Splendid Suns: Ending.

Ophelia · Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2007 3:51 am Post subject: Splendid Suns: Ending.

A thousand Splended Suns:

Any comments on the ending of the novel ?

WildCityWoman · Junior Joined: 13 Jan 2008 Posts: 321 Gender:

I'm pleased she and Tariq found each other again and got together.

And it goes against my better principles to say this, but when they killed off that old fart?

I ENJOYED IT IMMENSELY!

Unfortunately, not all Afghanistans have happy endings to their lives though.

Ophelia · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:57 pm Post subject:

I see what you mean Carla about the reader not shedding tears on Rasheed's demise.

This is of course one of those conflict solutions that happen mostly in books; without the author's providential intervention reality would have been bleak for the women, just lifelong misery.

I found it interesting to note that the author is always concerned about his characters and their humanity-- as they took the decision to kill they thought about peotecting the son whose father had locked in a room.

WildCityWoman · Junior Joined: 13 Jan 2008 Posts: 321 Gender:

Although Rasheed is a creep of the highest order as far as his treatment and attitude toward women is concerned, I don't think he meant harm in locking the boy in the room.

He, in his warped way of thinking, thought he was protecting the child from what he viewed as 'evil women'.

I think Rasheed was cruel to the extreme; he was just plain sick in the head with the fundamentalistic side of Islam.

The author does a good job at making us realize that not all Muslim men are cruel to women.

(Sorry I didn't get a chance to come back for a couple of days.)

Ophelia · Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:17 pm Post subject: women in Muslim countries

Yes, Carly, Rasheed loved his son (not his daughter though) and only locked him up because he didn't want him to witness the argument/ beating up scene that was about to follow.

Yesterday I saw a very disturbing documentary on TV: it was about the equivalent of a psychiatric hospital in Pakistan.

First, the inmates/ patients were only women and their children (males having either no psychiatric problems or being treated in different types of places).
The women were in cells, behind bars. One had been brought there many months before for ...whatever her husband had decided this place was for. He had said he would be back soon; he never returned, but sent her divorce papers after a month.

WildCityWoman · Junior Joined: 13 Jan 2008 Posts: 321 Gender:

That's awful, isn't it . . . but at least it's better than your inlaws killing you off.

I've heard about that - the groom's parents take so much money from the bride's parents when they get married.

Then they want to get rid of the bride - so the mother in law gives her son's wife something to do at the stove, and it blows up!

Geesh!

Ophelia · Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:48 pm Post subject:

I read about this many times about India, so this time it's not Muslim culture.
It happens so often that all the main newspapers have a page listing "dowry deaths".

Why be satisfied with the dowry your first wife brings if her death can bring about dowry number two?

In most cases it's engineered by mothers-in-law, but that's not all: in those rare cases when the police actually investigate and the in-laws are found guilty, only the mother-in law goes to jail most of the time. The husband, if bothered at all, just pays a fine, although there are specific laws condemning those customs in India.

I saw a TV programme where they showed some of the mothers-in-law in jail, explaining indignantly that they had no idea why they were there and how they'd always been good mothers, etc...

As is so often the case, customs, ignorance, poverty, and human nature are a lethal mix.

WildCityWoman · Junior Joined: 13 Jan 2008 Posts: 321 Gender:

Although I wonder if that's the case - do the men make the women commit the crime, or take the blame for it?

I dunno' . . .

I wonder how the bride's husband actually feels about it.

I wonder why I particularly mistrust the 'men' in these cultures? Surely all the women aren't lilly-white innocents.

Ophelia · Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2008 1:19 pm Post subject:

WildCityWoman wrote:

WildCityWoman · Junior Joined: 13 Jan 2008 Posts: 321 Gender:

Ah, thanks Ophelia . . . I won't do it right now though.

I've been stuck at home with an ankle/foot that I sprained last weekend - today I've got two appointments;

1) dietician;
2) x-rays . . . chest, bone density, etal.

Then I hope to be taken to lunch at Ali Baba's - where I might get to have Shrawrma chicken again!

So I don't wanna' depress myself this early in the morn.

Ha ha!


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