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Summary: The Passport
It is now 1982. Marji and her parents go to her aunt’s where they talk with her uncle Taher, who is distressed. Marji’s aunt and uncle sent their young son to Holland alone to escape the war and the repressive regime. Taher had wanted himself and his wife to join their son in fleeing Iran, but Marji’s aunt hadn’t wanted to be uprooted, so they stayed. The stress of not being able to see his son and the continual noise of gunshots in their neighborhood as the regime brutally puts down all forms of dissent has taken a toll on Taher’s health. He has experienced two heart attacks since his son left.
Later, the Satrapis get a call that Taher had another heart attack after the government set off a grenade near Marji’s aunt and uncle’s home. The Satrapis go to the hospital, and Marji is horrified to find it filled with war wounded, including victims of chemical weapons. The doctors tell Taher that he must travel to England for open-heart surgery since their hospital isn’t equipped for it. At this time, only the very sick are permitted to cross Iran’s closed borders. In a panic, Taher’s wife visits the hospital director’s office and is shocked to see that her former window washer holds the position. He tells her that whether or not Taher gets the permit and recovers is in god’s hands.
Determined to help, Marji’s father goes to Khosro, a former publisher who now prints fake passports. Khosro agrees to print a passport for Taher, but the process will take five days. In the meantime, the authorities raid Khosro’s home. Khosro escapes to Sweden, but Niloufar, an eighteen-year-old communist girl he was harboring, is captured and executed. Taher is buried three weeks later, on the same day his real passport arrives. His last wish, which was to see his son one more time before dying, is unfulfilled.
Summary: Kim Wilde
In 1983, a year after Taher’s death, Iran reopens its borders, and the Satrapis rush to get passports. Marji’s parents tell her that the two of them are going on a trip to Turkey. Knowing that Marji will be disappointed that she won’t be coming along, they ask her what they can bring her back from Turkey. Marji asks for “hip stuff” that has been unavailable in Iran since the war began: a denim jacket, chocolate, and two posters—one of rock vocalist Kim Wilde and one of the heavy metal group Iron Maiden. Marji’s parents purchase Marji’s gifts in Istanbul, and to get the posters past customs, Marji’s mother sews them into the back section of Marji’s father’s jacket. Marji loves the gifts from her parents—a pair of Nike sneakers, a denim jacket, a Michael Jackson button, and the two posters she asked for.
One day, Marji’s mother lets her go outside wearing her new hip gear. After buying black market cassette tapes, including one by Kim Wilde, two guardians of the revolution—women trained to seize and arrest females improperly veiled—stop her. They call Marji a “whore,” pointing to her shoes and tight jeans. Marji offers up clever explanations for her attire, but the guardians reject most of them and threaten to take Marji in for questioning. Marji explodes in tears and tells them that she’ll end up in an orphanage, so the women let her go. At home, tells her mother nothing of what has happened since she is fearful that her mother will never let her out again if she knows the truth. Marji goes to her room and blasts the Kim Wilde song, “Kids in America.”
Analysis
Uncle Taher’s heartbreaking story reveals the carnage that the Iranian government has wrought upon its own citizens and the extent to which every Iranian’s life is in the regime’s hands. Because the regime has ratcheted up its persecution of anyone who shows the slightest resistance, as Marji notes, Uncle Taher sends his son away to Holland to live in safety. The heartbreak he and his wife feel about this is plainly visible on their faces. Indeed, Taher’s heart is literally breaking, having suffered two heart attacks already, and the separation from his son only puts more strain on his health. Taher blames his wife for not wanting to join their son in Holland, but it is clear that her choice is an impossible one. Either she leaves her family and her country, or she must be away from her child. This is the fault of the regime, not Taher’s wife. Taher’s lament of “They kill me! They kill me!” is meant to refer the way he feels seeing young people murdered in war or in the street by the regime. But it also represents the way the regime’s actions are literally killing him.
The family’s visit to Taher in the hospital showcases more carnage. The man in the blood donation van bellowing out to all who would hear that they should give blood calls to mind one of the regime’s most grotesque slogans: “To die a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society.” The look on Marji’s face as the man bellows at the family is one of anger, and it is no wonder she feels this way. The hospital in front of her is literally overflowing with the consequences of the regime’s awful dictate to inject blood into society’s veins, and yet here the regime demands even more blood from its citizens. Worse, despite Iranian hospitals being maxed out, the regime still tightly restricts who they allow to leave the country for treatment. Khorso’s inability to provide a passport for Taher in time reveals a terrible irony. It is precisely his impulse to help people that leads him to take in Niloufar, which in turn leads to her capture and his flight from the country. This shows that the regime has purposely made it as difficult for Iranians to rely on one another as possible.
The events of “Kim Wilde” show the lengths Iranians go to try and live a semblance of a normal life. Though it could mean imprisonment or even death, Marji’s parents sneak rock n’ roll posters through customs. The elaborate smuggling scheme they devise might seem absurd to outsiders, given how trivial the items being smuggled are. But this only reveals just how important it is to Marji’s parents that she be able to live the life of a regular teenager. Similarly absurd is the scene, reminiscent of a drug deal, where Marji buys a few illegal cassette tapes. The scene darkly pokes fun at the Iranian regime’s paranoia and extremism and shows that the regime considers any outside ideas or trends dangerous. Ironically, the tighter the regime squeezes, the more it pushes people, such as Taher’s son, to voluntarily live in exile. Marji’s dangerous brush with the Guardians of the Revolution suggests that Marji may also have to consider leaving Iran if she wants to pursue the interests of a normal teenage girl.
