Jalil and his legitimate children relationship

Jalil, one of Herat's wealthiest men, had three wives and nine legitimate children, all of whom were strangers to his illegitimate daughter Mariam. He owned a cinema, land in Karokh and Farah, three carpet stores, a clothing shop, and a black 1956 Buick Roadmaster, and was a friend of the mayor and the provincial governor. His legitimate children lived in his large house in Herat, attended school, and enjoyed the privileges of his wealth and status. His daughters Saideh and Naheed, for instance, went to the Mehri School for girls in Herat, an education Mariam was denied. When Mariam, at fifteen, asked to meet her siblings and go to his cinema to see a cartoon, Jalil initially agreed but then failed to appear, sending his driver to turn her away from his house. She spent the night on the street outside his home, and the next morning, after she briefly burst into his garden, she saw his face in an upstairs window before the curtains were pulled shut. He let her sleep on the street. After Nana's suicide, Jalil brought Mariam to his house, but his wives quickly arranged for her to marry the much older Rasheed, a shoemaker from Kabul. When Mariam pleaded with Jalil to stop the marriage, he said, "Goddamn it, Mariam, don't do this to me," as though he were the victim. The nikka was performed the next morning, and Mariam was sent away on a bus to Kabul that same day. Before she boarded, she told him, "I used to worship you... I didn't know that you were ashamed of me," and declared, "It ends here for you and me." Jalil's legitimate children, by contrast, were never sent away; they remained in his home, continued their education, and were integrated into his public life. Years later, in a letter written shortly before his death, Jalil confessed to Mariam, "I regret that I did not make you a daughter to me, that I let you live in that place for all those years. And for what? Fear of losing face? Of staining my so-called good name?" He acknowledged that he had been a weak man and asked for her forgiveness, but Mariam never read the letter; she had shredded it unopened. The relationship reveals the cruel calculus of a man who, despite his wealth and influence, chose to protect his reputation among his legitimate family at the cost of abandoning his firstborn daughter, a choice that defined Mariam's life and her understanding of love and belonging.