A thousand Splendid Suns

Completed 4 years of engineering! Took my last exam last week. (Where on earth did the 4 years go?? Seems like just yesterday that I joined! )
This post is not about my life in these 4 years though. Wanted to post something on that subject, but I've consistently put off the idea.
I cannot put off this motivation though. After Jonathan Livingston Seagull (which strongly reminded me of The Alchemist, by the way), I finally began to read A Thousand Splendid Suns, a birthday gift I received almost a year ago.

Khaled Hosseini. He must feel like God. Having control over the emotions of total strangers. Having such power over his readers - their emotions, their feelings, thoughts. He is a powerful writer, for I have not been moved by anyone's writings in a very long time. (The last book that gave me a sleepless night was Night by Elie Weasel, because of the descriptions of the Holocaust, and the horrific concentration camps at Auschwitz.)

A thousand Splendid Suns has a lot in common with the Kite Runner.
1) For one, both stories are set in similar backgrounds: the story ranges through the periods of the the Soviet Union controlled Kabul, followed by the period during which factions including the Hazaras, Uzbeks, Pashtuns and Tijeks killed each other, and finally the fall of Afghanistan into the Taliban's Sharia' laws.
2) The second striking resemblance is the contrast of characters in Mariam-Laila and Hassan-Amir. Mariam and Hassan are both illiterate, very strong, steady, unfailingly patient, never faltering in duties assigned to them, religiously working for thankless chores and ungrateful people. Both sacrifice their lives in ways that the other pair (Laila-Amir respectively) can never forget. Laila and Amir are similar because of their educated background and their role in seeking redemption: in the way they each visit the dead's place or seek to remain connected with the lives of their beloved.
3) The third common factor is Hosseini's formula. His recipe. The first half of the stories hurt the reader in ways that will pain the reader most cruelly ( he most certainly hurt me badly enough for me to hate each book at varying points of time). In Hassan's pain, I could feel my own. In all the brutality Mariam faced, I was being burned with her. I could feel every blow dealt to her with Rasheed's belt. The second half of each story heals the wound. In the most beautiful, unforgettable manner.
4) The fourth common factor: outstanding conclusions. The last pages are worth reading a thousand times over.
5) Hosseini's love of the number thousand. "For you, a thousand times over." The most unforgettable dialogue of The Kite Runner. And the Farsi poetry lines on how 'one cannot count the thousand moons on the roof or the thousand splendid suns behind the wall'.
6) Finally, Hosseini has flooded his stories with beautiful Farsi. Words like koshteep(handsome), tarakosh (thank you), the suffix of jo/jan/agha, 'zendagi megzara'(life goes on) and so many more I cannot forget in a very long time.
7) The plight of Afghan refugees brought out in both books which nobody who reads his work can fail to notice. He has conveyed to us how war leads only to destruction - of a magnitude and scale that can scarcely be estimated with accuracy, let alone be reconstructed or rebuilt. He has highlighted to the world how difficult and important the task of rebuilding Afghanistan really is.
8) Hosseini's USP remains the same- his ability to create characters that are so powerfully convincing, that he can etch them permanently to our memories alongside those of the story itself, that the first thing we will think of when we remember his works are the characters themselves, however insignificant they may be. Be they that of Giti, Hasina, Tariq, Aziza, Rahim Khan or Asif - each one has a totally distinct characteristic nature and behaviour pattern.

{ .. to be continued.. }