The Ikeable One

While reading Persepolis, I learned a lot more about Iran than I already knew. I knew that people considered Iran an unsafe country and that might have ‘terrorists’, but considering I lived there, I was curious as to what the book would say when the author said that she wanted to show the other side of Iran’s story.

In the book, I learned about how difficult and scarring the war was from the perspective of people in Iran, especially for children like Marjane and her friends, and how the war affected people in negative ways.

In one part of the book, I see Marji talking about how she smokes a cigarette to signify the end of her childhood and the beginning of her adulthood, which looks bleak at that point.

This part of the book makes me wonder about how war can affect people, and how people can make rash decisions during war. This part of the story shows how much Marji wants to be a grown up, and how much she wants to be treated like a mature adult. Later, she ends up acting quite headstrong to her parents and her teachers, to the point where she goes a bit too far when she gets angry, and ends up being expelled. I feel like I see a lot of this in the earlier stages of the book when Marji is small, and she really wants to understand everything, which makes her read a lot about very many different things. At some point in the book, Marji even says that she read more than she had ever read in her childhood, mostly because of her need to understand everything.

In another part of the book, you get to see the ‘guardians of the revolution’, and how scary they can be.

In this part of the book, I can imagine how scared I would be, because if a person got caught by the guardians of the revolution, and they thought you were doing something wrong, they could take you to their committee where you could be whipped, and your parents wouldn’t know, but would end up thinking that their child was kidnapped or ran away. In my opinion, the possibility of getting caught by those people is a scary thought.

Later on, Marji’s neighborhood is bombed, and she sees her friend’s severed hand with her bracelet still on it.

In this part of the book, she is only 14, and it makes me wonder how she handled it, because most people would be scarred for a very long time. She, on the other hand, is recounting the experience by telling the story, and I end up wondering how she is feeling.

In all these 3 parts of the book, something bad or scary happens to Marji, her family, or her friends, and Marji has to be able to try and forget it, and uses some tactic to try and move on from it to try and cope with adults threatening to whip her for wearing basketball shoes and a Michael Jackson pin, to try and cope with seeing her friends severed, bloodied hand.

This book has shown me the horrors of war and revolutions, but kind of filtered behind the cartoon-ish feel of a graphic novel.

To increase that feel, for my creative part, I’ve made some memes that are related to Marji and what is happening to her.

The Mt. Kenya trip was a really nice trip, but mostly the first few days because the last day I was the day I got sick, and that also happened to be the day that we did the highest amount of walking and hiking.

During the trip, I really got a good idea of what my limits are and how far I can go before I get tired. In this blog, I’m going to be explaining my trip in a different type of way that I don’t really know what to call.

Day 1

The first day is one of the easiest days. You walk about 9 kilometers, but it feels like a lot longer than that. If you’re walking with other people, then you’re good because you aren’t bored and you can distract yourself from the long, long walk ahead of you. You walk, and compared to the other walks, it is quite easy. When you arrive at base camp, you are quite tired, and are just starting to feel the altitude, but it isn’t bad enough for you to start complaining a lot. You go and eat food and talk to the other people that are there and you seem to be doing well. In the evening, the sunset is beautiful, and at night the stars are much brighter than you have ever seen in any regular city. You soon get to bed and get prepared for the early morning ahead of you.

Day 2

The night wasFREEZING! You shiver inside your sleeping bag and at some point, start wondering whether your “extremely good quality” sleeping bag was really worth buying. You drag yourself out of your bed, which is considerably warm compared to the air outside the huts. You take about 45 minutes to prepare, and another 30 minutes later, you have finished your breakfast and are getting the briefing from the instructors, and then you are on your way. During the first 30 minutes of the walk, you are quite tired from the constant uphill, but not too much to complain. You walk, and you walk, and you trudge forwards, and keep going and when you reach the station, clouds start to form around you and your group. You push the thought of cold and rain aside, and stand as the guide shouts:

“2 minutes!! Put your backpack on!”

You walk on. As you feared, the walk gets steeper and muddier as you go on. You walk on, step after step, hill after hill, break after break. After a few breaks, you decide to ask how much longer you have to walk, and with a smug smile, the guide replies “less than 5 hours”.

You decide not to ask again.

The rest of the trip is a haze. You remember walking, and walking, sometimes talking, sometimes changing into warmer clothes, and stopping for breaks, but no details. Then the guide saves you by saying ‘almost there guys!’

You know he’s probably not telling the truth, but you have nothing but hope to hang on to now. You start thinking about the porters. All of them are ahead of you at this point. What kind of superhuman strength do they have that allows them to basically run with 10kg bags on their backs? Suddenly, you walk over another hill and see bright orange tents staring at you from just 2 kilometers or so away, and you immediately start walking faster, to the point that you almost trip. You walk, and walk, and suddenly you’re there! You collapse on the ground (partly from exhaustion but mostly from relief). You see the porters all doing their different jobs, and you also see your tents being set up. You look around and think ‘Ok… not so bad’. The bathrooms, as usual, are wonderful (*sarcasm*), and you decide you’d rather go to the bush than survive the stalls. You dread the moment where you need to go for a number 2. You socialize, you find a tent, and basically rest for the remaining part of the day, which is quite a lot, as it is only lunchtime just then.

The day passes by, but by 6:00, your feet aren’t feeling the best. Your fingers are freezing even with your gloves on, and your socks have frozen and your toes with them. Your hands can’t even hold the cup with the ORS (Oral Rehydration Salts) in it (which isn’t bad, really). At night, the sky is clear, but you’ve swaddled yourself inside your sleeping bag and you’re praying that the trip will be over soon. Another early morning ahead tomorrow. Here goes…

Day 3

You wake up from the coldest night of the whole trip, which feels like a month for some reason. You get ready for another long walk, and look up at the sky, which is clear. You climb the hill to feel the sun, because you know it won’t last. You take off your sweatshirt at the guides command. Huh. ‘Be bold, start cold?’ PLEASE. I THRIVE in heat. You still keep your layers off though. The walk begins, and so does your suffering. Again, you walk, and begin to wonder about these hills you’re walking on. Each time you think you’re at the top of the hill, it ends up being even higher than what you saw. It’s infuriating. You want to quit, but you keep dragging yourself onwards. You walk on, and as you walk, you start to admire the beauty of the mountains. Endless earth stretching over the horizon, and on the other side, cities, all sparkling with bright lights. You walk on the sides of hills, and inside valleys, and as the path stretches and winds onwards, you seem to forget how exhausted you are, and start to simply walk. Your feet seem to go on by themselves. Suddenly, you see a house. SHIPTON’S CAMP!!! You scream inside your head. In fact, you’re pretty much going insane. You’re almost there! You take someone’s advice and start thinking “I can go one more step” with each step you take. You walk and you climb and you walk even more, and finally you reach Shipton’s Camp. You walk towards the rocks so that you can collapse again. When you finally have enough energy to look up, the sky is clear, and only a few clouds cover what seems to be the peak of Mount Kenya. WOWWWWWWW. That is a WONDERFUL view. You stay for about 5 minutes just staring at Batian’s peak, and then finally go inside as it starts to get cold.

Suddenly you hear a scream.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

You’re scared at first, but realize that it’s someone screaming about a rat they’ve found in their room. You start to chuckle to yourself when you hear that. You go through the ‘normal’ routine, and a bit before dinner, you’re getting the briefing from the instructors about the challenge that you are going to go through tomorrow. You listen carefully, making sure you don’t miss a single detail. After dinner, you make sure you sleep early, so that when you wake up at 1 AM, you’ll have had as much sleep as you could have gotten.

Day 4 – Final Day

WAKE UP GUYS!!! IT’S TIME TO GO!!

You wake up groggily. Already?? I slept for like, 5 minutes!

You get ready anyways. Your head aches for some reason but it doesn’t really matter. YOU ARE GOING to get to the top of the mountain.

The climb begins.

Your torch helps a lot when you are climbing, and you are happy that you carried it. After about 30 minutes, you take your first break.

WHOA. YOU ARE` TIRED!

You put on your bags after a very short seeming break, and keep climbing.

In other words, you keep suffering. You stay silent because you don’t want to worry anybody, but inside, you are practically dying. As usual, the walk drags on. As you walk up the mountain, you are quieter than you have ever been these past few days. The only sound you hear is the sound of you and your group panting. The second break passes quickly, and you find yourself getting exhausted.

Time passes.

And passes.

And you’re next to the lake.

And at that point, the guide tells you it’s too late to turn back.

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

You walk on. Honestly, it ends up much shorter than you thought it would be, because the guides say it’s too slippery to go any further.

Shame. You’re too tired to be let down. You lean on the side of the mountain, and glance up, where you know that about 10 meters above you is the peak. Oh, well.

Soon, you’re climbing down. The walk doesn’t lift anybody’s spirits, but nobody really speaks.

Then the sun comes up.

WOW. People seem to just then realize why they came for this trip. It’s amazing. Suddenely that climb seems a whole lot more worth it. As usual, people take pictures, and you think to yourself, “Huh. I climbed Mount Kenya.”

Not bad.