Every year, I try re-read books that speak to my heart. One of those books is Persepolis, by now-in-exile Iranian author Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi is not a Muslim. Satrapi hails from a family that (very) loosely identified as Muslims, preferring instead to embrace a staunchly secular and patriotic Iranian mantle. In perhaps a very dramatic break with Islam, Marjane imagines herself as a young girl speaking to God, regularly, as a prophet. Muslims…don’t do that.
Persepolis is the comic-book style memoir of Satrapi’s childhood in an Iran that witnessed a revolution, then endured civil strife and mass executions by quasi-religious extremists, and then found itself plunged into a bloody war that cost a million lives. It went from a country brimming with youthful optimism that the scrappy good guys can pull a Star Wars-like victory against an emperor (the Shah), only to find out that the alternative was far worse. Satrapi shows us interfaith friendships, as she talks about her close Jewish friend who was obsessed with getting married at 15, and the horrific trauma of surviving war—she finds a severed limb belonging to her friend in the rubble of the apartment building where they both lived. But what shines through the most is Satrapi’s sassiness and a lingering feeling that this memoir could have been written by the American girl with ripped jeans that I crushed on in middle school, and not some foreigner with whom I have little in common. And that’s exactly what Marjane-joon is going for.
Persepolis reminds me that there are always at least three sides to every story. A master storyteller who relates to her audience incredibly well, Satrapi manages to drive home that there’s nothing wrong with being Muslim in Iran, but there shouldn’t be anything wrong with wanting to not be so Muslim, either. When I was in Tunisia last year, a minister of state and I got into a discussion about the concept of Muslaman religieux vs Musalman laïque. The latter, which essentially means a non-chalant and secular-leaning Muslim, has been all but criminalized by the ruling authorities in Iran today. While I surmised that the minister anticipated that I belonged to the other categorization (that is Musalman religieux) he surprised me by suggesting that perhaps I belonged to a third way. “What way is that?” I asked he answered: “the right way: of balance and moderation.” Throughout Satrapi’s re-telling of an often painful and unjust childhood: I keep asking myself “where is the righteous middle?” While Satrapi offers as a glimpse into at least one of the many sides of Iran, what I feel is missing is a holistic picture of everyday Iranians who are both Muslims and not extreme either in politics or religious fanaticism. That isn’t a critique of Satrapi: she’s telling her life story as truthfully and raw as one can possibly imagine. Instead, it’s an observation about how dangerous our world has become where the good deeds of those of us who seek to find balance in the force simply cannot be recalled anymore.
Satrapi’s memoir is a trilogy, with the first book having the name of the entire series. I have read all three, but it is her childhood and its vivid recollections of loss, the haunting reverberations of injustice being rationalized around her, and the depictions of a young girl just trying to live her life that has me coming back to remind myself: the world is full of interesting people, and prejudice often blinds us to the good in us all.