ياريت بصفحه التصويت تنحط نبده وملخص عن الكتاب ونوعه مع اسم المؤلف
هذى ملخص الكتاب لخالد الحسينى اهيا روايه عن حياه بنتين فى افغانستان الكتاب عجيب ومؤثر و اعتقد انه بست سيلير
Book Summary
The novel opens with the introduction of Mariam, an Afghan girl growing up in a small village on the outskirts of Herat. She lives with her mother, Nana, an embittered woman who is frequently resentful towards her daughter whom she bore out of wedlock. Mariam busies herself with lessons in reading and writing from Mullah Faizullah, an elderly kind-hearted cleric, and weekly visits from her wealthy father, Jalil. Mariam has heard of her father's other wives and children, who live with him at his lavish home in Herat, but has never visited them due to the stigma of her being an illegitimate child.
On her fifteenth birthday in 1974, Mariam wants her father to take her to see Pinocchio at the movie theatre that he owns. When Jalil fails to show up, Mariam decides to travel to Herat for the first time in her life and go to her father's house in person. Jalil refuses to see her, and she ends up sleeping outdoors on the porch.
In the morning, Mariam returns home to find that her mother has hanged herself out of fear that her daughter has deserted her.
Mariam is taken to live in her father's house, where she feels isolated and spends most of her time alone in her room. Jalil and his wives quickly arrange for her to be married to an older widower named Rasheed, who is a middle-class shoemaker in Kabul.
In Kabul, Mariam begins adjusting to her new life as the wife of a man she barely knows. Mariam soon becomes pregnant, and Rasheed, having lost his own son in a drowning accident years earlier, hopes for a boy. When Mariam suffers a miscarriage, her marriage takes a turn for the worse; Rasheed is no longer cordial to her, but verbally and physically abuses her.
Down the street lives Laila, the beautiful, bright young daughter of ethnic Tajik parents - a progressive-minded high school teacher and a mother who mourns the loss of her two sons, who were mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Laila has a subtle romance with Tariq, a boy from the neighborhood who lost a leg as a small child to a land mine explosion.
War comes to Afghanistan, and Kabul is bombarded by rocket attacks. Tariq's family decides to leave the city. The emotional farewell between Laila and Tariq culminates in a clandestine tryst on the living room sofa.
Laila's family also decides to leave Kabul, but as they are packing, a rocket destroys the house and kills her parents. Laila is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam.
After recovering from her injuries, including a slight deafness in one ear, Laila discovers she is pregnant with Tariq's child. To avoid the stigma of being an unwed mother, Laila arranges to marry Rasheed, who is only too eager to have a young and attractive second wife, and immediately consummates the marriage in hopes that she can pass the child off as his. A man stops by the house to tell Laila that he met Tariq at a hospital, and that Tariq was now dead.
Laila gives birth to Aziza, a daughter. Rasheed is unhappy and suspicious, and he becomes more abusive.
After an initially rancorous relationship, Mariam and Laila eventually become confidantes. They plan to run away from Rasheed and leave Kabul for Peshawar, Pakistan, but they are betrayed at the bus station by a man they thought they could trust, arrested and returned to Rasheed. Rasheed beats the two women and deprives them of water for several days, almost killing Aziza.
A few years later, Laila gives birth to Zalmai, Rasheed's son. By this time, the Taliban has risen to power in Afghanistan. They have banned television, movies and books other than the Koran, and women are not allowed to work. A drought comes, which eventually leads to widespread hunger and food shortages. When Rasheed's shop burns down, the family is thrust into destitution. There is little food and Rasheed finds himself reduced to working as a porter at a hotel. As their financial situation worsens, Aziza is sent to an orphanage a few kilometers away.
Then one day, Tariq appears outside the house, revealing the fact that the man who stopped by the house to tell the news about Tariq's death was a plan made by Rasheed. He and Laila are reunited, and their passions flare anew. When Rasheed returns home from work, young Zalmai tells his father about the visitor. Rasheed starts to savagely beat Laila with his belt, but Mariam comes to Laila's defense by killing Rasheed with a shovel.
Laila and Tariq leave for Pakistan with the children. Mariam confesses to killing her husband and is executed.
After the fall of the Taliban in 2003, Laila and Tariq decide to return to Afghanistan. They stop in the village near Herat where Mariam was raised, and discover a package that Mariam's father had left behind for her: a videotape of Pinocchio and check for her share of the family inheritance. They return to Kabul and fix up the orphanage.
