Lounge
A new anthology captures the defiance and resilience of ordinary Iranians
Summary
‘Persepolis’ author Marjane Satrapi’s new project, ‘Woman Life Freedom’, offers a ring-side view into state atrocities in Iran but resonates far and wide
In an essay titled, A Persian Tale of Good and Evil, which opens the anthology Woman Life Freedom, graphic artist Marjane Satrapi and scholar Abbas Milani invoke writer James Joyce’s famous saying: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
What follows is a roll call of renowned women from Iranian history, starting with legends like Anahita, a divine source of light and reason, to Tahmineh, mother of Sohrab in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, to Ghamar, who mesmerised audiences in the 1920s with her Edith Piaf-like voice, to 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for inappropriately wearing her veil in 2022.
Also read: Malcolm Gladwell's ‘Revenge of the Tipping Point’ is just some shallow fun
Outraged by the last tragedy, millions of Iranian women erupted in protest against the ruling regime, taking to the streets and tearing off their veils, chanting “Death to the Dictator". In an unusual show of solidarity, men joined them, too, as the movement spread all over Iran and beyond, ringing with the slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom".
Created by Satrapi, this eponymous anthology is an attempt to capture the defiance, grit and resilience embodied by ordinary Iranians over the last two years even as the campaign for justice has seen deaths, disappearances, public hangings and imprisonment. Enriched with art by creators like Hippolyte, Nicolas Wild, Shabnam Adiban and Bahareh Akrami, and words by Farid Vahid, Jean-Pierre Perrin, Milani and Satrapi, this stunning volume is a homage to the political potential of comics.
Satrapi, best known for her graphic memoirs Persepolis, is among the forerunners of the genre from Iran. Having used the medium as a tool for social mobilisation before, she returns to it with gusto—bold colours, irreverent texts, arch panels and running jokes, and her collaborators have more than delivered on the promise of such a project.
Aside from public figures like Shervin Hajipour, the young Iranian singer and mind behind Baraye, which became the anthem of the moment, there are plenty of ordinary men and women to be found in these pages. In spite of the horrific atrocities perpetrated on the people, moments of dark comedy abound. To escape the vigilantes of the state, people use “soup" to refer to beer. The word raqs (dance) is expunged from books and Othello is rewritten to have a happy ending.
Other vignettes bring to the fore the all-pervasive influence of the State. School-going girls are poisoned by gas to discourage women’s education. A young woman disguises herself as a man to watch a game of soccer played by men. Needless to say, this act of bravado ends badly.
In another segment, the insidious workings of the basij, or plainclothes militia, are explained, including their mounting corruption that has enabled members of IRGC to hold one-third to two-thirds of Iran’s gross domestic product. Another section gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of the Aghazadeh—an elite group of blue-blooded, rich and hypocrites, who feign exemplary piety at home, but flaunt bikinis and indulge in excesses abroad.
With its mix of history and current affairs, Woman Life Freedom gives a no-holds-barred view into Iran, which few scholarly volumes can hope to evoke. It tells a story that is unfolding, with different degrees of intensity, in different parts of the world, one that needs to be captured as much with words as in images. Life in the 21st-century, as humanity has inherited it, is yet to recover from waking nightmares. Woman Life Freedom memorialises the broken images of these disturbing dreams.
Somak Ghoshal is a writer based in Delhi.
