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Thousand splendid suns

I completed reading this book by Khaleid Husseini. It is a good book.

My heart goes out to Mariam. Her mother always keeps cursing her father. But father is so nice. He talks so sweetly, he brings gifts to her, he can not be bad , she thinks. She with her mother is living in a hut though her father is rich cinema owner. One fine day she decides, she will visit her father's house. She goes there only to realize that she is not even allowed inside the gate of the house. Sleeping on the street, whole night, next morning she is dropped back to her hut. But now she does not have a mother. The mother has hung herself from a tree.
    Now her father has no other option but to keep her in his house where his 3 legitimate wives and 10 children are staying. Step mothers find a way to get rid of her permanently. They find a match for her, who is a middle aged widower. Her protests to this match are unheard. Now she enters her another hell.

The story goes on like this. Your heart bleeds. How can women withstand so much torture,  from their own people?

  Ill treated by mother, betrayed by father, married to a groom old enough to be her grand father, scolded, beaten , kicked by this man every day for 27 years. Come on, isn't there any end to her woes? She finally finds some love and affection in her step children and her savathi what is the word for it, her husband's second wife. And finally she gathers enough courage in order to save them. And the other heroine of this tale is Laila who at least has a good life before she loses her universe in bomb blast.

 Muslim women in Islamist countries are cursed. I am not saying we Hindu women have a smooth life. But slightly better.

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