What is the significance of the opening and ending scenes of "A Thousand Splendid Suns"?

The story begins with a description of the first time Mariam heard the word “harami”. She was five at the time and living with her mother in a small hut outside Herat. Her father would visit her once every week. This was because Mariam was a bastard child who would cause embarrassment to the rest of her father’s legitimate family, thus she was banished together with her mum to the outskirts of Herat. During one of her father’s visits, Mariam broke her mother’s Chinese sugar bowl, left to her by her own mother as inheritance. Mariam’s mother is very annoyed and calls her “harami” and even though she does not know what it means, she can tell it is an offensive word. This opening shows the position Mariam is in, with regards to the prevailing social structures, and the word signifies the myriad of problems that Mariam would encounter throughout her life, coupled with her inability to change her situation.

In the closing, Laila would have wished to know where the Taliban buried Mariam and, although, she does not have this information, she believes Mariam to be alive in the rebuilding process and in her heart. She considers her among the people who died in order to restore hope to the people of Afghanistan.

In the opening Mariam is condemned to her fate because of her background but in the end she is revered as a martyr and the source of hope for Laila’s family.