From the outset of the novel, the reader learns that Mariam is a harami, a bastard child who is born at great inconvenience to her parents. Nana’s life is reduced to drudgery in a kolba, and she relies upon her seducer to provide for her. For Jalil, supporting Mariam and Nana is penance for his shameful transgression, something he does not want advertised when he casts Mariam out of his public life. Despite the fact that the transgression belongs to her parents and Mariam’s “only sin is being born,” being a harami defines the rest of her life (4). 

A burden and embarrassment to Jalil’s family, the harami is disappeared into matrimony in faraway Kabul. Once she is married, where her crime is to not produce heirs and so at her husband’s convenience is replaced by a younger wife, Laila, Rasheed uses the term harami to taunt Mariam, and devalue her legitimacy as a wife, a respected member of the family (216). Hearing the term “still made her feel like she was a pest, a cockroach” (216).

Ironically, Mariam gains a sense of legitimacy through the affections of baby

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now