A Thousand Splendid Suns, Passage
One (Chapter 3 – pages 16-18)
But Mariam's
favorite, other than Jalil of course, was Mullah Faizullah, the elderly village
Koran tutor, its akhund. He came by once or twice a week from Gul Daman to teach Mariam the
five daily namaz prayers and tutor her in Koran
recitation, just as he had taught Nana when she'd been a little girl It was
Mullah Faizullah who had taught Mariam to read, who had patiently looked over
her shoulder as her lips worked the words soundlessly, her index finger
lingering beneath each word, pressing until the nail bed went white, as though she could squeeze the meaning out of the symbols. It was Mullah Faizullah who
had held her hand, guided the pencil in it along the rise of each alef, the curve of each beh, the three dots of
each seh.
He was a gaunt,
stooping old man with a toothless smile and a white beard that dropped to his
navel. Usually, he came alone to the kolba, though sometimes with his russet haired son Hamza, who was a few
years older than Mariam. When he showed up at the kolba, Mariam kissed Mullah Faizullah's hand-which felt like kissing a
set of twigs covered with a thin layer of skin-and he kissed the top of her
brow before they sat inside for the day's lesson. After, the two of them sat outside
the kolba, ate pine nuts and
sipped green tea, watched the bulbul birds darting from tree to tree. Sometimes
they went for walks among the bronze fallen leaves and alder bushes, along the
stream and toward the mountains. Mullah Faizullah twirled the beads of his tasbeh rosary as they strolled, and, in his quivering voice, told Mariam stories of all the things he'd seen in his youth, like the two headed snake
he'd found in Iran, on Isfahan's Thirty three Arch Bridge, or the watermelon he
had split once outside the Blue Mosque in Mazar, to find the seeds forming the
words Allah on one half, Akbar on the other.
Mullah Faizullah
admitted to Mariam that, at times, he did not understand the meaning of the
Koran's words. But he said he liked the enchanting sounds the Arabic words made
as they rolled off his tongue. He said they comforted him, eased his heart.
Mullah Faizullah
listened to stories as well as he told them. When Mariam spoke, his attention
never wavered He nodded slowly and smiled with a look of gratitude, as if he
had been granted a coveted privilege. It was easy to tell Mullah Faizullah things
that Mariam didn't dare tell Nana.
One day, as they were
walking, Mariam told him that she wished she would be allowed to go to school.
"I mean a real
school, akhund sahib. Like in a classroom. Like my father's other kids."
Mullah Faizullah stopped.
The week before, Bibi
jo had brought news that Jalil's daughters Saideh and Naheed were going to the
Mehri School for girls in Herat. Since then, thoughts of classrooms and
teachers had rattled around Mariam's head, images of notebooks with lined
pages, columns of numbers, and pens that made dark, heavy marks. She pictured
herself in a classroom with other girls her age. Mariam longed to place a ruler
on a page and draw important looking lines.
"Is that what
you want?" Mullah Faizullah said, looking at her with his soft, watery
eyes, his hands behind his stooping back, the shadow of his turban falling on a
patch of bristling buttercups.
"Yes. "
"And you want me
to ask your mother for permission."
Mariam smiled. Other
than Jalil, she thought there was no one in the world who understood her better
than her old tutor.
"Then what can I
do? God, in His wisdom, has given us each weaknesses, and foremost among my
many is that I am powerless to refuse you, Mariam jo," he said, tapping
her cheek with one arthritic finger.
But later, when he
broached Nana, she dropped the knife with which she was slicing onions.
"What for?"
"If the girl
wants to learn, let her, my dear. Let the girl have an education."
"Learn? Learn
what, Mullah sahib?" Nana said sharply. "What is there to
learn?" She snapped her eyes toward Mariam.
Mariam looked down at
her hands.
"What's the sense schooling a girl like you? It's like shining a spittoon. And you'll learn
nothing of value in those schools. There is only one, only one skill a woman
like you and me needs in life, and they don't teach it in school. Look at
me."
