by Azar Nafisi
His face had become hard, and the shadow of obstinacy had colored his eyes. He repeated that people had to pay for their past crimes. This is not a game, he said. It is a revolution. I asked him if I too was on trial for my past. But he was right in a sense: we all have to pay in the end. There were no innocents in the game of life, that was for sure. We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle. I did not know then that I had already begun to pay, that what was happening was part of the payment. It was much later that these feelings would be clarified.
16
It was late; I had been at the library. I was spending a great deal of time there now, as it was becoming more and more difficult to find “imperialist” novels in bookstores. I was emerging from the library with a few books under my arm when I noticed him standing by the door. His two hands were joined in front of him in an expression of reverence for me, his teacher, but in his strained grimace I could feel his sense of power. I remember Mr. Nyazi always with a white shirt, buttoned up to the neck—he never tucked it in. He was stocky and had blue eyes, very closely cropped light brown hair and a thick, pinkish neck. It seemed as if his neck were made of soft clay; it literally sat on his shirt collar. He was always very polite.
“Ma’am, may I talk to you for a second?” Although we were in the middle of the semester, I had not as yet been assigned an office, so we stood in the hall and I listened. His complaint was about Gatsby. He said he was telling me this for my own good. For my own good? What an odd expression to use. He said surely I must know how much he respected me, otherwise he would not be there talking to me. He had a complaint. Against whom, and why me? It was against Gatsby. I asked him jokingly if he had filed any official complaints against Mr. Gatsby. And I reminded him that any such action would in any case be useless as the gentleman was already dead.
But he was serious. No, Professor, not against Mr. Gatsby himself but against the novel. The novel was immoral. It taught the youth the wrong stuff; it poisoned their minds—surely I could see? I could not. I reminded him that Gatsby was a work of fiction and not a how-to manual. Surely I could see, he insisted, that these novels and their characters became our models in real life? Maybe Mr. Gatsby was all right for the Americans, but not for our revolutionary youth. For some reason the idea that this man could be tempted to become Gatsby-like was very appealing to me.
There was, for Mr. Nyazi, no difference between the fiction of Fitzgerald and the facts of his own life. The Great Gatsby was representative of things American, and America was poison for us; it certainly was. We should teach Iranian students to fight against American immorality, he said. He looked earnest; he had come to me in all goodwill.
Suddenly a mischievous notion got hold of me. I suggested, in these days of public prosecutions, that we put Gatsby on trial: Mr. Nyazi would be the prosecutor, and he should also write a paper offering his evidence. I told him that when Fitzgerald’s books were published in the States, there were many who felt just as he did. They may have expressed themselves differently, but they were saying more or less the same thing. So he need not feel lonely in expressing his views.
The next day I presented this plan to the class. We could not have a proper trial, of course, but we could have a prosecutor, a lawyer for the defense and a defendant; the rest of the class would be the jury. Mr. Nyazi would be the prosecutor. We needed a judge, a defendant and a defense attorney.
After a great deal of argument, because no one volunteered for any of the posts, we finally persuaded one of the leftist students to be the judge. But then Mr. Nyazi and his friends objected: this student was biased against the prosecution. After further deliberation, we agreed upon Mr. Farzan, a meek and studious fellow, rather pompous and, fortunately, shy. No one wanted to be the defense. It was emphasized that since I had chosen the book, I should defend it. I argued that in that case, I should be not the defense but the defendant and promised to cooperate closely with my lawyer and to talk in my own defense. Finally, Zarrin, who was holding her own conference in whispers with Vida, after a few persuasive nudges, volunteered. Zarrin wanted to know if I was Fitzgerald or the book itself. We decided that I would be the book: Fitzgerald may have had or lacked qualities that we could detect in the book. It was agreed that in this trial the rest of the class could at any point interrupt the defense or the prosecution with their own comments and questions.
I felt it was wrong for me to be the defendant, that this put the prosecutor in an awkward position. At any rate, it would have been more interesting if one of the students had chosen to participate. But no one wanted to speak for Gatsby. There was something so obstinately arrogant about Mr. Nyazi, so inflexible, that in the end I persuaded myself I should have no fear of intimidating him.
A few days later, Mr. Bahri came to see me. We had not met for what seemed like a long time. He was a little outraged. I enjoyed the fact that for the first time, he seemed agitated and had forgotten to talk in his precise and leisurely manner. Was it necessary to put this book on trial? I was somewhat taken aback. Did he want me to throw the book aside without so much as a word in its defense? Anyway, this is a good time for trials, I said, is it not?
17
All through the week before the trial, whatever I did, whether talking to friends and family or preparing for classes, part of my mind was constantly occupied on shaping my arguments for the trial. This after all was not merely a defense of Gatsby but of a whole way of looking at and appraising literature—and reality, for that matter. Bijan, who seemed quite amused by all of this, told me one day that I was studying Gatsby with the same intensity as a lawyer scrutinizing a textbook on law. I turned to him and said, You don’t take this seriously, do you? He said, Of course I take it seriously. You have put yourself in a vulnerable position in relation to your students. You have allowed them—no, not just that; you have forced them into questioning your judgment as a teacher. So you have to win this case. This is very important for a junior member of the faculty in her first semester of teaching. But if you are asking for sympathy, you won’t get it from me. You’re loving it, admit it—you love this sort of drama and anxiety. Next thing you know, you’ll be trying to convince me that the whole revolution depends on this.
But it does—don’t you see? I implored. He shrugged and said, Don’t tell me. I suggest you put your ideas to Ayatollah Khomeini.
On the day of the trial, I left for school early and roamed the leafy avenues before heading to class. As I entered the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature, I saw Mahtab standing by the door with another girl. She wore a peculiar grin that day, like a lazy kid who has just gotten an A. She said, Professor, I wondered if you would mind if Nassrin sits in on the class today. I looked from her to her young companion; she couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old. She was very pretty, despite her own best efforts to hide it. Her looks clashed with her solemn expression, which was neutral and adamantly impenetrable. Only her body seemed to express something: she kept leaning on one leg and then the other as her right hand gripped and released the thick strap of her heavy shoulder bag.
Mahtab, with more animation than usual, told me that Nassrin’s English was better than most college kids’, and when she’d told her about Gatsby’s trial, she was so curious that she’d read the whole book. I turned to Nassrin and asked, What did you think of Gatsby? She paused and then said quietly, I can’t tell. I said, Do you mean you don’t know or you can’t tell me? She said, I don’t know, but maybe I just can’t tell you.
That was the beginning of it all. After the trial, Nassrin asked permission to continue attending my classes whenever she could. Mahtab told me that Nassrin was her neighbor. She belonged to a Muslim organization but was a very interesting kid, and Mahtab was working on her—an expression the leftists used to describe someone they were trying to recruit.
I told Nassrin she could come to my class on one condition: at the end of term, she would have to w
rite a fifteen-page paper on Gatsby. She paused as she always did, as if she didn’t quite have sufficient words at her command. Her responses were always reluctant and forced; one felt almost guilty for making her talk. Nassrin demurred at first, and then she said: I’m not that good. You don’t need to be good, I said. And I’m sure you are—after all, you’re spending your free time here. I don’t want a scholarly paper; I want you to write your own impressions. Tell me in your own words what Gatsby means to you. She was looking at the tip of her shoes, and she muttered that she would try.
From then on, every time I came to class I would look for Nassrin, who usually followed Mahtab and sat beside her. She would be busy taking notes all through the session, and she even came a few times when Mahtab did not show up. Then suddenly she stopped coming, until the last class, when I saw her sitting in a corner, busying herself with the notes she scribbled.
Once I had agreed to accept my young intruder, I left them both and continued. I needed to stop by the department office before class to pick up a book Dr. A had left for me. When I entered the classroom that afternoon, I felt a charged silence follow me in. The room was full; only one or two students were absent—and Mr. Bahri, whose activities, or disapproval, had kept him away. Zarrin was laughing and swapping notes with Vida, and Mr. Nyazi stood in a corner talking to two other Muslim students, who repaired to their seats when they caught sight of me. Mahtab was sitting beside her new recruit, whispering to her conspiratorially.
I spoke briefly about the next week’s assignment and proceeded to set the trial in motion. First I called forth Mr. Farzan, the judge, and asked him to take his seat in my usual chair, behind the desk. He sauntered up to the front of the class with an ill-disguised air of self-satisfaction. A chair was placed near the judge for the witnesses. I sat beside Zarrin on the left side of the room, by the large window, and Mr. Nyazi sat with some of his friends on the other side, by the wall. The judge called the session to order. And so began the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran versus The Great Gatsby.
Mr. Nyazi was called to state his case against the defendant. Instead of standing, he moved his chair to the center of the room and started to read in a monotonous voice from his paper. The judge sat uncomfortably behind my desk and appeared to be mesmerized by Mr. Nyazi. Every once in a while he blinked rather violently.
A few months ago, I was finally cleaning up my old files and I came across Mr. Nyazi’s paper, written in immaculate handwriting. It began with “In the Name of God,” words that later became mandatory on all official letterheads and in all public talks. Mr. Nyazi picked up the pages of his paper one by one, gripping rather than holding them, as if afraid that they might try to escape his hold. “Islam is the only religion in the world that has assigned a special sacred role to literature in guiding man to a godly life,” he intoned. “This becomes clear when we consider that the Koran, God’s own word, is the Prophet’s miracle. Through the Word you can heal or you can destroy. You can guide or you can corrupt. That is why the Word can belong to Satan or to God.
“Imam Khomeini has relegated a great task to our poets and writers,” he droned on triumphantly, laying down one page and picking up another. “He has given them a sacred mission, much more exalted than that of the materialistic writers in the West. If our Imam is the shepherd who guides the flock to its pasture, then the writers are the faithful watchdogs who must lead according to the shepherd’s dictates.”
A giggle could be heard from the back of the class. I glanced around behind me and caught Zarrin and Vida whispering. Nassrin was staring intently at Mr. Nyazi and absentmindedly chewing her pencil. Mr. Farzan seemed to be preoccupied with an invisible fly, and blinked exaggeratedly at intervals. When I turned my attention back to Mr. Nyazi, he was saying, “Ask yourself which you would prefer: the guardianship of a sacred and holy task or the materialistic reward of money and position that has corrupted—” and here he paused, without taking his eyes off his paper, seeming to drag the sapless words to the surface—“that has corrupted,” he repeated, “the Western writers and deprived their work of spirituality and purpose. That is why our Imam says that the pen is mightier than the sword.”
The whispers and titters in the back rows had become more audible. Mr. Farzan was too inept a judge to pay attention, but one of Mr. Nyazi’s friends cried out: “Your Honor, could you please instruct the gentlemen and ladies in the back to respect the court and the prosecutor?”
“So be it,” said Mr. Farzan, irrelevantly.
“Our poets and writers in this battle against the Great Satan,” Nyazi continued, “play the same role as our faithful soldiers, and they will be accorded the same reward in heaven. We students, as the future guardians of culture, have a heavy task ahead of us. Today we have planted Islam’s flag of victory inside the nest of spies on our own soil. Our task, as our Imam has stated, is to purge the country of the decadent Western culture and . . .”
At this point Zarrin stood up. “Objection, Your Honor!” she cried out.
Mr. Farzan looked at her in some surprise. “What do you object to?”
“This is supposed to be about The Great Gatsby,” said Zarrin. “The prosecutor has taken up fifteen precious minutes of our time without saying a single word about the defendant. Where is this all going?”
For a few seconds both Mr. Farzan and Mr. Nyazi looked at her in wonder. Then Mr. Nyazi said, without looking at Zarrin, “This is an Islamic court, not Perry Mason. I can present my case the way I want to, and I am setting the context. I want to say that as a Muslim I cannot accept Gatsby.”
Mr. Farzan, attempting to rise up to his role, said, “Well, please move on then.”
Zarrin’s interruptions had upset Mr. Nyazi, who after a short pause lifted his head from his paper and said with some excitement, “You are right, it is not worth it . . .”
We were left to wonder what was not worth it for a few seconds, until he continued. “I don’t have to read from a paper, and I don’t need to talk about Islam. I have enough evidence—every page, every single page,” he cried out, “of this book is its own condemnation.” He turned to Zarrin and one look at her indifferent expression was enough to transform him. “All through this revolution we have talked about the fact that the West is our enemy, it is the Great Satan, not because of its military might, not because of its economic power, but because of, because of”—another pause—“because of its sinister assault on the very roots of our culture. What our Imam calls cultural aggression. This I would call a rape of our culture,” Mr. Nyazi stated, using a term that later became the hallmark of the Islamic Republic’s critique of the West. “And if you want to see cultural rape, you need go no further than this very book.” He picked his Gatsby up from beneath the pile of papers and started waving it in our direction.
Zarrin rose again to her feet. “Your Honor,” she said with barely disguised contempt, “these are all baseless allegations, falsehoods . . .”
Mr. Nyazi did not allow his honor to respond. He half rose from his seat and cried out: “Will you let me finish? You will get your turn! I will tell you why, I will tell you why . . .” And then he turned to me and in a softer voice said, “Ma’am, no offense meant to you.”
I, who had by now begun to enjoy the game, said, “Go ahead, please, and remember I am here in the role of the book. I will have my say in the end.”
“Maybe during the reign of the corrupt Pahlavi regime,” Nyazi continued, “adultery was the accepted norm.”
Zarrin was not one to let go. “I object!” she cried out. “There is no factual basis to this statement.”
“Okay,” he conceded, “but the values were such that adultery went unpunished. This book preaches illicit relations between a man and woman. First we have Tom and his mistress, the scene in her apartment—even the narrator, Nick, is implicated. He doesn’t like their lies, but he has no objection to their fornicating and sitting on each other’s laps, and, and, those parties at Gatsby’s . . . remember, ladies an
d gentlemen, this Gatsby is the hero of the book—and who is he? He is a charlatan, he is an adulterer, he is a liar . . . this is the man Nick celebrates and feels sorry for, this man, this destroyer of homes!” Mr. Nyazi was clearly agitated as he conjured the fornicators, liars and adulterers roaming freely in Fitzgerald’s luminous world, immune from his wrath and from prosecution. “The only sympathetic person here is the cuckolded husband, Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Nyazi boomed. “When he kills Gatsby, it is the hand of God. He is the only victim. He is the genuine symbol of the oppressed, in the land of, of, of the Great Satan!”
The trouble with Mr. Nyazi was that even when he became excited and did not read from his paper, his delivery was monotonous. Now he mainly shouted and cried out from his semi-stationary position.
“The one good thing about this book,” he said, waving the culprit in one hand, “is that it exposes the immorality and decadence of American society, but we have fought to rid ourselves of this trash and it is high time that such books be banned.” He kept calling Gatsby “this Mr. Gatsby” and could not bring himself to name Daisy, whom he referred to as “that woman.” According to Nyazi, there was not a single virtuous woman in the whole novel. “What kind of model are we setting for our innocent and modest sisters,” he asked his captive audience, “by giving them such a book to read?”
As he continued, he became increasingly animated, yet he refused throughout to budge from his chair. “Gatsby is dishonest,” he cried out, his voice now shrill. “He earns his money by illegal means and tries to buy the love of a married woman. This book is supposed to be about the American dream, but what sort of a dream is this? Does the author mean to suggest that we should all be adulterers and bandits? Americans are decadent and in decline because this is their dream. They are going down! This is the last hiccup of a dead culture!” he concluded triumphantly, proving that Zarrin was not the only one to have watched Perry Mason.
