To the happy few

Mullah: Miss Satrapi, I see from your file that you have lived in Austria… Did you wear the veil there?
Marjane: No, I have always thought that if women’s hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald.
Mullah: Do you know how to pray?
Marjane: No.
Mullah: And may I know why?
Marjane: Like all iranians, I don’t understand arabic. If praying is talking to God, I prefer to do it in a language that I know. I believe in God, but I speak to him in persian. (…)
Mullah: Thank you, miss Satrapi, you can go now.

[Marjane was admitted in the University after this mandatory ideological test]

A few months later, I learned via the director of the department of Art that the mullah who had interviewed me had really appreciated my honesty. Apparently, he’d even said that I was the only one who didn’t lie. I was lucky. I had stumbled on a truly religious man.

— Marjane Satrapi, in Persepolis

Apesar do fascínio passageiro que podem exercer a malvadez e a violência, acredito que no fim o bem triunfa sempre, porque não há poder mais absoluto, nem força mais avassaladora.

“Were you addressing me, sir?” says the doctor; and when the ruffian had told him, with another oath, that this was so, “I have only one thing to say to you, sir,” replies the doctor, “that if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”

The old fellow’s fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened a sailor’s clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand, threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.

The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him as before, over his shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: “If you do not put that knife this instant in your pocket, I promise, upon my honour, you shall hang at the next assizes.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson, in Treasure Island

“But I have a way with me, I have. When a mate brings a slip on his cable–one as knows me, I mean–it won’t be in the same world with old John. There was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat, was Flint’s; the devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. Well now, I tell you, I’m not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how easy I keep company, but when I was quartermaster, LAMBS wasn’t the word for Flint’s old buccaneers. Ah, you may be sure of yourself in old John’s ship.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson, in Treasure Island

Long John Silver é uma personagem memorável; nobre nas palavras e vil nas acções; traidor e assassino, mas com a aura do absoluto e da grandeza de quem viu tudo e viveu para contar.

Of Silver we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but I dare say he met his old Negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, in Treasure Island

“Why, how many tall ships, think ye, now, have I seen laid aboard? And how many brisk lads drying in the sun at Execution Dock?” cried Silver. “And all for this same hurry and hurry and hurry. You hear me? I seen a thing or two at sea, I have. If you would on’y lay your course, and a p’int to windward, you would ride in carriages, you would. But not you! I know you. You’ll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang.”

“Everybody knowed you was a kind of a chapling, John; but there’s others as could hand and steer as well as you,” said Israel. “They liked a bit o’ fun, they did. They wasn’t so high and dry, nohow, but took their fling, like jolly companions every one.”

“So?” says Silver. “Well, and where are they now? Pew was that sort, and he died a beggar-man. Flint was, and he died of rum at Savannah. Ah, they was a sweet crew, they was! On’y, where are they?”

— Robert Louis Stevenson, in Treasure Island

A Ilha do Tesouro, de Robert Louis Stevenson, é um daqueles livros para crianças que nos deixam com vontade de virar as páginas para saber o que acontece a seguir. Tem graça; as más histórias acabam por estimular mais a imaginação, porque me ponho a pensar em como gostaria que elas continuassem, em vez de me deixar levar pela narrativa. Com Stevenson é diferente, mas crianças são crianças, em todos os tempos, e como diz o autor: ‘if this don’t fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day’.

At recess, I tried to console her…

Marjane: Your father acted like a genuine hero, you should be proud of him!
Pardisse: I wish he were alive and in jail rather than dead and a hero.

— Marjane Satrapi, in Persepolis

Reminds me of Nately’s old man:

“Because it’s better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees.
I guess you’ve heard that saying before.”
“Yes I certainly have,” mused the treacherous old man, smiling
again. “But I’m afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on
one’s feet than die on one’s knees. That is the way the saying goes.”
“Are you sure?” Nately asked with sober confusion. “It seems
to make more sense my way.”
“No, it makes more sense my way…”

— Joseph Heller, in Catch-22

Few works can be complete without humor, and Persepolis does not disappoint:

Anoosh: Later I married and had two children, two girls. Look…
Marjane: Why doesn’t the lady have a head?
Anoosh: She was my wife. We are divorced.
Marjane: Ok, but why is her head scratched out?
Anoosh: Russians aren’t like us…
Marjane: What? Don’t they have heads?
Anoosh: It’s hearts they don’t have. They don’t know how to love.

— Marjane Satrapi, in Persepolis

It is funny to see the russians thus described. Kundera wrote they were the sentimental people, but of course the term of comparison was the West. Further East, you reach the orientals against whom Settembrini warned us.

Marjane: But mom, Ramin’s father killed…
Mother: I know. His father did it, but it’s not Ramin’s fault. Anyway, it’s not for you and me to do justice. I’d even say we have to learn to forgive.

—

Marjane: Your father is a murderer but it’s not your fault, so I forgive you.
Ramin: He is not a murderer! He killed communists and communists are evil.

—

Marjane: Mom, I spoke to Ramin. He says his father did the right thing in killing communists.
Mother: My God! He repeats what they tell him. He will understand later.

—

Marjane (to mirror): You have to forgive! You have to forgive!

— Marjane Satrapi, in Persepolis

Reading Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s autobiography, I couldn’t help thinking that political debates are merely an afterthought (albeit a necessary and respectable one), compared with the processes that make them possible in the first place. This should be obvious, but it is hardly so, judging by the standards of public discourse.