Another 1,000 Sun Post

This book does have a lot of horrible things that happen in it. The following is a little bit of that. Mariam was promised to Rasheed when she was 15. He was around 40-45. This happens about 20 years after their marriage. Jalil is Mariam's father, whom she never lived with. He visited her once a week for most her life. (pgs 346-7)

"Mariam lost count of how many times the belt cracked, how many pleading words she cried out to Rasheed, how many times she circled around the incoherent tangle of teeth and fists and belt, before she saw fingers clawing at Rasheed's face, chipped nails digging into his jowls and pulling at his hair and scratching his forehead. How long before she realized, with both shock and relish, that the fingers were hers...

At first, he looked at her without seeing her, then his eyes narrowed, appraised Mariam with interest. The look in them shifted from puzzlement to shock, then disapproval, disappointment even, lingering there a moment.

Mariam remembered the first time she had seen his eyes, under the wedding veil, in the mirror, with Jalil lookng on, how their gazes had slid across the glass and met, his indifferent, hers docile, conceding, almost apologetic.

Apologetic.

Mariam saw now in those same eyes what a fool she had been.

Had she been a deceitful wife? she asked herself. A complacent wife? A dishonorable woman? Discreditable? Vulgar? What harmful thing had she willfully done to this man to warrant his malice, his continual assaults, the relish with which he tormented her? Had she not looked after him when he was ill? Fed him, and his friends, cleaned up after him dutifully?

Had she not given this man her youth?

Had she ever justly deserved his meanness?

The belt made a thump when Rasheed dropped it to the ground and came for her. Some jobs, that thump said, were meant to be done with bare hands."

(and from page 364...) Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.

I don't have any good comments for this one. Just that I'm lucky to have found a man very unlike this man. One that does not have an accusing finger, or even an accusing mouth for that matter. I'm a lucky woman in many ways.