1987

1987 is a year of convergence in A Thousand Splendid Suns, a hinge point where the separate arcs of Mariam and Laila begin to turn toward their eventual collision. It is a year of final reckonings, of childhood's end, and of the first, fragile dreams of escape from a country sliding into chaos. The events of this year—a father's belated attempt at atonement, a mother's descent into grief, and a daughter's first taste of love and loss—lay the emotional and narrative groundwork for the decades of suffering and resilience to come.

Jalil's Final Visit and Mariam's Refusal

In the spring of 1987, Jalil, now an old man with fluffy white hair and a stooping frame, drives his blue Buick Roadmaster from Herat to Kabul. He parks on the street outside Mariam's house in Deh-Mazang, leaning on a cane, and waits for hours, calling her name. Mariam, now twenty-eight, parts the curtain just enough to see him—his dark brown suit, the white handkerchief in his breast pocket, his red tie—and their eyes meet briefly through the gap. But she closes the curtains and sits on the bed, waiting for him to leave. She never opens the door. Later, Jalil leaves a letter at her door, which she keeps for days beneath her pillow, turning it over in her hands, before ultimately shredding it unopened. This refusal marks the final, irreversible severing of their relationship; she will never learn that he is dying, that the letter contains a confession of love and regret, and that he has come to say goodbye.

The Death of Jalil and the Unopened Letter

Later that same year, 1987, Jalil dies. Mariam learns of his death years afterward, in 2000, when she calls the mayor's office in Herat from the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. A groundskeeper confirms that Jalil died in 1987. The news hits Mariam with devastating force: he was dying when he came to see her. She regrets her youthful pride, realizing that his faults now seem forgivable compared to Rasheed's malice. The letter he left, which she destroyed, contained his final plea for forgiveness and a small inheritance. The timing of his death, so close to his failed visit, underscores the tragedy of their estrangement and the permanence of lost chances.

Laila's World: War and the Absence of Brothers

For nine-year-old Laila, 1987 is the year the war becomes real. Her brothers, Ahmad and Noor, have already left to join the jihad against the Soviets, and their absence hollows out her home. Her mother, Fariba, is consumed by grief, spending most days in bed, her room a shrine to the boys' photographs. Laila's father, Hakim, works at the Silo bread factory, a job he took after being fired from teaching by the communists. The family's life is defined by the tension between Fariba's militant devotion to the Mujahideen cause and Hakim's quiet, bookish resistance. It is in this atmosphere of loss and waiting that Laila's friendship with Tariq deepens into something more.

The Trip to Bamiyan: A Day of Beauty and a Dream of Escape

In 1987, Hakim hires a taxi for a day trip to the Bamiyan Valley, taking Laila and Tariq to see the giant Buddhas. The climb is hard for Tariq, who has only one leg, but they reach the top, where they stand side by side and gaze down at the green fields, the poplar-lined roads, and the snowcapped Hindu Kush. Hakim tells them about the Buddhist monks who once lived in the caves, and he speaks of his dream of leaving Afghanistan—first to Pakistan, then to America, somewhere near the sea, like California, where they would open a small Afghan restaurant. Laila knows this dream is impossible because her mother will never leave. But the day is a moment of pure, unspoiled beauty, a memory she will cling to. It is also the day she realizes she cannot bear to be separated from Tariq, a feeling that will shape her future choices.

The Blue Benz and the Ghost of the Past

In the spring of 1987, a blue Benz with Herat license plates appears on Laila's street, parked outside the house of the shoemaker, Rasheed. Laila sees an elderly man in a dark brown suit sitting in the backseat. This is Jalil, come to see Mariam. The car's presence is a silent, ominous sign of the past intruding on the present. It is a detail that Laila notices but does not understand, a thread that will connect her story to Mariam's. The car leaves later that day, its back window twinkling in the sun, but its arrival marks the beginning of the end for Mariam's old life and the first, faint signal of the connection between the two women's fates.