Can Afghan Mothers Speak? Re-reading A Thousand Splendid Suns of Khaled Hosseini as a Narrative of Agonised Motherhood
Abstract
Khaled Hosseini is a familiar name in world literature today because of his pioneering literary journey through the unsafe land of loss and lesion, Afghanistan. He is known for his vivid portrayal of life of the Afghan people through his narrative fiction. The paper analyzes his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) as a narrative of agonised motherhood. The idea of motherhood is instrumental in the poetics of Hosseini for representing the fretful lives of women in the text under consideration. Instead of dealing with the women’s suffering in a generalized method, the paper aims to specify and argue how motherhood as a social institution both subverts and oppresses the identity of women. The study focuses on each of the major women characters at a time and tries to underscore the subtle ways in which their precarious existence is exuded. Motherhood has assumed the role of an important narrative agency in Hosseini's tale and this paper attempts to unravel it.
Keywords: Afghanistan, Feminism, Motherhood, Narrative, Khaled Hosseini
Indeed, from childhood woman is repeatedly told she is made to bear children, and the praises of motherhood are sung; the disadvantages of her condition—periods, illness, and such—the boredom of household tasks, all this is justified by this marvelous privilege she holds, that of bringing children into the world. – Simon de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
Introduction
Khaled Hosseini has been writing about Afghanistan for almost two decades now. Professionally trained in medicine, Hosseini turned to writing about Afghanistan as he has always been haunted by the spectre of his country of origin. This article seeks to study his second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) as a narrative of agonized motherhood of Afghan women. This novel ventured to put the plight of the women in Afghanistan as mothers on the platter of the international audience for deliberations. Such women were generally overpassed by the world at large for years. Beginning with the Soviet Invasion, the country was ransacked time and again by the sectarian warlords from the groups like the Mujahidin. In the Taliban regime, the country saw the peak of brutality. Such crises have utterly failed conditions of human lives in Afghanistan. And the writer has used the concept motherhood as a narrative agency through which he has rendered the lives of women, specifically as mothers, in the horrid past of Afghanistan through his creative imagination.
Since time immemorial, women have been segregated by men in multifarious ways. And similarly, thinkers across ages have tried to understand the male-female dichotomy. We have examples like Aristotle, who in his Politics had viewed women “as in some sense biologically deficient” (Smith, 1983) and prescribed for them the roles like child rearing mother and others that confine them to their houses. As time passed, women started to become more conscious about their position in society. They began to appreciate their roles and raised their voice to acquire their due credit. A number of movements, led mostly by educated female activists, advocated for the cause of the women eventually giving rise to the discourse of Feminism. With Feminism, women voiced their concern, demanded their share of value and judgements.
However, the emergence of such pro-women discourses did not completely sweep away across the globe. The western world mostly benefitted from this women-led revolution while the women on the periphery like in many underdeveloped or developing countries, remained suppressed, voiceless and overpowered. Afghanistan is one such country where the lives of women are abject considering the trials and tribulations the country has been through. In Afghanistan during the time of Soviet Invasion, war, patriarchy, shariah law etc., combined to inflict brutal lesion to the identity of women. The present study attempts to underscore the precarious lives of Afghan women through the treatment of a few female characters who specifically play the role of a mother. This paper argues how motherhood is instrumental in the narrative conception of the novel and in understanding of the traumatic condition of women in a society which is ruled by fathers, husbands and the likes.
The study aims to draw on the scholarship on motherhood as produced by feminist theorists like Simon de Beauvoir and Adrienne Rich for example. Such theoretical grounds can be utilised to peep into the agonised presence of the women as mothers in a turbulent Afghanistan. And borrowing the ardent tenor of Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak’s seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, this paper questions whether these ill-fated subaltern (m)others of Afghanistan can obtain a voice of their own. The study aims to highlight whether these women characters can raise their voice against the injustice and oppression done towards them by a dominating male society or they merely form the child bearing other. Can they speak at all?
The novel under consideration here is basically a story of three women in Afghanistan who are set to live, suffer and challenge a hardcore patriarchal society, made more horrid frequently by the promulgation of strict shariah laws. In the postscript of the novel the writer says,
“…The Kite Runner—a father and son story set exclusively in the world of men. I wanted to write another love story set in Afghanistan but this time a mother/daughter tale and about the inner lives of two struggling Afghan women” (Hosseini 2007, 409)
As conveyed by the author, the novel in the present study effectively explores the conditions of women as mothers, daughters and wives in Afghanistan. This paper will consider the case of each of these women at a time and discuss her dreams and dilemmas individually. But before doing that it seems most germane to build up a conceptual framework of the idea of motherhood.
The Idea of Motherhood in Feminist Discourse
The idea of motherhood has always been a central drive in the identity-formation of women in any given era, society, culture or country. In most cases women have been confined to the kitchen, commissioned to the chores of preparing food and most specifically, bearing the babies for their male counterparts. On the other hand, men would stay outside home and earn the means of livelihood. With the arrival of feminist theorists like Simone de Beauvoir we are now made aware that women become women not only because they are born as such with some biological differences but also because of the gender role imposed upon them by a phallocentric society (Beauvoir et al. 2012, 267). Motherhood as a patriarchal institution has prompted a serious debate among the feminist thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century. Before that, feminism has mainly devoted its strength to achieve equal opportunities for women in political, economic and legal affairs of life which were denied to them for long. Even their rights to citizenship were compromised, considering military service a requisite for citizenship, on the basis of their gender (Allen 2005, 4).
At the end of the nineteenth century, women’s right to vote was topic of serious attention for the people who upheld a liberal outlook about democracy. The first and the second wave of feminism mainly addressed these issues of immediate concern e.g., right to vote, equal legal and social rights etc. for women. On the other hand the third wave of feminism, which purportedly began in the 1990s, posed more intricate questions which sought to understand the idea of womanhood in its very essence. And one of the most important initiatives taken by the feminists was to question the role of woman as a mother thereby highlighting a woman’s desire to reject or accept the social contract of becoming a mother. The twentieth century feminist thinkers considered motherhood as another patriarchal institution which perpetuates the role of the women as mothers which serve to subvert their identities as such. Patriarchy, on the pretext of celebrating and glorifying the identity of woman as a mother only incarcerates her, limits her social movements and places her on an idealistic pedestal from where she loses her voice most ironically.
Locating Motherhood in the Wilderness of Feminism
To locate the concept of motherhood in the wilderness of feminist critiques with better precision, the study will draw on Ann Snitow’s article Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading (1992) where she has done a commendable job in mapping the emergence and growth of the idea of mothering. In her article, Snitow traces the development of the idea of motherhood as seen and construed by feminist thinkers and charts a number of books written on relevant issues at the end of the article. She divides the entire feminist discourse about motherhood into three periods: the first period starting from 1963 to about 1975; the second from 1976 to 1979; and the third from 1980 to 1990.
In the first period (1963 – 1974) the author discusses about some “demon texts” which were demonized by the popular discourse because of the way those books treated the idea of mothering. She has discussed books like The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan and The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970) by Shulamith Firestone which apparently attacked the institution of motherhood in an unprecedented and vehement way in a crude manner.
The second period (1975 – 1979), according to Snitow, is characterised by the enterprise to explore the province of motherhood more rigorously in the feminist discourse. It saw the emergence of some of the most quoted books on motherhood like Rich’s Of Woman Born (1976) or The Laugh of the Medusa (1976 Eng. Trans.) by the French feminist Helene Cixous.
Sara Ruddic’s 1980 essay, “Maternal Thinking” is referred to as a seminal work in feminism which for Snitow launches the third period (1979/80 - 1990). The essay, as the author has tried to put, seeks to understand the emotional, impulsive and self-effacing traits which are generally attached to the concept of motherhood. Going beyond the debate of whether women should become mothers or not, the essay underscores some more subtle issues which are otherwise so palpable that they often evade intellectual consideration. Ruddick presents certain power struggles on the part of the mother in both personal and social terms. Her responsibilities towards the well being of the child viz., safeguarding it from natural vulnerabilities and others often make her helpless or powerless. A mother generally has no power over the natural forces. But the societal norms which often limit her possibilities are something which can be avoidable. And Ruddick puts how a mother has to undergo both these difficulties. She further explains the onus on the part of the mother to rear her children with proper manners so that they grow up with values and morals. Such duties are mainly left exclusively on the shoulder of the women.
Representation of Motherhood in A Thousand Splendid Suns
The novel, from its very beginning, highlights patriarchal rule functioning with full alacrity in Afghan households. Two decades of Afghan history, from the Soviet Invasion in the 1970s to the gruesome rise of the Talibans in the 1990s have been highlighted through the lives of the protagonists. Initially the conditions of women were not much pathetic in Kabul. Women taught there at universities and worked with men shoulder to shoulder, as doctors, teachers etc. But women outside Kabul, in the regions where Islamic rules rigidly dictated lives, experienced horrific lives as a marginalised group subjugated to the existence of their male counterparts. The novel opens in Gul Daman, an outskirt of Herat, where Mariam, one of the main protagonists, is born to a wealthy man out of wedlock. Right through the character of Nana, mother of Mariam, the saga of the dominated and suppressed motherhood leaps up and assumes newer and macabre shapes as other characters like Mariam and Laila experience motherhood. This study will take up the story of one such mother at a time, and assess the agonies as experienced by the character.
Nana, the Deserted Mother
The novel opens, and the readers are at once introduced to the unwedded mother who is addressed as ‘Nana’ by her daughter. Mariam is a bastard child and when she breaks one of the favourite cups of her mother, she is scolded and called a harami, a bastard. Thus the unlicensed birth of the girl is insinuated. Nana used to work in the house of Jalil, who was a wealthy person in Herat. She got suspended from her work when she conceived Jalil’s child in illegal way. Thus begins the destitute of a poor woman. She is not only denied the legal access to Jalil as his wife, rather she is forced to leave the locality and live with her daughter in a kolba, a hut which Jalil builds for her. Unlike Samuel Richardson’s character Pamela from the novel Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Nana failed to resist the seductive moves of her master and had her virtues rewarded through a legal relationship with him. Rather she ended up being punished for her sin. The father of Nana too disowns her and leaves for Iran to never return anymore to see her face. Such is the magnitude of Nana’s offence! Nana says how Jalil defends his cause before his other wives,
You know what he told his wives by way of defence? That I forced myself on him. That it was my fault. Didi? You see? This is what means to be a woman in this world. (Hosseini 2007, 7)
The situation of Nana reflects the condition in which women are subjected to live by a patriarchal society, a system that first sets up rules about how women should behave, and then punishes her for going astray. And in a patriarchal society again the sin of women only counts, not the mistake of men. As can be seen in the story, she is first ravished by a man, and then is held guilty for the same crime.
In her case, the identity of a mother brings nothing but affliction, pains and agonies. When Mariam conveys her desire to go school through Mullah Faizullah, the Quran tutor, Nana disapproves and says that a woman should learn nothing except for tahamul, endurance. Her thoughts are concerned only how much endurance a woman can inculcate in herself. And she wants Mariam to learn the same lesson and not anything else, let alone the lessons from the Quran. Nana is doing nothing but what Ruddick had mentioned in her essay, that a mother has to take care of the child in a way that s/he grows up learning the ways of the world. Nana also wants to rear Mariam in the same way. She does not want to create a bubble of idealism for her where she puts her trust on everyone or everything. But she is careful that her daughter learns the practicalities of life without any of its pretentions. That is why she does not like it much when Mariam expresses her affection for her father Jalil. Because in a society dominated by men like Jalil, the women must learn to be much more patient to survive, if not to thrive.
Hosseini has used profane motherhood as a situation which vivifies the abject condition of women in Afghan society. Motherhood has always been portrayed by feminist critics as an institution to exercise power over women. Noel Mack opines that the critics of motherhood understand the phenomenon as a powerful social institution shaping the lives of woman in modern society (Mack 2018, 2). Simone de Beauvoir also, in her celebrated work The Second Sex (1949), claims that, it is from the primary role as a mother that a woman plays all her oppressions springs.
Nana’s agonies as a mother is not limited to the shame she is subjected to suffer from, rather her physical condition is not spared from the traumas that motherhood brings to women. There is not an iota of doubt about the pains a woman undergoes while giving birth to a child. The help of medications or the care of a doctor can alleviate the sufferings of a woman at labour pains to some degree. As we read Nana’s story, we are told how inhumanly she had been left alone during her childbirth and denied all the cares she could be met with. The moments of the labour pain are described by Nana in graphic manner,
“...Jalil had not bothered to summon a doctor, or even a midwife...she lay all alone on the kolba’s floor, a knife by her side, sweat drenching her body” (Hosseini 2007, 11).
The knife is placed there with the intention to informing the readers that it is the mother herself who has to cut the umbilical cord to amputate the child off from her body when it is born. And when Mariam was born, the readers are informed that her father did not even hold her in his hands till she was a month old. Though such claims are later refuted by Jalil and he convinces Mariam otherwise, apparently to win her confidence.
Nana is denied the personhood which Adrienne Reich talks about in her book Of Woman Born (Rich 1986, 11). Her presence in the novel is felt only through her agonised motherhood. Her presence in the novel is only seen through her performance of the chores in Jalil’s household, and her use as a womb to conceive Mariam, that too out of the legal bond of marriage. She is only a body and her existence as a person is obfuscated by her being an illegitimate daughter bearer. She becomes pale into insignificance beside the other wives of Jalil who enjoy the status of legal wives hence the celebrated mothers. Society has always defended motherhood as an institution by glorifying it. It is as if only through motherhood that a woman is complete. Motherhood completes her is the very ideological apparatus that is used by the patriarchal society to house-arrest a woman and restrain them from participating in the outside world. But that does not happen in Nana’s case. Her identity as a mother is stigmatized, disapproved. She is shown to have none of the glories of motherhood and all of the agonies of it. Her story ends in the novel with her suicide.
Mariam, the Mother who Never Becomes a Mother
After Nana’s tragic self extinction, the emotive story of Mariam starts. From the beginning of the novel, the writer has encapsulated the callous behaviour of Jalil through his superficial concern for his daughter’s well being. And the irony is apparent when she is even denied the sight of her father when she crawls to the door of his mansion. And this decision, to go to visit Jalil’s home, of Mariam cuts her both ways. Now she is with the knowledge that the father she has envisioned in Jalil is nonexistent and that now she does not have the companionship of her mother who killed herself. Mariam’s regret to go against her mother’s will is intense and she cannot but remember the last few words of Nana - “Don’t leave me Mariam jo. Please stay. I will die if you go” (Hosseini 2007, 27).
Jalil takes Mariam to his house when the burial of Nana is executed. Mariam reflects that she is taken to an abode the doors of which were closed for her a couple of days back. She is then allotted a room which was otherwise used for providing for guests, the outsiders. She is indeed an outsider in Jalil’s household. The heavy air, the unfamiliar phenomena and the comings and goings of people around, everything reminded Mariam that she did not belong there. And Nana had always wanted Mariam to believe that she was an unwelcomed guest in Jalil’s household, in Jalil’s life. And the allotment of the guest room to her only crystallizes the idea. At once she realized why Nana had become so acrimonious about her Jalil.
Not before long, Mariam has her baptism of fire, when she is told about a suitor in Rasheed, waiting to marry her. This was nothing but an effort put by Jalil’s family to drive away the living shame to the distant land of Kabul, where Rasheed’s home is situated so that they can shake off her as some dust from their body. Rasheed appears before Mariam as a new adversary. Mariam is fifteen and Rasheed is in his forties as informed by Jalil’s wife Afsoon. The very conviction that now she has to beard the lion in his den, puts Mariam at her tether’s end. The girl who never went beyond two kilometres from her kolba was now being sent six hundred kilometres away. Now it was her turn to play the role of a wife, of a mother and so too without an iota of personal interest.
Rasheed takes Mariam to Kabul after a quick performance of the nuptial business. Her condition is apathetic after moving so far away from her own people and known places. Without any considerable show of amenity, Rasheed commences his conjugal life with Mariam instructing her beforehand of the wife he wants to see in her,
Where I come from, a woman’s face is her husband’s business only. I want you to remember that. Do you understand? (Hosseini 2007, 69)
The neighbours also have poked Mariam already, regarding the gender of the babies that Mariam would be expected to bear for Rasheed before long. Such expectation put up by a society displays the importance attached to the female capacity of mothering. Her neighbours already convince her that all Rasheed wants from her is a child, and most preferably a baby boy.
But as it turns out, Mariam’s tragedy lies in her inability to bring Rasheed a child. She conceives babies in her womb more than six times but she cannot nourish them for long in her belly. Multiple miscarriages leave Mariam childless, hopeless and hapless. She is subjected to intense sufferings because of her barrenness. This incapability of bearing children is something which tarnishes the identity of a woman as a woman. Rasheed’s bitterness grows with each loss, time and again, and is manifest in the domestic violence he makes Mariam undergo. Mariam’s agonies know no bound as she fails to give back Rasheed his son who had drowned purportedly. This clearly testifies to the worthlessness attributed to her once she fails to become a mother. It seems her existence relies on her capability to beget children and she is reduced to a mere womb. Rasheed, who lost his son from the former wife, expected another issue desperately from his new wife. And things turned awry when fate hatches another plan for the couple.
Mariam’s hope for motherhood too is manifest in her feelings as she becomes pregnant for the first time. It is apparent that her joys know no limit with the baby in her womb. Suddenly she found everything alright with the world.
When Mariam thought of this baby, her heart swelled inside of her. It swelled and swelled until all the loss, all the grief, all the loneliness and self-abasement of her life washed away. This was why God had brought her here, all the way across the country. She knew this now. (Hosseini 2007, 88)
As we find, this happiness concluded in utter distress since fate and the author had decreed some rude misfortunes for her. Mariam was lifted upwards with the prospect of motherhood only to be dashed to the ground finally. Though cursed with childlessness, we find the character of Mariam appear as a friend and as a mother figure for Laila who is to be the next wife of Rasheed after he rescues her from a rocket attack that kills her entire family. The poor Mariam could not become mother but ended up playing the mother of her sister wife.
Laila, the Grateful Mother
Laila can be considered the second protagonist of the novel. Daughter of Hakim who is a teacher and Fariba, Laila is raised as a bright child. Hakim is an educated person who advocates for the cause of women in society. Laila also develops a romantic attachment towards Tarik who is her childhood friend later only to be separated. Tarik leaves for Pakistan with his family to evade the turbulent conditions in homeland. Before the final estrangement the two lovers unite, and Laila conceives Tarik’s baby in her womb. When Hakim prepares to flee the country, a rocket hits the house and Laila remains the sole survivor in the family.
It is Rasheed and Mariam who replenish Laila with life. After realizing that Tarik’s child is growing inside her, Laila accepts the marriage proposal of Rasheed, only to dodge the shame of becoming an unmarried mother much like Nana. The expectant Rasheed discriminates against Mariam in his display of affection toward the women. Mariam also declares before Laila that she would not be her servant. It is the ability to produce children that creates the tussle between the two women apparently. First Mariam was rebuked for not becoming a mother. Now she is further reduced to a nonexistent being vis-à-vis Laila, whose ability to beget a child makes her better successful as a wife, as a woman. The role that the idea of motherhood plays in the formation of female identity is overtly manifest here.
Laila disappoints Rasheed much when she delivers a baby girl later to be named Aziza. Though Laila takes great pleasure in having Aziza and feels great at peace with the world after becoming a mother. Rasheed gradually grows bitter with Laila and begins to mistreat with her too. Common misery unites the two women and they find an oasis of occasional relief in each other. They soon become friends. Aziza becomes fond of Mariam also.
The traumatic experience of the mother during her childbirth is sharply presented by the author when he describes the caesarean birth of Zalmai. The pains and agonies that Laila undergoes are several times multiplied because of the poor conditions of the hospitals under the rule of the Talibans. Women thronging into the hospitals are treated with least medical facilities. Because of the lack of medications the doctor has to operate on Laila without any anaesthesia. And this puts Laila in unspeakable miseries.
Laila’s eyes snapped open. Then her mouth opened. She held like this, held, held, shivering, the cords in her neck stretched, sweat dripping from her face, her fingers crushing Mariam’s. (Hosseini 2007, 284)
Hosseini's way of narrating the labour pain here seems to underlie some specific agenda: that of informing the readers beyond gender identities about the physical trauma that women endure at the time of parturition. The graphic presentation of Laila, the patient, spread on the “gurney bed” curtained by clothes, the incision on her belly without any anaesthesia, and the groans of utter agonies, all combine to exude the tribulations of motherhood.
The story next develops and assumes newer dimensions as Laila’s former love Tariq returns. Rasheed then beats Laila brutally and is himself killed by Mariam. Mariam is executed by the Taliban and Laila leaves for Pakistan with Tariq. The couple is finally married and attains the happiness they had always dreamt about. It turns out that Laila is the only mother in the novel that attains comfort eventually.
Conclusion
The first woman character discussed in the paper is a passive receptacle of all the troubles which a male oriented society has to offer. The second one, Mariam, is someone who finally hits back and kills her oppressor. As if she represents the activist women who once fought for their rights and voice, finally inaugurating a whole new discourse of feminism. And the third one, Laila, is the person who translates the sacrifices of her successors into a meaningful, happy and grateful life. Hosseini's story is essentially a narrative of motherhood and mothers. It narrates their pains, their agonies and their confrontation with a life that is intolerably bleak and blistering. But it not only shows their fall, but their rise; not only their silence, but their convulsion. And through Mariam’s final outrage, the voice of the women is restored to some extent. Though she does not get away with the outrageous display of angst and has to accept her end. It is only through Mariam’s means that Laila succeeds in breaking apart the chains of a patriarchal state and flee to a land of freedom. Motherhood is indeed a crucial instrument in the conception of the novel to showcase the despair of women. But at the same time, this very identity of a mother turns them unwearied, resilient and strong. Nana had her last hope in Mariam. Mariam saw the chance of a good life through motherhood which did not happen in her case. And Laila eventually gets to appreciate the identity of motherhood though her union with Tariq. Perhaps these women were never schooled with feminist discourse. As many theorists have noted, motherhood is not a matter of choice for these characters, rather a means of escape, from a life troubled by thousand more challenges. Hosseini's story teaches the world of battles which are fought by the mothers of Afghanistan on a daily basis. The novel compels its readers to expand their vision and pan through the struggle of the girls, women and mothers of Afghanistan.
References