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- Mariam
- Rasheed
- Laila
- One of the novel’s protagonists, Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of one of the most successful businessmen in the city of Herat, Jalil. She grows up in a small hut several kilometers outside the city with her mother, Nana, before being married off at the age of fifteen to Rasheed and moving to Kabul. Throughout her life, Mariam is plagued by the shame of being a harami, or bastard (illegitimate child)—in addition to the greater shame of believing she contributed to her mother’s suicide. After feeling unwanted by and unimportant to Jalil, she is also shunned by her husband when she is unable to bear him a child. This lack of love and belonging is a constant theme throughout Mariam’s life, but she has a remarkable ability to endure and persevere through suffering—often with the help of the Koran verses that she spent her childhood memorizing. After finally finding a sense of belonging with Laila and her daughter, Mariam makes the ultimate sacrifice, giving up her own life so that those she loves can be free. She is the novel’s most powerful example of both the suffering and strength of women in Afghanistan.
- Tariq
- The undeniable villain of the novel. Rasheed owns a shoe shop in Kabul, and is initially a successful businessman, though as things unravel in Afghanistan, he ends up struggling and eventually losing his business. Before marrying Mariam, he had already been married once before, but his wife and son had died—his son drowned while Rasheed was drunk and passed out. He is initially kind and solicitous to Mariam but soon becomes a grunting, hostile bundle of nerves, who treats Mariam with scorn and beats her. The same process is repeated when he marries Laila after her parents’ deaths—Rasheed becomes increasingly violent to both his wives up until the book’s climax. Rasheed doesn’t mind the Taliban, and indeed his character is meant to reveal the worst of men’s treatment of women in Afghanistan during the time span of the novel.
- Nana
- Unlike Mariam, Laila is a beautiful young girl from an educated family in Kabul whose father is committed to giving her an education and preparing her for life as an independent woman. However, Laila suffers in her own way from the coldness of her mother, who seems to have abandoned her in favor of her two sons, who have gone off to battle and are eventually killed. Laila is curious and intelligent: she retains a strong sense of Afghanistan’s culture and is hopeful for its future. She is also bold and prone to risk-taking, as evidenced by her love affair with Tariq as a teenager, by her plot to escape Rasheed, and by her constant commitment to make it to the orphanage to visit her daughter Aziza despite the possibility of beatings by the Taliban. Ultimately, however, Laila is not as tough or world-weary as Mariam—though she remains forever cognizant of the tremendous sacrifice Mariam has made for her. It is this sense of debt, to Mariam, to her family, and to Afghanistan, that will determine her return to Afghanistan from exile in Pakistsan.
- Jalil
- Laila’s childhood friend and eventually lover and husband. Tariq wears a prosthetic leg since he stepped on a land mine at the age of five. He can be mischievous and goofy, and he is always eager to prove his strength by joining in any fight and by defending Laila against other neighborhood boys. Tariq adores Laila and is unfailingly loyal to her, returning to Kabul to find her after years of imprisonment and exile in Pakistan.
- Mariam’s mother, once a maid in Jalil’s household until she became pregnant with his child. Banished to the kolba (a hut on a hill) after her father disowned her, Nana is bitter and unhappy. She constantly complains about Jalil to Mariam and admonishes her not to trust any man. Though she can be at times a stifling presence for Mariam, Nana adores her and won’t even let her attend school so as to keep her close. Nana’s suicide, after Mariam has gone in search of Jalil, will make Mariam feel guilty and ashamed for the rest of her life, and harbor regrets about the way she dismissed Nana’s warnings.
- Mariam’s father, a successful cinema owner in Herat, who has three wives and nine legitimate children in addition to Mariam. Jalil comes to see Mariam every week when she is a child, but he never allows her to visit him in Herat or join the rest of his family there. Jalil does seem conflicted about Mariam, but he refuses to see her when she comes on her own. Though he seems regretful, he also allows his wives to arrange the marriage between Mariam and Rasheed. For the rest of the novel, there are hints that Jalil deeply regrets the way he acted with Mariam, though it is only at the very end that we learn the extent of this regret and shame.
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