A Thousand Splendid Suns: Part III: Chapter 47 Summary & Analysis

Mariam is placed in the Walayat women’s prison near Chicken Street. There are no curtains or glass on the windows, so there’s no privacy from the Talib guards. She’s in a cell with five women and four children: many of the children have been born here, and have never seen the world outside. All the other women are there for having run away from home, so Mariam has a certain notoriety and the women compete to share food and blankets with her.

One of the women, Naghma, tried to elope with a mullah’s son. When they were caught, he was flogged until he said that Naghma had cast a spell on him. He was freed and Naghma jailed. Mariam recalls Nana’s warning: men can always find a woman to blame.

At Mariam’s trial, there had been no cross-examination, no legal council or appeals. One elderly judge spoke to Mariam with apology rather than accusation. Another, younger, judge claimed that women’s brains are made differently than men’s, which is why a woman’s word is worth less. The elderly judge then said that he had only a few months to live. Though he was not frightened to die, he was frightened to be summoned to God and have to explain why he did not obey God’s laws. He understood Mariam’s cause, but was disturbed by her brutality—even if Mariam did not seem to be a wicked woman. He said he must sentence her to death, as Shari’a law requires. She was given a document to sign, remembering the last time she’d signed her name to a document, 27 years before.

On the last of Mariam’s ten days in prison, she watches children below her barred window, singing a rhyme Jalil had taught her. That night she’d dreamed of eleven pebbles, arranged vertically; of a young Jalil; of Mullah Faizullah playing with her in the stream; and of Nana calling her to dinner in the kolba.

On the way to Ghazi Stadium, the young Talib across from her in the bus asks if she’s hungry. When she refuses, he asks if she’s afraid. She says she is, and the Talib says that his own father, according to his mother, was the bravest man she knew—and yet he still was crying the day the communists took him. For the first time, Mariam cries a little.

As she enters Ghazi stadium, thousands of people look down at her. Earlier, she had feared she would panic or weep, but she thinks of Zalmai, of the father she took from him, and she’s able to walk steadily. She knows she has had a difficult, painful life, but she finds herself, in these last seconds, wishing for more of it—more time with Laila, the ability to see Aziza grown up, to play with her children.

But at the last moment, as she closes her eyes and the guard lifts his Kalashnikov, she feels not regret but peace. She came into the world as a harami, an unwanted, shameful presence, but since then she has loved and been loved. Her final thoughts are from the Koran, about God, the Mighty, the Great Forgiver. The guard asks her to kneel, and one last time she does as she’s told.