Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
By Marjane Satrapi
Pantheon Books, New York: $26.95

Persepolis is a memoir. It’s a comic book. It’s history, story-telling and politics. Described aptly by Bitch magazine as the “tragi-comic art of Marjane Satrapi” and by Satrapi herself as a “very Iranian story” told in a “very Western way,” Persepolis is the story of an Iranian girl who was 9 years old in 1979 when the Iranian people rose up and ousted the corrupt regime of the Shah.

Satrapi tells the story of her experiences during the revolution and afterwards as the popular uprising was consolidated by the mullahs into an “Islamic revolution” and one repressive regime was replaced by another. Persepolis tells Satrapi’s story from the age of 9 until 14 when, afraid for her future and even her life, her parents manage to send their feisty, rebellious daughter out of the country to live and study in Austria.

Born into a left-leaning, middle-class and quite “Westernized” professional family, Satrapi was a beloved and relatively privileged only child. In Persepolis, she presents a unique and revealing perspective on events, weaving together her 10-year-old fantasies and dreams with her curiosity and child’s eye for hypocrisy.

An opening scene shows Satrapi and her schoolmates in the schoolyard in the early days of the Islamic regime using their veils as inventive playthings – skipping ropes, flags, hide-and-seek hoods and make-believe horse harnesses. Soon it is made clear to the little girls that wearing their veils is not optional.

During that time, there are demonstrations of women for and against the veil. Satrapi’s mother is captured on camera by a journalist demonstrating against the veil. In fear of the consequences, she dyes her hair and wears dark glasses for a long time.

An idealist, Satrapi portrays her transition from religion to rebellion. Although her parents are not religious and she attends a secular school in the pre-Islamic period, she forms her childish religious views in reaction to the injustices she sees around her.

During the revolution, she feuds with her parents about not being allowed to accompany them to demonstrations and plays at being a revolutionary with her friends. “Today,” she says, “my name is Che Guevara.” Her playmates respond with: “I am Fidel” and “I want to be Trotsky.” Her favourite book becomes a comic called Dialectic Materialism. She marvels at how much God and Marx look alike, “though Marx’s hair was a bit curlier.”

The comic does not shy away from the terrible acts of repression that she hears about and witnesses as the Islamic regime consolidates its hold on society. Satrapi meets her uncle Anoosh for the first time. He has been imprisoned for many years under the Shah for resistance to the regime and is released during the revolution. They become very close as she laps up his eagerness to talk to her about politics and history. Eventually, he disappears again and she realizes deep inside that her parents’ claim that he has gone on a “trip” is an attempt to protect her from the fact that he has been executed.

But life as a pre-teen in Islamic Iran is not only about politics and repression. To quote Bitch magazine again, “Persepolis strikes an uncanny balance between the personal and the political, the tragic and the comic… Satrapi peppers the books with moments of levity, many involving brushes with the law: helping her grandma dispose of bootleg liquor with the police hot on their trail,” for example.

The story also tells of Satrapi’s attempts to do the things teens everywhere love. She takes risks to wear her jean jacket and skips school to go downtown to buy tapes and hang out at a café with her friends. She argues with her teachers against the hypocrisy in the pro-regime lessons and narrowly escapes arrest by the Guardians of the Revolution for wearing Nike high-tops and a Michael Jackson pin (she tells them it’s Malcolm X).

But the possible consequences of even minor teenage rebellion are frightening. When an 18-year-old acquaintance is captured and executed under suspicion of being a communist, Satrapi’s parents take the heartbreaking step of sending their daughter away.

So, I highly recommend Persepolis to everyone and look forward to the next installment of Satrapi’s comic-strip memoir, Persepolis 2, due to be published in the spring of this year.