of the shifting moods of her husband who will beat her.
As Mariams miserable life continues the writer shifted the story to another chapter a young and beautiful girl Laila who lives in the neighborhood of Mariam. Although the family was troubled because brothers of Laila were gone to jihad and since then her mother had never been the same. She would miss them terribly and won’t pay any attention to Laila. Laila was a happy living modern girl, her parents believed in the...