Goodbye Marjane

Today, Marjane Satrapi passed away. She was 56 years old, and according to the statement from her family, the primary cause for this extremely sudden death was the depression from the death of her husband last year. She was in Paris, so far from her hometown, Rasht, in Iran. Last year, I did a presentation on her celebrated film, Perspolis, for the cinema society of our university. I tried to show them why many Iranians have immigrated to Europe in the last half-century, the numerous issues within the borders of the country for women, and how some of us have never accepted the diaspora as our home. Satrapi describes it better than anyone; you feel you don't belong to your country, and you don't belong to the other country you live in now. For her, there's a lifelong identity crisis that you cannot overcome, but can get along with only by accepting the fact that you'll never see anywhere as "home" in the way that many people might see. The sentiment of being a stranger for the rest of…