Character: Marina Nemat

There’s a Persian proverb that says, “The sky is the same colour wherever you go.”  Marina takes this literally and throughout the first few chapters proves that the proverb is wrong.  We are quickly introduced to a young girl who has endured a colossal amount of pain no human should endure, in 14 years.  Marina goes on to flip back and forth from past and present.  Story-telling her childhood memories and her experience in the prison, Evin.  The first chapter is told from her current situation, married with two sons, looking back on her days in Evin and Tehran.  She believes that the only way to get over what has happened and healthily progress is to go back and truly deal with her horrific past.  She wanted to talk and write as much as she could about it and to not dismiss her stories so that they could stop haunting her and she could move on.  She believed that once she put her experiences, thoughts, and bloody details onto paper, that she would feel better.  Because it was considered wrong and inappropriate to talk about her experiences no one talked about it, she never got to talk about it. 

Marina comments on her life when she was a young girl.  While growing up her family had a low-middle income.  She had a small but comfortable house, heating, went to school, but didn’t have enough money for items like books.  Her parents seemed to be distant and uninvolved with her life.  Her father was always working and when he came home, she would dance and try to get his attention, though his eyes were glued to the newspaper.  As for her mother, when she wasn’t working at her beauty parlor she would rather Marina be in her room out of sight, than help with cooking and spending time together.  Her mother found taking care of her daughter was too much of a hassle and tended to just shove her aside constantly.  Because of the neglect from her parents, Marina found love from other people, mainly her grandmother.  Marina’s grandmother was the one person she would always run to when things got difficult.  Her grandmother was Russian and Christian which was unlike others in Tehran.  She was very unique and had taught Marina plenty of life lessons, one being religion.  Marina quickly caught onto Christianity; she prayed and truly believed.  When her grandmother explained how her husband had died, Marina had learnt her first lesson of ‘harsh realities of life’.  Each detail drilled into her brain by her grandmother’s shrieks, Marina goes back to that day as the beginning. 

Then with her grandmother’s death at such a young age, Marina learns to be mature and understand complicated concepts, like death.  Marina’s grandmother was her personality shaper.  She had essentially mothered Marina as her own.  While Marina tried to deal with death she in turn dove into the world of books becoming adventurous and curious of the world.  Reading as many as she could she then started living her days at the bookstore.  With hundreds and hundreds of books she took comfort in being part of another story and escaped bad times through reading.  The bookstore keeper, Albert took a liking to Marina and treated her like his own; he acted fatherly-like.  Marina learnt how to be thoughtful and value everything that happened. 

When Marina turned 13, she had her first crush.  She becomes infatuated with a boy who’s 18, Arash.  He makes her feel special and worthy.  With having her first crush she becomes vulnerable, observant, and happy.  Since her grandmother died she hadn’t had anyone else to connect to until now.  Marina and Arash had meaningful conversations about serious topics and would connect so beautifully.  Once he went missing and Arash’s family found the note of him explaining that he was connected to the Islamic movement against the Shah and most likely dead by now, Marina realizes she had just experienced her first love and another tragedy at a very young age. 

As Marina talks about her experiences in Evin, readers are exposed to cruel realities that are so hard to read because of its absurdity. Marina knew the prison she was going to equaled fear, torture, and death.  During the events that happened in Evin, Marina was forced to be brave and fearless.  She was whipped to the limit and stuck to her guns.  She was proven loyal and logical when the guards demanded information; in which she didn’t tell about her friends because she knew they would only do the same to the others.  She witnessed courtyard shootings with other women in line.  She was then taken away last second by one of the men, Ali and was sentenced to life in jail instead of death.  She then sees her old friend Sarah and finds a bit of comfort in that.  Marina comments on the fact that she’d rather be killed than alive living in the torturing centre of Evin. 

With all of the events Marina is depicted as a good person.  She has been taught respectable morals and values by her grandmother.  She is seen as a confident, curious, caring, sympathetic, and kind girl.  With all the sad experiences she had endured, she constantly relies on God to help her in all situations and puts all her trust in the religion.  Subconsciously, the feelings of neglect and sadness had been dismissed and morphed into times of praying and having faith in God.  Her past had consistently pushed her closer to her religion even if she hadn’t recognized it.  Religion had become a strong relationship that would never leave her in which she probably took comfort in.  The main thing that keeps her going and is a constant theme is religion. 

Quotes

"Tehran always looked innocently beautiful under the deceiving curves of the snow, and although the Islamic regime had banned most beautiful things, it couldn't stop the snow from falling."  (pg.6)

"People never talked about Evin; it was shrouded with fearful silence."

"Maybe this was a place beyond fear, where all normal human emotions suffocated without even a struggle." (pg.7)

"Pain.  I had never experienced anything like it.  I couldn't even have imagined it. 

It exploded inside me like a lightning bolt." (pg.18)

 

"A voice in my head was saying, You're alive, and you don't desrve it." (pg.58)

"My time in this world had ended, but I was still alive.  Maybe this was the line that

seperated life and death.  And I didn't belong to either side." (pg. 86)