What is the critical problem in A Thousand Splendid Suns?

I think that the main problem of the narrative has to do with women's rights and freedoms. Miriam is not someone who has any options. She is treated as something unwanted, partially because she is a bastard child, but partially also because she is female. When she tries for a baby with Rasheed, he refuses to consider girls' names, and does not buy any girl's clothes. Laila, on the other hand, born on the eve of the Islamist revolution, is encouraged to do everything. She represents a modern woman and the communist regime she lives under gets credit for developing that aspect of her. She has choices as long as the regime lasts. When it falls and the Islamists take control, and the fighting intensifies, her freedoms are restricted, so that marriage to Rasheed, which the reader can already see Miriam suffering in, becomes an avenue for legitimacy and escape. In the end, women's rights becomes less important to the book than the intimacy and trust between the women. As they stand up for each other—as Miriam stands up for Laila and saves her life at the expense of her own—the reader sees the question of women's power answered in elemental form.