Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

She introduced me to Momo. He was two years older.

“This is Marjane. She’s Iranian. She’s known war.”

“War?”

“Delighted!”

“You’ve already seen lots of dead people?”

“Um... a few.”

“Cool!”

For me, not going to school was synonymous with solitude, especially now that Lucia was spending all her time with her boyfriend, Klaus.

“Do you have a problem with vacation?”

“No! But you see, at home, we had two weeks of rest for the new year and after that we had to wait until summer.”

“You’ll get used to it. Thanks to the left, there are holidays in Europe. We are not forced to work all the time [...] Come on, relax, take advantage! You don’t even know Bakunin!”

[...]

This cretin Momo wasn’t altogether wrong. I needed to fit in, and for that I needed to educate myself.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

That night, I really understood the meaning of “the sexual revolution.” It was my first big step toward assimilating into Western culture.

“Whatever! Existence is not absurd. There are people who believe in it and who give their lives for values like liberty.”

“What rubbish! Even that, it’s a distraction from boredom.”

“So my uncle died to distract himself?”

For Momo, death was the only domain where my knowledge exceeded his. On this subject, I always had the last word.

The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else’s rules. Each telephone call from my parents reminded me of my cowardice and my betrayal. I was at once happy to hear their voices and ashamed to talk to them.

[...]

If only they knew...if they knew that their daughter was made up like a punk, that she smoked joints to make a good impression, that she had seen men in their underwear while they were being bombed every day, they wouldn’t call me their dream child.

“It’s amazing how you’ve grown.”

I didn’t repeat that she, too, had changed. At her age, you don’t grow up, you grow old.

In the letter, he was overjoyed by the thought that I had a peaceful life in Vienna. I had the impression that he didn’t realize what I was enduring.

I’d already heard this threatening word yelled at me in the metro. It was an old man who said “dirty foreigner, get out!” I had heard it another time on the street. But I tried to make light of it. I thought that it was just the reaction of a nasty old man.

But this, this was different. It was neither an old man destroyed by the war, nor a young idiot. It was my boyfriend’s mother who attacked me. She was saying that I was taking advantage of Markus and his situation to obtain an Austrian passport, that I was a witch.

What do you want me to say, sir? That I’m the vegetable that I refused to become?

That I’m so disappointed in myself that I can no longer look at myself in the mirror? That I hate myself?

I had known a revolution that had made me lose part of my family.

I had survived a war that had distanced me from my country and my parents...

...And it’s a banal story of love that almost carried me away.

Despite the doctor’s orders, I bought myself several cartons of cigarettes.

[...]

I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.

There were people everywhere. Each passenger was being met by a dozen people. Suddenly, amongst the crowd, I spotted my parents...

...But it wasn’t reciprocal. Of course it made sense. One changes more between the ages of fourteen and eighteen than between thirty and forty.

“Ah, there’s nothing like Iranian tea!”

“Oh yes, especially with a cigarette. Do you want one?”

“Mom!!”

“What? You know the proverb: ‘prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea.’”

It was the first time that my mother had spoken to me in this tone: in her eyes now, I had become an adult.

Many had changed names. They were now called Martyr what’s-his-name Avenue or Martyr something-or-other Street.

It was very unsettling.

I felt as though I were walking through a cemetery.

...Surrounded by the victims of a war I had fled.

It was unbearable. I hurried home.

Next to my father’s distressing report, my Viennese misadventures seemed like little anecdotes of no importance. So I decided that I would never tell them anything about my Austrian life. They had suffered enough as it was.

Certainly, they’d had to endure the war, but they had each other and close by. They had never known the confusion of being a third-worlder, they had always had a home! At the same time, how could they have pitied me? I was so shut off. I kept repeating to myself that I mustn’t crack up.

“What do you mean? You’ve done the deed with many people?”

“Well, I mean...I’ve had a few experiences.”

“So what’s the difference between you and a whore???”

Underneath their outward appearance of being modern women, my friends were real traditionalists.

They were overrun by hormones and frustration, which explained their aggressiveness toward me. To them, I had become a decadent Western woman.

But as soon as the effect of the pills wore off, I once again became conscious. My calamity could be summarized in one sentence: I was nothing. I was a Westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn’t even know anymore why I was living.

He sought in me a lost lightheartedness. And I sought in him a war which I had escaped. In short, we complemented each other.

I applied myself. Designing the “model” that would please both the administration and the interested parties wasn’t easy. I made dozens of sketches.

This was the result of my research. Though subtle, these differences meant a lot to us.

This little rebellion reconciled my grandmother and me. [...] And this is how I recovered my self-esteem and my dignity. For the first time in a long time, I was happy with myself.

The regime had understood that one person leaving herself while asking herself: Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?

No longer asks herself: Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What’s going on in the political prisons?

I didn’t say everything I could have: that she was frustrated because she was still a virgin at twenty-seven! That she was forbidding me what was forbidden to her! That to marry someone that you don’t know, for his money, is prostitution. That despite her locks of hair and her lipstick, she was acting like the state.

When the apartment door closed, I had a bizarre feeling. I was already sorry! I had suddenly become “a married woman.” I had conformed to society, while I had always wanted to remain in the margins. In my mind, “a married woman” wasn’t like me. It required too many compromises. I couldn’t accept it, but it was too late.