We can only appreciate the power and beauty of freedom when we do not have it.
I read this book around 5 years ago and picked it up again last week and loved it a lot more than I did the first time around.
The repression, oppression, loss of dignity, the suffering that people are made to endure in the name of politics and religion is terrible. I hate to make such a statement, but I am glad I am not a Muslim woman or a man living in an Islamic Middle East country. A terribly racist statement.
The entire bit about how the intellectuals who actually revolted against the Shah being executed so that they could not be the real guardians of the revolution was disheartening...as was so much more. Satrapi was lucky to have liberal well off parents who brought her up to be free and had the economic freedom to give her a better life.
The part that reached out to me the most -
The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself:
Are my trousers long enough?
Is my veil in place?
Can my makeup be seen?
Are they going to whip me?
No longer asks herself:
Where is my freedom of thought?
Where is my freedom of speech?
My life, is it livable?
What's going on in the political prisons?
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