Before reading the first portion of Persepolis, I had made a
somewhat subconscious decision to ignore what was going on in Iran and
in other regions of the Middle East. Even by calling all countries that
appear to have a high number of Muslims "the Middle East" seems to be a
way of saying "all of those people" and I feel rather uneducated for
referring to that area in such a way. It seems logical to assume that
the Middle East can vary in a large way from country to country or even
from city to city.
I think that perhaps what
contributed to my decision to be willingly ignorant about Iran was
caused by the popular images that were and still are being circulated by popular Western media.
These were the images of women wearing various types of veils as well as images of the
flowing robes that the men wore. Since members of the media almost
always used the vague term "the Middle East" it became difficult for me
to differentiate one country from another. After the attacks that
occurred in September of 2001, the mainstream media also seemed to focus
on whatever anyone in the Western world would deem to be most negative
about Muslim culture.They focused on the poor treatment and alleged
subservience of Muslim women and on that of gun toting religious extremists.
American soldiers told stories of children that would throw grenades at
them. It seemed to me that if the state of the area was as bad as it
seemed that it must have been that way for at least a few hundred years
or so.
What I gathered from my reading in Persepolis is that the way life in Iran is now must be the result of what occurred gradually over the last several decades. The main character of the graphic novel is a very young girl and before the story begins the author explains that she grew up in Iran. I can only assume that the story is at least loosely based on the author's true childhood. Her story paints a picture of Iran that I did not expect to see. The events involving demonstrations seem tumultuous and dangerous to be sure, but aren't all protests risky? The main character's home life seems similar enough to that of my own, except that her parents seem to be more understanding of her rebelliousness. Her mom is not subservient and is as involved with political demonstrations as her father seems to be. The main character also mentions being "forced" to suddenly wear a veil, yet what she describes as "force" seems to be more reminiscent of the common issue of getting any child to wear just about any restrictive item of clothing. My point is that I don't expect to see any woman getting executed over what she wears this early in the story and I think that it's safe to say that this observation is somewhat indicative of what it was and what it was not like to live in Iran in the time period covered by the first part of this novel.
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