A Thousand Splendid Suns - Characters

Characters

In order of appearance:

• Mariam, is an ethnic Tajik born in Herat, 1959. She is the illegitimate child of Jalil and Nana, and suffers shame throughout her childhood because of the circumstances of her birth.
• Nana is Mariam's mother and a former servant of Jalil. Mariam's birth is the result of an assault between Nana and Jalil. Jalil's favoritism toward his wives and legitimate children leaves Nana bitter at Jalil. She hangs herself when Mariam is fifteen, after Mariam journeys to Jalil's house on her birthday, which Nana perceives to be betrayal, and regards it an act of desertion.
• Mullah Faizullah, a Sufi, is Mariam's elderly Koran teacher and friend. He dies of natural causes in 1989.
• Jalil is Mariam's father, a wealthy man who had three wives before he produced Mariam. He marries Mariam to Rasheed after Nana's death, but later regrets sending her away. He dies in 1987.
• Laila is an ethnic Tajik. Born in 1978 to Hakim and Fariba, she is a beautiful and intelligent girl coming from a family in which the father is university-educated and a teacher. Her life becomes tied to Mariam's when she marries Rasheed (Mariam's husband) as his second wife. Towards the end of the novel she becomes a school teacher.
• Hakim is Laila's father. He is a well-educated and progressive school teacher. He is killed in a rocket explosion along with Fariba.
• Fariba is Laila's mother. In Part One, during her brief meeting with Mariam, she is shown as cheerful, but her happy nature is brutally disrupted when her two sons, Ahmad and Noor, leave home to go to war and are later killed. She spends nearly all of her time in bed mourning her sons until the Mujahideen are victorious. She is killed in a rocket explosion along with Hakim.
• Rasheed is an ethnic Pashtun, a shoemaker, and the antagonist of the novel. He marries Mariam through an arrangement with Jalil and later marries Laila as well. After suffering years of domestic abuse at his hands, Mariam bludgeons Rasheed to death with a shovel during a violent struggle.
• Tariq, an ethnic Pashtun born in 1976, is a boy who grew up in Kabul with Laila. He lost a leg to a land mine at age 5. They eventually evolve from best friends to lovers and, after a decade of separation, are married and expecting a child by the end of the novel.
• Aziza is the daughter of Laila and Tariq, conceived when Laila was 14. Her conception incites Laila to marry Rasheed when the news of Tariq's alleged death arrives; she does this in order to hide the child's illegitimacy and provide for herself. Aziza is born in the spring of 1993 and becomes a peacemaking figure between Mariam and Laila when her cries for Mariam's attention trigger Mariam's maternal instinct and respect for Laila.
• Zalmai, born in September 1997, is Laila and Rasheed's spoiled son. Despite the conditions presented onto his mother and figurative aunt (Mariam), Zalmai idolizes Rasheed and is unaware of the fact that Mariam killed him. At the end of the novel, Zalmai continuously asks about Rasheed to Laila, who lies to him saying he simply left for some time. After initially blaming Tariq for his father's mysterious disappearance, he comes to accept Tariq as a father-figure.