Things I've Been Silent About

by Azar Nafisi

  Mother, during her time as a member of Parliament.

  IN MY FATHER’S ABSENCE, my mother redesigned her coffee sessions. There was a gradual shift from whispering women to men in ties and suits. Every once in a while she would preside over special gatherings with prominent journalists and officials, whom she proudly called “my men friends.” (“I get along far better with my men friends,” she would boast, “than with women.”) Most of the men came to our house because they were interested in my father’s fate, though some did come because they were impressed by her. Since she joined Parliament in the fall of 1963, a few months before Father’s arrest, she could claim that her political connections were due at least in part to her own public role. She counted General Pakravan, the former head of the Ministry of Information, as one of her friends. She would talk about what the Shah had told her, how she had argued with the Shah, how such and such was between the two of them.

  These coffee sessions were different from the more spontaneous and noisy Friday morning coffee hours, when Mr. Khalighi would jump from politics to poetry. For one thing, they were more self-conscious. There were journalists like Safipur, or the serious-minded Mr. Meshgin. Prominent lawyers came, like Mr. Behdad, Mr. Oveisi, and Mr. Sadegh Vaziri, who later became my father’s lawyers; government officials; and members of Parliament. In these sessions the men sat a little too straight, like schoolboys expecting to be called upon at any moment. Mother talked with great passion, blasting the government from the prime minister, who she was sure was backed by both the British and the Americans (“Of course, we know who is behind this gentleman”), to the judiciary (the real thieves, from the minister on down). She reserved her most scathing comments for General Nassiri, the former head of police, who was now in charge of Iran’s feared intelligence organization, SAVAK, and Pirasteh, the minister of the interior, who was my father’s number one foe. She was sure that these two were most responsible for concocting the case against my father. “I am not afraid of these cowards,” she would say, “these weak-minded criminals.”

  Mr. Amirani came only once, or perhaps twice, alone on both occasions. He was the editor of an influential publication called Khandanyha. (It is possible I have been left with an impression of the paper’s seriousness by my recollection of the man himself.) In his editorials he was bold in chastising the government. It was said that the only person immune from his pen was the Shah himself. Mr. Amirani had decided to take my father’s side, at times even published some of his writings. I don’t remember seeing him in person while Father was in office, but we heard about him and from him very often once Father had been arrested. “If it is possible to write like Amirani, why don’t others do the same?” Father asked in his diary. “And if it is not possible then how can he write this way?” Khandanyha published an editorial in his defense that made great waves. Father mentions in his diary that Pirasteh offered Amirani ten thousand tumans to publish his own side of the story, but Amirani refused. He continued to publish my father’s prison dispatches and to defend him. Father obsessed over Ami-rani’s accounts of haggling with the censors over a line in an article.

  For Father what was not written, what was taken out, became more important than what was published.

  Mr. Amirani was slim, almost bald, with watchful eyes that peered at you from behind horn-rimmed glasses. His face was thin and sharp, which gave him a scholarly appearance. He reminded me of an emaciated owl. Mother was very proud of her connection to him—she insisted he was her friend, and claimed that his support for Father was due to her influence. It was almost poignant, the childish way she competed with my father over these influential men. Years later I saw Amirani’s thin, sharp face alongside that of the gentle former head of security, General Pakravan, who had helped save Ayatollah Khomeini after the June 5, 1963, uprising. They were both executed by Khomeini’s Islamic regime.

  These meetings always left my mother energized, sometimes dangerously so. Usually it was after them that she would pick up the phone and give whoever would listen a piece of her mind. “He might not be a perfect husband,” she’d say, “but he has always been a good father, an indulgent father, and a principled man.” She would dial a number and say provocatively, “I know Mr. Nassiri’s henchmen are listening in, so let me tell you criminals, butchers, defilers of women …” Whomever she had called would try to appease her, but she would go on with her barrage of epithets. Later, people would visit Father in jail and ask him to contain his wife, saying that she was the reason his sentence was being prolonged. But Mother would not be contained. Each person would pass her on to the next, like a dangerous explosive, hoping she would blow up somewhere else.

  PEOPLE DO PAY A PRICE for their actions, she says cryptically to me one morning. Apparently Pirasteh had been addressing Congress, and a few members, including Mother, kept asking him to speak louder, to raise his voice. He turned to Mother with a smirk and said, “If you are patient enough ‘It’ will rise in time,” making a pun in Persian on the word “rise” and his sexual organ. This caused an uproar on the floor. The session was disrupted, and everyone turned to apologizeto her. Soon Mr. Amirani had written a scathing article about the incident, and for a few days we were all basking in the glory of this blunder.

  Sometimes I think the years my father was in jail—during most of which my mother was in Parliament—were among the best years of her life. Mother took her job very seriously: she brought to it the same ferocity and determination that she brought to everything she did. She was very proud of the fact that she had been elected secretary to Parliament. Father claims his former colleagues were surprised that Nezhat took her job so seriously, going to her constituency in the small city of Baft in Kerman province and stirring them up with her criticism of the government’s neglect and with promises of radical changes aimed at bettering their lives. She used to say that while fate had prevented her from becoming a doctor, now at least she had a chance to show her true mettle. Among the first to experience this mettle was the new prime minister, Hassan Ali Mansour.

  Father suspected that his rivals, especially Mansour, had imagined that Mother would be grateful for the job in Parliament and that she would become a willing tool in their hands. How wrong they were! She was fond of telling people about the time when she had been invited with other colleagues to have lunch with Princess Ashraf, the Shah’s powerful twin sister, who was said to be close to some of the people (including Pirasteh and Baheri, the minister of justice) who put Father in jail. Mother would relate with pride how, when she was asked to sit at the Princess’s table, she refused loudly. Why would eating with her be an honor? she asked her colleagues, who I imagine must have done their best to dissociate themselves from her as quickly as possible.

  In 1962, before he became the prime minister, Mansour ran for Parliament and was elected as the second representative from Tehran, after Abdollah Riazi, the speaker of the House. He was voted in on the ticket of the Progressive Alliance. Mother’s first act of defiance came when Mansour formed a new party, Iran Novin. He expected members of Parliament to join his party, which most did, making him the majority leader. Mother not only refused to join Iran Novin, she made sure that her refusal was well advertised. She would boast that when Mansour suggested that the Shah himself was interested in her active support of Iran Novin, she had responded that, should His Majesty wish to convey a message to her, he could do so directly.

  Mansour was not the majority leader for long. He succeeded Alam as prime minister when Alam resigned in 1963. From the start, Man-sour’s government was controversial. Not long after he took office, he raised the price of gasoline to meet budget deficits, creating a taxi strike that caused so much popular discontent that he had to overturn the decision. In the fall of 1964, the Mansour government brought a controversial bill to Parliament known as the capitulation law, which gave diplomatic immunity to American military personnel, placing them beyond the jurisdiction of the Iranian court for civil or criminal acts. My mother and a few oth
ers (only one other person, she insisted) refused to support the law. Those who voted for the act, she claimed with indignation, had no pride in their own country. First the British, and now the Americans. No wonder honest men who have no ties to foreign powers are in jail.

  Many admired her courage in voting against the capitulation law, but she puzzled most people with her decision to oppose the family protection law of 1967. This law abolished extrajudicial divorce, permitted polygamy only under limited circumstances, and established special family courts. Her negative vote scandalized those who were pushing for women’s rights. She argued that it was hypocritical to pass a law claiming to protect women that stipulated that they would still require the notarized permission of their husband to leave the country. She was too radical, or too inflexible, to accept the compromise that had been proposed, and she preferred to vote against the law than to take what she considered to be half measures. I disagreed vehemently with her about the protection law, and still do, yet I cannot help but admire her hard headed independence.

  LATER MOTHER WOULD SAY you could see it coming. “I was no fan of Mansour,” she offered, drawing a deep breath. “I rejected every single bill he brought to the House. Once he tried to reach out to me—of course he was always very polite, not like that goon Pi-rasteh, who had no manners—where was he educated? I told you what he did in Parliament, didn’t I? When he insulted me? People saw Pirasteh for what he was. But Mansour was different. He was a gentleman, always charming. You never knew where you stood with him.

  “I had left Parliament,” she went on, “and was at the pastry shop. You remember how much you loved those cream puffs? He was very fond of you, the owner. Remember him?” “Yes, Mom, Mr. Tajbakhsh.” “He always had a free cream puff for you. I was standing there at the counter, talking to Tajbakhsh, when I heard someone saying, ‘May I butt in?’ I saw Mr. Tajbakhsh suddenly freeze, so I turn around and there’s Mansour, he is smiling at me with this charming smile. It never fooled me. ‘Could I divert you for a moment from this very important activity?’ he says. ‘It certainly is important,’ I tell him. He leads me toward the door, and asks, ‘May I have the pleasure of your company for lunch?’ ‘No, you may not,’ I tell him. He may have been the majority leader, but I wasn’t exactly honored because he wanted to have lunch with me. I say, ‘If there is anything you want to tell me, please do so right here.’ So we stand there, right outside the door. ‘I always thought of you as a friend,’ he says. ‘Well, you have a strange way of showing it,’ I tell him. ‘Ahmad doesn’t help his own case,’ he says, ‘he likes making enemies.’ I say nothing and stand there looking at him. You know, the kind of look I give people when I know what they’re up to?” “Yes, Mom, I know.” “Of course, I was brought up around politicians—my own father, when he was running for Kerman, and Saham Soltan…

  “Then I say, ‘So, are you here to insult my family? You want to tell me my husband is responsible for the biggest hoax in the history of this country’—for it was a hoax, accusing Ahmad of embezzling money from that bankrupt institution, or claiming that he conspired against the Shah. Whatever your father may have done to me,” she said, addressing me, “I have always been fair to him.”

  “‘Nezhat jan,’ he says softly, ‘I am talking to you not as his wife, but as a colleague, an esteemed colleague. Let’s put Ahmad aside for a moment. Why can’t we work together?’ And in truth I could have worked with him. If I had wanted to I could have had a second term. The Shah himself was very much on my side. I gave all that up. I gave it up because my pride did not allow me not to stand up for my husband! I would not have minded the sacrifice, had it been appreciated, or at least acknowledged… The point is, I just refused to comply with him and he was offended, although he tried to cover it, and from that day on he seldom talked to me, he never approached me again. And now this!”

  My mother’s “now this” referred to Mansour’s assassination by a man named Mohammad Bokharaii, said to be affiliated with the Coalition of Islamic Societies, a group created at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1963. They were supported by clerics nominated by Khomeini, among them his trusted student and follower Mota-hari, and some of the future leaders of the Islamic Republic such as Rafsanjani and Beheshti. The group had drawn up a list of people to assassinate, among them the Shah; thirteen leading figures in his government; his personal physician, General Ayadi, who was said to have been targeted because he was a Baha’i; General Nassiri, the new head of intelligence; eleven civil servants; and newspaper editors who had attacked clerics and Khomeini. The June 5th uprising had been quashed, but not the religious opposition that had led it.

  FROM MY FATHER’S DIARIES: “Friday, Bahman 1, 1343 [January 22, 1965]. Today around noon I heard that Mansour has been shot. At first I didn’t believe it. These days, unfortunately, gossip surrounding the government abounds. But soon the news was confirmed. Around 10 a.m., they say, a young man shot him four times. It appears that the bullets were not fatal. Today they announced on the radio that his physicians say his blood pressure is up and he will recover within a month. I feel so sorry for him … he was not by nature a bad person, he didn’t want to betray his country and he had good reason to serve it, but he had little experience and was ambitious and hasty …”

  A few days later Father writes, “Hassan Ali Mansour, the young prime minister of Iran, after a week in a coma, full of pain and anguish, left this world on Wednesday, Bahman 7, 1343 [January 27, 1965]. Two days earlier, rumors were circulating around town that he had already died. In a country where the government has never been honest and open with its people, and the real news is kept secret, rumors replace facts. From the start it was obvious that the bullets were fatal, but until a day before his death the new bulletins claimed that he was improving. On Monday they even claimed the danger was gone.”

  In his diary Father describes how he stood by the window of his room, opened onto the hall leading to the morgue, waiting for Man-sour’s body to arrive. “His death made me sorry, it brought tears to my eyes. I did not sleep all night…. A year and a half ago we were among the most prominent young men in this country; many envious and some hopeful eyes were fixed on us. Tonight one of us is in jail thanks to shameless rivals and their malicious cohorts and three meters away the other rolls in his own blood, his cold body is stuffed into the coroner’s fridge. Here is a lesson for us. Both of us might have been useful to our country.”

  Mansour haunts my father after that. It was incredible that Man-sour was assassinated, the one who had been considered so lucky, who had promised hope and created so much controversy during his short term as prime minister, the one who had time and again been compared to the young and handsome John F. Kennedy. His gravesite was made into a shrine, but after the revolution his grave, like that of many others, including Reza Shah’s, was razed to the ground by the Islamic regime.

  CHAPTER 17

  a suitable match

  NEZHAT CAME TO VISIT,” my father writes in his diary in the fall of 1964. “Again she was irritated and anxious. Why doesn’t Azar leave for England? Why am I in jail? Why doesn’t the world turn in our favor? She is one of those who think they are God’s chosen people and believes she never makes mistakes. Whatever bad things happen she thinks it is someone else’s fault. In this case she considers me the guilty party.” His tone, when he writes about the Shah and other government officials, is full of defiance tinged with exasperation, but almost without fail when he writes about my mother a sense of despair creeps into his voice.

  “From the day of my arrest I was happy with the thought that Nezhat would be chastised and that she would finally dispense with the illusion that the world should be at her service. I believed that when she saw me in jail, she would understand what I could not make her understand when I was free. But today I realized that she is after my life, my entire existence—not only has she not learned a thing but she thinks I am in the best of places and owe her a great deal.”

  Many men use thei
r wives and family for political purposes but my parents were so subsumed by their differences that they hoped their political lives would solve their problems at home. I once heard my father tell a friend that his relationship with my mother reminded him of a story by Attar, the twelfth-century Persian mystic poet, about a man who fearlessly rode a ferocious lion. When the narrator followed this brave man to his home, he was shocked to see how easily he was cowed by his wife. How could a man who was not afraid of a fierce beast be so intimidated by his own wife? His host shot back: If it weren’t for what happens at home I could never ride a lion.

  “You are here, away from all the trouble, doing what you want while all the burden is on me,” Mother would say without irony. All this made my brother and me more protective of our father. I bought him what he liked, praised the gifts he bought for my mother, and commiserated with him. I baked him cakes and wrote him little sentimental notes about how proud I was of him. I also lied to him about how good things were at home—statements that would almost immediately be contradicted by my own mournful countenance and half-articulated complaints.