Noteless Days

In Satrapi8217;s new graphic novel, a man loses his music and so the will to live

Marjane satrapi8217;s three graphic novels so far have been intensely personal. In Persepolis and Persepolis 2, she recounted her Tehran childhood and adolescence in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution of 1979. With her woodcut drawings, she conveyed wit, liberalism and deep love for her country. In depicting the manner in which personal life changes had to be made after 1979 8212; from exaggerating the number of times she prayed to leaving for high school in Europe 8212; Satrapi made stridently political points. In her third book, Embroideries, she recreated the rich interior lives of Iranian women with stories about her grandmother.

With Chicken With Plums, Satrapi casts her storytelling net wider than her immediate clan. It is a disconcerting, melancholy book. Set over just a few November days in 1958, it tracks an Iranian musician8217;s disenchantment with life and his willful journey to death.

Nasser Ali Khan is a well reputed tar player, and his wife8217;s intentional destruction of the instrument sets him off to reconsider his entire life. Nasser first tries to replace it, checking out various instruments in Tehran and even making an arduous trip to Mashad. To no avail. In the meanwhile, his family8217;s 8212; his wife8217;s and his four children8217;s 8212; unconcern for his creativity accentuates the spreading vacuum in his days.

Satrapi abandons linear storytelling and takes her graphics back and forth in time, using almost imperceptible changes in the artwork to drift into flashbacks, dreams, and hints on what happened in later years to the children. She also keeps the narrative grounded in politics, aligning the sense of helplessness experienced by Nasser and his friends with the common Iranian8217;s feeling of loss of political control since the Americans helped overthrow Mossadegh five years earlier.

Predictably, the story facilitates Nasser8217;s stock taking 8212; the dying man is expected to have the main events of his life play out in his mind, and his dreams are supposed to be imbued with deep meaning. Pleasure has always been key to Persian sophistication, and Nasser8217;s loss of his percussion instrument has obvious parallels with contemporary Iran.

But, by inserting herself into the story, Satrapi projects the story far out into the future. On a trip back to Iran, for instance, she is told about Nasser8217;s favourite daughter, trying in the post-Revolution years to draw as much enjoyment from her days as possible, never mind the disastrous consequences for her health. And his youngest son, relocated in America, is shown to slide into obesity.

Last year, a wonderful anthology, Strange Times, My Dear, captured a profusion of writings out of Iran and by Iranians in exile. It returned the gaze to writers as custodians of Persian specialness, dovetailing their work to the old greats whose poetry preserved the language during centuries of invasion. Satrapi8217;s new book, with its bold departures from the Persepolis books, is a reminder of the special place for the creative mind in telling the Iran story.