War and Women - Book Report/Review Example

One day , the teen aged Mariam goes to her father's house in Herat and is denied admittance. After spending the night huddled on the roadsid , she returns to her 'kolba', to find that her mother has committed suicide. Her father marries her off to Rasheed, a shoe maker in Kabul, who is twenty years older than her. After many miscarriages, she resigns herself to her fate and suffers the brutish Rasheed silently. The beautiful Laila, the other main character of the book, is the daughter of a teacher and is more knowledgeable and spirited than Mariam.

Her two older brothers have died in the civil war, and her mother has become aloof . She loves Tariq, who has lost one leg. Tariq and his parents go away to Pakistan to escape the escalating war . When both her parents die soon after in a rocket attack, Laila is saved by Rasheed, whom she is forced to marry as she hears that Tariq and his parents are dead. After Laila's child is born , a bond develops between her and Mariam , the other wife of Rashid. They plan to run away to Pakistan, but are caught at the border and brought back to the brutal Rasheed.

The author describes the life under the rule of the Taliban , the people's steady descent into abject poverty . He describes how Mariam kills Rasheed finally when he was trying to strangle Laila, and Mariam's public execution. Laila escapes and rejoins Tariq who takes her to the safety of Pakistan. When the situation improves in Afghanistan, they come back to work for the reconstruction of their country. The condition of women in patriarchal feudal societies deteriorates when there is instability in the region.

Only by determined effort and education can woman uplift herself in such societies. This is well brought out in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini as well as in the biography of the Lebanese maid in Sumaya- a Lebanese Housemaid by Leila Fawaz. The Afghanistan of the early 1970s was progressive and peaceful. "Women here used to practice law and medicine" (Hosseini 249). After the king was overthrown , the republic functioned for a short while , but soon came under the influence of the communists.

The government during that time encouraged women's education. "The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. "(Hosseini 121) Thus we see Jalil's legitimate daughters were educated in good schools, whereas Mariam, the illegitimate one was not sent to school , although she longed to go the regular school. There was widespread unrest in Afghanistan where the Mujahideen fought against the Soviet troops. Peace did not come to the country after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops . "The jihad was over"(Hosseini 144), in 1992, and the Mujahideen turned upon themselves and rockets began to fall on Kabul.

"The Mujahideen, armed to the teeth but now lacking in a common enemy, had found the enemy in each other."(Hosseini 155) With the fresh outbreak of civil war , the position of the women in the society slid rapidly down. Under Islamic law, a man could have four wives at a time. When Rasheed wants his wife Mariam to convey his marriage proposal to Laila, Mariam could do nothing but obey. The brutal beatings he gave her regularly and the constant abuses had almost broken her spirit. The situation deteriorates even further when the Taliban come into power.

With their bigotry and chauvinism which characterizes their rule, they make life insufferable for women. The Taliban issues a dictat which