It's funny, how a few weeks ago I was starving for books, and now I'm swimming in books I'm dying to read.
I look at them, sitting patiently on my bookshelf. Stacked knee-high aside my bed, scattered on my desk, a few actually burrowed in my underwear drawer. [I don't know how.] All of them are silent. Content. Ready but not eager. They know their time will come. They know that one day, tomorrow or next year, they will be picked up, devoured, adored, relished, conquered, eventually destroyed. Though the total worship will only last a few days, weeks at most, they accept their fate. They know that they will be slid under a pillow, beneath a bed, forgotten in a locker or given to another person, their black ink is stamped in my mind. Their scent-- be it dusty; old like sunlit-rainy mornings slathered in sleep and easygoingness, or harsh and straight-edged; fresh from Barnes & Nobles--is safely hidden in the warmest corner of my [sensory] cerebrum. They understand that they will be left behind, but not forgotten. I build my world out of them, hide in the paper fortress and get lost in the sea of Carbon Font and Times New Roman. Comic Sans and Aria. As short lived as this love affair is, the effect is eternal.
Which is why I'm struck by A Thousand Splendid Suns. I didn't really like The Kite Runner, which is by the same author-Khaled Hosseini. It was magnificent, but there's a lot I could say about it. It needed some editing. What I love about Hosseini's books however, is that they seem to be the exact same books that sit in my room. Granted they're nothing like Nietzsche, or Dr.Suess, or Francis Bernard Shaw, but they seem to do the same thing the books slipped under the shag rug seem to do. They capture me when I need them, slip away when I'm done, but stay imprinted in my memory. They have a great deal of deep thinking, not only symbolically but ethically, morally, ect. You could read one page of A Thousand Splendid Suns, and be provided with conversational topics that would last you a week. Actually, I'm not sure about that. I doubt it's humanly possible to ONLY read one page of this book at a time.
Anyway, what I'm saying is, it's actually as impossible to find only ONE main thing to talk about in this book as it is to only read ONE page. One topic I'd like to talk about tonight though, is right at wrong. Perspective. Abuse. Violence.
We've been talking about violence, love, hatred and so on in our Romeo and Juliet text study, so this book actually helps me a little, in terms of finding important things in the Romeo and Juliet. What I've noticed and been thinking a lot about in A Thousand Splendid Suns, is what makes things wrong and right. Does believing something is right make it so? In this book, a man named Rasheed is physically abusing his wives, Mariam and Laila. At one point, he locks both women and Laila's child, Aziza, in a room for three days without food, water or sunlight. Afterwards, he doesn't regret, apologize, or question what he does. Simply says that they deserve it, that this is the consequence for their faults. Rasheed seems to almost symbolize the Taliban of this relationship, this family. He seems to be the epitomy of "An Eye for and Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth". Possibly much more extreme, actually. But what I don't understand, is why Rasheed seems not to understand the monstrosity and horror of what he's doing. All his abuse and evil doesn't even bother him. He doesn't realize what he's doing is wrong.
In Rasheeds eyes, hitting your wife, punching her, sticking a gun in her mouth, it's all totally acceptable. In Rasheed's eyes, this is alright. This is what a woman deserves if she misbehaves. Women are for bearing sons and taking care of their husbands and houses. And what makes Rasheed wrong? In Afghanistan, he's pretty much right. Women have no rights. They can't travel without a man, can't go out without a man, can't be out after a certain hour of night. Can't go to school, have to go to separate hospitals, can't go out without a burqua-a sort of robe that covers you head to toe-save for a mesh cover that allows you to see. Rasheed's world is totally in sync with the physical world he lives in. That surely doesn't make him right, though? Obviously, these monstrosities are exactly that-monstrous. They're unacceptable and unjust, right?
When I watch the news every weeknight with my mother, I seem to ask myself the same questions about the alarmingly increasing number of stories about murderers, arsonists, robbers, sex offenders and other criminals. Surely, they are insane. Surely , they're wrong in thinking what they're doing is acceptable. That's why they're going to jail-they're wrong!
But what happens in a place where the wrong things you're doing are concidered right? Or if not concidered right, simply overlooked? Are right and wrong really going to do a difference? What I mean is, if Rasheed is told ''What you're doing is wrong'', if he's arrested, sent to jail, for what he's doing, will he still believe he's right? Will he care if he is forced to see what he's doing is wrong? Is this situation even a matter of right or wrong?
Right and wrong seem to always come up in my conversations. I always seem to ask myself, is this right? is this wrong? It's almost like an obsession. I have to be on the right side of life. Which is fascinating AND creepy. It's also why I can't get through this book without questioning everything, and getting myself confused. I keep stepping into Rasheed's shoes and seeing why he would think he was right-even though it's totally corrupt and I don't agree with his thoughts at all. And it's not even like Hosseini paints Rasheed in a possitive light. It's just so easy to slip into Rasheed's mind and see what he sees, think what he thinks, hate what he hates and do what he does. (Not literally. I'm not that into any characters.)
But because of this, it's impossible for me to answer all of these questions honestly. So if you'd like, leave a comment answering one of these questions, or maybe just turn off your computer and read a book or eat a donut and watch T.V or something.
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