Persepolis Marjane Satrapi: revolution through a child’s eyes

I was ten years old when God switched sides.

It wasn’t gradual. It happened like this: one day the Shah was God’s chosen one, and the next day he wasn’t. Nobody explained what had happened in between. I think they expected me not to notice. But children notice everything. They just don’t have the words for it yet, so they store it as a question that goes unanswered for years.

At school they gave us a veil. They said we had to wear it. Nobody said why. I used mine to play jump rope with my friends. It made perfect sense. We were ten. What else would you do with a piece of cloth?

My uncle was a hero. Then he was a prisoner. Then he was dead. The adults processed that as politics. I processed it as loss. I’m not sure which one is more honest.

That’s what I drew in Persepolis. Not the Islamic Revolution the way history books tell it. The revolution the way a child sees it, a child who doesn’t understand why the certainties adults built their lives on break so easily. Why what was true yesterday isn’t true today. Why growing up in some places isn’t a process but a collision.

Iranian women are still in the streets. Still taking off their veils. Still paying a price I drew more than twenty years ago in black ink on white paper, thinking that if I left it on a page, at least nobody could say it never happened.

Just lines on paper. And yet, everything.