WARNING: LONG

Grace Taylor

Mrs. Shannon Kelly

AP English Literature & Composition

13 April 2016

Analyzing Afghanistan: A Look Into the Historical and Modern Significance of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

1. The Search Story

Thirty-two dead, over three hundred wounded—that’s the casualty count for the most recent attack in Brussels (Kennedy and Domonoske). One hundred thirty dead, over three hundred fifty wounded—that’s the count for the November 2015 Paris attacks (BBC News). Almost three thousand dead, over 6,000 others wounded—that’s the aftermath of terrorism at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania (CNN). That’s the date which, to quote FDR, will truly “Live in infamy.” What do each of these attacks have in common? One can trace their origins back to Afghanistan, with a little help from the Internet and Khaled Hosseini.

Before beginning research on the Middle East’s long and muddled history, I first found my interest piqued by the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s sophomore success detailing the plight of women in Afghanistan. However, as a work of fiction, the novel left me with a lot of unanswered questions. In this paper I hope to share what I have learned regarding Hosseini’s choice of title, U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan, parallels to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the rise of terrorism in the modern era, and Western attitudes towards the Middle East.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini focuses on the common human bonds strengthened by love to relate the lives of Muslim women to the Western world and generate awareness for ethnic conflict in Afghanistan during the late 20th century. He uses Islamic culture, historical context, and a compelling plot to highlight this theme and demonstrate the similarities between women across national borders.

In exploring this theme, my first question led me to the poem “Kabul” by Saib Tabrizi. It was no easy task finding information about this poem that wasn’t written in Farsi or by other high school students tasked with similar projects. Since I don’t speak Farsi, luckily Hosseini included the version translated by Dr. Josephine Davis in his text. The poem was written in the 17th century, which necessitated my delving even farther back in history to research the Mughal Empire. The Embassy of Afghanistan’s webpage provided the information I would need to analyze Tabrizi’s poetry as it relates to the novel.

To learn more about U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, I needed to consult another government source—The U.S. Department of State’s webpage. However, this page didn’t offer much more than a standard history textbook, focusing more on Korea and Vietnam than the Middle East. Therefore, I looked up Mohammad Najibullah, whom Hosseini references in the novel, online via Encyclopaedia Britannica. I also found a helpful account of Afghanistan’s history written by Katherine Harvey of Stanford University.

Scanning YouTube when compiling my class presentation for the novel yielded one video portraying women’s fashion in Iran over the last century. This video spurred my third question regarding the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which was explained on the Iran Chamber Society’s webpage. Iranian-American academic Haleh Esfandiari outlined the effect the revolution had on women of the era, contrasting with Laila’s experiences in communist Afghanistan.

I also hoped to acknowledge several misconceptions about Islam in this paper, especially those concerning jihad and Al-Qaeda. Spiritual leaders Muhammad Kabbani and Seraj Hendricks wrote an 11-page paper breaking down these misconceptions that proved incredibly useful. Giles Foden, a writer for The Guardian, explained how Al-Qaeda rose to power under the Taliban and former Syrian ambassador Robert Ford connected this to current conflict with ISIS perpetuated by Sunni-Shia tensions.

Finally, a Q&A with Khaled Hosseini published on his website offered his purpose in publishing the acclaimed novel, and publications by the Pew Research Center and associate professor Belinda F. Espiritu shed light on public opinion and the media portrayal of Muslims in the world today. These combined sources allowed me to expose each of my questions in a historical and responsive context and develop my own opinion regarding the very relevant issues surrounding the Middle East.

1. The Search Results

Hosseini chose his title based on a line from the poem “Kabul” by Iranian poet Saib Tabrizi. How do the diction, imagery, and details of the poem portray the city in a historical context and how does this contrast with the lives of Afghan women, notably Mariam and Laila?

I’ll include the poem here for reference:

Oh, the beautiful city of Kabul wears a rugged mountain skirt,

And the rose is jealous of its lash-like thorns.

The dust of Kabul's blowing soil smarts lightly in my eyes,

But I love her, for knowledge and love both come from her dust.

I sing bright praises to her colourful tulips,

The beauty of her trees makes me blush.

How sparkling the water flows from Pul-i-Mastaan!

May Allah protect such beauty from the evil eye of man!

Khizr chose Kabul to Paradise,

For her mountains brought him near to heaven's delights.

The fort's dragon-sprawling walls guard the city well,

Each brick is more precious than the treasure of Shayagan.

Every street in Kabul fascinates the eye.

In the bazaars, Egypt's caravans pass by.

No one can count the beauteous moons on her rooftops,

And a thousand splendid suns hide behind her walls.

Her morning's laugh is as gay as flowers,

Her dark nights shine like beautiful hair.

Her tuneful nightingales sing with flame in their notes,

Fiery songs like burning leaves, fall from their throats.

I sing to the gardens, Jahanara and Sharbara.

Even the Tuba of Paradise is Jealous of their greenery.

(Kenwood Academy, 1)

Tabrizi offers abundant praise for the city, using affectionate diction, striking imagery, and majestic details to express his wonder at its beauty, which he compares to that of a woman. The poem was written in the 17th century (Kenwood Academy, 1), during which time Afghanistan was merely considered a peripheral aspect of the Mughal Empire, which had moved its capital from Kabul to India (Embassy of Afghanistan). In his poem, Tabrizi makes an effort to acknowledge Kabul’s splendor during this period despite the city’s limited role. He also acknowledges its rougher aspects, writing that “the rose is jealous of its lash-like thorns,” lending both beauty and harshness to his personification of the city.

This line aligns itself perfectly with the image Hosseini portrays regarding Afghan women, who retain beauty in their strength and harshness from the struggles they have faced, with Laila and Mariam representing both pieces of the rose metaphor, respectively. Still, in Tabrizi’s poem, the city’s “blowing soil” hurts the speaker despite his love for it, much like Afghanistan hurts its women during each period of war, instability, and tyrannical government. Fariba’s love for the city and its connection with her dead sons makes her reluctant to leave and ultimately leads to her own death. Hosseini is purposeful in his inclusion of this poem in the novel (even using a line for the title) because Tabrizi’s feminization of the city and its audacious beauty that “makes [him] blush” is a stark contrast from the way in which women are instructed to hide their femininity and feel shame for it under the rule of the Taliban.

Foreign Policy

Afghanistan went through several changes of power before the United States intervened in 2004. How did U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War exacerbate conflict in the Middle East and how does Hosseini allude to this in his novel?

During the Cold War with the U.S.S.R., George F. Kennan’s policy of containment outlined that preventing communism from gaining influence and expanding would lead to its own collapse under economic pressures, as surmised from the Long Telegram sent in 1946 (U.S. Department of State). While the most notorious examples of this policy’s implementation took place in Korea and Vietnam, the U.S. treatment of the Middle East also reflected this idea, a fact of which many Americans remain unaware to this day.

From 1979 to 1988, the Soviet Union attempted to control Afghanistan by installing a Soviet-friendly government under Mohammad Najibullah (Encyclopaedia Britannica). By arming the Mujahideen, an assortment of Afghan warlords that resisted Najibullah’s government, the United States perpetuated the bloodiest war in the history of Afghanistan (Harvey). At the collapse of the Soviet Union, these warlords would turn on each other, as referenced in the novel by “the troublesome marriage of guns and ego” (Hosseini, 170), as Babi puts it to young Laila. This left behind Islam radicals and Jihadi fighters that endorsed terrorism to oppose the West, and are still seen in organizations like ISIS today.

Hosseini clearly delineates the U.S. as one cause of the war in the passage:

And certainly no one, no one, dared repeat in her presence that,

after eight years of fighting, the Soviets were losing this war. Particularly now that

the American president, Reagan, had started shipping the Mujahideen Stinger Missiles to down the Soviet helicopters, now that Muslims from all over the world were joining the cause: Egyptians, Pakistanis, even wealthy Saudis, who left their millions behind and came to Afghanistan to fight the jihad. (Hosseini, 112-113)

Had we not armed amoral tyrants to serve our own selfish ends, we would not be facing the harsh backlash of our actions today, and the accompanying humanitarian crises that have been taking place in the Middle East since the 1980s and can be qualified through stories like Hosseini’s that shed light on the situations of average Afghan citizens. Mariam and Laila, though fictional, were hardly outliers—and we have yet to accept responsibility for the chaos that ensued after the Soviets fell.

The Islamic Revolution of 1979

Afghanistan was not the only country in this region experiencing conflict in the late 20th century. How do the historical events of parallel the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, especially with concern to the role of the Muslim woman?

In Afghanistan in 1979, the Soviets have taken control and the country has actually become less conservative with respect to equal rights. Women are smoking cigarettes, wearing “makeup and skirts that show their knees” (Hosseini, 70), and even receiving higher education.

However, in Iran, a national referendum took place after the Shah was deposed from power. This referendum resulted in a landslide victory in favor of an Islamic Republic (Iran Chamber Society). Ayatollah Khomeini became the supreme spiritual leader of the state, and, unlike their newly communist counterparts, extreme regulations on women’s dress were passed.

This shocked the Western world, because it marked one of the first instances in history where people voted for a repressive government. The punishment for a woman showing any hair was 70 public lashes. Men got exclusive custody of children and women lost divorce privileges. Polygamy became commonplace, and girls could be forced into marriage as early as nine years old (Esfandiari).

Historically, whenever a predominantly Muslim country swings towards conservatism, the freedoms allowed to women are greatly diminished. Afghanistan would see this later with the rise of the Taliban, as detailed in . Finally, by 2009, after our story ends, Iran’s Green Movement saw student populations demanding democracy and expressing their desire for peaceful change. Not long before, in Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud created the United Front in the North against the Taliban, where he also promoted peace and respect for women. Women—really people in general—can only tolerate injustice for so long, after which political attitudes are forced to shift. Both Iran and Afghanistan act as testaments to this truth.

Contemporary Connection

How do current humanitarian crises like the rise of ISIS and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan put historical events into perspective? What is the connection between events in the novel and current Jihadi terrorist groups?

What is jihad exactly? According to Muhammad Kabbani, Chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, and Seraj Hendricks, Head of Cape Town, South Africa, jihad “can refer to internal as well as external efforts to be a good Muslim or believer, as well as working to inform people about the faith of Islam” (ISCA, 10).

The word itself means struggling or striving, not “holy war,” as is a popular misconception in America. The Arabic word for war is “al-harb” and more accurately describes the actions of so-called “Jihadi” fighters.

In true jihad, there are strict rules of engagement not followed by radicals like those in ISIS and the Haqqani Network of Afghanistan. For one, innocents must never be harmed in the name of Islam, including women, children, and invalids. Turn on any news channel and it seems that the radicals conveniently forget this rule quite often.

Jihad is also not supposed to be a declaration of war against other religions. The Qur’an actually mandates that Christians and Jews in particular be respected as “people of the Book” who worship the same God (ISCA, 10). This should dispel the generalized notion that all Muslims are violent people, a concept on which Hosseini himself hoped to elucidate through texts like and his earlier work, . Furthermore, it is clear that the primary victims of radical “jihad” are the citizens of Muslim countries.

The word “jihad” is not the only Arabic term to have been misconstrued over the last few decades. “Al-Qaeda,” an organization infamous for the September 11th attacks on the United States, borrows its nomenclature from the Arabic word for “database” (Foden). During Russia’s occupation, the CIA possessed a of rebel fighters eligible to receive training, funding, weapons, and supplies. It didn’t take long for those fighters to turn on America once the Soviets left, as explained in Hosseini’s novel.

Those parallels to Iran come back into play when we consider that Middle Easterners have long memories—which we as Americans have difficulty understanding. According to former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, since we toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2005, “Sunni Arabs have perceived that they are under attack by Shia irregulars abetted by Iran or sometimes by the Shia-majority Iraqi government forces” (Ford). This has caused the pace of ISIS gains in areas like the Levant, where majority oppression exists, to accelerate rapidly. Combine a terrorist network that we created in Afghanistan with political unrest that we also created in Iraq and a pretty dicey situation unfolds. Still, we would make a mistake by supporting the Iranians against ISIS, since their goal is to secure Shia dominance, not an equal balance of power (Ford). That mistake could cost us another fifty years of military involvement in a region already struggling to stand on its own.

Western Attitudes

What was Hosseini’s intent when he published in 2007? How have Western attitudes towards the Middle East changed over the last nine years and to what extent have literature and the media played a role in this shift, respectively?

In an interview with Khaled Hosseini published online, the author said that he felt “a responsibility to represent his…own culture and to educate others about it” (“Q&A”). However, his main intention was simply to craft a work of fiction that would resonate emotionally with its readers despite cultural differences, fostering empathy for the plight of Afghan women during this troubled period.

At the time was published, about 43% of U.S. citizens described Muslims as fanatical and violent when polled (Pew Research Center). The attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001 in particular viciously polarized the two ideological groups, which already laid claim to fundamental disagreements respecting women, democracy, and globalization.

Unfortunately, it seems that islamophobia has spiked again in the last year, with ISIS responsible for attacks on European cities like Paris and Brussels, and thousands of Syrian refugees flooding the continent. Part of the problem lies in the media. Had Mariam been a real person, her martyrdom would likely fail to register on major news networks in America. Several university professors in the U.S. and abroad have become fascinated with the “obsession” pertaining to Islam and the West, which portray average Muslims as “bigoted extremists and terrorists” (Espiritu). This prejudice can be attributed to several factors, including the treatment of American journalists by ISIS, competition for high ratings, and support for nationalism by identifying a common, yet misrepresented, enemy.

Still, it’s not fair to assume that the majority of Muslims “cheered on 9/11” and other ridiculous claims. We must remember that they, too, have fallen victim to extremism and suffered at the hands of the sadistic, and we must unite against humanitarian atrocities to prevent future generations of conflict. By centering his novel on the human principle of loving one another, this is the point Hosseini tried to underscore.

1. The Search Reflection

This research experience has opened my eyes to conflict in the Middle East that gets largely ignored in most history textbooks. Although I had to sift through a plethora of conspiracy theories and foreign documents to find the information I wanted, I believe that possessing such knowledge will prove invaluable as our nation continues involvement overseas and through online globalization. Understanding cultural diversity always provides the benefit of increased acceptance, allowing me to better sympathize with the plight of refugees here and abroad and develop a better informed opinion of our country’s obligation to combat terrorism. The commonalities expressed by all members of the human race that are prevalent in the theme of will maintain their relevance as we tackle sensitive topics in politics. Feelings of isolation, limitation, vulnerability, self-sacrifice—these are traits that we all share and that Hosseini so effortlessly addresses in his 2007 novel. Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or none of the above—we all have the capacity for love.

Works Cited

"Afghanistan in Brief." , Washington D.C. Embassy of Afghanistan, 2016. Web. 13 April 2016.

Esfandiari, Haleh. "The Women's Movement." . United States Institute of Peace, August 2015. Web. 13 April 2016.

Espiritu, Belinda F. "Islamophobia and the 'Negative Media Portrayal of Muslims.'" . University of the Phillipines Cebu, 29 February 2016. Web. 13 April 2016.

Foden, Giles. "What is the origin of the name al-Qaida?" . Guardian News and Media Limited, 24 August 2002. Web. 13 April 2016.

Ford, Robert. "How ISIS Came to Power." . Tierra Innovation, 2015. Web. 13 April 2016.

Harvey, Katherine. "Afghanistan, The United States, and the Legacy of Afghanistan's Civil War." . Stanford University, 5 June 2003. Web. 13 April 2016.

Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. New York City: Riverhead Books, 2007. Print.

Hosseini, Khaled. “A Thousand Splendid Suns Q&A.” . Riverhead Trade, 2007. Web. 13 April 2016.

"Islamic Revolution of 1979." . Iran Chamber Society, 2016. Web. 13 April 2016.

Kabbani, Muhammad Hisham, and Seraj Hendricks. "Jihad: A Misunderstood Concept from Islam." . ISCA, 2016. Web. 13 April 2016.

"Kennan and Containment, 1947." . U.S. Department of State, n.d. Web. 13 April 2016.

Kennedy, Merrit, and Camila Domonoske. “The Victims of the Brussels Attacks: What We Know.” . National Public Radio, 31 March 2016. Web. 13 April 2016.

"Mohammad Najibullah." . Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 22 March 2016. Web. 13 April 2016.

Milani, Abbas. "The Green Movement." . United States Institute of Peace, August 2015. Web. 13 April 2016.

“Paris attacks: What happened on the night.” . BBC News, 9 December 2015. Web. 13 April 2016.

“September 11th Fast Facts.” . Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., 7 September 2015. Web. 13 April 2016.

"Thousand Splendid Suns Poem Analysis." . Kenwood Academy, 8 September 2010. Web. 13 April 2016.

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