I remember this period, in Iran. The whole world marveled at what it called Iranian “openness.” We were in the Khatami years; we talked about dialogue, reforms, timid diplomatic smiles. But behind this trompe-l’oeil decor, behind the cozy salons of politics, reality was a leaden screed. For us, the young, the artists, the free spirits, it was a time of suffocation. The regime imposed daily brutality on us, made up of forced silences and red lines that we could not cross without risking our skin.
This is where I created my island. In the heart of Tehran, there was this great bookseller, a legendary place which was also a café and a gallery. It was my refuge, my sanctuary, the only place where I could breathe, far from the crushing pressure of the regime. It was an enclave of culture, a bubble of oxygen where one could, over a coffee, forget the dictatorship. It was in this sacred space that I laid my hands on Persepolis (1). The film was banned, of course. I bought it in a pirated version, hidden under the coat, like one carries a precious weapon.
Looking at him, alone, in privacy, I felt an electric shock. For the first time, someone translated the unspeakable. Marjane explained the truth about Iran with a luminous simplicity, a genius which contrasted with the absurd complexity of our daily lives. This feeling of gratitude, I shared it with millions of Iranians like me, who were thirsty for a truth that resembled us, which told of our childhood and our adolescence stolen by the revolution and the war.
“A breach in the wall of indifference. »
Marjane was the first to dare to show the world that Iran was not just this dark, monolithic bloc that Western newspapers portrayed us as; it was a complex country, inhabited by human beings with dreams, doubts and biting irony.
When I arrived in France later, as a political refugee, I carried in my luggage my pencils and the conviction that press cartoons were my only home. I then discovered the colossal impact of his work. Thanks to his masterpiece, the view of France and the West on Iranian press cartoonists had radically changed. She had opened a breach in the wall of indifference. She had made our fight readable, almost familiar.
This respect, this kind attention that was shown to me upon my arrival, I owe in part to this furrow that she blazed before me. It made the path less steep for us, the ones following.
Marjane has never stopped being the voice of Iranians. She, who was born in my hometown, experienced the same torments as me. Today, as a designer, I measure the strength of his line. She not only drew a story, she gave back dignity to an entire generation.
Thank you, Marjane, for this island that you built, even bigger than the one where I took refuge in Tehran. You gave us a world where our truth, finally, could be told.
(1) Persepolis is the film directed by Marjane Satrapi in 2007, inspired by her graphic novel of the same name.
