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Summary: The Shabbat
Word spreads that the Iraqis have ballistic missiles that can reach Tehran. Marji’s father appears skeptical, but her mother worries. The rumors are proven true when the missiles, called Scuds, begin to hit Tehran. The city de-populates as residents realize that most buildings cannot withstand the damage the missiles cause. Marji’s parents decide to stay, however, insistent that Marji’s future depends on her continuing her education. Some residents, including the Satrapis’ neighbors, the Baba-Levys, take shelter in hotel basements since hotels are known to be structurally durable. The Baba-Levys are a Jewish family who has remained in Iran in spite of the oppressive Islamic regime because of their deep self-identifying as Iranians. Their young daughter, Neda, is Marji’s friend.
One Saturday while out shopping, Marji hears on the radio that the Tavanir neighborhood where she lives has been attacked. She hurries home to find her neighborhood blocked off. Fearing her family is dead, she runs toward her home when she hears her mother calling out for her. The family is safe, but when Marji asks about the Baba-Levys’ home, her mother tells her that their building was destroyed. Although the Baba-Levys usually stayed in local hotels because they were more secure, on Saturdays they remained at home to observe Shabbat. When Taji and her mother walk past the site of the Baba-Levys’ building, Marji catches a glimpse of human remains sticking out of the rubble. She recognizes Neda’s bracelet attached to the remains and begins to scream.
Summary: The Dowry
After the death of Neda Baba-Levy, Marji becomes more intolerant of the lies she is told at school. She openly corrects teachers on political points and accidentally strikes the principal during an argument, which gets her expelled and that also makes it difficult for the Satrapis to find another school willing to accept her. As soon as she is allowed to start at a new school (through the efforts of an aunt with bureaucratic connections), Marji's refusal to accept the falsehoods being peddled to her class gets her into trouble again.
Her mother frantically tries to reason with Marji, reminding her of Niloufar, the eighteen-year-old communist girl staying with Khosro who was executed. Her mother warns Marji that as a virgin, she would likely be raped before she was executed. Marji’s father confirms that this is almost certainly what happened to Niloufar, information that terrifies Marji. In bed that night, Marji thinks of the gruesome Islamic slogan she once read that said, “To die a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society.” She considers Niloufar a martyr but doesn’t see how her blood fed society in any way.
Marji’s parents decide that it’s best that Marji should finish her education in Vienna, where her mother’s best friend Zozo lives. Marji feels heartbroken since she doesn’t want to leave her family or friends. (Her parents promise to join her in a few months, but Marji senses that they will not.) Marji packs a jar of Iranian soil and gives her most prized possessions, including her posters, to her friends.
The night before Marji leaves, her grandmother comes to stay with her in her bed. Marji’s grandmother tells her to not dwell on the stupidity of others and consoles her by telling her always be true to herself. The next morning, Marji recites her grandmother’s words to herself in the mirror before making a tearful ride to the airport with her parents. At the airport, Marji’s mother says that they will visit her in six months, which confirms Marji’s fear that her parents don’t plan to join her permanently in Europe. Marji goes through security and decides to turn around one last time to wave goodbye to her parents. When she does, Marji is heartbroken to see that her mother has fainted and that her father is carrying her mother away.
Analysis
The new scud missile bombing campaign in Tehran pushes the Satrapis to the breaking point and has a profound effect on the direction of Marji’s life. Marji‘s trip to the store to buy jeans shows that Marji is still doing her best to ignore the increased danger and to live as normal a life as possible. But when the house next door to the Satrapis is destroyed and the Baba-Levys are killed, it is no longer possible for Marji to ignore the existential peril she is in. The tragedy causes a change in Marji. She becomes dangerously fatalistic, perhaps because she feels it is only a matter of time before a similar tragedy befalls her family. This sense of fatalism manifests in a devil-may-care rebelliousness, which results in Marji’s expulsion from her school. But Marji’s continued outspokenness at her new school shows that she is not ready to back down. Her father is proud of Marji for standing up for her ideals, but her mother recognizes the real danger in Marji speaking her mind. To impress upon Marji the danger she is in, specifically as a woman in Iran, Taji tells her about what happened to Niloufar. Marji’s reaction shows that her mother’s story does indeed have the intended effect.
On a broader level, Taji’s story about Niloufar and the dowry lays bare the reality of the battle they are all engaged in. For Marji and her father, there is an ideological component to this battle. They each believe it is important to stand up to the regime by standing up for their ideals. But Taji recognizes that while the regime is supposedly built upon an ideological foundation, it is not fighting an ideological war. Niloufar’s story proves that the regime’s most effective tools are not ideological but physical tools of violence and intimidation. The regime doesn’t care about the tradition of the dowry per se. Rather, they use it as an instrument of terror. By sharing this story with Marji, Taji is begging her to wake up and recognize the real danger they are in. This is an existential struggle for survival, not a debate to be won.
Much of what happens in the second half of the novel foreshadows Marji’s ultimate departure from Iran. Throughout the story, many of the people in Marji’s family and community flee Iran. The Satrapis seem likely candidates to also flee, but Marji’s father has been resistant to leave. He has been able to maintain his professional and social position during the new regime and does not want to have to start all over in another country. But the steady trickle of friends and family leaving Iran is a reminder that self-exile is always available as an escape hatch should things become untenable for the Satrapis. The possibility of self-exile remains in the background as Marji grows older and becomes a liability to her own safety. The drawings of Marji in these final chapters show a young woman, not a girl. Given the regime’s emphasis on repressing and exploiting women’s sexuality, Marji’s physical maturity has become a liability. So too is Marji’s increased fatalism and rebelliousness. Marji’s parents recognize that Marji’s bright and critical mind is her greatest strength and want to protect her education at all costs. But in an increasingly repressive Iran, Marji’s anti-authoritarianism is extremely dangerous. Thus, Marji’s parents’ decision to send her away from the country seems an inevitable one if they want to keep her safe.
Marji’s final estrangement from her country and her family represents a tragedy of several dimensions. At the beginning of the novel, Marji loves her country, its religion, its history, and its heroes. But the darkness that descends over Iran slowly chips away at Marji’s romanticism. Her heroes are killed, and she rejects God and Islam. She comes to hate and fear many of her fellow Iranians, none more than the religious zealots who run her country. Even before she leaves, Marji feels estranged from everything she thought her country and culture to be. For Marji, this represents a kind of betrayal. Marji’s country has turned its back on her and has forced Marji to turn her back on her country. Worst of all, though, is estrangement from her family. The one thing the Satrapis have been able to cling to is each other. That the family feels it has no choice but to separate if Marji is to survive is cruelly unfair and represents Marji’s final estrangement from everything she has ever held dear.
