A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Read Free Book Online Page A

who had a small chin and curly black hair, asked. “We hope you’ve been comfortable. This…ordeal…must be very hard for you. So difficult.”
    The other two nodded. Mariam took in their plucked eyebrows, the thin, tolerant smiles they were giving her. There was an unpleasant hum in Mariam’s head. Her throat burned. She drank some of the water.
    Through the wide window behind Jalil, Mariam could see a row of flowering apple trees. On the wall beside the window stood a dark wooden cabinet. In it was a clock, and a framed photograph of Jalil and three young boys holding a fish. The sun caught the sparkle in the fish’s scales. Jalil and the boys were grinning.
    â€œWell,” Afsoon began. “I—that is, we—have brought you here because we have some very good news to give you.”
    Mariam looked up.
    She caught a quick exchange of glances between the women over Jalil, who slouched in his chair looking unseeingly at the pitcher on the table. It was Khadija, the oldest-looking of the three, who turned her gaze to Mariam, and Mariam had the impression that this duty too had been discussed, agreed upon, before they had called for her.
    â€œYou have a suitor,” Khadija said.
    Mariam’s stomach fell. “A what?” she said through suddenly numb lips.
    â€œA khastegar. A suitor. His name is Rasheed,” Khadija went on. “He is a friend of a business acquaintance of your father’s. He’s a Pashtun, from Kandahar originally, but he lives in Kabul, in the Deh-Mazang district, in a two-story house that he owns.”
    Afsoon was nodding. “And he does speak Farsi, like us, like you. So you won’t have to learn Pashto.”
    Mariam’s chest was tightening. The room was reeling up and down, the ground shifting beneath her feet.
    â€œHe’s a shoemaker,” Khadija was saying now. “But not some kind of ordinary street-side moochi, no, no. He has his own shop, and he is one of the most sought-after shoemakers in Kabul. He makes them for diplomats, members of the presidential family—that class of people. So you see, he will have no trouble providing for you.”
    Mariam fixed her eyes on Jalil, her heart somersaulting in her chest. “Is this true? What she’s saying, is it true?”
    But Jalil wouldn’t look at her. He went on chewing the corner of his lower lip and staring at the pitcher.
    â€œNow he is a little older than you,” Afsoon chimed in. “But he can’t be more than…forty. Forty-five at the most. Wouldn’t you say, Nargis?”
    â€œYes. But I’ve seen nine-year-old girls given to men twenty years older than your suitor, Mariam. We all have. What are you, fifteen? That’s a good, solid marrying age for a girl.” There was enthusiastic nodding at this. It did not escape Mariam that no mention was made of her half sisters Saideh or Naheed, both her own age, both students in the Mehri School in Herat, both with plans to enroll in Kabul University. Fifteen, evidently, was not a good, solid marrying age for them.
    â€œWhat’s more,” Nargis went on, “he too has had a great loss in his life. His wife, we hear, died during childbirth ten years ago. And then, three years ago, his son drowned in a lake.”
    â€œIt’s very sad, yes. He’s been looking for a bride the last few years but hasn’t found anyone suitable.”
    â€œI don’t want to,” Mariam said. She looked at Jalil. “I don’t want this. Don’t make me.” She hated the sniffling, pleading tone of her voice but could not help it.
    â€œNow, be reasonable, Mariam,” one of the wives said.
    Mariam was no longer keeping track of who was saying what. She went on staring at Jalil, waiting for him to speak up, to say that none of this was true.
    â€œYou can’t spend the rest of your life here.”
    â€œDon’t you want a family of your