Thursday, July 3, 2008

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I finished reading a book..."A thousand splendid suns" by Khaled Hosseini. It's heart wrenchingly beautiful. We always get to see and listen to news of war on TV. We click our tongues in sympathy and switch channels, all forgotten, all stories from faraway lands. This book actually made me realize what war is. It takes away everything, and yet gives inexplicable strength to carry on, to fight for survival. It results in death and despair on one hand, and on the other gives power to strive for survival. In it's ugliest form it does nothing but kills, but then it also make stronger and real human beings, the way we are supposed to be, out of man. This story is about great loss, and greater achievements.
Mariam inspires us all....oh I cried for her so much. It broke my heart to realize that such characters do live in real life. I so often think of things I never got, how often do I count my blessings? And this woman, she got nothing, absolutely nothing in her life due to no fault of hers. Oh she deserved something, some love, some happiness, but she was always denied the simplest pleasures of life. And yet she rose to become a hero....I actually cannot express the way I felt as I finished the book, the emotion was too overwhelming. I felt a knot in my heart for this character, which lasted for a few days afterwards, which is quite an achievement on a writers part, because after all it is a work of fiction.

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