Marjane Timeline and Summary

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• Marjane's school is segregated along gender lines, and she is forced to wear a veil.
• Young Marjane learns that her grandfather was a prince who was imprisoned and tortured.
• Her Uncle Anoosh is freed during one regime change, only to be recaptured and executed later.
• Iraq invades Iran, and bombs them regularly. Marjane's neighbor's building is destroyed.
• Realizing that if her neighbor can die she can too, Marji decides she has nothing to fear. She mouths off at school and eventually gets expelled.
• Her parents decide that Marji is too independent and intelligent to live in Iran (this is a good thing), so they send her to be educated in Vienna.
• In Vienna, Marjane has trouble acclimating—the culture is just so different.
• Marjane experiments with sex, drugs, finding friends, and losing them; she also lives in a variety of different apartments.
• Eventually she becomes so homesick that she gets super depressed and starts sleeping on the streets.
• This causes her to go from homesick to just sick-sick, and she almost dies.
• This near-death experience is a wake-up call, which sends Marjane back to her support system: her family in Iran.
• She's glad to see her family, but giving up her freedom kind of sucks. She also doesn't want to admit what a hard time she had in Vienna, so she gets more depressed and tries to kill herself.
• Believing she was saved by an act of God, Marjane tries living her own life once again. She becomes more outspoken, she gets married, and then—when it feels right—she gets divorced.
• However, she does find her identity... and her identity is not compatible with living under the oppressive Iranian regime.
• Marjane returns to Western Europe, and never lives in Iran again.