Appreciate What You Have

Reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini really opened my eyes to the oppression of women over in the Middle East. The stories of violence and war broadcasted over the news distract the public from the problems of oppressing Middle Eastern women.

            The women in the Middle East do not have much of a say in basically anything they do. In the novel, Mariam and Laila had very few choices that they could make on their own. The first choice Mariam was able to make on her own was going to visit her father. Choosing to leave her mother and go to her father led Mariam to live a life without any choices. Mariam’s mother committed suicide which forced her to stay with her father. Her father ended up arranging Mariam’s marriage to Rasheed. Living with Rasheed stripped Mariam of making her own choices as he used her as his own slave. The next time she was able to make her own choice was when she decided to kill Rasheed with a shovel and later when she decides to sign a contract of guilt and die.

            As a young girl, Laila didn’t have many choices either. Laila had to take over as the woman of the household since her mother refused to cook or clean when in her deep depression. Laila was also forced to go to school to get an education by her father, as she had no choice. After her parents died, Laila had to agree to Rasheed’s marriage proposal to survive since she was left stranded and didn’t want to have to survive by begging on the streets. After Rasheed was killed and Mariam handed over her life to the Taliban, Laila was forced to find another man to protect her so she wouldn’t be left begging on the streets. Luckily the man she found was the man she has been in love with her whole life, Tariq.

            Seeing the oppression of women in the Middle East makes me so much more appreciative to live as a woman in the United States. Arranged marriages are not vital to the American culture. In the United States, women can choose who they want to marry or if they want to marry at all. Here, a woman doesn’t need a man to survive in life. Women are able to find jobs and make their own livings; they don’t need to depend on men for money or survival. Women are not forced to wear burquas like Middle Eastern women are; women can choose to wear the clothes they want, how to do their hair and if they want to wear makeup or not. Reading about all of the differences between the American culture and the Middle Eastern culture makes me so much more appreciative to live in the country I do where women have just about as many rights as men.