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...