Irene’s Reviews > A Thousand Splendid Suns > Status Update

"When she was younger, she used to sit for hours outside this door. She would tap on it and whisper Mammy’s name over and over, like a magic chant meant to break a spell. But Mammy never opened the door. She didn’t open it now."

'I know you’re still young, but I want you to understand and learn this now,' he said. 'Marriage can wait, education cannot.'

"Tears were leaking out of the corners of her eyes. 'CHEW!' he bellowed. Something in the back of her mouth cracked. 'Good.' Then he was gone, leaving [her] to spit out pebbles, blood, and the fragments of two broken molars."

"…each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. As a reminder of how women like us suffer. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us."

'I used to worship you,' she said. 'I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you were ashamed of me.' 'I’ll visit you,' he muttered. 'No. No,' she said. 'Don’t come. I won’t see you. Don’t you come. I don’t want to hear from you. Ever. Ever.' He gave her a wounded look. 'It ends here for you and me. Say your good-byes.' 'Don’t leave like this,' he said in a thin voice.

If she could articulate it, she might have that she was tired of being an instrument, of being lied to, laid claim to, used. 'You’re afraid,' she might have said. 'You’re afraid that I might find the happiness you never had. And you don’t want me to be happy. You don’t want a good life for me. You’re the one with the wretched heart.'

'A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you. I’m the only one who loves you. I’m all you have in this world, Mariam, and when I’m gone you’ll have nothing. You’ll have nothing. You are nothing!' Then she tried guilt. 'I’ll die if you go. You’ll see, I’ll swallow my tongue and die. Please stay. I’ll die if you go.'

"That I forced myself on him. That it was my fault…This is what it means to be a woman in this world…Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always."

"He described to her the green wheat fields of Herat, the orchards, the vines pregnant with plump grapes, the city’s crowded, vaulted bazaars."