Cultural anthropology is defined as the study of human patterns of thought and

behavior, and how and why these patterns differ, in contemporary societies. (qtd
by Peter Collings in Birx 150). In all three novels (The Kite Runner, A Thousand
Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed), we observe the same pattern of
thought regarding marriage and the importance of a womans reputation. For
example, in The Kite Runner everyone avoids Soraya and her marriage
prospectives are very low because of her bad reputation when we lived in
Virginia, I ran away with an Afghan man. I was eighteen at the time rebellious
stupid, and he was into drugs we lived together for almost a month. All
the Afghans in Virginia were talking about it. (Hosseini, Kite Runner 151). In
spite of this unfortunate happening, Amir accepts her for who she is and marries
her. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mammy scolds Laila for being so close with a
male friend, Tariq: Its about you and Tariq. Hes a boy, you see, and as such,
what does he care about reputation? But you? The reputation of a girl, especially
one as pretty as you, is a delicate thing, Laila. Like a minah bird in your hands.
Slacken your grip and away it flies. (Hosseini, Suns 160) This delicate subject is
also mentioned when Laila arrives into Rasheeds house because her parents died
and she was left on the street. After spending some time into his house, Rasheed
tells Mariam, his wife: We need to legitimize this situation People will talk.
It looks dishonorable, an unmarried young woman living here. Its bad for my
reputation. And hers. And yours, I might add. (Hosseini, Suns 208).
When analyzing a certain culture, we also study the behavior of people
paying attention to the way they act in certain situations, whether they fit into
individualism or groupism. Muslims have the tendency to conform to the
general thinking and rules of a group: The Muslim is part of the unmah, the
community, to which he gives loyalty and which provides him with social
identity (Ahmed 57). If one person dares to have a personal and unique system
of beliefs, he or she will be singled out as a pariah and receive disapproval and
condemnation from the entire community. Muslim girls are raised to be
dependent on a man, to marry and bear children, they are not to be independent,
self-reliant women: By the time were twenty, Hasina used to say, Giti and I,
well have pushed out four, five kids each. But you, Laila, youll make us two
dummies proud. Youre going to be somebody. I know one day Ill pick up a
newspaper and find your picture on the front page. (Hosseini, Suns 163)
Culture is transmitted, learned, and shared. In his novel, The Kite
Runner, Hosseini introduces us to the Afghan traditional competitions that are
transmitted from elder generations to younger generations. Children learn them
very thoroughly to make their parents proud and when they reach adulthood they
share them with their offspring. One example is Buzkashi, Afghanistans national
passion which consists of skilled horsemen that have to snatch a goat or a cattle
carcass from the midst of a melee (a confused hand-to-hand fight or struggle
among several people), carry the carcass around the stadium at full gallop, and
drop it in a scoring circle while other horsemen chases the contestant and do
everything in their power to snatch the carcass from him. This tournament takes
place on the first day of spring. Amir doesnt enjoy this violent and aggressive
game and starts to cry to his fathers disappointment, when he watches one of the
horsemen fell off his saddle and got trampled under a score of hooves: His body
was tossed and hurled in the stampede like a rag doll, finally rolling to a stop
when the melee moved on. He twitched once and lay motionless, his legs bent at
unnatural angles, a pool of his blood soaking through the sand. (Hosseini, Kite
Runner 20). Another example is the annual kite fighting contest: In Kabul,
fighting kites was a little like going to war (Hosseini, Kite Runner 47). Hassan
and Amir built their own kites and made their own string: If the kite was the
gun, then tar, the glass-coated cutting line, was the bullet in the chamber.
(Hosseini, Kite Runner 47).
In his novels, Hosseini employs the etic approach (members of a culture
often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures
impartially) to culture providing an objective view of Muslim traditions and
customs: On Eid, the three days of celebration after the holy month of Ramadan,
Kabulis dressed in their best dress and newest clothes and visited their families.
People hugged and kissed and greeted each other with Eid Mubarak. Happy
Eid. Children opened gifts and played with dyed hard-boiled eggs. (Hosseini,
Kite Runner 41)
We can find many examples of Afghan norms, such as the wearing of
burqa: Mariam had never before worn a burqa. Rasheed had to help her put it
on. The padded headpiece felt tight and heavy on her skull, and it was strange
seeing the world through a mesh screen. She practiced walking around her room
in it and kept stepping on the hem and stumbling. (Hosseini, Suns 71). We also
encounter various examples of mores, which refer to the moral customs and
conventions that embody the fundamental values of a group or society (Birx
634), such as: Mullah Fatiullah Khan lectured us about the virtues of zakat and
the duty of hadj; he taught us the intricacies of performing the five daily namaz
prayers, and made us memorize verses from the Koran he told us one day that
Islam considered drinking a terrible sin (Hosseini, Kite Runner 15). Still, when
Amir confronted his father about drinking, he replied: no matter what the
mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft when you kill
a man, you steal a life when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the
truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. (Hosseini, Kite Runner
17)
Muslim marriages are endogamous. Muslim marriages are arranged by the
parents of the couple who, after considering potential partners for their children,
arrange meeting for the two with a chaperone always being present. We can see
how in Hosseinis The Kite Runner, Amirs father goes to General Taheri to ask
for Sorayas hand in marriage for his son Amir. Only with the womans father
agreement, will the wedding take place: Well?. The General accepted. I let
out a burst of air. Sat down. My hands were shaking. (Hosseini, Kite Runner
150). We observe here Amirs excitement, his dread of a negative response and
feelings of happiness mixed with relief at the hearing of the acceptance of the
proposal. In this fortunate situation, the marriage between Amir and Soraya
involve feelings of love, not only duty. But in other unfortunate situations, such
as the one described in A Thousand Splendid Suns, some women have no choice
and are obliged to marry an older man they do not love if they do not want to end
up living on the street having no one to care for them: Ive seen nine-year-old
girls given to men twenty years older than your suitor, Mariam. We all have.
What are you, fifteen? Thats a good, solid marrying age for a girl. (Hosseini,
Suns 47)
In many societies, including the Muslim one, marriage involves some kind
of economic exchange. Bride wealth is money or valuable goods paid by the
groom or his family to the brides family upon marriage: Baba spent $35.000,
nearly the balance of his life savings, on the awroussi, the wedding ceremony. He
rented a large Afghan banquet hall in Fremont the man who owned it knew him
and gave him a substantial discount. Baba paid for the chilas, our matching
wedding bands, and for the diamond ring I picked out. He bought my tuxedo, and
my traditional green suit for the nika the swearing ceremony. (Hosseini, Kite
Runner 156)mullah

Anthropologists emphasize that some cultures, including the Muslim one,

embrace endogamy which refers to marriage within a particular group or
category of individuals: Khala jan tells Amir: You know, your grandfather,
Ghazi Sahib, the judge? Now, his uncle and my grandfather were cousins, she
said. So you see, were related. She smiled a gap-toothed smile, and I noticed
the right side of her mouth drooping a little. (Hosseini, Kite Runner 137). This
category also contains cousin marriage, which is considered ideal and
encouraged by some, while criticized and prohibited by others across the world.
Cousin marriage is common in Australia, North America, South America, and
Polynesia, but it is banned and viewed as incestuous and a taboo topic in China,
Taiwan, North and South Korea, and less than half of the United States. Hosseini
talks about cousin marriage in his novels: Ali, Hassans father, married
Sanaubar, his cousin - Like Ali, she was a Shia Muslim and an ethnic Hazara.
She was also his first cousin and therefore a natural choice for a spouse
(Hosseini, Kite Runner 7). Also Lailas parents in A Thousand Splendid Suns are
cousins: Both Mammy and Babi, who were first cousins, had been born and
raised in Panjshir; they had moved to Kabul back in 1960 as hopeful, bright-eyed
newlyweds when Babi had been admitted to Kabul University (Hosseini, Suns
108). The issue of polygyny is also brought up, a form of marriage in which one
individual has multiple spouses at the same time. It is the preferred form of
marriage around the world and practiced in parts of Asia and Africa: Jalil had
three wives and nine children, nine legitimate children, all of whom were
strangers to Mariam (Hosseini, Kite Runner 5)
Hosseini discusses controversial issues, especially in the Islamic culture,
such as homosexuality, rape, and porn: Assef knelt behind Hassan, put his
hands on Hassans hips and lifted his bare buttocks. He kept one hand on
Hassans back and undid his own belt buckle with his free hand. He unzipped his
jeans. Dropped his underwear. He positioned himself behind Hassan. Hassan
didnt struggle. (Hosseini, Kite Runner 71); Suleiman Wahdati confesses to
Nabi that he loves him: I need to tell you, if only this once, that I have loved
you a long, long time, Nabi. Please dont be angry (Hosseini, Mountains 136);
Beneath the gun were several magazines with curling corners. Mariam opened
one. Something inside her dropped. Her mouth gaped of its own will. On every
page were women, beautiful women, who wore no shirts, no trousers, no socks or
underpants. They wore nothing at all. (Hosseini, Kite Runner 81)
Besides the strictness and horrors of an arranged marriage presented in the
novels, Hosseini also adds the existence of romance, of an innocent crush or
childhood love that can bloom between two nave teenagers who believe they can
change the norms of the society. One excellent example in this matter is the
relationship between Laila and Tariq in A Thousand Splendid Suns, which
develops as time goes by, from playground friends into sweethearts: Laila could
think of, was the fullness of Tariqs lips, the heat of his breath on her mouth, her
own reflection in his hazel eyes. Shed kissed him twice more since the time
beneath the tree, longer, more passionately, and, she thought, less clumsily. Both
times, shed meet him secretly in the dim alley where hed smoked a cigarette the
day of Mammys lunch party. The second time, shed let him touch her breast.
(Hosseini, Suns 174) Another example that defies the Muslim conventional
perception of love is Nila Wahdati from And the Mountains Echoed who writes
some eccentric poems: But Nilas poems defied tradition. They followed no
preset meter or rhyming pattern. Nor did they deal with the usual things, trees
and spring flowers and bulbul birds. Nila wrote about love, and by love I do not
mean the Sufi yearnings of Rumi or Hafez but instead physical love. She wrote
about lovers whispering across pillows, touching each other. She wrote about
pleasure. (Hosseini, Mountains 112)
The bond between husbands and wives rests upon sex life and division of
labor. In Muslim society, the woman leads the domestic life, while the husband
does the hard work and brings in the money. In A Thousand Splendid Suns,
Rasheed is the one who owns a shoe shop and provides for his family with
money, while Mariam does the housework: Mariam was disappointed that he
did not notice the clean windows, the swept floors, the missing cobwebs. But he
did look pleased that she had already set his dinner plate, on a clean sofrah spread
on the living-room floor. (Hosseini, Suns 67-68)
Fidelity is an important factor in the treatment of women. Many societies,
including the Muslim one, permit maltreatment of an unfaithful wife. A clear
example of a mans reaction at the discovery of the fact that his wife has spoken
or interacted with another man, especially without wearing a burqa is given in A
Thousand Splendid Suns: Without saying a word, he swung the belt at Laila
At one point, Laila ducked and managed to land a punch across his ear, which
made him spit a curse and pursue her even more relentlessly. He caught her,
threw her up against the wall, and struck her with the belt again and again, the
buckle slamming against her chest, her shoulder, her raised arms, her fingers,
drawing blood wherever it struck. (Hosseini, Suns 337-338).
Afghanistan is a country that has undergone multiple changes throughout
history, having power struggles, coups, and unstable transfer of power. Power
refers to the ability of individuals or groups to impose their will upon others and
make them do things even against their own wants or wisher (Haviland 228).
Hosseini shows a special interest in politics in all of his novels and considers it
an important aspect of the country for the readers to be aware of. He presents the
coup that happened in Afghanistan. A coup is a sudden illegal, often violent,
taking of government power, especially by an army: As it turned out, they
hadnt shot much of anything that night of July 17, 1973. Kabul awoke the next
morning to find that the monarchy was a thing of the past. The king, Zakir Shah,
was away in Italy. In his absence, his cousin Daoud Khan had ended the kings
forty-year reign with a bloodless coup (Hosseini, Kite Runner 34). This event is
also described in A Thousand Splendid Suns: A revolutionary council of the
armed forces has been established, and our watan will now be known as the
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Abdul Qader said. The era of aristocracy,
nepotism, and inequality is over, fellow hamwatans. We have ended decades of
tyranny. Power is now in the hands of the masses and freedom-loving people. A
glorious new era in the history of our country is afoot. A new Afghanistan is
born. We assure you that you have nothing to fear, fellow Afghans. The new
regime will maintain the utmost respect for principles, both Islamic and
democratic. This is a time of rejoicing and celebration (Hosseini, Suns 100-
101)
Afghanistan had various systems of government: monarchy, republic,
theocracy, dictatorship, and a pro-communist state. The dictatorship is
represented by the Taliban and is vividly and accurately described in Hosseinis
novels: When the Taliban rolled in and kicked the Alliance out of Kabul, I
actually danced on that street, Rahim Khan said People were so tired of the
constant fighting, tired of the rockets, the gunfire, the explosions, tired of
watching Gulbuddin and his cohorts firing on anything that moved. The Alliance
did more damage to Kabul than the Shorawi. (Hosseini, Kite Runner 184-185),
The streets became littered with bodies, glass, and crumpled chunks of metal.
There was looting, murder, and, increasingly, rape, which was used to intimidate
civilians and reward militiamen. Mariam heard of women who were killing
themselves out of fear of being raped, and of men who, in the name of honor,
would kill their wives or daughters if theyd been raped by the militia.
(Hosseini, Suns 247), and And then the looting, Mr. Markos. Militiamen would
walk in at will and make off with whatever struck their fancy. They whisked
away most of the furniture, the paintings, the Turkoman rugs, the statues, the
silver candlesticks, the crystal vases. They chiseled loose lapis tiles from the
bathroom counters. (Hosseini, Mountains 140). We can conclude that the
Taliban rule is characterized by violence, terrorism, brutal treatment of people,
and by the destruction and burning of countless homes. They also applied
negative sanctions which involve external enforcement through open coercion.
This is exemplified by a very strict interpretation of the Sharia law: And what
manner of punishment, brothers and sisters, befits the adulterer? ... How shall
we answer those who throw stones at the windows of Gods house? WE SHALL
THROW THE STONES BACK! (Hosseini, Kite Runner 248-249), The Supreme
Court under Rabbani passed rulings based on Sharia, strict Islamic laws that
ordered women to cover, forbade their travel without a male relative, punished
adultery with stoning. (Hosseini, Suns 253)
As previously stated, religion is more than the mere name of a belief; it
expresses that man is concerned about something that is beyond him. Islam,
though, is a very strict religion with definite rules to be followed and obeyed. In
Hosseinis novels we can see the characters strong belief in a God whom you
can count on in adversity and who will never turn His back on you: I see now
that Baba was wrong, there is a God, there always had been. I see Him here, in
the eyes of the people in this corridor of desperation. This is the real house of
God, this is where those who have lost God will find him, not the white masjid
with its bright diamond lights and towering minarets. There is a God, there has to
be, and now I will pray (Hosseini, Kite Runner 317), You go on and cry,
Mariam jo. Go on. There is no shame in it. But remember, my girl, what the
Koran says, Blessed is He in Whose hands is the kingdom, and He who has
power over all things, Who created death and life that He may try you. The
Koran speaks the truth, my girl. Behind every trial and every sorrow that He
makes us shoulder, God has a reason. (Hosseini, Suns 38). Like any other
religion, the Islamic one contains superstitions, the belief in supernatural source,
such as omens, witchcraft, and prophecies that contradict science and the natural
occurrence of events: He would take the mirror and tell us what his mother had
told him, that the devil shone mirrors too, shone them to distract Muslims during
prayer. And he laughs while he does it, he always added, scowling at his son
(Hosseini, Kite Runner 4), He told her of the superstitions people had about
shoes: that putting them on a bed invited death into the family, that a quarrel
would follow if one put on the left shoe first. Unless it was done unintentionally
on a Friday, he said. And did you know its supposed to be a bad omen to tie
shoes together and hang them from a nail?(Hosseini, Suns 63).
The transition between the spirit realm and the earthly one is the existence
of sacred sites or places. These locations are so important because people have
experienced something inexplicable there or the site was associated with a
mystic, prophet, or a saint. These sites have become in time pilgrimage
destinations being also prone to desecration, which is a sacrilegious act of
destroying sacred objects or places. Hosseini gives us the example of the Buddha
statues destroyed by the Taliban: Governments, historians, and archaeologists
from all over the globe had written letters, pleaded with the Taliban not to
demolish the two greatest historical artifacts in Afghanistan. But the Taliban had
gone ahead and detonated their explosives inside the two-thousand-year-old
Buddhas. They had chanted Allah-u-akbar with each blast, cheered each time the
statues lost an arm or a leg in a crumbling cloud of dust. (Hosseini, Suns 306)
Regarding the gender roles issue, we most certainly can affirm that in the
Afghan culture, women are less valued than men: You know what he told his
wives by way of defense? That I forced myself on him. That it was my fault.
Didi? You see? This is what it means to be a woman in this world. (Hosseini,
Suns 7) Its our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. Its all we
have. Do you understand? (Hosseini, Suns 18). In Afghanistan, men have full
control over their wives, leaving or getting a divorce being out of the questions:
You do realize, hamshira, that it is a crime for a woman to run away. We see a
lot of it. Women traveling alone, claiming their husbands have died. Sometimes
theyre telling the truth, most times not. You can be imprisoned for running away,
I assume you understand that, nay? (Hosseini, Suns 259). In general women are
not perceived as contributing members of the society, but there was a time in
Afghanistans history when things were different and women were even allowed
to receive proper education and work in institutions: Women have always had it
hard in this country, Laila, but theyre probably more free now, under the
communists, and have more rights than theyve ever had before But its true,
Babi said, its a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan. And you can take
advantage of that, Laila Here in Kabul, women taught at the university, ran
schools, held office in the government. No, Babi meant the tribal areas,
especially the Pashtun regions in the south or in the east near the Pakistani
border, where women were rarely seen on the streets and only then in burqa and
accompanied by men (Hosseini, Suns 133)
 Language is a system through which people share their thoughts and
feelings. This signifies that language unites people; it brings them together or
separates them: Every Tuesday afternoon, after regular school, I sat in Farsi
class and, like a fish made to swim upstream, tried to guide the pen, against my
hands own nature, from right to left. I begged Baba to end the Farsi classes, but
he refused. He said I would appreciate later the gift he was giving me. He said
that if culture was a house, then language was the key to the front door, to all the
rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home
or a legitimate identity. (Hosseini, Mountains 417).
Hosseini mentions that in Afghanistan there are a few dialects. Dialects
represent varying forms of a language that reflect particular regions, occupations,
or social classes, and that are similar enough to be mutually intelligible: Kabul
was far more crowded than the little that Mariam had seen of Heart. There were
fewer trees and fewer garis pulled by horses, but more cars, taller buildings, more
traffic lights and more paved roads. And everywhere Mariam heard the citys
peculiar dialect: Dear was jan instead of jo, sister became hamshira, and so
on. (Hosseini, Suns 72)
Personal names are important devices for self-definition in Islamic culture,
but not only: Still, despite the familiarity, each night I asked to hear Paris story
again, caught in the pull of its gravity. Maybe it was simply because we shared a
name. Maybe that was why I sensed a connection between us, dim, enfolded in
mystery, real nonetheless. But it was more than that. I felt touched by her, like I
too had been marked by what had happened to her. We were interlocked, I
sensed, through some unseen order in ways I couldnt wholly understand, linked
beyond our names, beyond our familial ties, as if, together, we completed a
puzzle. I felt certain that if I listened closely enough to her story, I would
discover something revealed about myself. (Hosseini, Mountains 400-401)