By now, Tariq and Laila are teenagers and in love.

A few years later, war reaches Kabul and bombs fall on the city regularly. Just before Laila reaches adolescence, her parents' receive news that both of their sons have been killed. Laila seeks comfort from her best friend, Tariq, a boy a few years older than her. However, the Afghani war against the Soviets disrupts Laila's childhood and both her older brothers leave to join the war. Growing up down the street from Rasheed and Mariam is Laila, a young, intelligent girl from a loving family. It becomes clear that Rasheed's only use for Mariam is in her ability to replace the son he lost years ago. At first Rasheed treats Mariam decently, but after she suffers miscarriage after miscarriage, he abuses her both physically and verbally. Jalil's wives want nothing to do with Mariam, so they force him to let her marry Rasheed, a widowed shoemaker in Kabul. Mariam is taken to Jalil's home after her mother's funeral.

The next morning, Jalil's chauffeur drives Mariam home where she finds that her mother has committed suicide. Mariam walks to heart and finds Jalil's house, but he doesn't let her in, so she sleeps on the street. Jalil reluctantly agrees, but then never shows up to take her to the film. She makes her wishes known by asking Jalil to take her to see Pinocchio for her fifteenth birthday. Mariam resents her limited place in Jalil's life she wants to live with him, his three wives, and her half-siblings in Herat. Mariam has complicated feelings about her parents: She lives with her spiteful and stubborn mother, Nana while her father Jalil, a successful businessman, visits Mariam - his only illegitimate child - once a week. Mariam, a young girl in the 1960s, grows up outside Herat, a small city in Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s.

I have lived a thousand years summary