Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

When I was seven, eight, and nine we lived in a neighborhood in Philly where my sister and I were friends with Iranian immigrants who had one daughter her age and one daughter my age. I have a pretty poor memory and can't recall a great deal about these years, but I clearly remember the anger the Iranian family felt about the Islamic Revolution and about being forced to leave their country. Add to that the 444-day Iran hostage crisis and the distrust and fear I know they faced from some of their new neighbors, and you can imagine what a great time they were having in their new home.

Persepolis is the memoir of a girl my age whose family stayed in Iran during this time. She's the other side of the coin of the girl I knew, and the truth is that they weren't very different. Satrapi's story makes it explicitly clear that a change in regime does not signal a sudden change in the opinions and desires of all of the people; it only appears this way when the new regime practices brutal repression of free speech and political dissent. She shows how complicated life under such a regime is, and how strong ties to your own country remain, no matter how much you come to disagree with its rulers and suffer under their control.

I read this book about a year ago and still think of it often due to its illustrations of the daily truth beneath the news stories that make it to CNN or the New York Times. It's an important reminder in this age of extreme political doubletalk, which is much more sophisticated than the Evil Empire dichotomy of the Reagan Years, but still crude enough to insist that citizens are being bombed and maimed for their own good. That, in fact, they rather asked for it.

Satrapi's tales of family members taken away, tortured killed for their dissent shows that our Western insistence on standing up to the "bad guys" isn't as simple as we make it. She shows how she personally subverted the repressive laws against women (e.g. wearing the veil), but how small and deadening and useless such actions can be. Ultimately, she decided to leave her family behind and move to France rather than live in an Islamic fundamentalist Iran.

Here's what Satrapi said on her publisher's website:

If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less. It's not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface. That is why I wanted people in other countries to read Persepolis, to see that I grew up just like other children.

We haven't been paying any heed to "the basement of a country", not here in our own country (witness New Orleans), nor in Iraq, Lebanon, or Afganistan. Until we do that, we're just hyping hate and expecting brute force to solve problems.

So I say buy this book, read it, then hit President Bush over the head with it. Repeatedly. It's okay; only Tony Blair would feel the pain.