Gendered Cities

Gendered Cities: Kabul in A Thousand Splendid Suns, by

Khaled Hosseini

Ramona BranUniversity of the West Timisoara

Faculty of Sociology and Psychology

“One cannot count the moons that shimmer on her roofsOr the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls”

Ode to Kabul by Saeb-e-Tabrizi

Women of Afghanistan:

● wives and mothers

● restricted to the home

● no / low education

Wives

• … of the same man

• Rasheed is 40 when he marries Mariam, 60 when he marries Laila

• Jamil has 3 wives and a lover (Mariam’s mother)

Polygamy

• Maximum number of 4 wives

• The husband should not discriminate among them

BUT

• Muhammad: 9 wives (Aisha was his favourite)

• Rasheed: 2 wives (Laila is his favourite, if only for a short while)

Child brides

“A girl should have her first period in her husband’s house, not in her father’s house” (Afghan proverb)

• Aisha is 9

• Mariam is 15 (marriage arranged by her father)

• Laila is 14 (orphaned, is forced by circumstances)

● Rasheed believes marrying Laila is “right down charitable”

Mothers

• …of boys preferably

• Rasheed had had a boy from a previous marriage

• Mariam – 7 miscarriages (apparently failed in her “career” as a mother)

• Laila – 2 children (Aziza and Zalmai, the boy)

The home

Women forbidden to go OUTSIDE unaccompanied

-Flogged if caught-Imprisoned (and then beaten by their fathers) if they tried to runaway

Women secluded INSIDE their homes

-Doing all the chores-Rearing the children-Being abused

Domestic violence

Rasheed beats both his wives fiercely

-makes Mariam chew pebbles-Laila loses a few teeth after being battered

-both are kept for 3 days in separate rooms, without light,water or food

• “cooperation” between the wives (try to run away)

• Mariam: - befriends Laila - succeeds as a “mother” to Aziza

- kills Rasheed when he was suffocating Laila

- is sentenced to death

● Laila: - runs to Pakistan with Tariq and the children

For any questions…

rbran@socio.uvt.ro

Thank you!

All the photos were taken from flickrcc (under Creative Commons License)