A Thousand Splendid Suns Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mariam

Mariam is the primary protagonist in the first part of the novel. She is a "harami" or an illegitimate child, and is sentenced to a life of mockery and sadness as being illegitimate was deemed both the mother's and the child's fault in 1960s Afghanistan, where she lives.

Her father is Jalil, a prominent and rich businessman, who owns a movie theater and is married to three women. Her mother is Nana, Jalil's bitter ex-servant, who ridicules everything her once-lover does in order to strengthen his relationship with Mariam.

Answer: Shoemaker

Rasheed is a middle-class shoemaker who is initially decent around Mariam, as his only requests include her covering of her face. However, after Mariam suffers her first miscarriage, he begins a series of domestic violence and psychological abuse. He complains about everything Mariam does, and on one occasion, forces her to bite into pebbles to "show her how bad her food tastes."

Answer: He is missing one leg

Laila is the daughter and youngest child of Hakim and Fariba, who are also parents to two young men: Ahmad and Noor. Both these boys joined Al-Mujahideen (Arabic for: those who fight in the Jihad), and they are eventually killed. Fariba goes into a depression, and soon begins to neglect her daughter. Laila's friendship with Tariq strengthens, and they eventually become lovers when she loses her virginity to him in her early teen years without marrying him first. Tariq's leg amputation was a result of a land-mine that he stepped on when he was just five years old.

Answer: She realizes that she is pregnant with Tariq's baby

Mariam is actually the one that tells Laila of Rasheed's proposition after Rasheed pays a man to convince her that Tariq was killed. Laila, who does not want her child to be deemed illegitimate and criticized for the rest of his/her life, decides to pass him/her off as Rasheed's.

When her daughter Aziza is born, however, Rasheed openly expresses dismay at her gender, and begins abusing Laila as well.

Answer: To run away from Afghanistan after stealing money from Rasheed's wallet.

Laila had been secretly stealing money from her husband's wallet for the past year, and when she tells Miriam her full story, including her daughter's illegitimacy, Mariam agrees to join her in running away. However, when everything seems to be going well, the two women are betrayed by a man they thought they could trust, and the police send them back to Afghanistan where they meet an enraged Rasheed.

He beats them both up pretty badly and deprives them of food and water for days before finally realizing that they have had enough.

Answer: Zalmai

When Laila realizes that she is pregnant with Rasheed's child this time, her initial plan is to terminate her pregnancy without her husband's knowledge, because her contempt for the man makes her feel she might not love the child. However, after thinking, and slowly realizing that the child had no fault in her chronic suffering, she announces that she is pregnant once more. Zalmai is born, and unlike Aziza, he is loved equally by both his mother and his father.

Answer: Get medical care

Under the Taliban rules, women may not laugh, sing, dance, wear fashionable clothes, wear nail polish, make eye contact with a man, speak unless spoken to, work, learn, or leave their house without being accompanied by a man. The Taliban police followed those policies religiously and would beat, torture, and in some cases, execute any women that would fail to abide by the laws.

However, women may get medical treatment, but only in very rare cases, and in hospitals with few or no medical supplies.

They are to be treated only by other women. When Laila gives birth to Zalmai, she is forced to undergo a Caesarean section without an anaesthetic.

Answer: His son tells him by mistake.

Zalmai informs his father of a strange man's visit to his house. When Rasheed finds out, he blows up and his anger has no precedent. He attempts to strangle and kill Laila, before Mariam kills him by hitting him on the head with a shovel. Mariam then convinces Laila to run off with Tariq, Aziza, and Zalmai until the Taliban leave the country.

She says that she will take the blame for Rasheed's death as a final act of loyalty to Laila who made her suffering more bearable during her stay. The Taliban then proceed to arrest Mariam and execute her publicly.

Answer: Pinocchio

After Afghanistan is deemed relatively safe again, Tariq and Laila decide to return. On their way back, they stop at the village where Mariam was raised. Over there, they find that her father left her a share of his inheritance, and a videotape of Pinocchio. He also leaves her a letter apologizing for what he had done to her and how much he regrets his selfish actions.

Answer: Kabul

In part two, Laila's father Hakim (Arabic for wise), recites part of the poem to her. The poem's English translation goes as follows:

"Ah! How beautiful is Kabul encircled by her arid mountains
And Rose, of the trails of thorns she envies
Her gusts of powdered soil, slightly sting my eyes
But I love her, for knowing and loving are born of this same dust

My song exhalts her dazzling tulips
And at the beauty of her trees, I blush
How sparkling the water flows from Pul-I Bastaan!
May Allah protect such beauty from the evil eye of man!

Khizr chose the path to Kabul in order to reach Paradise
For her mountains brought him close to the delights of heaven
From the fort with sprawling walls, A Dragon of protection
Each stone is there more precious than the treasure of Shayagan

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

Her laughter of mornings has the gaiety of flowers
Her nights of darkness, the reflections of lustrous hair
Her melodious nightingales, with passion sing their songs
Ardent tunes, as leaves enflamed, cascading from their throats

And I, I sing in the gardens of Jahanara, of Sharbara
And even the trumpets of heaven envy their green pastures"

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