Reading Lolita In Tehran Part 10

I could never get over my resentment of those faded photographs, hanging neglected and forlorn on the cream-colored walls. Somehow these shabby posters and their slogans interfered with my work; they made me forget that I was at the university to teach literature. There were reprimands posted about the color of our uniforms, codes of conduct, but never a notice about a talk, a film or a book.

13.

About two weeks into my second semester of teaching at Allameh, as soon as I opened the door to my office, I noticed on the floor an envelope that had been pushed under the door. I still have both the envelope and the yellowing piece of paper I found inside, folded once to fit. My name and address at the university is typed, but on the piece of paper there is only one line, childish and as obscene as its message: The adulterous Nafisi should be expelled. The adulterous Nafisi should be expelled. This was the welcoming gift I received on my formal return to academia. This was the welcoming gift I received on my formal return to academia.

Later that day, I spoke to the head of the department. The president had also received a note, with a similar message. I wondered why they told me this. I knew and they knew that the word adulterous, adulterous, like all other words confiscated by the regime, had lost its meaning. It was merely an insult, intended to make you feel dirty and disqualified. I also knew that this could happen anywhere: the world is full of angry, pathological individuals pus.h.i.+ng pieces of paper with obscene messages under doors. like all other words confiscated by the regime, had lost its meaning. It was merely an insult, intended to make you feel dirty and disqualified. I also knew that this could happen anywhere: the world is full of angry, pathological individuals pus.h.i.+ng pieces of paper with obscene messages under doors.

What hurt, and still hurts, is that this mentality ultimately ruled our lives. This was the same language that the official papers, the radio and television and the clerics from their pulpits used to discredit and demolish their foes. And most of them succeeded at their task. What made me feel cheap, and in some way complicit, was the knowledge that so many people had been deprived of their livelihood on the basis of similar charges-because they had laughed loudly in public, because they had shaken hands with a member of the opposite s.e.x. Should I just thank my lucky stars that I escaped with no more than one line scrawled on a cheap piece of paper?

I understood then what it meant when I was told that this university and my department in particular were more "liberal." It did not mean that they would take action to prevent such incidents: it meant that they would not take action against me on account of them. The administration did not understand my anger; they attributed it to a "feminine" outburst, as they would become accustomed to calling my protests in the years to come. They gave me to understand that they were prepared to put up with my antics, my informal addresses to my students, my jokes, my constantly slipping scarf, my Tom Jones Tom Jones and and Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller. This was called tolerance. And the strange thing is that in some crooked way it was tolerance, and in some way I had to be grateful to them. This was called tolerance. And the strange thing is that in some crooked way it was tolerance, and in some way I had to be grateful to them.

14.

Whenever I picture myself, it is going up the stairs; I never see myself coming down. But I did go down that day, as I did every other day. I went down almost as soon as I had reached my office, disposed of the extra books and papers and picked up my notes for my first cla.s.s. I descended at a more leisurely pace to the fourth floor, turned left and, near the end of the long hall, entered the cla.s.sroom. The cla.s.s was Introduction to the Novel II. The author under discussion was Henry James, and the novel, Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller.

As in my memory I once again open my book and spread out my notes, I glance over the forty-odd faces that stare back at me, seemingly ready at my command. Certain faces I have become accustomed to take consolation from. In the third row, on the girls' side, sits Mahs.h.i.+d, with Na.s.srin.

The first day of cla.s.s the previous semester, I had been shocked to see Na.s.srin sitting there. My glance had traveled over students' faces casually and then reverted back to Na.s.srin, who was looking at me and smiling, as if to say, Yes, it's me. You have not made a mistake. Over seven years had pa.s.sed since I had seen little Na.s.srin with a bunch of leaflets under her arm disappearing into a sunny street near the University of Tehran. I had sometimes wondered what had become of her-was she perhaps married now? And there she was sitting beside Mahs.h.i.+d, with a bolder expression on her face, softened by a pale blush. The last time I had seen her she was wearing a navy scarf and a flowing robe, but now she was dressed in a thick black chador from head to foot. She looked even smaller in the chador, her whole body hidden behind the bulk of the dark, shapeless cloth. Another transformation was her posture: she used to sit bolt upright on the edge of the chair, as if prepared to run at a moment's notice; now she slumped almost lethargically, looking dreamy and absentminded, writing in slow motion.

After that cla.s.s, Na.s.srin had stayed behind. I noticed that some of her old familiar gestures were still with her, like the restless movement of her hands and her constant s.h.i.+fting from one foot to the other. I asked her as I picked up my book and notes, Where have you been? Do you remember that you still owe me a paper on Gatsby Gatsby? She smiled and said, Don't worry, I've got a good excuse. In this country, we are not short of good excuses.

She was brief in recounting the seven missing years of her life. In the barest outline, which I never dared ask her to detail, she informed me that soon after that day when I had last seen her, she and a few of her comrades had been arrested while distributing leaflets in the streets. You remember those days the regime went crazy attacking the Mujahideen-I was really very lucky. They executed so many of my friends, but initially gave me only ten years. Ten years was lucky? Well, yes. Do you remember that story of the twelve-year-old girl who was shot as she was running around the prison grounds asking for her mom? Well, I was there, and I did want to shout for my mother, too. They killed so many teenagers, I could've been any one of them. But this time, my father's religious credentials paid off. He had friends in the committee-in fact, one of the haj aghas had been his student. They spared me because of my dad. I got preferential treatment. After a while my ten years were reduced to three and I got off. Then for a while they wouldn't let me pursue my education and I was, still am, under probation. I was only allowed finally to enroll in college last year. So here I am. Welcome back, I said, but remember-you still owe me a paper. I tried awkwardly to take her story as lightly as she intended me to.

I can still see Mahs.h.i.+d smiling her placid porcelain smile. Na.s.srin has a lethargic look about her-I always got the feeling she had not had a good night's sleep-but she will turn out to be one of my best and sharpest students.

To their right, by the wall, are the two members of the Muslim Students' a.s.sociation. I have forgotten their names and they will have to endure the unpleasantness of being renamed: Miss Hatef and Miss Ruhi. They are all negative attention. Every once in a while, from beneath their black chadors, which reveal no more than a sharp nose on one and a small, upturned one on the other, they whisper; sometimes they even smile.

There is something peculiar about the way they wear their chadors. I have noticed it in many other women, especially the younger ones. For there is in them, in their gestures and movements, none of the shy withdrawal of my grandmother, whose every gesture begged and commanded the beholder to ignore her, to bypa.s.s her and leave her alone. All through my childhood and early youth, my grandmother's chador had a special meaning to me. It was a shelter, a world apart from the rest of the world. I remember the way she wrapped her chador around her body and the way she walked around her yard when the pomegranates were in bloom. Now the chador was forever marred by the political significance it had gained. It had become cold and menacing, worn by women like Miss Hatef and Miss Ruhi with defiance.

I will return to the beautiful girl with the too-sweet face in the fourth row. She is Mitra, who always gets the highest grades. She is quiet, barely says a word in cla.s.s, and when she does, she expresses herself so calmly that sometimes I miss her point. I discover Mitra in her exam papers and, later, in her cla.s.s journal.

Across the room, on the men's side, is Hamid, who will soon marry Mitra and go into computers. He is clean-shaven, handsome and intelligent, his smile carefree as he talks to his friends on either side of him. Just behind Hamid is Mr. Forsati. I see him always in a light brown coat and dark trousers. He too is smiling, but I discover that his smile is part of his physique. He has a beard, but it is trimmed and not full. He belongs to a new brand of Islamic students-very different from Mr. Bahri, with his fierce faith in revolutionary principles. Mr. Forsati is a Muslim, but he is not particularly devoted to the religious ideals that shaped the first generation of Islamic students. His interest, first and foremost, is in getting ahead. He doesn't seem close to anyone in the cla.s.s, yet he is probably the most powerful person there, because he is the head of Islamic Jihad, one of the two lawful student organizations in Iran. The other, the Muslim Students' a.s.sociation, is more revolutionary and Islamic in its practices. I soon discover that if I want to show a video in cla.s.s or to organize a speakers' series, I will have to convince Mr. Forsati to lobby on my behalf, which he usually does with pleasure.

As I talk, my gaze involuntarily s.h.i.+fts to the last chair by the wall in the last row. Since the beginning of the semester, I have been both irritated and amused by the antics emerging from this corner of the room. Usually, midway through the lecture, the tall, lanky occupant of that chair-let us call him Mr. Ghomi-would lift himself up halfway, and, without waiting to rise fully or for me to give him permission to speak, begin to enumerate his objections. It was always objections-of this I could be certain.

Sitting beside Mr. Ghomi is an older student, Mr. Nahvi. He was more composed than his friend. He spoke calmly, mainly because he was always very certain. There were no doubts in him that might emerge in the form of an occasional outburst. He spoke clearly and monotonously, as if he could see each word forming in front of his eyes. He often followed me to my office and lectured me, mostly about Western decadence and how the absence of "the absolute" had been the cause of the downfall of Western civilization. He discussed these matters with a.s.sured finality, as facts that could not be argued. When I spoke, he paused respectfully, and as soon as I finished, he would go on in the same monotonous way and continue exactly where he had left off.

This was the second time Mr. Ghomi was taking my cla.s.s. The first time, my first semester at Allameh, he hardly ever attended, under the pretext that he was in the militia and involved in the war effort. His war efforts always remained vague: he had not enlisted and had never been to the front. The war had become a good excuse for some of the Islamic activists to force undeserved privileges from the faculty. Mr. Ghomi flunked the finals and missed most of the tests, but he resented me nonetheless for failing him. I never quite knew if the lie about the war had become so much a part of his life that he had begun to believe in it, but he seemed to be genuinely hurt and for no good reason I felt almost guilty every time I encountered him. Now he came to the cla.s.s regularly-more or less. Whenever I confronted students like him, I missed Mr. Bahri, who had had enough respect for the university never to abuse his position.

Mr. Ghomi came fairly regularly to cla.s.s the second time around, and every time he did, he created some sort of commotion. He decided to turn Henry James into the biggest issue between us. He thrust his hand up at every opportunity and asked, or rather stated, his strident objections. James was his favorite target. He never questioned me directly-he did so obliquely, by insulting James, as if he bore a personal grudge against him.

15.

When I picked Daisy Miller Daisy Miller and and Was.h.i.+ngton Square Was.h.i.+ngton Square for my cla.s.s, I never thought that Miss Daisy Miller and Miss Catherine Sloper would become such controversial and obsessive subjects of discussion. I had chosen the two novels because I felt they were more accessible than some of James's longer later works. Before James, we had read for my cla.s.s, I never thought that Miss Daisy Miller and Miss Catherine Sloper would become such controversial and obsessive subjects of discussion. I had chosen the two novels because I felt they were more accessible than some of James's longer later works. Before James, we had read Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights.

My emphasis in my introductory course was on the ways in which the novel, as a new narrative form, radically transformed basic concepts about the essential relations.h.i.+ps between individuals, thereby changing traditional att.i.tudes towards people's relations.h.i.+p to society, their tasks and duties. Nowhere is this developing change so apparent as in relations between men and women. Ever since Clarissa Harlow and Sophia Western-two modest and seemingly obedient daughters-refused to marry men they did not love, they changed the course of narrative and laid open to question the most basic inst.i.tutions of their times, beginning with marriage.

Daisy and Catherine have little in common, yet both defy the conventions of their time; both refuse to be dictated to. They come from a long line of defiant heroines, including Elizabeth Bennet, Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre. These women create the main complications of the plot, through their refusal to comply. They are more complicated than the later, more obviously revolutionary, heroines of the twentieth century, because they make no claims to be radical.

Catherine and Daisy seemed too exacting to many of my students, who were more practical and did not understand what the fuss was all about. Why did Catherine defy both her father and her suitor? And why did Daisy tease Winterbourne so? What was it that these two difficult women wanted of their bewildered men? From the very first moment she appears with her parasol and her white muslin dress, Daisy creates some excitement, and some unrest, in Winterbourne's heart and mind. She presents herself to him as a puzzle, a dazzling mystery at once too difficult and too easy to solve.

Somewhere around this point, as I begin to move into a more detailed discussion of Daisy Miller, Mr. Ghomi raises his hand. His tone is one of protest, and immediately it puts me on the defensive and irritates me. What is it, he asks, that makes these women so revolutionary? Daisy Miller is obviously a bad girl; she is reactionary and decadent. We live in a revolutionary society and our revolutionary women are those who defy the decadence of Western culture by being modest. They do not make eyes at men. He continues almost breathlessly, with a sort of venom that is uncalled-for in relation to a work of fiction. He blurts out that Daisy is evil and deserves to die. He wants to know why Miss F in the third row felt that death was not her just reward.

Mr. Ghomi makes this little speech and sits down triumphantly, looking around him to see if anyone will challenge him. No one does. Except me, of course; they all expect me to perform the task. Mr. Ghomi always managed to divert the cla.s.s from its course. At first I would get angry with him, but in time I came to see that sometimes he articulated sentiments that others did not dare express.

When I ask the cla.s.s what they think of this, no one speaks. Mr. Ghomi, encouraged by this silence, raises his hand once more. We are more moral, because we've experienced real evil; we are in a war against evil, he says, a war both at home and abroad. At this point Mahs.h.i.+d decides to speak. If you remember, she says quietly, James experienced two terrible wars. When he was young, there was a civil war in America, and before he died he had witnessed the First World War. Mr. Ghomi's response was an imperceptible shrug; perhaps he felt those wars were not the righteous ones.

I see myself sitting in my chair in silence. The silence seems deliberate. After the cla.s.s I continue to sit in my chair, caught in a vacuum of light coming from the large curtainless windows that cover one side of the room. Three of my female students come and hover by my desk. "We want you to know that the majority of this cla.s.s disagrees with those guys," one of them says. "People are afraid to talk. This is a controversial subject. If we tell the truth, we're afraid he will report us. If we say what he wants to hear, we are afraid of you. We all appreciate your cla.s.s."

Yes, I thought as I walked home that evening and, long after that, whenever this conversation returned to mind. You appreciate the cla.s.s, but do you appreciate Daisy Miller Daisy Miller? Well, do you?

16.

If Mr. Ghomi had strong opinions about the Daisy Millers of the world, the cla.s.s vacillated with the novel's hero, Winterbourne. With the exception of A Doll's House, A Doll's House, there was no other work to which they responded so pa.s.sionately. Their pa.s.sion came from their bewilderment, their doubts. Daisy unhinged them, made them not know what was right and what was wrong. there was no other work to which they responded so pa.s.sionately. Their pa.s.sion came from their bewilderment, their doubts. Daisy unhinged them, made them not know what was right and what was wrong.

One day at the end of cla.s.s, a timid girl who sat in the front row but somehow managed to create the impression that she was hiding somewhere in the shadow of the last row hesitated shyly by my desk. She wanted to know if Daisy was a bad girl. "What do you think?" she asked me simply. What did I think? And why did her simple question irritate me so? I am now positive that my hedging and hesitation, my avoidance of a straight answer, my insistence on the fact that ambiguity was central to the structure of the Jamesian novel, badly disappointed her and that from then on I lost some of my authority with her.

We opened the book to the crucial scene at the Colosseum. Daisy, defying all caution and decorum, has gone to watch the moonlight with Mr. Giovanelli, an unscrupulous Italian who follows her everywhere, to the chagrin of her correct countrymen and -women. Winterbourne discovers them, and his response says more about his character than hers: "Winterbourne stopped, with a sort of horror; and, it must be added, with a sort of relief. It was as if a sudden illumination had been flashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy's behavior and the riddle had become easy to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to respect."

Daisy's night at the Colosseum is fatal to her in more ways than one: she catches the Roman fever that night from which she will die. But her death is almost predetermined by Winterbourne's reaction. He has just declared his indifference, and when she returns to the carriage to leave, he recommends that she take her pills against Roman fever. " 'I don't care,' said Daisy, in a strange little tone, 'whether I have Roman fever or not.' " We all agreed in cla.s.s that, symbolically, the young man's att.i.tude towards Daisy determines her fate. He is the only one whose good opinion she desires. She is constantly asking him what he thinks about her actions. Without ever telling him, she poignantly and defiantly desires that he prove his devotion to her not by preaching, but by approving of her as she is, without any preconditions. It is ironic that ultimately Daisy is the one who really cares, and proves her devotion by dying.

Winterbourne was not the only one to feel relief on discovering the answer to Daisy's riddle. Many of my students shared his relief. Miss Ruhi asked why the novel did not end with Daisy's death. Did that not seem the best place to stop? Daisy's death seemed like a nice ending for all parties concerned. Mr. Ghomi could gloat over the fact that she had paid for her sins with her life, and most others in the cla.s.s could now sympathize with her without any feeling of guilt.

But this is not the end. The novel ends just as it started, not with Daisy but with Winterbourne. At the beginning of the story, his aunt warned him that he was in danger of making a grave mistake about Daisy. She had meant that he could be duped by her. Now, after Daisy's death, Winterbourne ironically reminds his aunt, " 'You were right in that remark that you made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I have lived too long in foreign parts.' " He had underestimated Daisy.

At the beginning of the novel, the narrator tells us of a rumor that Winterbourne is attached to a foreign woman. The novel ends, bringing us around full circle, with this same statement: "Nevertheless, he went back to live at Geneva, whence there continue to come the most contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: a report that he is 'studying' hard-an intimation that he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady."

The reader, who has identified with the hero until that moment, is left out in the cold. We are left to believe that Daisy, like the flower she is named after, is a beautiful and brief interruption. But this conclusion also is not wholly true. The narrator's tone at the end leads us to doubt if Winterbourne could ever see life the way he saw it before. Nothing will really be the same again, either for Winterbourne or for the unsuspecting reader-as I had occasion to find out much later, when my former students went back to their "mistakes" about Daisy in their writings and conversations.

17.

In The Tragic Muse, The Tragic Muse, James explains that his goal in writing is to produce "art as a human complication and social stumbling block," my friend Mina reminded me. This is what made James so difficult. Mina was a scholar of James and I had told her about my students' difficulties with James explains that his goal in writing is to produce "art as a human complication and social stumbling block," my friend Mina reminded me. This is what made James so difficult. Mina was a scholar of James and I had told her about my students' difficulties with Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller. Mina added, a little anxiously, I hope you are not thinking of dropping him because he is too difficult. I a.s.sured her that I had no such intention; anyway, it was not that he was too difficult for them, it was that he made them uncomfortable. Mina added, a little anxiously, I hope you are not thinking of dropping him because he is too difficult. I a.s.sured her that I had no such intention; anyway, it was not that he was too difficult for them, it was that he made them uncomfortable.

I told her my problem was not so much students like Ghomi, who were themselves so bluntly opposed to ambiguity, but my other students, who were victims of Ghomi's unambiguous att.i.tude towards them. You see, I have a feeling that people like Ghomi always attack, because they are afraid of what they don't understand. What they say is we don't need James, but what they really mean is we are afraid of this fellow James-he baffles us, he confuses us, he makes us a little uneasy.

Mina told me that when she wanted to explain the concept of ambiguity in the novel, she always used her chair trick. In the next session I started the cla.s.s by picking up a chair and placing it in front of me. What do you see? I asked the cla.s.s. A chair. Then I placed the chair upside down. Now what do you see? Still a chair. Then I straightened the chair and asked a few students to stand in different places around the room, and asked both those standing and those sitting to describe the same chair. You see this is a chair, but when you come to describe it, you do so from where you are positioned, and from your own perspective, and so you cannot say there is only one way of seeing a chair, can you? No, obviously not. If you cannot say this about so simple an object as a chair, how can you possibly pa.s.s an absolute judgment on any given individual?

In order to encourage the silent majority in my cla.s.ses to openly discuss their ideas, I asked my students to write their impressions of the works we were reading in diary form in a notebook. In their diaries, they were free to write about other matters related to the cla.s.s or their experiences, but writing about the works was mandatory. Miss Ruhi always described the plot, which at least demonstrated that she had read the books I had a.s.signed, and that she even, in some cases, had not only read them but also read about them. But she seldom expressed her own opinions. In one instance she mentioned that she had objected to Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights's immorality until she read somewhere about its mystical aspects, but in James's case there seemed to be no mysticism involved-he was very earthy, if at times too idealistic.

Her notebooks were always neat. At the top of each a.s.signment she wrote in beautiful handwriting: "In the name of Allah, the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful." She wrote that Daisy was not merely immoral, she was "unreasonable." Yet it was good to know that even in a decadent society like America there were still some norms, some standards according to which people were judged. She also quoted another teacher, lamenting the fact that certain writers made their unreasonable and immoral characters so attractive that readers instinctively sympathized with them. She lamented the fact that the right-thinking Mrs. Costello or Mrs. Walker was cast in such a negative light. This to her demonstrated a writer's satanic as well as G.o.dly powers. A writer like James, according to her, was like Satan: he had infinite powers, but he used them to do evil, to create sympathy for a sinner like Daisy and distaste for more virtuous people like Mrs. Walker. Miss Ruhi had imbibed the same dregs as Mr. Nyazi and so many others.

Mr. Ghomi was true to his role. He rarely showed any indication of having read the novels. He ranted and raved about immorality and evil. He got into the habit of "educating" me by writing quotations from Imam Khomeini and other worthies about the duty of literature, about the decadence of the West, about Salman Rushdie. He also took to pasting in his notebook newspaper clippings reporting murder and corruption in the United States. One week he got so desperate that he resorted to quoting the slogans posted out in the streets. One such slogan I particularly liked: A WOMAN IN A VEIL IS PROTECTED LIKE A PEARL IN AN OYSTER Sh.e.l.l. A WOMAN IN A VEIL IS PROTECTED LIKE A PEARL IN AN OYSTER Sh.e.l.l. This slogan, when it appeared, was usually accompanied by a drawing of a predatory half-open oyster sh.e.l.l revealing a glossy pearl inside. This slogan, when it appeared, was usually accompanied by a drawing of a predatory half-open oyster sh.e.l.l revealing a glossy pearl inside.

Mr. Nahvi, his silent older friend, wrote neat philosophical treatises on the dangers of doubt and uncertainty. He asked whether the uncertainty James made such a fuss over was not the reason for Western civilization's downfall. Like many others, Mr. Nahvi took certain things for granted, among them the decay of the West. He talked and wrote as if this downfall were a fact that even Western infidels did not protest. Every once in a while he handed his notes in, along with a pamphlet or a book on "Literature and Commitment," "The Concept of Islamic Literature" or some such.

Years later, when Mahs.h.i.+d and Mitra were in my Thursday cla.s.s and we returned to Daisy Miller, Daisy Miller, they both lamented their own silence back then. Mitra confessed that she envied Daisy's courage. It was so strange and poignant to hear them talk about Daisy as if they had erred in regard to a real person-a friend or a relative. they both lamented their own silence back then. Mitra confessed that she envied Daisy's courage. It was so strange and poignant to hear them talk about Daisy as if they had erred in regard to a real person-a friend or a relative.

One day, leaving cla.s.s, I saw Mrs. Rezvan walking back to her office. She approached me and said, "I keep hearing interesting reports about your cla.s.ses"-she did have reporters in every nook and cranny. "I hope you believe me now when I tell about the need to put something into these kids' heads. The revolution has emptied their heads of any form or thought, and our own intelligentsia, the cream of the crop, is no better."

I told her I was still not convinced that the best way of going about this was through the universities. I thought perhaps we could address it better through a united front with intellectuals outside the university. She gave me a sidelong glance and said, Yes, you could do that as well, but what makes you think you will have more success? After all, our intellectual elite has not acted any better than the clerics. Haven't you heard about the conversation between Mr. Davaii, our foremost novelist, and the translator of Daisy Miller Daisy Miller? One day they were introduced. The novelist says, Your name is familiar-aren't you the translator of Henry Miller? No, Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller. Right, didn't James Joyce write that? No. Henry James. Oh yes, of course, Henry James. By the way what's Henry James doing nowadays? He's dead-been dead since 1916. Right, didn't James Joyce write that? No. Henry James. Oh yes, of course, Henry James. By the way what's Henry James doing nowadays? He's dead-been dead since 1916.

18.

I told my magician that I could best describe my friend Mina with a phrase Lambert Strether, the protagonist of James's The Amba.s.sadors, The Amba.s.sadors, uses to describe himself to his "soul mate," Maria Gostrey. He tells her, "I'm a perfectly equipped failure." A perfectly equipped failure? he asked. Yes, and you know how she responds? uses to describe himself to his "soul mate," Maria Gostrey. He tells her, "I'm a perfectly equipped failure." A perfectly equipped failure? he asked. Yes, and you know how she responds?

"Thank goodness you're a failure-it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous. Look about you-look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour? Look, moreover," she continued, "at me."For a little accordingly their eyes met. "I see," Strether returned. "You too are out of it.""The superiority you discern in me," she concurred, "announces my futility. If you knew," she sighed, "the dreams of youth! But our realities are what has brought us together. We're beaten brothers in arms."

I told him, One day I will write an essay called "Perfectly Equipped Failures." It will be about their importance in works of fiction, especially modern fiction. I think of this particular brand as semi-tragic-sometimes comic and sometimes pathetic, or both. Don Quixote comes to mind, but this character is essentially modern, born and created at a time when failure itself was obliquely celebrated. Let us see, Pnin is one, and Herzog, and Gatsby perhaps, but perhaps not-he does not choose failure, after all. Most of James's and Bellow's favorite characters belong to this category. These are people who consciously choose failure in order to preserve their own sense of integrity. They are more elitist than mere sn.o.bs, because of their high standards. James, I believe, felt that in many ways he was one, with his misunderstood novels and his tenacity in keeping to the kind of fiction he felt was right, and so is my friend Mina, and your friend Reza, and of course you are one, most definitely, but you are not fictional, or are you? And he said, Well, right now I seem to be a figment of your imagination.

I believe I had picked Mina as a perfectly equipped failure when I first met her after the revolution, during one of my last department meetings at the University of Tehran. I was late and as I entered the room I saw, sitting opposite the door, to the right of the department head, a woman dressed in black. Her eyes and short, thick hair were also jet-black, and she appeared indifferent to the hostile arguments flying around her. She looked not so much composed as drawn inward. She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time. This is what I remember about her: a shabby gentility, an air of "better days" clinging to all she wore. From that very first glance to our last meeting many years later, I was always oppressed by two sets of emotions when I met her: intense respect and sorrow. There was a sense of fatalism about her, about what she had accepted as her lot, that I could not bear.

Farideh and Dr. A had talked a great deal about Mina-her knowledge, her commitment to literature and to her work. There was a generosity to Farideh, which, despite her dogged commitment to what she called revolution, opened her up to certain people even when they were ideological opponents. She had an instinct for picking out the rebels, the genuine ones who, like Dr. A or Mina or Laleh, disagreed with her political principles. So it was that she instinctively sympathized with Mina and tried to console her, although she disagreed with her on almost all counts.

Mina had been recalled from a two-year sabbatical at Boston University, where she'd gone to write her book. She was given an ultimatum, and she, in my opinion, had made a mistake in returning to Iran. Her book was on Henry James. She had studied under Leon Edel, and when I first saw her, it was difficult for her, quite an effort, to utter the simplest sentence. She of course never taught again: she came back to be expelled. She refused to wear the veil or to compromise; her only compromise had been to return. And maybe that was not a compromise but a necessity.

Mina's father had been the poet laureate-her family was cultured and well-off. Our families had gone on weekend outings together when we were young. She was older than me and never really talked to me during these family gatherings, but I remembered her vaguely. She is in some of the old photographs from my childhood, standing behind her father in their garden, with one of her uncles and my father and a young man I cannot identify. She looks solemn, with the shadow of a conditional smile.

Farideh and I tried to tell Mina how much we appreciated her, how outraged we were that the university did not. She listened impa.s.sively but seemed to enjoy our esteem. Her favorite brother, the president of a large company, had been arrested at the start of the revolution. Unlike most, he refused to put up with the new regime. Although he was not politically active, he supported the monarchy and like his sister he spoke his mind, even in jail. He had been insolent and that was enough. He was executed. Mina nowadays always dressed in black. Almost all her time in those days seemed to be devoted to her brother's widow and children.

Mina lived alone with her mother in a ridiculously large mansion. The day Farideh and I went to visit her, each carrying a large bouquet of flowers, was a sunny day clipped short as soon as we entered the mausoleum of her front hall. Her mother opened the door. She knew my parents and spent some time talking to me about them and then abruptly but politely left us as soon as her daughter descended the winding staircase. We were standing at the bottom of the steps with our colorful bouquets and pastel dresses, looking too breezy and light in the face of the somber gravity of that house, which seemed to pull all things into its shadows.

Mina's joys, the way she expressed her appreciation, were solemn. Yet she was very happy to see us and she led us into the huge semicircle of her living room. The room seemed to have complaints of its own, like a widow appearing for the first time in public without her husband. It was spa.r.s.ely furnished; there were empty s.p.a.ces where there should have been chairs, tables and a piano.

Mina's mother, a dignified woman in her late sixties, served us tea on a silver tray, with dainty gla.s.s teacups in silver filigree containers. Her mother was a wonderful cook, so going to her house was always a feast. But it was a mournful feast, because no amount of good food could bring cheer to that deserted mansion. Our hostesses' gracious hospitality, their efforts to make us feel welcomed, only made their well-concealed loss more emphatic.

Realism in fiction was Mina's obsession, and James her pa.s.sion. What she knew, she knew thoroughly. We complemented each other, because my knowledge was impulsive and untidy, and hers meticulous and absolute. We could talk for hours on end. Before Farideh went into hiding and then joined her revolutionary group, escaping to Kurdistan and then to Sweden, the three of us used to talk about fiction and politics for hours, sometimes deep into the night.

Farideh and Mina were polar opposites when it came to politics-one was a dedicated Marxist and the other a determined monarchist. What they shared was their unconditional hatred for the present regime. When I think of how their talents were wasted, my resentment grows for a system that either physically eliminated the brightest and most dedicated or forced them to lay waste to the best in themselves, transforming them into ardent revolutionaries, like Farideh, or hermits, like Mina and my magician. They withdrew and simmered in their dashed dreams. For what good could Mina be without her James?

19.

The air attacks on Tehran were resumed after a long period of calm in the late winter and early spring of 1988. I cannot think of those months and of the 168 missile attacks on Tehran without thinking of the spring, of its peculiar gentleness. It was a Sat.u.r.day when Iraq hit the Tehran oil refinery. The news triggered the old fears and anxieties that had been lurking for over a year, since the last bombs had hit the city. The Iranian government responded with an attack on Baghdad, and on Monday, Iraq started its first round of missile attacks on Tehran. The intensity of what followed transformed that event into a symbol of all that I had experienced over the past nine years, like a perfect poem.

Soon after the first attacks, we decided to stick adhesive tape to our windows. We moved the children first to our own room, covering the windows in addition with thick blankets and shawls, and then, later, into the tiny windowless hall outside our bedrooms, the scene of my sleepless a.s.signations with James and Nabokov. A few times we thought seriously of leaving Tehran, and once, in a frenzy, cleaned a small room that was later turned into my office near the garage, fortifying its windows; then we moved back up to sleep in our own bedrooms. I, who had been most frightened during the first round of attacks on Tehran, now seemed the calmest, as if to compensate for my former behavior.

On the first night of the missile attacks we watched with a few friends a German TV doc.u.mentary commemorating the life of the late exiled Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. In an attempt to appease the intellectuals, the annual Fajr (formerly Tehran) Film Festival presented a special screening of Tarkovsky's films. Although the films were censored and shown in the original Russian with no subt.i.tles, there were lines outside the cinema hours before the box office opened. Tickets were sold on the black market at many times the actual price, and fights broke out over admittance, especially among those who had traveled from the provinces for the occasion.

Mr. Forsati came to see me after one cla.s.s to inform me that he had obtained two extra tickets to a showing of Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, The Sacrifice, a film I had expressed some desire to see. Since Mr. Forsati was the head of Islamic Jihad, one of the two Muslim students' a.s.sociations at the university, he had access to the coveted tickets. He said the Tarkovsky mania was so pervasive that even the oil minister and his family had gone to a screening. People were starved for films. He told me laughingly that the less they understood, the more they treated it with respect. I said if that is the case, then they must love James. He responded, shrewdly, That is different; they respect Joyce the way they respect Tarkovsky. With James, they think they understand him, or that they should understand him, so they just get angry. They have more problems with James than with the more obviously difficult writers, like Joyce. I asked Mr. Forsati if he was going to see Tarkovsky. He said, If I do go, it is only to be a Roman in Rome; otherwise, I much prefer Tom Hanks. a film I had expressed some desire to see. Since Mr. Forsati was the head of Islamic Jihad, one of the two Muslim students' a.s.sociations at the university, he had access to the coveted tickets. He said the Tarkovsky mania was so pervasive that even the oil minister and his family had gone to a screening. People were starved for films. He told me laughingly that the less they understood, the more they treated it with respect. I said if that is the case, then they must love James. He responded, shrewdly, That is different; they respect Joyce the way they respect Tarkovsky. With James, they think they understand him, or that they should understand him, so they just get angry. They have more problems with James than with the more obviously difficult writers, like Joyce. I asked Mr. Forsati if he was going to see Tarkovsky. He said, If I do go, it is only to be a Roman in Rome; otherwise, I much prefer Tom Hanks.

The afternoon I went to see The Sacrifice The Sacrifice was a fine winter day: not really winter, a mixture of winter and spring. Yet the most amazing feature of the day was not the heavenly weather, not even the movie itself, but the crowd in front of the movie house. It looked like a protest rally. There were intellectuals, office workers, housewives, some with their small children in tow, a young mullah standing uncomfortably to the side-the kind of mix of people you would never have found at any other gathering in Tehran. was a fine winter day: not really winter, a mixture of winter and spring. Yet the most amazing feature of the day was not the heavenly weather, not even the movie itself, but the crowd in front of the movie house. It looked like a protest rally. There were intellectuals, office workers, housewives, some with their small children in tow, a young mullah standing uncomfortably to the side-the kind of mix of people you would never have found at any other gathering in Tehran.

Inside, the sudden burst of luminous colors on the screen brought a hushed silence over the audience. I had not been inside a movie theater for five years: all you could see in those days were old revolutionary movies from Eastern Europe, or Iranian propaganda films. I cannot honestly say what I thought of the film-the experience of sitting in a movie house, ensconced in the deep, cool leather, with a full-size screen in front of me, was too amazing. Knowing that I could not understand the words and that if I thought about the censors.h.i.+p I would be too angry to watch, I surrendered to the magic of colors and images.

Looking back on that time it seems to me that such rapture over Tarkovsky by an audience most of whom would not have known how to spell his name, and who would under normal circ.u.mstances have ignored or even disliked his work, arose from our intense sensory deprivation. We were thirsty for some form of beauty, even in an incomprehensible, overintellectual, abstract film with no subt.i.tles and censored out of recognition. There was a sense of wonder at being in a public place for the first time in years without fear or anger, being in a place with a crowd of strangers that was not a demonstration, a protest rally, a breadline or a public execution.

The film itself was about war, and about its hero's vow never to speak again if his family was spared from the ravages of war. It concentrated on the hidden menace behind the seemingly calm flow of everyday life and the lush beauty of nature: the way war made itself felt by the rattle of the furniture caused by the bomber planes, and the terrible sacrifice required to confront this menace. For a brief time we experienced collectively the kind of awful beauty that can only be grasped through extreme anguish and expressed through art.

20.

In a period of twenty-four hours, fourteen missiles. .h.i.t Tehran. Since we had moved the children back to their room again, that night I pulled a small couch into their room and stayed awake reading until three in the morning. I read a thick Dorothy Sayers mystery, safe and secure with Lord Peter Wimsey, his faithful manservant and his scholarly beloved. My daughter and I were woken up at dawn with the sound of a nearby explosion.