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.

“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.