In the continuation of Satrapi’s Persepolis: Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi’s story begins in Austria. After her initial arrival, where she was picked up by Zozo, her mother’s old friend, she finds herself in a situation unlike one she had imagined. Her initial plan to stay with Zozo and her family falls through when their family seems to experience one problem after another due to their immigration to Austria. From financial problems to dropping in their social status, Zozo and her family represent what numerous high-status Iranians would have experienced when they relocated to foreign countries. Shirin, their daughter, seem out-of-touch with the situation in Iranian, which inhibits Marji from befriending her for real. In fact, she seems to bond most with Houshang, Zozo’s husband, most, who was often accused of ‘gambling away’ their capital by Zozo in their daily fights. The difference in domestic relationship is noted by Marji, who compares them to her own parents, who she considers more competent.
After ten days, Zozo finally caves in and sends Marji to a boarding school run by nuns. With her mother’s permission, of course. There, she experiences a new kind of freedom, having to do her own groceries and laundry, which she enjoys even with her limited grasp of the German language. She shares a roommate with a girl called Lucia, who she’d initially pictured as someone like Heidi, the character.
The language barrier poses less problem than it would with someone else. Marji embarks on a cultural exchange, or at least as much as possible considering the two don’t speak a shared language. Similarly, Marji finds herself slightly lost with everything going on around her due to not being able to speak German.
Arriving in the middle of the semester, Marji first established herself by earning a high grade in a math test, and also drawing caricatures of teachers, earning her attention from her peers. The attention brings her some trouble due to the language barrier, but also, was the start of a friendship with Julie, who later introduces her to her other friends, who were intrested in Marji due to her experience with death, especially Momo.
During Christmas, Marji finds her friends going away for vacation. Noticing her glumness, Lucia invites her to spend Christmas along with her family in Tyrol. Marji is warmly welcomed by her family, who invites her to come along for Christmas Mass. She meets other members of Lucia’s family, who opposite from Marji’s clique, steers clear of the darker topics of her Iranian citizenship, and Marji finds herself enjoying their companion, even receiving gifts when she left. At the end, Marji’s feelings for Lucia turns warmer, their bond strengthening to sisterhood.
Upon returning, Marji notices how out-of-depth she is with the topics her clique discuesses, and so she spends their next holiday reading while they went on vacation. When she was away from Bakunin and Sartre, Marji also read up on her mother’s favorite book, The Mandarins and The Second Sex, trying to educate herself on topics such as feminism.
On a day where she decides to cook herself some spaghetti, she brings it to the refectory to eat it while watching TV, which had been forbidden at her parents’ house. The Mother Superior criticises Marji for her behaviour, and her racist remark about Iranians triggers Marji to give a similar aggressive response, calling them all prostitutes. She is expelled, and angry, she notes the extremists found in all religions. She leaves to stay with Julie, while the sisters write to Marji’s parents to notify them. However, instead of telling the real story, they make up a lie, which they see through very quickly.
At Julie’s, Marji experiences a slight culture shock. Julie is sexually open and also has a very different relationship with her mother, Armelle, compared to Marji. Marji quickly bonds with Armelle, who Marji says is a little too much lenient. However, her intelligence and educated manner makes her easy to bond with, and she even called Marji’s parents to reassure them.
When Armelle takes a trip out of town, Julie throws a party. She introduces Marji to makeup, and also other lessons about sex. The party, which Marji notes is wildly different from an Iranian party, exposes her to more lessons on the subject, and Marji even overheards people having sex. She witnesses the half-naked couple, and has a flashback to a discussion about testicles with her father, which makes her laugh, causing other people to think she is stoned.
As time passes, Marji starts to mature. She starts experimenting with her appearance, even becoming the school’s official haircutter for a period of time. Her interactions with Momo and her other friends gives a good comparison on how out-of-depth they are when discussing the subject of death compared to Marji. They introduce her to drugs, and she starts smoking, though it reminds her of her parents’ discussion of her cousin who had gotten addicted and resembled a vegetable. Marji pretends to participate to fit in, however, doesn’t actually let loose. She feels distant as a result, and every phone call with her parents made her feel conflicting happiness and also shame. Her internal struggle comes to a peak when she pretends to be French in order to fit in. However, she recalls her grandmother’s advice to stay true to herself and feels ashamed. When hears herself being gossipped about and outed as an Iranian in a restaurant, she finally realises how foolish it was and breaks, shouting that she was Iranian and proud of it, before running out. Though she cries, she realises afterwards that her actions also provided her emotional relief and that she felt good for the first time in a year.
When Julie and her mother leaves Vienna, Marji takes up residence with eight homosexual men in a communal apartment. One day, her mother calls to inform her that she wants to visit, and Marji takes extra care to clean up.
The day comes and Marji goes to pick up her mother at the airport. However, time has changed the two so much that it takes a second for them to recognise each other. She brings her mother to her apartment, where Taji learns about her homosexual roommates. After the initial surprise, however, they start to get along. With her arrival, Taji also brings a letter from Marji’s father. Taji remarks upon the difference in freedom in Austria, and informs Marji of the bits and pieces of the going-ons back in Iran.
The trip allows the mother and daughter to bond. From sharing cigarettes, to gossipping about Marji’s tenant, Doctor Heller, who looks like a horse. When Taji finally leaves, the two share a hug in the airport and Marji remarks upon how the trip had given her enough love to strengthen her in the following months.
With time, Marji’s friends have all left the school, leaving Marji alone. She starts dating a guy called Enrique, who had a passion for anarchy. He invites Marji to an anarchist party in the forest, which leaves Marji disappointed and also decreases her admiration of Enrique. However, the subsequent bonfire and singing rekindles it. Sometime during the night, Enrique introduces her to a girl, Ingrid, before they go to bed. Marji, coming from a conservative culture, is hesitant about sleeping in a bed together, however, her fears were unfounded as they did not do anything. This makes her insecure, jealous of Ingrid. But when Enrique pulls her aside to talk, he comes out as gay instead, and they promise to always be friends.
As she loses touch with Enrique, she also delves deeper into the communal life, which brings along with it substance use. It increases up to the point that her physics teacher, Yonnel Arrouas, worries about her and invites her to dinner, where she enjoys herself and plays with her kids. However, she is not invited back, which she figures is due to his wife, who had not taken to her as well as the others had.
The breakup with Enrique had left her doubting herself. Hence, when a classmate, Jean-Paul, invites her to grab a drink, she accepts, figuring it to be date. However, he ends up asking her questions about their studies, and the disappointment worsens her drug abuse.
Around this time, she meets Markus, who invites her to a club. They end up dancing, though Marji is uncomfortable. When the club closes, he offers to drive her home, however asking to split the bill for gas. He praises her ‘rebellious side’ and ‘natural nonchalance’, and the night ends with a kiss so surprising she doesn’t close her eyes.
Happy as Marji is with her first real boyfriend, Markus’ mother is less so. Her racism echoes another encounter Marji had experienced in the metro, and unsatisfied is an understatement to describe her attitude towards their relationship. They go back to Marji’s apartment, where they are again kicked out by Doctor Heller, who accuses Marji of ‘secret prostitution’. Angered and frustrated, Marji holds back her tongue due to her promise to her mother. Once she was alone in her room, however, she cries and insults her in Persian.
Due to the two hostile women at their respective places, Markus and Marji turn to joints as their form of amusement. Markus asks Marji to buy some hash at Café Camera, praising her once she did.
At this point, Marji is also studying for her last exams of the French Baccalaureate. God visits her in a dream and tells her a question from the exam, which actually comes during the test, resulting to her getting the highest grade in the school. After school ends, Marji finds herself doing odd jobs to support herself. She takes her a job as a waitress, and due to a sexist interaction with a customer, finds herself being defended by the old lady chef.
School starts again soon enough, and Marji finds herself being called into the principal’s office for a talk about cannabis consumption, heavily implying that he knows she is responsible for a major part of it. But her intelligence lends her some leniency, which means she is let off without any punishment. It scares her enough that she stops dealing drugs, but not enough to stop herself. Her own consumption increases, which bothers even Markus at one point that he starts distancing himself. Her health starts being affected as a consequence, and graduates only barely.
In 1988, the election of Kurt Waldheim as president increases the concerns of rising Nazism. In response, demonstrations were being held by students, which Marji sometimes joined. Her involvement in political issues increases, though Markus never seemed to take interest. This causes a rise in tension and conflict between the two, causing a rift in their relationship.
The day before her birthday, Marji is celebrated to a friend’s graz, which means they won’t get to spend it together. However, Marji misses her train the next morning, and decides to surprise Markus instead by going to his house to wake him up. When she arrives, she finds him in bed with another woman, which makes her angry. However, her anger incites his anger, and he shouts at her to get out, which she does, running down the stairs in a hurry. Markus, who was the last person for whom she had an emotional connection to in Austria, was significant and needless, to say, she took the loss heavily. When Doctor Heller accuses her of stealing a brooch, Marji finally breaks and runs out of the house.
Without a friend, Marji ends up sitting on a bench in a park, where she reflects upon her relationship with Markus and starts to realise that he had been using her all along. Disillusioned about their relationship and his personality, she had spent her money on him and was now nearly broke. She ends up on a train, sleeping there for the night, and it becomes her daily schedule for the next month until her money runs out.
Homeless and penniless, Marji has sunken to rock bottom as she finds herself smoking cigarette butts and rumaging the trash for food. Thrown out of the trams, she starts sleeping on the streets and tries to think of who to go to. Her situation worsens her health before anything, though, and it deteriorates until she finally passes out due to severe bronchitis and wakes up in the hospital.
Marji recalls her mother’s words about Zozo owing her money, and once discharged, goes there to pick it up. At Zozo’s, she finds out that her family had been worried, her uncle Massoud even coming to Austria to look for her. She receives a call from her parents, where she makes them promise to never ask about her experiences in the past three months. Her mother tells her to go home, and she takes the offer. When the call ends, Marji goes back to her apartment, where she finds most of her things sold off to compensate for the ‘stolen’ brooch. Instead of arguing, she ends up staying at a hotel and smokes, despite the doctor’s warnings. She reflects upon her mediocrity in Austria, despite the sacrifices her parents had made. With the promise to her mother to go back home, she finally packs, puts on her veil and departs to Tehran.
Upon her arrival, Marji finds herself back in a fundamentalist Iran. The security officer checks her luggage and ends with a note for her to fix her veil, reminding her how out of practice she is with wearing it. Her parents pick her up at the airport, where again, they almost don’t notice each other due to the changes the years had wrought upon both parties.
During her stay in Austria, Marji finds that things have changed. Her father’s Cadillac was no more, and the change reminds Marji of the better times in the past. When she gets home, she notes the unchanged furniture and is overjoyed to be home, spending the rest of the night on her bed with the lights turned off. The next day, Marji tries to search for her old tapes to no avail. Her mother tells her that she sold it, however, the exchange makes her realise that her mother now regards her as a mature adult. She takes it as a sign to start over and cleans up her room.
More than herself, however, she finds that Iran has also changed a lot. Marji takes a tour of the city, finding it decorated with pictures of martyrs all around. It unsettles her enough that she hurries home to her family, which she also finds changed. With the war over, her father has a new job and her mother seems to hold a new attitude towards life, one that Marji does not like. However, Ebi turns the conversation around by informing Marji instead on all the things she had missed, everything Marji had missed while she was abroad. Marji learns about the killing of the political prisoners and the total human life cost by the war. Morbid and depressing as it is, though, the two bond over the conversation, resolving to move forward from the dark past. At the end of the night, Marji vows never to tell them about Austria, deciding that it would only make them suffer more.
Meanwhile, the rest of the family had heard of Marji’s homecoming and Marji has to bear the visits from her relatives, close or distant. She meets her grandmother, and even meets up with her friends, who Marji notes have changed their appearances to fit Western standards. However, a quick conversation leads her to realise that she cannot really connect with them, and through it, realised that their Western appearance was only a way for them to rebel and put up resistance against the regime.
Marji tells her mother this when she goes home, and inquires about her other friends. She finds that one of them, Kia, had been sent to the front and had come back disabled. Marji quickly phones him and visits, wheres he finds him in a wheelchair. The awkward start quickly fades into something more comfortable, to the point where Kia tells her a joke about a man coming back from the war, makes them both laugh. The experience makes Marji feel more at home and teaches her a lesson about misfortune, and when she leaves, it’s with a more positive outlook for her future.
The change in her attitude inspires her to start over. The suggestions from her family and close relations, which compose of either marriage, study or exercise, sends her into a downward spiral, and she spends days at home doing nothing until her friends invite her to a ski trip to lift her mood.
During one of their talks, Marji discloses her sexual encounters during her stay in Austria, which is received negatively by her friends. Again, it makes her realise the differences between them, and she goes home still uninspired and confused. She goes through a list of psychotherapists to try and help her, even taking anti-depressants to help with her mood. The pills, while they made her feel drowsy, helped while they worked. But the withdrawal that came after only deepened her slump and she decided to kill herself by slitting her wrist. However, the cut being too shallow, her attempt did not work, and so she took all of her anti-depressants in a second attempt.
Marji doesn’t die, though, but wakes up three days later with severe hallucinations. She tells her therapist, who is shocked at her miraculous survival, as the dose she had taken was extremely high. From this, she vows to actually cahnge, and begins by changing her appearance into one more ‘sophisticated’. Marji goes through several changes in her life to improve, ending up as an aerobics instructor at one point. The change brings to her a new car as a gift from her parents, new friends and invitations to parties, where she finally meets a man called Reza.
Reza is a painter, which Marji also relates with. She finds out from one of her friends that Reza is a ladies’ man, however, it doesn’t deter her from talking to him for the rest of the night. Opposite as they were, Marji and Reza found a way to make it work and they get serious enough to start talking about the future. Reza’s ambition to travel together is quickly banished due to the difficulty of obtaining a visa, so the two start studying to take the national exam for the college of art. For her drawing qualification, Marji draws a reproduction of Michelangelo’s ‘La Pieta’ using martyrs.
Their work pays off, and the two get in, finding their names in the newspaper annoucnement. Overjoyed, Reza puts his hand on hers as a gesture of affection, and the two go back home to their respective families. Ebi reminds her of the ideological test, which is heavily influenced by the fundamentalist idealism. Marji ends up trying to study, to no avail, as she had not been raised by said ideology. She goes to sleep with a prayer.
During the interview, Marji responds with surprisingly honest answers. She almost regrets it, but is lucky enough that the examiner had liked her honesty, and passes her. She remarks that he had been a ‘true religious man’, which is a great compliment in Marji’s standard.
The results of the exam had made Marji and Reza firmer on the idea of their shared future. During one of their rendezovus, she decides to give a little more effort by putting on makeup, which could get her taken away. Spotting a car full of guardians, she decides to use an innocent man as a scapegoat to draw their attention away from her. She tells the story to Reza, who finds it hilarious. Reza shares a story about his friends who were questioned by the guardians and took them too lightly, resulting to getting beaten up. It reminds them of the actual danger of their situation, and results to them going home.
Marji goes to tell the story to her grandmother also. However, she finds it significantly less funny than Reza, instead getting upset and angry. She leaves with a remark to Marji to reflect upon her actions, which makes her realize the wrongness of what she did. She vows it to be the first and last time her grandmother yell at her.
In September 1989, Marji enrolls in school. Reza and Marji keep their relationship a secret, as the university was heavily socially segregated between men and women. When she comes home from her first day, her grandmother gifts her a cotton head-scarf, signifying her forgiveness.
Marji’s school starts getting more strictly segregated, on the basis of following proper religious conduct. New rules governing the women’s clothing makes Marji stand up, however, and she points out the double standards between men and women to the adminstration, earning her admiration from her peers.
Afterwards, she is summoned by the Islamic Commission. Her fears are unfounded, though, as it is the ‘religious man’ who had questioned her during her ideological text. She is not expelled, although he points out a flaw in her argument, and they come into the agreement that she will be designing the women’s uniforms to appeal to both the adminstration and the students. It is from this that she slowly regains her self-esteem and happiness, and on the way, gains back her grandmother’s approval.
In an anatomy class, Marji and her class are told to sketch a model heavily covered in clothing, which makes their job difficult. From then on, they choose to use a male model instead. However, when a supervisor visits, he tells her that she is not allowed to look at the man while she draws, and though she points out the ridiculous demand, there is no winning the argument. In another display of illogical persecutions, Marji is stopped as she is running for a late dentist appointment due to the movements her behind makes as she runs, to which she yells back angrily in reply.
The women’s resistance against the regime takes many different form during this time, little gestures such as wearing makeup, laughing louder and having a walkman. Marji notes that this is the way the regime controls their freedom of thought, busying their mind with trivial matters such as clothing regulations and their safety that they no longer use the time to question their authority.
An exchange between Marji and her friend changes things, however. Marji tells her friend that she sleeps with her boyfriend - not disclosing Reza’s name - and it brings half the class against her. Again, Marji realises that they have changed only their appearance, and that they still hold the regime’s views. However, she gains respect of the other half of the class, slowly becoming closer to the point where they would go to each other’s houses to draw each other without their heavy clothings in a gesture of small resistance. The numbers slowly grew, and they even showed their professor, who was not only glad, but also shared the thought that ‘artists should defy the law. This makes Marji note the difference between the government representation and how the real people actually were, which led to the people leading double lives behind the regime’s back.
It’s no surprise that these same people would hold parties that were forbidden by the government. After their first arrest, they slowly got used to the danger, until one day, the breaking-up of a party leads to someone’s death as he was trying to escape from the roof. It scares Marji for good, and also jars the rest of her friends. But after their initial fear turns into anger, they resolve to party even more in a show of resistance against the regime.
As time passes by, Marji’s relationship with Reza grows close enough that they start to find it difficult to have so many things that allow them intimacy barred against them due to their unwedded status. Renting an apartment or a hotel are impossible as they do not have a marriage certificate. Reza asks Marji if she wants to get married, which Marji feels confused about. She asks for time to think, as she thinks that she is still too young to get married. Consulting her father, he tells her that she is the only one who knows what she wants, and a few days later, she finally announces her decision to get married. The three of them, Ebi, Marji and Reza, have dinner at a restaurant, where Ebi tells Reza three conditions before he allows him to marry Marji: a right to divorce, to leave to Europe to continue their studies, and to stay together as long as they stay happy. In the voiceover, Satrapi the author states how her father had always known that the two would not stay together for long as they were not made for each other.
Marji soon calls her mother who is in Vancouver to inform her about the divorce. The reception is less than warm, as her mother thinks that she is still too young. However, Ebi promises to talk to her to bring her around, which she does once she arrives. They start making wedding preparations before finally getting married in a traditional Iranian wedding.
During the wedding, she finds her mother trying to put on a brave face. Taji finally admits that she had wanted Marji to be an independent woman who left Iran to become free, instead of marrying so young. Marji assures her that she knows what she is doing, and they hug. When the wedding ends, Marji and Reza goes home with the well-wishes of their friends and family, however, she immediately felt regret once they arrive at their apartment, feeling like she had conformed to society’s expectations when she had always wanted to be set apart from them. She realises the full consequences of marriage a little too late.
Marji starts to feel differently about their relationship after this. The differences between her and Reza feel more pronounced, and it is also due to the fact that Marji had changed herself while she was dating him. This difference puts a distance between them so far that they get separate bedrooms just after one month, and it feels like they are leading their separate lives. Only the thought of their friends, who consider them to be the perfect couple, keep them together. In private, the number of their arguments increase and their relationship quickly deteriorates.
The same year, Iran declares its neutrality in Iraq’s attack against Kuwait. Kuwait immigrants fled to Iran, and the disparity between the Kuwaiti’s women rights and Iran’s becomes apparent in a personal encounter between Marji and an immigrant, who had thought her a prostitute due to her freedom.
Apart from this, though, their lives are relatively relaxed compared to the chaos happening in Europe, whose people were bracing for war and fearing for their countries. Marji and her father laugh about it on the television, however, her mother points out the anti-Western ideology that the Iran media holds. Marji points out that the Western media holds a similar anti-Iran ideology, leading to the conclusion that one is not better than the other. The conversation moves to the fake ‘liberators’ of the country who are only there for profit, leading to Ebi’s exclamation to the artificality of the proclamation of ’human rights’ in the intervention of Kuwait. Of course, Marji notes how rare this type of thinking was, as most Iranians were just happy to be uninvolved and safe.
Things start changing in January 1992, when a man called Fariborz installs a satellite antenna, which gives them the rare opportunity to look outside of Iran. As the number of satellites grow, the regime starts banning satellites for fear of the satellites undermining their indoctrination. However, as previously, the people rebel by hiding their satellites instead, including Marji’s parents.
The arrival of the satellite to their home gives Marji access to television, which makes her stay at their house for days just to watch the programs. This worries Ebi to the point where he asks her about her wellbeing and her marriage’s wellbeing. His criticism on the wastage of her talents angers her that she leaves the house, which he welcomes gladly, and though she is upset, she realises the true wisdom of his words that she takes the time to reflect. Realising the truth, she apologises the next day, and he does as well, as he hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. He gives her three books on Iranian history and global politics, which she accepts happily and finishes in the next ten days.
The books awaken a new interest in History in her, and she starts making new friends with similar interests. She comes to the conclusion that she must again educate herself to become better.
The end of their fourth year in university brings a proposal to her and Reza’s for a project to create a theme park from their professor. It interests them enough to work together well, temporarily bringing an end to their arguments. It finishes so well that they get full grades from the professor. However, when trying to bring the project to reality, Marji faces more than several challenges along the way due to the criticisms from the mayor’s deputy that are all based on religious grounds, such as unveiled women in her drawings. He tells her that the project is unachievable, as the government does not care.
Afterwards, Marji meets up with her childhood friend, Farnaz, to whom she opens up about the state of her marriage with Reza. Marji wishes to divorce, however, Farnaz informs her about the reality of a divorced woman in Iran and tells her to stay with him as long as it isn’t too bad. Marji disagrees, however, and goes to meet her grandmother, who assuages her fears about divorce; she tells her to think about it well and get divorced if she wants to, which makes Marji feel better and leave with a smile.
Marji gets a job as an illustrator at an economics magazine. Though initially going well, an illustrator at another magazine had made a drawing the regime disagreed with and was consequently arrested. From then on, the press was monitored closely, up to the point where Marji and Reza’s friend, Behzad, was arrested for making an unwise choice of drawing a bearded man in his illutration about alarm systems.
Behzad is released after a few days, and Marji and Gila, the magazine’s graphic designer, go to visit him. He has been beaten up, and states that the cost of freedom of expression is high in their regime. Marji admires him for the quick moment before she witnesses his treatment of his wife, and her feelings quickly turns into disgust. In the car, she says this to Gila, who states that the Spanish diplomat she had dated was the same.
When she gets home, Marji is confronted by Reza, who wants to talk about their relationship. She tells him that she does not love him anymore, and rejects his proposal to go to France to try better their relationship, stating that there is no hope and that it would be a ‘waste of time’.
Marji goes to her parents a few days later to announce that her departure to France. Contrary to her parents assumptions, she is going alone, as she and Reza are getting divorced. While her mother disagrees with what she thinks are Ebi’s manipulations, they do agree that Marji has learned the lesson through experience and that it is good that Marji is leaving for France. They admit that they were scared of the marriage, thinking it would ruin her, however, they support her decision now that she is going to France.
Before leaving, Marji goes on a trip with her grandmother, memorizing Tehran, visits her grandfather’s grave and the prison where her uncle, Anoush, was buried, promising to him that she would try her best to be as honest as possible. She does her best to enjoy her time left with her family, and they accompany her to the airport on the day of her departure. Her mother forbids her to come back and they all share a hug with Marji. Marji remarks upon the difference between her previous departure and the present one, noting her change into an adult. In the voiceover, Marji remarks that this would be the second to last time she would see her grandmother, as she would die in January 4, 1996, ending with the statement that ‘Freedom had a price’.
