This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!

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Navigate the Summary Parts: Part 1: Mariam waits for her dad Part 2: Mariam follows her dad Part 3: Mariam gets married Part 4: Mariam gets pregnant Part 5: Young Laila misses Tariq Part 6: Laila goes on a field trip Part 7: Plans to evacuate Kabul Part 8: Laila gets married Part 9: The Taliban shows up Part 10: Conclusion

Summary of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini:
Pages 47 - 64

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Chapter 8: (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) The next day Jalil and the wives bring over Rasheed and a strange mullah, and they rush through the marriage ceremony with Mariam who is appalled at how big and rough Rasheed looks. Rasheed has bus tickets to take them both from Herat to his home in Kabul.

At the bus station Jalil waits with Mariam beside the bus, chattering to her about how much she will like living in Kabul.  Mariam interrupts him and cuts him down to size with a short, devastating denouncement: she tells him she used to worship him until she realized that he was ashamed of her. She tells him to say goodbye now because she never wants to see him ever again. Jalil starts whining, but Mariam boards the bus with her new husband and does not look back.
 
Chapter 9: Mariam and Rasheed return to his small house in Kabul, which is nowhere near as luxurious as Jalil's house, but way better than Nana's hovel.  Mariam feels the loss of her old life and starts crying.  Rasheed impatiently orders her to stop because he can't stand the sound of a woman crying. She says she wants to go home, and he says he won't take that personally – this time. He takes her arm and gives her a tour of the house, showing her their separate bedrooms.  She's relieved to see that they will be sleeping apart.  In her room, he's made an effort to arrange a bowl of tuberoses (her namesake) on her windowsill.

Chapter 10:  For her first week, Mariam stays in her room. Rasheed puts up with it, but then tells her on the eighth day that she's supposed to start acting like a wife.  He leaves for work. Poor Mariam is petrified that she'll have to have sex with him; her mother has already made her terrified at the thought of sex. She unpacks her suitcase and then cleans the house.

Then Mariam puts on a hijab (headscarf) and goes down the street with some bread dough to bake it in the communal tandoor (clay oven).  The neighborhood women are gathering there and gossiping; at first, Mariam is intrigued by all the fragments of conversation that she overhears. A woman named Fariba introduces herself and tries to get acquainted with Mariam. 

But then suddenly the neighborhood women swarm Mariam, curious about the newcomer.  They bombard her with personal questions. Fariba realizes that she's about to panic, and tries to back the others down. But Mariam freaks out and runs back towards Rasheed's house. But she can't remember which house is his; for several long terrifying minutes, she's running around lost.  Then she finds his house and runs inside.

That night, Rasheed grudgingly praises her cooking, and it fills Mariam with relief and pride. He gives her a burqa (a head-to-toe robe for women with a mesh opening over the eyes) and says she has to wear it in public from now on.

Apparently a Pashtun like Rasheed is going to expect Mariam to adhere to ancient tribal customs. He lectures about how improper he finds it that men bring their wives to his shoe-store to get fitted for shoes and let him see their wives' bare feet. He mentions the neighbors Fariba and her husband Hakim, a teacher; apparently Hakim is a weakling who lets his wife walk around in public alone with nothing on her head but a scarf.
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