Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

  As I browsed around the semi-lit room, lost in the objects scattered haphazardly on old wooden tables and shelves, my eyes fell on an odd-looking pair of scissors. They were beautifully handcrafted; one of the handles was much bigger than the other, and they were shaped like a rooster. The blades were blunter than those of ordinary scissors. I asked the shopkeeper what it was. He shrugged. I’m not sure—maybe for trimming the mustache or beard. It probably came from somewhere in Europe, maybe Russia.

  I don’t know why I was so fascinated by this object, but I found it quite extraordinary that perhaps a hundred years ago this pair of scissors—or mustache trimmer, or whatever it was—had been brought over all the way from Europe to finally end up on an old table in the farthest reaches of this dusty shop. Yet so much work had gone into this quite dispensable object. I decided to buy it for my magician. I had a theory that some gifts should be bought for their own sake, exactly because they were useless. I was sure he would appreciate it, that he would be pleased to receive something he did not need, a luxury item that was not luxurious. Instead of buying something for Nima, I left with my rooster-headed scissors.

  When I gave them to my magician with my explanation, he was making coffee and was seemingly so involved in his task that he did not respond. He carried the tray with two mugs and his box of chocolates to the table, and went into the library. A few moments later he returned with a leather-bound book, in solemn green with gold lettering. It was The Ambassadors. Since you bought me the gift you should have gotten Nima, I have a gift for him: tell him to reread the scene in Gloriani’s garden. Your Nima sounds like a chap who needs to be reminded of things by someone such as myself. So why don’t you ask him to reread that scene?

  In the book, my magician had marked two passages. One was in the preface, where James mentions a famous and oft repeated scene as the “essence” of his novel; the other was the scene itself. It occurs at a party given by the famous sculptor Gloriani. Lambert Strether, the hero of the novel, tells a young painter, little Bilham, whom he has unofficially appointed as his spiritual heir: “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? I’m too old—too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t, like me to-day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now I’m a case of reaction against the mistake. For it was a mistake. Live, live!”

  35

  We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.—Henry James

  It was early in the morning, the first class of the day; the classroom was filled with light. I was summing up James. Last time we talked about certain traits in James, how they appear in different characters and within different contexts, and today I want to talk about the word courage, one that we bandy about a great deal these days in our own culture.

  There are different kinds of courage in James. Can you think of an example? Yes, Nassrin? The most obvious example is Daisy, Nassrin said. She pushed herself forward with an effort, tried to brush an imaginary strand of hair from her forehead and continued. Daisy tells Winterbourne at the very start not to be afraid. She means not to be afraid of conventions and traditions—that is one kind of courage.

  Yes, I said encouragingly. Daisy is a good example, and then there are other characters, others whom we never credit with courage, because we never think of their kind as courageous; we think of them as meek. Mahshid’s face lit up, and before she had bolstered the courage to raise her hand, I turned to her and said, Yes? The light withdrew from her face and she hesitated. Tell us, Mahshid, I insisted. Well, when you said “meek,” I suddenly thought of Catherine. She is shy and retreating, not like Daisy, yet she stands up to all these characters, who are much more outgoing than her, and she faces up to them at a great cost. She has a different kind of courage from Daisy, but it is still courage. I . . .

  It was at this point that we heard a commotion in the hall. I paid no attention to it. Over the years I had come to see such interference from outside the class as part of the class itself. One day, two janitors had walked in with two chairs and placed them in one corner. They left without a word and a few minutes later came back with two more chairs. Another time, a janitor with a crooked neck came in with a broom and started sweeping the floor while I continued to talk about Tom Jones and pretended not to notice him.

  And then there is The Ambassadors, I continued, where we find several different kinds of courage, but the most courageous characters here are those with imagination, those who, through their imaginative faculty, can empathize with others. When you lack this kind of courage, you remain ignorant of others’ feelings and needs.

  Maria, the soul mate Strether finds in Paris, has “courage,” while Mrs. Newsome has only “exultation.” Madame de Vionnet, the beautiful Parisian whom Mrs. Newsome is determined to expel from her son’s life, demonstrates courage when she risks all the known quantities of her life for the unknown quantity of her love for Chad. But Mrs. Newsome chooses to play it safe. Having imagined what everyone is like, having imagined their function and role, she refuses to change her formulations. She is a tyrant much in the way of a bad novelist, who shapes his characters according to his own ideology or desires and never allows them the space to become themselves. It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.

  I could tell by the restless movements of my students and their glances towards the door that they could not wholly concentrate on this most intriguing point, but I was determined to be undisturbed for as long as possible, so I continued. The most dictatorial character in the novel is the invisible Mrs. Newsome. If we want to learn about the essence of a dictatorial mind, we would do well to study her. Nima, could you please read the passage where Strether describes her—” ‘That is just her difficulty—’ ”

  “ ‘That is just her difficulty—, that she doesn’t admit surprises. It’s a fact that, I think, describes and represents her . . . she’s all, as I’ve called it, fine cold thought. She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for herself. Wherever she has done that, you see, there’s no room left; no margin, as it were, for any alteration. She’s filled as full, packed as tight, as she’ll hold. . . . I haven’t touched her. She won’t be touched. I see it now as I’ve never done; and she hangs together with a perfection of her own . . . that does suggest a kind of wrong in any change of her composition.’ ”

  By this time the disturbance outside had grown louder. There were sounds of feet running and people shouting. Miss Ruhi and Miss Hatef were now visibly agitated and whispered loudly, casting significant glances at the door. I sent them outside to find out what was happening, and tried to go on.

  “Let us return to the quotation . . .” I was instantly interrupted by Miss Ruhi and her breathless mate, who stood on the threshold as if they did not intend to stay. They reported that a student had set fire to himself in an empty classroom and had then started to run down the hall, shouting revolutionary slogans.

  We all rushed out. From both sides of the long hall, students were running in the direction of the staircase. I found a place near the stairs, close to one of my colleagues. Three people were carrying a stretcher, trying to make their way through the crowd towards the stairs. From the way they were carrying the stretcher, their burden seemed light. On the stretcher, under a white sheet, I could make out a remarkably pink face, marked by patches of dark gray. A pair of black minstrel hands extended out motionless above the white sheet, creating the impression that they were trying to avoid contact with the sheet at all costs. Two huge black eyes seemed to be attached to the face by invisible wires. They appeared completely motionless, as if fixed on a scene of unbelievab
le horror, and yet, paradoxically, they also seemed to be roving, but from side to side. Of all the wild images of that morning, those roaming eyes have continued to haunt me.

  The loudspeakers urged everyone to return to their classes. No one moved. We were watching the pink face, the minstrel hands and the sooty eyes as they were carried down the staircase in what seemed like a spiral motion. The murmurs died down and rose again with the stretcher’s approach and descent. It was one of those scenes which, while happening in front of one’s eyes, have already acquired the quality not just of a dream, but of a memory of a dream.

  As the stretcher moved down the stairs and out of sight, the murmurs became more articulate and clear. The almost magical creature on the stretcher became more tangible, acquired a background, a name, an identity. This identity was mainly impersonal. He had been one of the most active students in the Muslim Students’ Association. To say that he was “active” meant that he was one of the more fanatical. He belonged to the group responsible for the posters and slogans on the walls, the group that had authorized the notices at the entrances to the university listing the names of those who had transgressed the dress code.

  I thought of him on that stretcher, going down the staircase, passing the now irrelevant photographs of the war, passing by Ayatollah Khomeini, who even after death was glaring down on the procession with his usual stern and impenetrable gaze and passing his precious slogans about the war: WHETHER WE KILL OR ARE KLLED WE ARE VICTORIOUS! WE WILL FIGHT! WE WILL DIE! BUT WE WON’T ACCEPT COMPROMISE!

  There were so many young men like him on all our campuses, those who had been very young at the beginning of the revolution, many from the provinces or from traditional families. Every year, more students were admitted to the universities based on their loyalty to the revolution. They belonged to the families of the Revolutionary Guards or the martyrs of the revolution and were called the “government’s share.” These were the children of the revolution, those who were to carry its legacy and eventually replace the Westernized workforce. The revolution must have meant many things to them—mainly power, and access. But they were also the usurpers, who had been admitted to the university and given power not because of their own merit or hard work but because of their ideological affiliations. This, neither they nor we could forget.

  I went down the stairs, slowly this time, surrounded by a group of students who were talking excitedly among themselves. Who he was had already become an excuse for our remembrances, and our stories. My students spoke heatedly about the humiliations they had suffered at the hands of members of his organization. They repeated the story of another leader of the Muslim Students’ Association, one who had died during the war, who claimed to have been sexually aroused by the sight of a white patch of skin peeking out from under a head scarf. Not even death could erase the memory of that white patch and the penalty the young girl had been made to pay for it.

  There were no public articulations of these humiliations, so we took refuge in accidental occasions to weave our resentments and hatreds into little stories that lost their impact as soon as they were told. Of the injured student’s background very little was known, and no one seemed to care. It dawned on me only much later that despite the precision with which I remembered all the stories related to him and his comrades, I could not remember his name. He had turned himself into a revolutionary, a martyr and a war veteran, but not an individual. Did he ever fall in love? Did he ever desire to hold one of those girls whose throats, under their black scarves, blazed so white?

  Like many others at that university, I had climbed the stairs and walked the halls with resentment. Resentment had erased all ambiguity in our encounters with people like him; we had been polarized into “us” and “them.” It did not occur to me or to my students and colleagues as we shared stories and anecdotes that day, like conspirators delighting in the setback of a far more powerful adversary, that he who seemingly wielded so much power was in fact the one with the strongest urge to self-destruction. Had he, by burning himself, usurped our right to revenge?

  He who in life had been nothing to me in death had become an obsession. All we ever found out about his personal life was that he came from a poor family and that his only close relative was a very old mother, whom he supported. He had gone to the war as a volunteer. He had been shell-shocked and sent home early. Apparently, he never fully recovered. After “peace” with Iraq, he returned to the university. But the peace had created a sense of disillusionment. The excitement of the war was gone, and with that, many young revolutionaries had lost their power.

  THIS WAR HAS BEEN A BLESSING FOR US! For us, it was a war that we never felt quite a part of. Yet for people like him, in a strange way the war must have been a blessing. It gave them a sense of community and purpose and power. He lost all that as soon as he returned from the front. His privilege and power meant nothing to him now, and his fellow Islamic students had already moved on. What must have gone through his mind when he saw that his old comrades were more eager to watch the Oscar celebrations, via forbidden satellite dishes, than clips from the war? He could deal with us, but what could he do with a Mr. Forsati, who had become as unfamiliar and as baffling to him as characters in a novel by Henry James?

  I kept thinking of him coming early to the university with two full cans of gasoline—probably not searched, because he was a privileged war veteran. I see him going into an empty classroom and pouring gasoline over his head. Next, he would have struck a match and slowly set fire to himself—did he light himself just once, or in several places? Then he ran down the hall and burst into his classroom, shouting, “They betrayed us! They lied to us! Look at what they did to us!” And that was the last of his rhetoric.

  One did not have to agree with him or approve of him to understand his position. He had returned from a war where he belonged to a university he had never been a part of. No one wanted to hear his stories. Only his moment of death could spark interest. It was ironic that this man, whose life had been so determined by doctrinal certainty, would now gain so much complexity in death.

  He died that night. Did his comrades mourn him in private? Nothing was said about him—no commemoration, no flowers or speeches, in a country where funerals and mourning were more magnificently produced than any other national art form. I, who prided myself on speaking out against the veil or other forms of harassment, also kept quiet. Apart from the murmurs, the only thing out of the ordinary about that day was that the loudspeakers for some reason kept announcing in the halls that classes would be held as usual that afternoon. We did have a class that afternoon. It did not go on as usual.

  PART IV

  Austen

  1

  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife.” So declared Yassi in that special tone of hers, deadpan and mildly ironic, which on rare occasions, and this was one of them, bordered on the burlesque.

  “Or is it a truth universally acknowledged,” Manna shot back, “that a Muslim man must be in want not just of one but of many wives?” She glanced at me conspiratorially, her black eyes brimming with humor, knowing she would draw a reaction. Unlike Mahshid, Manna had a way of secretly communicating with the few people she liked. Her chief means of contact were her eyes, which she focused or withdrew from you. We had developed a hidden code between us and only when she felt offended—and she could easily be offended—would she lower and divert her gaze to one side, the playful inflections wiped from her words.

  It was one of those cold, gray early-December mornings when the overcast sky and the chill in the air seem to promise snow. I had asked Bijan to light a fire before leaving for work, and it sparkled now with a soothing warmth. Cozy—a word too common for Yassi’s usage—would be the right term for how we felt. All the necessary components were there: misty windows, steaming mugs of coffee, a crackling fire, languorous cream puffs, thick wool sweaters and the mingling smells of smoke,
coffee and oranges. Yassi was sprawled on the couch, in her usual place between Manna and Azin, making me wonder again how such a tiny body could take up so much space. Azin’s flirtatious laughter rang in the air, and even Mahshid bestowed upon us a hint of a smile. Nassrin had moved her chair near the fireplace, her restless hands tossing orange peels into the fire.

  It was a tribute to the degree of intimacy that had developed among us that we could easily shift from light banter to serious discussions of the novels. What we had with all the writers, but especially with Austen, was fun. Sometimes we even went wild—we became childish and teasing and just plain enjoyed ourselves. How could one read the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice and not grasp that this was what Austen demanded of her readers?

  That morning, we were waiting for Sanaz. Mitra, her dimples making a temporary appearance, had informed the class that Sanaz wanted us to wait for her—she had a surprise. All our wild speculations were met with a reticent smile.

  “Only two things could have happened,” Azin speculated. “Another row with her brother and she’s finally decided to leave home and move in with her wonderful aunt.” She raised her hand with a tinkling of gold and silver bangles. “Or she’s marrying her sweetheart.”

  “The sweetheart seems the more likely of the two,” said Yassi, straightening herself up a little, “judging by Mitra’s expression.”

  Mitra’s dimples widened, but she refused to respond to our provocation. Looking at her, I thought of her own recent marriage to Hamid; their furtive courtship must have taken place right under my unsuspecting nose. They had invited me to their wedding, but Mitra had never mentioned her relations with Hamid before then.

  “Did you fall in love?” I had asked Mitra anxiously, causing Manna to say, “That boring question again.” It was a joke among my friends and colleagues that I could never resist posing my obsessive question to married couples. “Did you fall in love?” I’d ask urgently and eagerly, provoking almost invariably an indulgent smile. Mitra blushed and said, “Well, yes, of course.”