On Thursday morning, June 4, I woke to the tragic and shocking news of Marjane Satrapi’s death. It was not the first time I had learned of a loved one’s loss in exile in the most mundane, alienating way: half-awake in bed, phone in hand, scrolling through messages and headlines, confronted by yet another immeasurable catastrophe. The news of my father’s passing reached me in a similar way seven months ago. Suddenly, everything felt darker, more fragile than it had the day before.
I sat in my Philadelphia apartment, still in pajamas, as grief arrived in waves: first numbness, then denial, and finally tears that blurred every word and memory at once. I scrolled through news feeds, searching for answers I knew would not compensate for her loss. On Narges Mohamadi’s foundation page, I read her family’s note: “she died of sorrow.” Four devastating words echoed the Persian compound we use for this kind of death: degh kardan: to die of sadness so deep it shatters your whole being. In English, they call it “Broken Heart Syndrome,” a phrase too clinical, too far removed from the untranslatable ache that sorrow leaves in the body in its wake.