Mariam and Laila exist only on paper, figments of an author’s imagination, yet I can’t seem to shake them.
I thought of them again last week during President Obama’s State of the Union speech, when the battered country of Afghanistan was but a mere footnote.
Mariam and Laila are the strong but silent women in Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” Women from different generations and from different economic classes, they came of age in an Afghanistan most Americans know little about. Before the Soviets invaded, they knew a country of poets and scholars, of movies and nightlife, not just of strife and danger. But during the dark rule of the Taliban, the burka-clad women forged a mother-daughter bond, forced by the brutal hand of their shared husband, who beat and raped them.
They’re an amalgam of women who Hosseini heard about or met while in Afghanistan after publishing his first book, “The Kite Runner.” They’re merely fictional characters, but they have become the very real faces of war to me. It’s a credit to Hosseini’s amazing storytelling and a nod to the fact we know so little of the women there.
Hosseini was in Denver earlier this month as part of The Denver Post’s Pen and Podium series, and I had the privilege of hosting a Q&A with him. Because he’s sold millions of copies of his two books, he has helped shape how much of our country views Afghanistan.
Hosseini was a fascinating interview. Smart, engaging, witty. His family left Afghanistan when he was a boy, but he’s become its most famous ambassador.
I read both of his books last fall as the war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, was creeping into its ninth year and popular opinion of it was wilting. From the moment smoke wafted from the World Trade Center, most of us wanted to exact some pain on the people who hurt us, but the tide has turned.
Still, I can’t shake the thought of Mariam and Laila, two smart women who would never realize their potential, or of Laila’s daughter, who wouldn’t be properly educated, or of the women who were beaten as sport. The barbaric treatment of women pre-dated the Taliban, especially in rural areas of Afghanistan, but it was sanctioned under their rule.
“No society can be successful when its women are suppressed,” Hosseini told us.
Hosseini argues quite convincingly that poverty, not war, is the No. 1 killer in Afghanistan. The average life expectancy is only 44. One in four children dies before age 5, and most of the country doesn’t have access to clean water.
Our commitment there can’t be just guns and bombs, he said. It also must involve programs to help lift Afghans from poverty. Some in that country believe we owe it to them, he said, since they feel the final chapter of the Cold War was inked in Afghan blood, pointing to huge sacrifices they made during the Soviet war.
“When people have a roof over their head, food on the table and a school to send their children to, they are not as vulnerable to exploitation by extremist groups,” he wrote in USA Today.
But can we create an Afghanistan where its people will flourish without a ramped-up military intervention to keep the Taliban at bay, I asked? You can’t, he conceded.
So even as more Americans simply want to forget the fight altogether, or to merely focus on al-Qaeda, I can’t help but think that the Taliban is still the enemy, if liberty is still the objective.
Uunfortunately the political will no longer exists in Washington, or in middle America, to worry about the Mariams and Lailas of the world. Our focus is shifting from Afghanistan, as Obama’s passing reference to it in a 75-minute speech showed.
Yet they still need us.
Hosseini’s books gave us a peek into an Afghanistan few of us know. He wants his next book to shed light on an aspect of the war there that should be better known: Afghans’ appreciation for U.S. soldiers.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
