Khanum Taheri (aka Khala Jamila) is the wife of General
Iqbal Taheri and the mother of Soraya, Amir's wife in The Kite
Runner. A former singer in Kabul, the general now forbids her to sing in
public. Her voice--or lack of it--is one of the symbols that represents Jamila, who is
fully dominated by her once powerful husband. Jamila also bears another of the novels
symbols, that of scars. Jamila, once a beautiful women, suffered a stroke as a result of
Soraya running away with a man when they lived in Virginia. She is left paralyzed, and
Amir noticed
... the right side of her mouth drooping a
little.
Fear is another symbol that is connected with
Jamila. She is a hypochondriac with "an impressive list of maladies" to which the
general pays no attention and she worries about the general's own recurring migraine
headaches. It is Amir who removes Jamila's greatest fear,
however:
I had
rid her heart of its greatest malady. I had relieved her of the greatest fear of every
Afghan mother: that no honorable khastegar would ask for her
daughter's hand. That her daughter would age alone, husbandless,
childless.
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