A Thousand Splendid Suns: Part IV: Chapter 50 Summary & Analysis

Life in Murree is comfortable and calm, the kind that Laila used to dream of when she was with Rasheed. She is thankful for it, but one night in July 2002, she and Tariq are talking about how the coalition forces have driven the Taliban out of every major city, and there’s now an interim president, Harmid Karzai. She decides it’s time to tell Tariq how she misses Kabul, but also feels restless when she hears about schools and roads being rebuilt. She hears Babi in her head telling her she can do anything she wants; she hears Mammy saying she wants to be in Afghanistan when her sons’ dream of a new country come true; and finally, she can’t think that Mariam died so that Laila could live comfortably as a maid in a foreign place.

When she tells Tariq, he asks if she’s not happy in Murree. Though she is, she tells him that she wants to be a part of what’s happening in Kabul. She says it’s only if he wants to go to, and Tariq smiles and says he’ll follow her to the end of the world. But first, she says, she wants to go to Herat.

Laila has to convince Aziza, who still has nightmares, that Kabul is safer now. As Sayeed drives them to the station, Laila herself wonders if they’re really right to leave the safety of Murree. But she recalls Babi’s ode by Saib-e-Tabrizi to Kabul, about the thousand splendid suns, and she’s convinced that they’re making the right decision.

They pass through Iran on the way to Herat, since the Afghan roads have been decimated. They pass an Afghan refugee camp, all black tents and sheets of corrugated steel. But in Herat, most of the streets are paved and lined with trees, with steady electricity and parks under construction. Ismail Khan, the warlord who controls Herat, collects customs at the Afghan-Iranian border that Kabul says is meant for the central government, to invest in the city. Their taxi driver speaks in awe and a bit of fear of Ismail Khan.

After a night in a hotel, Tariq finds Laila a taxi, since she wants to go alone. Zalmai starts to cry when she leaves, but then he reaches for Tariq, which both comforts and devastates Laila.

The taxi driver says he’s lived in Herat his whole life, and has seen everything—even the March 1979 uprising, when a couple of Heratis killed a few Soviet advisers and the Soviets bombed the city in retaliation. Thousands were killed, including the driver’s two sisters. Laila marvels at the grief and loss that is present in every Afghan’s story, but also at the Afghan people’s survival—including her own.

They drive through the village of Gul Daman, and the driver asks for directions from a boy playing by a windmill, before stopping in front of a walled one-story house. A middle-aged man opens the door. When Laila asks for Mullah Faizullah’s house, he says that he is his son Hamza. She’s come about Jalil Khan’s daughter, Mariam, Laila says. At once, Hamza’s face lights up, and he asks if Mariam’s also come. He seems to deflate when Laila says she’s passed on, but he invites her in anyway.

Laila tells Hamza everything. Near the end she struggles to stay composed. After a long silence, Hamza says his father was incredibly fond of Mariam, and was upset when Jalil sent her away. But Mullah Faizullah lived to an old age, he says.

Laila asks Hamza to show her where Mariam lived. They walk fifteen minutes downhill, and then up a grassy path until they reach a clearing and a streambed now dried up. Laila hurries up until she reaches the willows and sees that the kolba is still there. The interior is tiny, dark, and dim. Laila tries to imagine Mariam living fifteen years in this place. Here, though, unlike in Pakistan, it’s easy to summon the details of her face. She pictures the kolba at the time of Miriam’s childhood, with tea on the stove and chickens clucking outside. She pictures Mariam as a child, knowing that in a few years she will become a woman who will endure without complaining, never burdening others despite her own sorrows. Weeping now, Laila says goodbye to Mariam.

Upon their return, Hamza gives Laila a box, which Jalil had given to his father before he died, asking him to keep it for Mariam. His father never unlocked it, he says, so it is God’s will for it to be Laila.

Back at the hotel, Laila opens the box to find an envelope, a burlap sack, and a videocassette. Laila asks the clerk to allow Laila to use the videocassette in the hotel’s one TV. She’s confused, and doesn’t understand—the film is Disney’s Pinocchio.

The envelope holds a letter dated May 13, 1987. In it, Jalil tells how disappointed he was that Mariam did not come out to speak with him in Kabul a month earlier, but he can’t blame her. He tells of all his family sorrows, and hopes she has been spared the same. He says he misses Mariam, and feels constant shame and regret for how he treated her. He regrets he didn’t let her in the day she visited him in Herat, and that he didn’t make her a real daughter. Honor, now, means little to him, after all the terrible things he’s seen in war. Now he can only ask for her forgiveness. He is no longer wealthy, but has enclosed Mariam’s share of his inheritance. He knows death is coming, and he hopes that she will be more charitable to him than he ever was to her. He hopes she will come and see him one last time, and give him the chance to welcome her like he never did before.

That night, after they’ve eaten dinner and returned to the hotel, Laila tells Tariq about the letter and shows him the money in the sack. He holds her as she cries.