Turns out Laila was right from the beginning: Rasheed knew about Aziza being Tariq's baby. Laila was arguing with him, complaining that he had lied to her about Tariq dying and how “’…that man [sat] across from [her] and…[Rasheed] knew [Laila] would leave if [she] thought he was alive.’ ‘AND YOU DIDN’T LIE TO ME?...You think I didn’t figure it out? About your harami? You take me for a fool, you whore?’” Why did Rasheed just now bring up what Laila hoped was still her secret?
When Mariam or Laila’s secrets get out or they have a reason, or not, to be beaten, that is the only time one of them sees Rasheed’s “face soften,” But only if they fight back. When Rasheed has got a hold on Laila’s throat and was waiting for her death Mariam goes insane and begins fighting her husband. “She hit him across the temple…he looked at the blood on his fingertips, then at Mariam. She thought she saw his face soften…that maybe quite literally knocked some understanding into his head….was that respect she saw in his eyes? Regret?” That line makes the reader wonder if Rasheed really did have a glimpse of respect for Mariam at that point. Would he change? Or would he not? “…it occurred to her that this was the first time that SHE was deciding the course of her own life.”
I disagree with that occurrence right there because I think another time where Mariam decided her course of life would be when she was a little girl that had never left her yard before and crossed the river. But she decided that one day to cross the river and go after her father when he didn’t show up that day. That altered her entire life! Her mother killed herself, she had to move in with her father and his wives, and then she was given away to Rasheed.
In the next chapter, Laila is curled up on Mariam’s lap and Mariam is telling her all about the things they’re going to see and where they’ll soon live. “Somewhere with trees…lots of trees. They would live in a small house on the edge of some town they’d never heard of, Mariam said, or in a remote village…Maybe there would be a path to take, a path that led to a grass field where the children could play, or maybe a gravel road that would take them to a clear blue lake (river) where trout swam and reeds poked though the surface. They would raise sheep and chickens, and they would make bread together…they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.” Mariam is talking about her home from when she was a little girl living with her mother and daydreaming about Jalil visiting her and the dirt road he would come on and the river they would fish in.
Before her execution Mariam thinks “…of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lonely village, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother.” Then when Laila is in Mariam’s old house she notices that “the floor is carpeted now with dry-edged leaves, broken bottles, discarded chewing gum wrappers, wild mushrooms…but mostly with weeds, some stunted, some springing impudently halfway up the walls.” Impudently means showing a lack of respect and excessive boldness: the reason Mariam was killed in the first place! She showed a lack of respect by obviously beating the crap out of her husband and seconds later he died and the excessive amount of boldness appeared in between holding the shovel and forcing contact between that and Rasheed’s skull. In the end, “One last time, Mariam did as she was told.” She kneeled down and bowed her head
