Chapter IV
Mariam’s father Jalil would visit them every Thursday. He always dressed in a suit with necktie, his moustache was trimmed, and his nails were well-manicured. Mariam loved her father so much, that before Thursday she was always restless and fretting whether her father was prevented by those business entanglements. Jalil would take Mariam to fish in the stream, taught her how to cast her line, to gut a trout and how to lift the meat off the bone. Jalil told her Afghanistan was no longer a monarchy but a republic country. Jalil would bring Mariam some small gift, like candy and pendant. Mariam dreamed of brewing tea for her father, shopping with him in the vaulted bazaar and went out on his Buick.

Chapter III
Mariam’s brothers will use a wheelbarrow to send those rations to Nana, but Nana always yelled at them or even worse threw walnut size rock at those boys. Once Mariam wanted to plead Nana, she called her brother a lizard-ass face, she felt shame later. Nana taught Mariam a lot of living skills, such as kneading dough, stewing turnip with cauliflower and ginger, putting on the toppings and sewing. Mariam’s tutor was a gaunt and stooping old man. He would come to their house once a week and taught Mariam to read Koran and write words. This old man had a white beard that dropped to his navel. Mariam and her tutor liked to stroll in the clearing. Once Mariam told her tutor that she wanted to go to school, but her request was refused by her mother, Nana. Nana thought those children in school would laugh at Mariam and treated her as a spittoon.

Chapter II
Obviously, Mariam loved her father. Though her mother, Nana, had told her a lot of immoral things that her father had done to herself and his own daughter, Mariam still believed her beloved papa was dear and kind to her. The description of Nana’s first wedding and the symptoms of her illness are vivid, such as throttling her from inside, the froth at the corner of her mouth, white, and sometimes pink with blood. Names of different kinds of trees appeared in the book, like willow, poplar, tuberose and grove. The name of fish, trout, is also new to me.

Topics of A Thousand Splendid Suns (Part One) 1.

chapter 1.Mariam lived with her mother named Nana in the country of Kolba. Mariam is a harami, that is, a bastard. Her father Jalil is a rich business man in Herat. He owned a cinema, land, three carpet stores, a clothing shop and a black 1956 Buick Roadmaster. Nana was once a housekeeper of Jalil, when her belly bagan to swell, she was sent off with disgace to Iran. Therefore, she hated Jalil and his family, though Jalil always came to see his daugther Mariam, she felt unhappy. This feeling can be inferred from the discription, that when Jalil told Mariam that his cinema would give free ice creams to kids from the concession stand, Nana was smiling demurely and then asked Mariam what she has got excluding a storey of ice cream. The beginning of the novel is quite good, just a description of Mariam. Mariam was waiting her father coming from the clearing, and when the porcelain was slipped to the wooden floorboards and shatterd, Mariam was blame to destroy this chinese tea-set which is Nana's heirloom from her mother. The word "bastard" appeared here at the first time, and offered background information abour Mariam. The description of the porcelain was very lively, for example, its color was blue and white and the pot's spout had a graceful curve, the hand was painted chrysanthemums, and the dragon on the bowl was used to ward off evil. The language is also very sophiscated, like scurrying cockroaches, the cradle of Persian culture, the famous minarets of Queen Shad, and the vines pregnant with plump grapes,and also the vaulted bazzar, trellised ceilingand a face-saving deal.