Life in Iran becomes increasingly unbearable for Marjane. She wants to be ‘an educated, liberated woman’ but this is simply not possible in a country where women’s freedom is so restricted. She studies at art college but has to attend a lecture on ‘Moral and Religious Conduct’ in which the lecturer instructs women on how to dress modestly so as not to infl ame men’s passions. Marjane asks the lecturer why it is only women who are forced to dress a certain way when male students dress as they want and sometimes ‘wear clothes so tight’ that the girls ‘can see everything’. The double standard in Iran is unacceptable to Marjane.
Marjane realises just how restricted women’s lives are when she visits a work colleague who speaks for his wife, effectively preventing her from taking part in the conversations. This is the fi nal straw for Marjane. While she accepts that it is not just Iranian men who treat women as inferiors, the difference is that the law in Iran takes the man’s side in every case. Women are not even allowed to testify in court. Only a man may initiate a divorce, and he automatically gets custody of the children. Marjane says that the reason given for this is that ‘the man is like the grain and the woman simply the earth in which the grain grows’. Marjane can’t take this gender inequality anymore and decides to emigrate to Europe, where she can live life on her own terms. Her mother supports her choice, telling her she is ‘a free woman’ and that she must never come back. Although Marjane believes she is doing the right thing, she is also keenly aware that she is leaving her beloved family behind. Her fi nal words in the book are ‘Freedom had a price’.
