A Thousand Splendid Suns: Part I: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The first few days, Mariam mainly stays in her room, watching Rasheed leave for work on his bicycle. She looks through the house, everything reminding her of how she’s been uprooted. She’s barely hungry, and instead stays in bed and watches the women and children in the neighboring houses. She longs for the nights she and Nana would sit outside, or the afternoons reading the Koran with Mullah Faizullah. As the sun goes down, Mariam grows increasingly anxious at Rasheed’s return, and worries he’ll do to her what husbands do to their wives.

When Rasheed arrives home, he tells her about his day at the shoe shop, and things he’s heard on the street, such as about the American president Richard Nixon, who Mariam has never heard of. One night, instead of saying good night, he tells Mariam she’s been acting absurdly, and orders her to unpack her suitcase and start behaving like a wife.

The next morning Mariam unpacks and begins to cook lentils, carrots, and potatoes, kneading dough the way Nana showed her to make bread. She heads out for the communal tandoor, following the women and children walking in groups of three or four and complaining about their husbands. Mariam wonders if they’ve all had unlucky marriages, or if this is just a game the wives play. Mariam imagines they’ll somehow know she’s a harami.

A round, light-skinned woman taps Mariam on the shoulder, introducing herself as Fariba and saying she must be Rasheed’s new wife. She says her husband is Hakim, a teacher, and invites her to tea sometime. The other women begin to gather around Mariam and ask her all sorts of questions. Mariam backs away, anxious and feeling trapped, and Fariba tells the other women they’re frightening her. Mariam pushes out of the crowd and up the street, where she trips and falls, scraping her knee. She can’t remember which house is Rasheed’s, and pushes on several doors, increasingly desperate, until she recognizes the yard. She’s never before felt so alone.

That night, Rasheed seems pleased to see dinner set out. Mariam is nervous, but Rasheed says that it’s good. Rasheed offers to show Mariam around Kabul the next day. He takes out a blue burqa from his bag, and tells Mariam about the wives of customers who come to his shop wearing makeup and short skirts, and their husbands who think they’re modern intellectuals. Rasheed says they’re spoiling their honor and pride. Hakim and Fariba are one of these couples, he says—it’s embarrassing. Rasheed says that where he comes from, a woman’s face belongs to her husband alone. He gives her the burqa, and Mariam feels suddenly shrunken and small.