Day 6: Carmelo and Bashkim

Bashkim...

Marji faces a lot of obstacles in her life that are mostly because of the war that's going on and her struggle with coming to age. Because of the war, Marji has a lot of rules to follow like wearing a veil and always being covered from head to toe. She's separated from boys at school has schoolbooks that pretty much just talk about the revolution and how all the things that are happening is caused by the Shia who was "sent by God". She also has to deal with the fact that no one really believes in her dream to be a prophet so she slowly starts to believe in this dream less and less. Her parents are always keeping her sheltered from the war by keeping her home and not wanting her to go out and demonstrate with them.I've always been told a lot of stereotypical things. I had the parents who even though they wanted to see succeed and do better in school, the opposite came out of their mouths. They would always claim how I wasn't going to do much and that I was just going to drop out or flip burgers my whole life and just waste away. I hated it but didn't care much because to me, their words only encouraged me to prove them wrong and to do better than they thought I would. I wanted to be able to achieve my dreams and look back and be proud because I did it on my own and all I needed was to believe in myself and have a few other encourages. I felt it made a positive outcome just because I feel like a better person for proving them wrong. Even though I would have loved for them to be supportive and at least try to be encouraging, at least I got to where I am now and I'm happy now...

Carmelo..

In Persepolis, Marji is starting to join this crowd of older girls at her school. She starts to see how these girls go about town with not much of a worry or of what can happen to them. This group isn't nessesarily the group of freinds that Marji needs at this time.I know how it is to grow up around people who are older than you and it kind of just makes you grow up faster than you should be. I guess the idea of being surronded by kids who do "cooler" things than you and go to differtnt hang outs can kind of make you wan to be just like them. Event though Marji is with this older group of girls and does these rebelious things, I know deep down she does it to come to terms with the way she's growing up and starting to find away to not really think about what's going on around her. She wants to be able to find acceptance somewhere since her whole life, she's had to been surronded by all this rejection and all the hardships she's faced. They group I stareted off with in high school wasn't nessesarily the best group to get mixed in with. They liked to go out and drink, smoke, rock out at shows and never really had curfews and even thoguh I hung out with them, I rarely ever was home. I would be at one of their houses listening to music or around the school lot watching them skateboard. Homework was something I didn't even care about doing because all that mattered to me was that group of friends. But as soon as they started graduating or dropping out, I realized that I needed to set my priorities and start getting good grades.