A Thousand Splendid Suns

Margaret Bourke White Image

This photograph was taken in the 1950's of an Arab Muslim woman begging on the streets.  Women were not permitted to speak loudly on the streets so she is holding a sign that she is a widow with children. 

Women in the Middle East have long suffered at the bottom of the totem pole of society in these cultures where men are superior. 

In the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini the reader is allowed access and insight into this complicated society and its age old traditions. 

What is perhaps most fascinating is that book offers a very non biased glimpse of how each separate government has affected these people, especially women.  For instance it was under the communist government that the female characters, representing the female race of that time, was allowed the most freedom at least in the major cities.  The character Laila grew up under communism which enabled her to go to school, as a child experience similar rights of the boys her same age, to see other women holding jobs, going to college and many other freedoms that are later torn from her grasp under the other various governments.

Hosseini follows the life of Miriam, a child born out of wedlock, whose mother dies and who is  given away to be married by a seeminly unlovving father.  Miriam's marriage does not seem so bad at first especially to one raised in such a harsh environment as a child but things soon begin to change.  A little girl named Laila who lives across the street grows up under much different circumstances.  She begins her life with freedoms, she goes to school, she a childhood friend Tarik, and they eventually fall in love.  In a sad turn of events Laila and Miriam both are married to the same abusive hateful husband.  It becomes the story of their survival through domestic abuse, warfare, a country falling apart, and a complete lack of basic women's rights.

A moment of introspection and perhaps critical thinking of my own country was that the US funded the gun-power and helped to get rid of the Communists when in fact by comparison they were the far better government to live under at least for women. 

This novel tells the story of womanhood, friendship, human rights, and family.  It allows a simple and realistic and dare I say it, unbiased glimpse at some of the reasons behind the current state of the Middle East and the harsh unforgiving life women face there.  But not only does it provide readers with a glimpse of the state of affairs but Hosseini puts a human face, a woman's face, on the current events in the Middle East.   





Some Women's rights happenings:

• woman driver receives lashes
• Saudi Arabia Women's suffrage 
• Saudi Arabia Women's right to vote 

Americans in support of sweatshops?

Americans are often accused of being obsessed with rugged individualism.  As a nation we pride ourselves on independence, freedom, and capitalism.  We find ourselves in a nation where the pursuit of happiness is our god given right. 

Perhaps this is why the media seems to be constantly engulfed with cries of injustice.  It seems to have become a game of who cried wolf.  The perhaps overused cliche that "you have to pick your battles" has become my rule.  

For a developing worlds class I'm taking this semester I watched the 2005 PBS documentary China Blue.  It features 17 year old Jasmine, a worker in a jeans factory in China.  She quits school and leaves her home in the rural Sichuan province of China to go to work in one of the big factory. This documentary begins with her journey to the city in search of work.  She finds a post as a thread cutter at the Lifeng factory making denim jeans. 


Jasmine and her other friends, all teenagers some as young as 14 years old live in a small concrete apartment. They have sheets that covers their beds.  They have faucets where they get water and do their laundry by hand.  And although these living conditions aren't desirable by any means they seem doable. But this is just the beginning. 

Jasmine and the girls are forced to consistently work 17 hour shifts with only a couple hours of sleep before the next shift. Often the boss delays the wages saying that he cannot pay them yet.  He talks about how all the workers want is to steal from him and complains of their unfair demands. Jasmine doesn't even get paid in time, or enough to be able to go home for one day that year.  Often they have to pin their eyes open with clothes pins late into the night.  The foreign companies they make the jeans for notify the factories when they come to inspect and the workers are forced to lie about wages, breaks, and working conditions. 

Its disgusting.  Here is a 17 year old girl who should be in school gaining an education that will shape the rest of her life instead she is forced to work to all day and late into the night and yet is not payed enough to pay for medication when she falls ill. 

One of the companies mentioned that outsources to factories in China was Levi's.  According to the Wall Street Journal in 1993 the company after learning of the despicable working conditions that Chinese laborers were being forced to endure supposedly withdrew their business in light of the "pervasive violation of human rights."  (Levi's Faced Earlier Challenge in China)

Yet five years later Levi's announced that would return to China, and then in a 2005 documentary their brand is mentioned as one of the companies supporting these anti-human rights factories where it is obvious that little positive change has occurred in the working conditions, even regarding teenagers?

An article in the Los Angeles Times in 1998 even stated, "Levi Strauss never stopped making clothes in China; its Hong Kong subsidiary continues to manufacture clothes on a contract basis at plants in neighboring Guangdong Province." (Has Levi Strauss Sold Out in China?)

China Blue reveals that the conditions remain unchanged. Big name companies such as Guess?, Levi Strauss & Co, The Limited, Inc. , Tommy Hilfiger, and Wal-mart still continue to use sweatshop to crank out profits, mean while foreign and domestic laborers living in poverty and often children, are forced to pay the price.