Reading A Thousand Splendid Suns (hereafter referred to as ATSS because I’m lazy) was an intense emotional experience; whether it was the graphic portrayals of emotional and physical abuse, the inequality within Afghanistan that Meriam and Laila experienced, or the seemingly never-ending string of awful events that the characters had to endure, I was crying through 75% of it. Some of the moments that struck me the most, however, were scenes depicting the vastly different treatments Zalmai and Aziza received from Rasheed due to their genders. Upon learning of Meriam’s first pregnancy, Rasheed only considers that the baby could be a boy, and is not at all interested in the thought of a girl child. When Laila gives birth to Aziza, he is obviously not pleased; he refuses to help with Aziza’s care and is constantly complaining about the typical newborn behavior that Aziza exhibits. However, when Zalmai is born Rasheed becomes a different parent entirely: he is loving, enthusiastically involved, and even buys Zalmai a TV on the black market. Of course, this behavior is extended to Zalmai only; at one point, Rasheed suggests to Laila that Aziza should join the other children that beg on the streets for money. One could say that this is due to the loss of Rasheed’s son from his first marriage, who drowned, and his desire to have this son back that makes his treatment of Zalmai so starkly different from that of Aziza. However, there are a myriad of societal and cultural disadvantages working against Aziza and millions of female children across the world: girls are not only seen as undesirable children to have, but as drains upon their families that are to be avoided by any means necessary. And although Aziza’s mistreatment is awful, in many cases for girls born in third world countries they are subject to an even harsher fate: death at the hands of their parents.
Gendercide, or the mass killing of girl children at birth or shortly after, is a phenomenon that has occurred since the birth of many cultures, and can even be traced back to 200 B.C. Greece. In modern China and India especially, where in the former there is a one child per family policy that is strictly enforced and in the latter there is much poverty and the expense of paying a dowry to the family of the man their daughter will eventually marry. In more traditional societies, sons are seen as the children who will carry on the family name and be able to take up a job or trade that will bring income to the family, whereas girls are a drain upon family resources who cannot contribute nearly as much to the family income or legacy as a boy could. To the women in these situations, it is often seen as a practical choice to have a sex selective abortion, to murder their baby girls within days of birth, or to abandon these babies.
The details of female infanticide are brutal and sickening, but not shocking when you consider the social climates that foster these beliefs that female children are inherently less worthy of love or life due to their gender and society’s ideas of what they could accomplish for themselves and their families based on this. And it is in this belief that lies the real problem, and the thing that must change if an epidemic like this is to end. The lives of girls and women must be valued on an equal level with those of boys and men, and this belief must be promoted. Although women are most often the perpetrators of these infant murders, women like Laila who value their children no matter the gender exist and are working tirelessly to change the immensely damaging culture that they are forced to raise their daughters in and the policies that condone and turn a blind eye to this epidemic. It is my hope that within my lifetime this practice of female infanticide, and infanticide in general, will be only a devastating chapter in our world’s past. We need all of the Lailas and Meriams that we can get in this world.
