Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

  “Where is she now?” asked Mitra after a long pause.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We have to ask Mahshid.”

  “Nassrin left for the border two days ago,” Mahshid quietly informed us. “She’s waiting for the smugglers to get in touch with her, so by next week she should be riding a camel or a donkey or a jeep across the desert.”

  “Not Without My Daughter,” said Yassi with an uneasy giggle. “I’m so sorry,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth. “I feel so terrible.”

  For a while everyone speculated about Nassrin’s journey: the perils of traveling from the Turkish border, her loneliness, her future options. “Let’s not talk about her as if she’s dead,” said Azin. “She’s much better off where she’s going, and we should be happy for her.” Mahshid threw her a sharp glance. But Azin was right. What else could we have wished for her?

  The person who reacted most strongly, not to Nassrin’s departure but to my own now that Nassrin’s sudden vanishing act had made concrete the threat of separation, was the one who identified with me most—Manna.

  “This class will be over very soon anyway,” she said without looking at anyone. “Nassrin has gotten the message from Dr. Nafisi.” What message? “That we should all leave.”

  I was rather startled by the bitterness of her accusation. I felt guilty enough on my own, as if my decision to leave was a betrayal of some promise I had made to them. (Guilt has become part of your makeup. You felt guilty even while you had no notion of leaving, my magician said later, when I complained to him.)

  “Don’t be silly,” Azin said, turning to Manna, her voice full of reproach. “It isn’t her fault if you feel trapped living here.”

  “I am not being silly,” said Manna savagely, “and, yes, I do feel trapped. Why shouldn’t I?”

  Azin’s hand went to her bag, perhaps to fish out a cigarette, and came out empty. “How could you? You talk as if it’s all Mrs. Nafisi’s fault,” she said to Manna, her hand shaking.

  “No, let Manna explain what she means,” I said.

  “Perhaps she means . . .” Sanaz started lamely.

  “I can explain myself, thank you,” said Manna crossly. “I mean, you set up a model for us”—she turned to me—“that staying here is useless, that we should all leave if we want to make something of ourselves.”

  “That’s not true,” I told her with some irritation. “I never suggested that my experience should be yours. You can’t follow me in everything, Manna. I mean each one of us has to do what’s best for her. That’s all the advice I can give you.”

  “The only way I can convince myself that it’s okay for you to leave us here,” said Manna (I remember she said to leave us here), “is that I know if I had half a chance, I would too. I would leave everything,” she said as an afterthought. Even Nima? “Especially Nima,” she shot back with a wicked little smile. “I am not like Mahshid. I don’t think any of us has a duty to stay. We have only one life to live.”

  For so many years now I had acted as their confessor. They’d poured out their heartaches, their troubles, as if I never had any troubles of my own to cope with, as if I lived under a magical spell that allowed me to avoid all the pitfalls and hardships not just of life in the Islamic Republic but of life in general. And now they wanted me to carry the burden of their choices as well. People’s choices were their own. The only way you could help them was if you knew what they wanted. How could you tell someone what she should want? (Nima would call later that night. “Manna is afraid you don’t like her anymore,” he said half jokingly. “She asked me to call.”)

  Other people’s sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly empathize with them because we ask ourselves: What about me? What does that say about my life, my pains, my anguish? For us, Nassrin’s departure entailed a genuine concern for her, and anxieties and hopes for her new life. We also, for the moment at least, were shocked by the pain of missing her, of envisioning the class without her. But in the end we finally turned back towards ourselves, remembering our own hopes and anxieties in light of her decision to leave.

  Mitra was the first to express her own anxieties. Lately, I had observed an anger and bitterness in her that was all the more alarming because it was so unprecedented. She had started to raise her voice in her diaries and notes, beginning with her account of her visit with her husband to Syria. The first thing that struck her was the humiliations Iranians suffered, quite meekly, at the Damascus airport, where they were segregated into a separate line and searched like criminals. Yet what had shocked her most were her sensations in the streets of Damascus, where she had walked freely, hand in hand with Hamid, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She described the feel of the wind and the sun on her hair and her skin—it was always the same sensation that was so startling. It had been the same with me and would be so later with Yassi and Manna.

  In the Damascus airport she had been humiliated by what she was assumed to be, and when she returned home, she felt angry because of what she could have been. She was angry for the years she had missed, for her lost portion of the sun and wind, for the walks she had not taken with Hamid. The thing about it, she had said with wonder, was that walking with him like that had suddenly transformed him into a stranger. This was a new context for their relationship; she had become a stranger even to herself. Was this the same Mitra, she asked herself, this woman in jeans and a tangerine T-shirt walking in the sun with a good-looking young man by her side? Who was this woman, and could she learn to incorporate her into her life if she were to live in Canada?

  “You mean you don’t have any sense of belonging here?” Mahshid asked, looking defiantly at Mitra. “I seem to be the only one who feels she owes something to this place.”

  “I can’t live with this constant fear,” said Mitra, “with having to worry all the time about the way I dress or walk. Things that come naturally to me are considered sinful, so how am I supposed to act?”

  “But you know what is expected of you, you know the laws,” said Mahshid. “This is nothing new. What has changed? Why is it bothering you so much more now?”

  “Maybe for you, it is easier,” said Sanaz, but Mahshid did not let her continue.

  “You think I have it easy?” she said, turning a sharp eye towards Sanaz. “Do you think only people like you suffer in this country? You don’t even know what fear is. Just because of my faith and the fact that I wear the veil, you think that I don’t feel threatened? You think I don’t feel fear? It’s rather superficial, isn’t it, to think that the only kind of fear is your kind,” she said with a rare show of bitterness.

  “I didn’t mean that,” said Sanaz more gently. “The fact that we know about these laws, the fact that they are familiar, doesn’t make them any better. It doesn’t mean that we don’t feel the pressure and the fear. But for you, at least, wearing the veil is natural; it’s your religion, your choice.”

  “My choice,” said Mahshid with a laugh. “What else do I have but my religion, and if I lose that . . .” She left her sentence unfinished, and turned her gaze once more to the ground, murmuring, “I’m sorry. I got too emotional.”

  “I know what Mahshid’s talking about,” Yassi broke in. “The worst fear you can have is losing your faith. Because then you’re not accepted by anyone—not by those who consider themselves secular or by people of your own faith. It’s terrible. Mahshid and I have been talking about that, about how ever since we could remember, our religion has defined every single action we’ve taken. If one day I lose my faith, it will be like dying and having to start new again in a world without guarantees.”

  My heart went out to Mahshid, sitting there trying to look composed, her face flushed, strong emotions like thin veins moving under her pale skin. Mahshid, I thought, more than my more secular students, has the most troubling questions about religion. In her class diary and papers, with a rage as restrained as her smile, she reviewed and questioned minute details of life under Islamic law. Mahshid la
ter wrote in her class diary: “Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah’s time, it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my faith against all odds. Now that my religion is in power, I feel more helpless than ever before, and more alienated.” She wrote about how ever since she could remember, she had been told that life in the land of infidels was pure hell. She had been promised that all would be different under a just Islamic rule. Islamic rule! It was a pageant of hypocrisy and shame. She wrote about how at work her male superiors never look her in the eye, about how in movies even a six-year-old girl must wear a scarf and cannot play with boys. Although she wore the veil, she described the pain of being required to wear it, calling it a mask behind which women were forced to hide. She talked about all of this coldly, furiously, always with a question mark after each point.

  “This decision to leave was a difficult one,” I said, feeling for the first time that I was ready to speak to them honestly about what I was doing and what it meant. “I had to go through many torturous deliberations. I even contemplated leaving Bijan.” (You did? Bijan asked me later, when I recounted our conversation to him. You never told me.) This had the effect of diverting them momentarily from their anger and frustrations. I told them about my own fears, about waking up at night feeling as if I were choking, as if I would never be able to get out, about the dizzy spells and nausea and pacing around the apartment at all hours of the night. For the first time I opened up to them, talking about my own feelings and emotions, and it seemed to have an oddly soothing effect on them. By the time Azin suddenly jumped up, remembering that today was her turn to visit her daughter—named after my own Negar—who now lived temporarily with her husband’s family, we felt lighter. We joked about Sanaz’s various gentleman callers and Yassi’s attempts to lose some weight.

  Before they left, Mahshid picked up a little parcel she had brought with her. She said, “I have something for you. Nassrin sends her regards. She asked me to give this to you.” She handed me a thick folder and a bundle of notes. I have the folder here on this other desk, in this other office, right now. It is brilliantly colored: white with bright bubble-gum-orange stripes and three cartoon characters. In vivid green and purple characters it says: Be Seeing You in Fabulous Florida. Things Go Better with Sunshine! Inside the folder, Nassrin had transcribed every word of my classes during my last three terms at Allameh, neatly written in her handwriting, with headings and subheadings. All the sentences and anecdotes were recorded. James, Austen, Fielding, Brontë, Poe, Twain—all of them were there. She left behind nothing else—no photograph, and no personal note—except for one line on the last page of the folder: I still owe you a paper on Gatsby.

  22

  Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe, I said to Bijan that evening after the Thursday class. He had come home to find me sitting in my customary chair in the living room, Nassrin’s folder on my lap, my students’ notes scattered on the table and beside them a dish of melting coffee ice cream. Boy, you must be feeling rotten, he said after a glance at the ice cream. He took a seat opposite me and said, Don’t just let that sentence hang in the air. Explain a little.

  Well, it’s like this: if you’re forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank—you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That’s what we do over here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere else—we either plan it or dream it. Ever since my girls left this afternoon, I have been thinking of this issue.

  Bijan and I had become surprisingly closer after our period of arguments, which had been heated and painful. Bijan was most articulate in his silences. Through him I had learned the many moods and nuances of silence: the angry silence and the disapproving one; the appreciative silence and the loving one. Sometimes his silences accumulated and overflowed into torrents of words, but recently we had found ourselves talking for long stretches. It all started when we both decided to describe to each other how we felt about Iran. For the first time, we began seeing the matter through each other’s eyes. Now that he had begun to dismantle his life in Iran, he needed to articulate and share his thoughts and emotions. We spent long hours talking about our feelings, our ideas of home—for me portable, for him more traditional and rooted.

  I told him in detail about the arguments we had had in class that day. After they left, I couldn’t get rid of this idea of sexual molestation. I said, I keep tormenting myself with the thought that that’s how Manna must feel.

  Bijan didn’t respond—he seemed to be waiting for me to elaborate—but suddenly I had nothing more to say. Feeling a little lighter, I stretched and picked at a few pistachio nuts. Have you ever noticed, I said, cracking a nut, how strange it is when you look in that mirror on the opposite wall that instead of seeing yourself, you see the trees and the mountains, as if you have magically willed yourself away?

  Yes, as a matter of fact I have, he said, going into the kitchen for his usual vodka, but I haven’t lost sleep over it. You, however, must have been thinking about it day and night, he added, placing his glass and a new dish of pistachio nuts on the table. As for your most eloquent analogy, your girls must resent the fact that while you’re leaving this guy behind, they have to keep sleeping with him—some of them, at least, he said, taking a sip of his drink. He looked at his glass speculatively. I’m going to miss this, you know. You have to admit, we’ve got the best bootleg vodka in the world.

  Cutting through his speculations on the merits of our vodka, I said, Going away isn’t going to help as much as you think. The memory stays with you, and the stain. It’s not something you slough off once you leave.

  I have two things to say to that, he said. First, none of us can avoid being contaminated by the world’s evils; it’s all a matter of what attitude you take towards them. And second, you always talk about the effect of “these people” on you. Have you ever thought about your effect on them? I looked at him with some skepticism. This relationship is not equal in both good and bad ways, he continued. They have the power to kill us or flog us, but all of this only reminds them of their weakness. They must be scared out of their wits to see what’s happening to their own former comrades, and to their children.

  23

  It was a warm summer day, about a fortnight after my conversation with Bijan. I had taken refuge in a coffee shop. It was really a pastry shop, one of the very few that still remained from my childhood. It had great piroshki for which people stood in long lines, and near the entrance, next to the large French windows, two or three small tables. I was sitting at one of these with a café glacé in front of me. I took out my pen and paper and, staring into the air, started to write. This staring into the air and writing had become my forte, especially in those last few months in Tehran.

  Suddenly I noticed in the long line of people waiting for piroshki a face that seemed familiar, but not so familiar that I could place it. A woman was looking at me, more like staring. She smiled and, giving up her precious place in line, came towards me. Dr. Nafisi, she said. Don’t you remember me? Clearly, she was a former student. Her voice was familiar, but I could not place her. She reminded me of my classes on James and Austen, and gradually her ghost took shape in my memory and hovered into focus alongside her present self and I recognized Miss Ruhi, whom I had not seen for some years. I would have recognized her more quickly if she had been dressed in a chador that emphasized her small upturned nose and defensive smile.

  She was dressed in black, but not in a chador, and had curled a long black scarf around her neck, fastened with a silvery pin that seemed to quiver like a spider’s web against the black cloth. Her makeup was pale, and a few strands of dark brown hair showed from under the scarf. I kept remembering her other face, the austere one, so withdrawn that her lips seemed constantly pursed. I noticed now that she was not plain, as I had believed her to be.

  She linger
ed by my table. I asked her, since she had lost her coveted place in the line, to sit down and have a coffee with me. She hesitated and then perched herself precariously on the edge of the chair. After college, she had become active in one of the militia organizations, but she’d left it after a short while. They didn’t care much for English literature, you know, she said with a smile. . . . And then she had been married for two years. She said she missed her college years. At the time, she had often wondered why she continued with English literature, why she didn’t find something useful—here she smiled—and now she was glad she had continued. She felt she had something others did not. Do you remember our discussions of Wuthering Heights?

  Yes, I remembered them, and as we talked I remembered her more clearly too; images chased away her present unfamiliar face and replaced it with another, now also unfamiliar. I returned in my mind to that classroom, on the fourth floor, to the third—or was it the fourth?—row near the aisle. I can just about pick out two faces, almost identical in their bland disapproval, taking notes. They were there when I entered the class and would linger after I left. Most of the others looked on them with suspicion. They were quite active in the Muslim Students’ Association and did not mix well even with the more liberal elements in the Islamic Jihad, like Mr. Forsati.

  I remember her. I remember that particular discussion of Wuthering Heights, because I remember how Miss Ruhi had unglued herself from her friend and followed me out of the classroom, pushing me almost into a corner of the hall. She leapt at me and spluttered out her indignation over the immorality of Catherine and Heathcliff. There was so much passion in her words—I had been taken aback. What was she talking about?