A Thousand Splendid Suns

I finished the book last week. Man I laboured through it. Not that it was such a dreary boring book, no. It couldn’t be any more otherwise. It’s just that the only time I get to read is in class, post-PSLE, and with that noise, it makes reading and re-reading difficult. I only truly enjoy a book in dead silence, with no distractions. And an annoying quirk that I have in reading is that I read, re-read and again, not only the sections that I enjoy, but sometimes even the dry bits. I study the language, the use of words, read on patronisingly when I feel an author tries too hard, or marvel at a lone word that brings the point across.

Coming back to the book, one of my favourite parts is when Mariam was executed. How she could have tried to flee but didn’t, how her knees did not buckle at the thought of what was ahead. And on a side note, I wondered if a person died immediately if he were beheaded. Or would he be alive in damnable pain for a few seconds, his eyes still flickering, open, shut, open, then shut again, on the detached head that had rolled several metres from the body, brain nerves sending signals of excruciating pain to the head, intensified at the area around the neck where flesh had been cleaved, nerves severed? Mariam was not beheaded, by the way, though I did think, sickeningly so, that that might have made for a more gripping end. She was shot in the head with a Kalashnikov. Tsk, is that not macabre enough?