When Marji decides to return to Iran, she leaves her individual and social liberties behind, together with her scented detergent and eyeliner. The moment she arrives at the airport of Tehran, her bag is checked for forbidden goods as alcohol, films and magazines and she is immediately asked to fix her veil. It’s an expected but nonetheless unsettling transition. Where she had plenty of freedom in Austria, she now feels the stifling absence of it in her home country. It’s out of the question that everybody else in Iran senses the confinement too. How do they counter these restrictions, or in other words, how do these limitations and strict rules affect society?
In public, the rules are best to be obeyed. The guardians of the revolution haunt the Iranian streets in search of inadequately dressed women or improperly behaving individuals. Even with the slightest slip-up, wearing red socks for example, one can get him- or herself arrested and every person leaving the house feels nervous and uncomfortable if not scared. A couple walking down the street will most likely get arrested if they fail to produce a marriage certificate and two persons of the same gender that are suspected to be homosexual are at risk/in
…show more content…
Women can untie their veils and couples can display affection again without risking thrown in jail, getting whipped, or worse. In public they hold themselves very differently than at home, something that really comes forward on page 307 of Persepolis. You see Marji and her group of female friends depicted two times. In the top panel they are in public and therefore covered with dark veils and dressed in concealing clothes. In the lowest panel they are at someone’s home, lounging around, each dressed in a modern and more revealing attire, sans veil. In the caption Marji says: “Our behaviour in public and our behaviour in private were polar opposites. This disparity made us