Power of "A Thousand Splendid Suns"

I have read many emotional sad novels but I never felt anything close to what I felt when reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. To give you an idea, few times I had to stop reading the book take a breath focus on something else and then go back to reading.

The book is so powerful such that I could not bare the never ending suffering of the two main characters of the book “Mariam” and “Laila”.

Khaled Hosseini, the author is trying to give us an idea, what it is like to be born in Afganisthan (when Islamic extremists rule the country) as a woman and also get caught in a war.

His perfectly matched words, his ability to put human feelings into words kept my heart crying right throughout the book. Characters started living inside me and I was expecting something to smile about each time when I turned to the next page.

It made me think, if it was this difficult for me to read their life experience, how hard it might be for those who actually go through it.

This book made me ashamed of what I had and have in my life when many other “Mariam”s and “Laila”s are there somewhere on earth.

Another powerful aspect of the book is it gives us a tremendous idea about how much pain a woman can bare. How much my mother would have tolerated all these years and how much my girl friend is tolerating since I’m thousands of miles away from her.

Almost everyday here in Paris, I see Muslim women in streets and I think, she could be another “Mariam” or another “Laila”. The world we are living is so unfair and each of us has the responsibility to make it a better place.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns”, I would recommend for everyone as a must read, to open your eyes and see the dark side of this world.

My First Euro Trip :)

It all began on Friday evening around 7pm when me and 4 other friends of mine left to Brussels in a car. Our plan was to spend Friday night in Brussels and go to Maastricht on Saturday and travel around Brussels on Sunday. It was only on the way to Brussels I got to know that we will be going to an AIESEC conference Party on Friday night.

 

After spending about 1 hour just to get out of Paris, it took 2.5 more hours to reach Brussels. Thanks to our good friends in Brussels we managed to arrange 3 AIESEC intern flats to accommodate us for Friday and Saturday nights.

 

After putting our stuff in these 3 places we directly went to the party. This party was again a reminder for me “how small AIESEC world is”. In this night alone, I met 4 people I met in Egypt 2 years ago including my CC mate Carissa.

 

Though it was not a great party we stayed there till almost 4 am. Then we went to the city center and had a kebab at 5 am (:D) before heading back to our places.

 

Though it was a tough night, we managed to wake up around 11 get ready and reach Maastricht around 2.

First thing that caught my eye in this great city was its calmness and the river which bisects the city. On one side of the city, you can find the historical pat with a Small Castle and a church and many many small statues all over the place. The main square in the City center is a perfect place just to sit and relax which influenced us to get into a restaurant and have our lunch.

Luckily the restaurant we selected happened to a very good one with no other customers :). The sea food sandwich I had there was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. I will remember that sandwich when ever I hear about Maastricht.  

 

After this great lunch we continued our walk around this amazing city. All the streets were so calm and relaxing even though they were filled with all different types of elegant shops.  All of us really felt like we were in middle of a long holiday and did not want to return to Paris.

The Maastricht adventure continued till the dinner pumping us with new energy to our stressful and fast lives in Paris. All famous cities in this world have become crowded and stressful with full of tourists. This city was a reminder for me, there are many more great cities around the globe that can inspire us more than so called “Great” famous cities.  

 

Since we were all tired from traveling and partying, we went to bed around 1 am on Sunday.

On Sunday we went around Brussels. To be honest, there is nothing much to see there. Only thing that caught my attention was the Atomium. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium). After going around the city for 2 hours we were heading to Brugge, a city located about 1 hour away from Brussels. Brugge was another beautiful city but filled with tourists. One restaurant we went, had menus in 10 different languages giving us an idea how many tourists visit this place.

 

Brugge is a much more beautiful city compared to Brussels.  Its a simple small city with attractive quite streets.

 

This city was the final destination of our “AWESOME” weekend adventure. I should thank Jiri for arranging everything in the trip and especially David for driving us all the way. I’m Looking forward for the next road trip yet to be decided, where to ?