Reading Lolita In Tehran Part 9

My face was burning and I felt dirty-I felt like my whole body was a soiled, sweaty T-s.h.i.+rt that had to be cast off. That was when the idea of this game came to me: I decided to make my body invisible. The woman's coa.r.s.e hands were reverse X rays that left only the surface intact and made the inside invisible. By the time she had finished inspecting me, I had become as light as the wind, a fleshless, boneless being. The trick to this magic act was that in order to remain invisible, I had to refrain from coming into contact with other hard surfaces, especially with human beings: my invisibility was in direct ratio to the degree to which I could make other people not notice me. Then, of course, from time to time I would make part of me return, like when I wished to defy an obstructionist figure of authority and I would leave a few strands of hair out and make my eyes reappear, to stare at them uncomfortably.

Sometimes, almost unconsciously, I would withdraw my hands into my wide sleeves and start touching my legs or my stomach. Do they exist? Do I exist? This stomach, this leg, these hands? Unfortunately, the Revolutionary Guards and the guardians of our morality did not see the world with the same eyes as me. They saw hands, faces and pink lipstick; they saw strands of hair and unruly socks where I saw some ethereal being drifting soundlessly down the street.

This was when I went around repeating to myself, and to anyone who cared to listen, that people like myself had become irrelevant. This pathological disorder was not limited to me; many others felt they had lost their place in the world. I wrote, rather dramatically, to an American friend: "You ask me what it means to be irrelevant? The feeling is akin to visiting your old house as a wandering ghost with unfinished business. Imagine going back: the structure is familiar, but the door is now metal instead of wood, the walls have been painted a garish pink, the easy chair you loved so much is gone. Your office is now the family room and your beloved bookcases have been replaced by a brand-new television set. This is your house, and it is not. And you are no longer relevant to this house, to its walls and doors and floors; you are not seen."

What do people who are made irrelevant do? They will sometimes escape, I mean physically, and if that is not possible, they will try to make a comeback, to become a part of the game by a.s.similating the characteristics of their conquerors. Or they will escape inwardly and, like Claire in The American, The American, turn their small corner into a sanctuary: the essential part of their life goes underground. turn their small corner into a sanctuary: the essential part of their life goes underground.

My growing irrelevance, this void I felt within me, made me resent my husband's peace and happiness, his apparent disregard for what I, as a woman and an academic, was going through. At the same time, I depended on him for the sense of security he created for all of us. As everything crumbled around us, he calmly went about his business and tried to create a normal and quiet life for us. Being a very private person, he focused his energies on safeguarding his life at home, with family and friends and on work. He was a partner in an architectural and engineering firm. He loved his partners, who, like him, were dedicated to their work. Since their job was not directly related to culture or politics, and the firm was private, they were left in relative peace. Being a good architect or dedicated civil engineer did not threaten the regime, and Bijan was excited by the great projects they were given: a park in Isfahan, a factory in Borujerd, a university in Ghazvin. He felt creative and he felt wanted, and, in the very best sense of the term, he felt he was of some service to his country. He was of the opinion that we had to serve our country, regardless of who ruled it. The problem for me was that I had lost all concept of terms such as home, service home, service and and country. country.

I became again the child I had been when I would indiscriminately and waywardly pick up books, slouch in the nearest available corner, and read and read. I picked up Murder on the Orient Express, Sense and Sensibility, The Master and Margarita, Herzog, The Gift, The Count of Monte Cristo, Smiley's People- Murder on the Orient Express, Sense and Sensibility, The Master and Margarita, Herzog, The Gift, The Count of Monte Cristo, Smiley's People-any book I could get my hands on in my father's library, in secondhand bookstores, in the still-unravaged libraries in friends' houses-and read them all, an alcoholic drowning her inarticulate sorrows.

If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect some aspect of myself that was now in constant retreat. My other sanctuary, what helped restore some sense of sanity and relevance to my life, was of a more intimate and personal nature. On April 23, 1982, my niece Sanam was born, prematurely. From the moment I saw her, small and curled under a machine that was there to keep her alive, I felt a bond, a warmth; I knew she would be good for me and good to me. On January 26, 1984, my daughter, Negar, was born, and on September 15, 1985, my son, Dara. I have to be precise in terms of the day, month and year of their births, details that twinkle and tease every time I think of their blessed births, and have no compunction in becoming sentimental over their coming into this world. This blessing, like other blessings, was mixed. For one thing, I became more anxious. Until then I had worried for the safety of my parents, husband, brother and friends, but my anxiety for my children overshadowed all. When my daughter was born I felt I was given a gift, a gift that in some mysterious way preserved my sanity. And so it was with the birth of my son. Yet it was a source of constant regret and sorrow to me that their childhood memories of home, unlike my own, were so tainted.

My daughter, Negar, blushes every time I tell her that her particular brand of obstinacy, her pa.s.sionate defense of what she considers to be justice, comes from her mother's reading too many nineteenth-century novels when she was pregnant with her. Negar has a way of throwing her head to the right and back in one move and pursing her lips just a little in defiance of whatever authority she is protesting at the moment. I embarra.s.s her, and she wants to know, Why do I say such impossible things? Well, don't they say that what a mother eats during her pregnancy, as well as her moods and emotions, all have an effect on the child? While I was pregnant with you, I read too much Jane Austen, too much of the Brontes, George Eliot and Henry James. Look at your two favorite novels of all time: Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice and and Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights. But But you, you, I add with glee, I add with glee, you you are pure Daisy Miller. I don't know who this Daisy or Maisie or whatever of yours is, she tells me, pursing her lips, and I won't like James, I are pure Daisy Miller. I don't know who this Daisy or Maisie or whatever of yours is, she tells me, pursing her lips, and I won't like James, I know. know. Yet she Yet she is is like Daisy: a mixture of vulnerability and courage that accounts for these gestures of defiance, her way of throwing her head back which I first noticed when she was barely four, in the waiting room of a dentist's office of all places. like Daisy: a mixture of vulnerability and courage that accounts for these gestures of defiance, her way of throwing her head back which I first noticed when she was barely four, in the waiting room of a dentist's office of all places.

And when Dara jokingly asks, What about me? What did you do when you were pregnant with me? I tell him, Just to defy me, you turned out to be all that I imagined you would not be. And the moment I say this, I begin to believe it. Even in the womb, he took upon himself the task of proving my nightmarish anxieties wrong. While I was pregnant with him, Tehran was the object of continual bombings and I had become hysterical. There were stories about how pregnant women gave birth to crippled children, how their mother's anxiety had affected the unborn fetus in irremediable ways, and I imagined mine to be infected with all those maladies-that is, if we were spared and lived to see the birth of this child. How could I know that instead of my protecting him, he was coming into the world to protect me?

6.

For a long time, I wallowed in the afterglow of my irrelevance. While doing so, I was also unconsciously examining my options. Should I give in to this non-existence imposed upon me by a force I did not respect? Should I pretend to comply and then cheat the regime in secret? Should I leave the country, as so many of my friends had done or had been forced to do? Should I withdraw from my job in silence the way some of my most honorable colleagues had done? Was there any other option?

It was during this period that I joined a small group who came together to read and study cla.s.sical Persian literature. Once a week, on Sunday nights, we gathered at one of the partic.i.p.ants' houses and for hours we studied text after text. Sunday nights-sometimes during the blackouts by candlelight-in different houses, belonging to the different members of the group, we would gather year after year. Even when our personal and political differences alienated us from one another, the magical texts held us together. Like a group of conspirators, we would gather around the dining room table and read poetry and prose from Rumi, Hafez, Sa'adi, Khayyam, Nezami, Ferdowsi, Attar, Beyhaghi.

We would take turns reading pa.s.sages aloud, and words literally rose up in the air and descended upon us like a fine mist, touching all five senses. There was such a teasing, playful quality to their words, such joy in the power of language to delight and astonish. I kept wondering: when did we lose that quality, that ability to tease and make light of life through our poetry? At what precise moment was this lost? What we had now, this saccharine rhetoric, putrid and deceptive hyperbole, reeked of too much cheap rosewater.

I was reminded of a story I had heard and reheard about the Arab conquest of Persia, a conquest that brought Islam into Iran. By this account, when the Arabs attacked Iran, they won because the Persians themselves, perhaps tired of tyranny, had betrayed their king and opened the doors to their enemies. But after the invasion, when their books were burned, their places of wors.h.i.+p destroyed and their language overtaken, the Persians took revenge by re-creating their burned and plundered history through myth and language. Our great epic poet Ferdowsi had rewritten the confiscated myths of Persian kings and heroes in a pure and sacred language. My father, who all through my childhood would read me Ferdowsi and Rumi, sometimes used to say that our true home, our true history, was in our poetry. The story came back to me then because, in a sense, we had done it again. This time we had opened the gates not to foreign invaders but to domestic ones, to those who had come to us in the name of our own past but who had now distorted every inch of it and robbed us of Ferdowsi and Hafez.

Gradually, I started to take on projects with this group. I used the material culled from my dissertation on Mike Gold and proletarian writers of the thirties in America to write my first article in Persian. I persuaded a friend from the group to translate a small book by Richard Wright, The American Hunger, The American Hunger, and I wrote the introduction. It covered Wright's Communist experiences, his trials and ordeals and his final break with the Party. Later I encouraged my friend to translate Nabokov's and I wrote the introduction. It covered Wright's Communist experiences, his trials and ordeals and his final break with the Party. Later I encouraged my friend to translate Nabokov's Lectures on Russian Literature. Lectures on Russian Literature. I translated poems by Langston Hughes. A member of our group, a well-known Iranian writer, encouraged me to write a series of articles on modern Persian fiction for a literary magazine he edited and, later, to partic.i.p.ate in weekly literary discussions with young Iranian writers. I translated poems by Langston Hughes. A member of our group, a well-known Iranian writer, encouraged me to write a series of articles on modern Persian fiction for a literary magazine he edited and, later, to partic.i.p.ate in weekly literary discussions with young Iranian writers.

This was the beginning of my writing career, which has stretched over almost two decades to the present. I created a protective sh.e.l.l around myself and started not thinking but writing, mainly literary criticism. I flung my diaries into the corner of my closet and forgot about them. I wrote without ever going back to them.

My articles gained recognition, yet I seldom felt complete satisfaction with them. I thought most were too tidy and rather pompous and learned. I felt pa.s.sionate about the subjects I wrote about, but there were conventions and rules to follow and I missed the impulsiveness and enthusiasm I could bring to my cla.s.ses. In cla.s.s, I felt I was having an exciting dialogue with my students; in my articles I became a rather dry teacher. My articles succeeded for the exact reasons that I disliked them; their learned claims won me respect and admiration.

7.

There should be a clear and logical reason why one day out of the blue I picked up the phone and called my magician. It is true that I had begun to brood too much over my unsatisfactory intellectual life, true that I missed my cla.s.ses and felt restless and desperate, but still I don't know why on this particular day, and not the day before or after, I decided to call him.

There were so many myths around him-that he saw only a select few, that at night if the light in one of his rooms facing the street was on, it was a sign that he would see visitors; otherwise they should not bother him. These stories did not impress me; in fact, they were the one reason I hesitated to call him. He had created such an elaborate fiction out of his relations.h.i.+p with the world that the more he claimed to be detached, the more he seemed to be actually involved. The myths were his coc.o.o.n; in that land people created coc.o.o.ns, elaborate lies to protect themselves. Like the veil.

So, we will settle for the fact that I called him impulsively for no very good reason. One afternoon I was alone at home, reading all day instead of working. Every once in a while I would look at my watch and say, I will start work in half an hour, in one hour; I'll quit as soon as I've reached the end of the chapter. Then I'd go to the refrigerator and make myself a sandwich, which I ate as I continued to read my book. I think it was after I had finished the sandwich that I got up and dialed his number.

Two rings and I heard a voice on the third: h.e.l.lo? Mr. R? Yes? I am Azar; a pause. Azar Nafisi. Oh yes, yes. Can I see you? But of course. When would you like to come? When is best for you? How about the day after tomorrow, at five? Later, he explained that the size of his apartment was such that he could answer the phone from anywhere in his apartment on the third ring; otherwise, it meant that he either was out or did not wish to answer.

No matter how intimate we became, I always saw myself the way we were in that first meeting. I sat opposite him on the lonely chair, and he on the hard brown sofa. Both of us had our hands on our knees, he because it was customary with him, me because I was nervous and had unconsciously adopted a schoolkid's pose in front of a much respected teacher. Between us on the table he had set a tray with two dark green mugs of tea and a box of chocolates, immaculate squares of red with black lettering: Lindt, a rare luxury, all the more so because they could not be found in the shops where foreign chocolates were sold at exorbitant prices. The chocolates were the only luxury he treated himself and his visitors to. There must have been days when he went almost hungry, but he did have a store of chocolates in that half-empty refrigerator, which he did not eat much of himself but reserved for friends and visitors. I forgot to add: it was a cloudy, snowy day; and would it matter if I told you that I wore a yellow sweater, gray pants and black boots and he a brown sweater and jeans?

Unlike me, he appeared very confident. He acted as if I had come to ask for help and our task was to set up an elaborate rescue plan. And in a sense it was true. He talked as if he knew me, as if he knew not only the known facts but also the unknown mysteries, thus creating a formal intimacy, a shared strangeness between us. It seemed from that first meeting that, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, we entered into a conspiracy-not a political one, but one cooked up by children to protect them against the grown-up world.

He finished my sentences for me, articulated my wishes and demands, and by the time I left, we already had a plan. This was what was good about him: people who went to see him somehow ended up with some plan or another, whether it was how to behave towards a lover or how to start a new project or structure a talk. I don't remember too clearly the exact nature of the plan I went home with, but he does, I am sure, for he seldom forgets. I had not finished my tea, and did not eat my chocolate, but I did go home giddy and satiated. We had talked about my present life, the intellectual state of affairs and then about James and Rumi all in one breath. Without intending to, we had strayed into a long and pointless discussion that had sent him to his immaculate library, and I left with a few books under my arm.

That first day colored our relations.h.i.+p-in my mind at least-until the day I left Iran. I stopped growing up in relation to him because it suited and even pleased me to do so, absolving me of certain responsibilities. While he had created around himself the illusion of a master, of someone always in control, he may not have been quite so much in control as I thought him to be-and I was not quite such a helpless novice.

I usually went to see him twice a week, once for lunch and once in the early evening. Later we added evening walks, around my house or his, during which we exchanged news, discussed projects, gossiped. Sometimes we went to a favorite coffee shop or restaurant with an intimate friend of his. Apart from that friend, we had two other friends in common who owned a bookstore that had become a meeting place of writers, intellectuals and young people. With them we enjoyed occasional lunches and excursions to the mountains. He never visited my house but often sent my family tokens of his regards, a box of chocolates, which they had come to identify with him, and even expect, on certain days of the week, videos, books and, sometimes, ice cream.

He called me "lady professor"-a term less odd and more often used in Iran than here. He said later that when friends asked him after our first meeting, What is the lady professor like?, he had said, She's okay. She is very American-like an American version of Alice in Wonderland. Was this a compliment? Not particularly; it was merely a fact. Have I already mentioned that his favorite actress was Jean Arthur and that he liked Renoir and Minnelli? And that he wanted to be a novelist?

8.

Turning points always seem so sudden and absolute, as if they have come bolt out of the blue. That is not true, of course. A whole slow process goes into their making. When I look back, I cannot trace the exact process that suddenly led me back into the cla.s.sroom, against my own will almost, wearing the veil I had vowed never to wear.

The signs coalesced in all sorts of small events, like the sudden phone calls from various universities, including the University of Tehran, asking me to teach. When I refused, they would always say, Well, how about one or two cla.s.ses, just to get a feel for how things are right now? Many would try to convince me that things had changed, that people like me were in demand, the atmosphere had become more "relaxed." I did teach a course or two at the Free Islamic University and the former National University, but I never accepted to return as a full-time faculty member.

By the mid-eighties a new brand of Islamists were gradually coming into being. They had begun to sense that all was not right with the direction their revolution was taking, and decided it was time to intercede. The lack of progress in the war with Iraq was taking its toll. Those who had been ardent revolutionaries at the start of the revolution-people now in their late teens and early twenties-and the younger generation, who were coming of age, were discovering the cynicism and corruption of the leaders who had taken power. The government also had discovered that it needed the cadre it had so casually expelled from the universities to meet the growing demands of the student body.

Some within the government and some former revolutionaries had finally realized that there was no way the Islamic regime could make us intellectuals vanish. In forcing us underground, it had also made us more appealing, more dangerous and, in a strange way, more powerful. It had made us scarce and, because of this, also in demand. So they decided to have us back, perhaps partly to be more certain of their control, and they started to contact people like me, who had once been branded as decadent and Westernized.

Mrs. Rezvan, an ambitious teacher in the Department of English at the Allameh Tabatabai University, was one of the intermediaries between the more progressive Islamic revolutionaries and the alienated secular intellectuals. Her husband had been a Muslim radical at the start of the revolution, and she had connections with the progressive revolutionaries and the secularists-with the insiders and outsiders; she was determined to use both to her advantage.

This Mrs. Rezvan seemed to have cropped up out of nowhere, bent on changing the course of my life through the sheer force of her will. I remember our first meeting well, partly because it was during one of those periods known in the history of the war as "the war of the cities." Sporadically, the two sides carried out ferocious attacks for a sustained period on certain key cities, such as Tehran, Isfahan and Tabriz in Iran and Baghdad and Mosul in Iraq. Usually, the fighting relaxed for a time after that, until the next bombing attack, which could sometimes last as long as a year.

It was mid-morning in the winter of 1987. My daughter, who was now three, and my one-and-a-half-year-old son and I were alone at home. Tehran had been hit by two rocket attacks earlier that morning, and I was trying to divert my children's attention by playing a favorite song involving a rooster and a fox on a small tape recorder-I was encouraging my daughter to sing along. It sounds too much like a sentimental movie: brave mother, brave children. I did not feel brave at all; the seeming tranquillity was due to an anxiety so paralyzing that it translated itself into calm. After the attacks we went to the kitchen, and I made them lunch. We then moved to the hall, where we felt more secure, because there were fewer windows. I built for them houses of cards that they destroyed with a touch of their small hands.

Right after lunch, the phone rang. It was a friend who had been one of my graduate students the previous year. She wanted to know if I could come to her place on Wednesday night. Mrs. Rezvan, a colleague of hers, really wanted to meet me. She liked me, had read all of my articles. Anyway, my friend concluded, Mrs. Rezvan is a phenomenon in her own right: if she didn't exist, we would have to invent her. So could you come, please?

A few nights later, in the midst of another blackout, I set off to my friend's house. When I got there, it was already dark. As I entered the large hall, from the depth of darkness I could see, flickering in the light of a kerosene lamp, a short, stocky woman dressed in blue. Her physical appearance is perfectly clear and alive in my mind. I can see her plain face, the sharp nose, short neck and dark cropped hair. But none of this captures the woman who, at the height of our intimacy, after we had visited each other's houses, once our children had become almost friends and our husbands got to know each other, remained always Mrs. Rezvan. What I cannot describe is her energy, which seemed to be caged inside her body. She appeared to be in constant motion, pacing her small office, my living room, the halls of the university.

She always seemed determined: determined not only to do certain things herself, but to make others, whom she targeted carefully, perform specific tasks that she had outlined for them. I have seldom met anyone whose will was so physically imposing. It was not the plainness of her features but the determination, the will and the half-ironic tone of her voice that remained with you.

Sometimes she would come to my house unexpectedly, in such an anxious state that I would think some disaster had befallen her. Yet it would only be to inform me that it was my duty to partic.i.p.ate in some meeting or another. She always framed these requests as matters of life and death. Some of these "duties" I am grateful for, like forcing me to meet with a handful of progressive religious journalists-who are now fas.h.i.+onably called the "reformists"-and to write for their journals. They were fascinated by Western literature and philosophy and I discovered, to my surprise, that there were many points on which we could agree.

It is such a privilege to meet you, she told me that evening, the first time we met. I want to become your student. She said this with a perfectly serious expression, without a trace of humor or irony. This threw me off balance so violently that I immediately disliked her; I became shy and could not respond.

That night she did most of the talking. She had read my articles; she knew about me from certain friends and students. No, she was not trying to flatter me; she really wanted to learn. At any rate, I must teach at their university, the only liberal university in Iran, which still had some of the best minds. The head of the department, you will like him, not a man of literature, but a serious scholar. The state of literature in this country could not be any worse, and the state of English literature is most hopeless of all. We, those of us who care, must do something about this; we should leave our differences aside and work together.

After our first meeting, she pressured me through various intermediaries to accept her offer to teach at Allameh Tabatabai University on a regular basis. She called me incessantly, evoking G.o.d, students, my duty to the homeland, to literature: it was my task in life to teach at that university. She made promises; she promised to talk to the president of the university, to whomever I wished her to talk to.

I told her I did not want to wear the veil in the cla.s.sroom. Did I not wear the veil, she asked, whenever I went out? Did I not wear it in the grocery store and walking down the street? It seemed I constantly had to remind people that the university was not a grocery store. What is more important, she countered, the veil or the thousands of young people eager to learn? What about the freedom to teach what I wanted? What about it? she asked conspiratorially. Haven't they banned any discussion of relations between men and women, drinking, politics, religion-what is there left to talk about? For you, she said, they would make an exception. Anyway, things are much freer now. They have all had a taste of good things; they want to get there too. Why not teach them James or Fielding or whoever-why not?

9.

The meeting with Mrs. Rezvan had thrown me off balance. She was like an intermediary pleading on behalf of an unfaithful and unforgotten lover, pledging complete loyalty in return for my affections. Bijan thought I should return; he felt that is what I really wanted to do, if only I would admit it to myself. Most of my friends merely confused me by posing the dilemma back to me: is it better to help the young people who might otherwise not have a chance to learn or to refuse categorically to comply with this regime? Both sides were absolute in their position: some thought I would be a traitor if I neglected the young and left them to the teachings of the corrupt ideologies; others insisted I would be betraying everything I stood for if I worked for a regime responsible for ruining the lives of so many of our colleagues and students. Both were right.

I called the magician one morning in panicked confusion. Another urgent meeting was set up, for late afternoon in a favorite coffee shop. It was a tiny place, a bar in its pre-revolution days, now reincarnated as a cafe. It belonged to an Armenian, and forever shall I see on the gla.s.s door next to the name of the restaurant, which was in small letters, the compulsory sign in large black letters: RELIGIOUS MINORITY. RELIGIOUS MINORITY. All restaurants run by non-Muslims had to carry this sign on their doors so that good Muslims, who considered all non-Muslims dirty and did not eat from the same dishes, would be forewarned. All restaurants run by non-Muslims had to carry this sign on their doors so that good Muslims, who considered all non-Muslims dirty and did not eat from the same dishes, would be forewarned.

The s.p.a.ce inside was narrow and shaped like a wide curve, with seven or eight stools on one side of the bar and, on the other, next to the wall-length mirror, another set of stools. When I went in, he was already seated at the far end of the bar. He got up and with an imperceptible mock curtsy, bent down, saying, Here I am, your servant at your service, m'lady, as he drew a stool for me to sit.

We ordered and I said breathlessly, This is an emergency. So I gathered. I have been asked to teach again. Is this new? he asked. No, but this time I'm wavering; I don't know what to do. Then somehow I managed to divert my own emergency meeting into a discussion of the book I was immersed in at the moment, Das.h.i.+ell Hammett's The Continental Op, The Continental Op, and Steve Marcus's marvelous essay on Hammett in which he cited a line from Nietzsche that struck me as pertinent to our situation. "Whoever fights monsters," Nietzsche had said, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." I had an amazing talent for subverting my own agendas, and we got so involved in our discussion that I completely forgot about the real purpose of the visit. and Steve Marcus's marvelous essay on Hammett in which he cited a line from Nietzsche that struck me as pertinent to our situation. "Whoever fights monsters," Nietzsche had said, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." I had an amazing talent for subverting my own agendas, and we got so involved in our discussion that I completely forgot about the real purpose of the visit.

Suddenly, he said, Aren't you going to be late? I should have known how late it was by the changing colors of the window and the pale, withdrawing light. I went to telephone Bijan and shamefacedly informed him that I would be late. When I got back my magician was paying the bill. But we haven't finished yet, I feebly protested. We still need to discuss the main business we came here for. I thought all we had been discussing was the main business-your rediscovery of your love for Mr. Hammett and Co. You're lucky I've given up on life and am not trying to seduce you. All I would have to do is to let you go on about Hammett and the shameful disrespect for the detective story in Iran and other matters that apparently turn you on. No, I said with some embarra.s.sment-I mean, about my teaching again. Oh that, he said dismissively. Well, obviously you must teach.

But I was not one to let go that easily. I was in love with the idea of moral imperatives and taking a stand and all that. So I relentlessly pursued my argument about the morality of returning to a job I had sworn I would never take up again so long as I was forced to wear the veil. He raised an eyebrow with an indulgent smile: Lady, he said at last, will you please please wise up to where you live? As for your qualms about submitting to the regime, none of us can drink a single gla.s.s of water without the grace of the moral guardians of the Islamic Republic. You love the work, so go on, indulge yourself and accept the facts. We intellectuals, more than ordinary citizens, either play scrupulously into their hands and call it constructive dialogue or withdraw from life completely in the name of fighting the regime. So many people have made their name through their opposition to the regime, yet they too can't get along without it. You don't want to take up arms against the regime, do you? wise up to where you live? As for your qualms about submitting to the regime, none of us can drink a single gla.s.s of water without the grace of the moral guardians of the Islamic Republic. You love the work, so go on, indulge yourself and accept the facts. We intellectuals, more than ordinary citizens, either play scrupulously into their hands and call it constructive dialogue or withdraw from life completely in the name of fighting the regime. So many people have made their name through their opposition to the regime, yet they too can't get along without it. You don't want to take up arms against the regime, do you?

No, I conceded, but I don't want to make deals with them, either. Anyway, how can you you give me such advice? I asked him. Look at you. What about me? Didn't you refuse to teach, to write, to do anything under this regime? Aren't you saying through your actions that we should all withdraw? No, I am not saying that. You are still making the mistake of using me as a model. I am not a model. In many ways I might even be called a coward. I don't belong to their club, but I am also paying a big price. I don't lose, and I don't win. In fact, I don't exist. You see, I have withdrawn not just from the Islamic Republic but from life as such, but give me such advice? I asked him. Look at you. What about me? Didn't you refuse to teach, to write, to do anything under this regime? Aren't you saying through your actions that we should all withdraw? No, I am not saying that. You are still making the mistake of using me as a model. I am not a model. In many ways I might even be called a coward. I don't belong to their club, but I am also paying a big price. I don't lose, and I don't win. In fact, I don't exist. You see, I have withdrawn not just from the Islamic Republic but from life as such, but you you can't do that-you have no desire to do that. can't do that-you have no desire to do that.

I tried to turn the tables, and reminded him that he had become a sort of role model for his friends and even for his foes. He disagreed. No, the reason I am so popular is that I give others back what they need to find in themselves. You need me not because I tell you what I want you to do but because I articulate and justify what you want to do. That is why you like me-a man without qualities. That's what yours truly is all about. What about what you want? I asked. I've given that up, but I make it possible for you to do what you want. But you are going to pay the price, he told me. Remember that quote you read me about the abyss? It is impossible not to be touched by the abyss. I know how you want to have your cake and eat it too, I know all about that innocence, that Alice in Wonderland persona you want to preserve.

You love teaching. All of us, including me, we're all subst.i.tutes for your teaching. You enjoy it, so why not go ahead and teach? Teach them your Hammetts and your Austens-go on, enjoy yourself. Well, we are not talking about pleasure here, I shot back righteously. But of course, he mocked me, the lady who constantly boasts about her love for Nabokov and Hammett is now telling me we should not do what we love! That is what I call immoral. So now you too too have joined the crowd, he said more seriously-what you've absorbed from this culture is that anything that gives pleasure is bad, and is immoral. You are more moral by sitting at home and twiddling your thumbs. If you want me to tell you it's your duty to teach, you've come to the wrong person. I won't do it. I say teach because you enjoy teaching: you will nag less at home, you will be a better person and probably your students will also have fun and maybe even learn something. have joined the crowd, he said more seriously-what you've absorbed from this culture is that anything that gives pleasure is bad, and is immoral. You are more moral by sitting at home and twiddling your thumbs. If you want me to tell you it's your duty to teach, you've come to the wrong person. I won't do it. I say teach because you enjoy teaching: you will nag less at home, you will be a better person and probably your students will also have fun and maybe even learn something.

When we were in the taxi on our way home, he turned to me again and broke the silence that had descended between us. Seriously, he said, go back and teach. It isn't forever. You can always get out if you want. Make your deals, but go only as far as you can without compromising the fundamentals. And don't worry about what we, your colleagues and friends, might say behind your back. We'll talk behind your back no matter what you do. If you returned, we'd say, She's caved in; if you didn't, we'd say, She's scared of taking up the challenge. So I did what he advised, and they did talk behind my back just as they saw fit.

10.

Less than a week after our emergency session, Mrs. Rezvan called me at home. She wanted me to meet with the head of the department, a nice man. You'll see things are different now, she insisted. They have become more liberal; they realize the value of good academics. What she forgot to mention was that "they" wanted the impossible: good academics who would preach their ideals and conform to their demands. She was right, however, about the head of the department. He was a first-rate linguist, a graduate of one of the best universities in the U.S. He was religious, but not ideological and not a sycophant. And, unlike most, he was genuinely interested in academic standards.

After that first meeting with the head of the department came a less pleasant meeting with the pious and less flexible dean of the faculty. After the usual preliminaries, he took on a serious expression, as if to say, Enough about such trivial matters as philosophy and literature-now let's get down to the basics. He began by expressing some concern about my "background," especially my defiance of the veil. I told him that this was now the law of the land, that I could no longer appear anywhere in public without the veil and that therefore I would wear it. But I would not compromise on my cla.s.ses: I would teach what I wanted to teach as I saw fit to teach it. He was surprised, but decided to accede, at least in principle, to my requirement for freedom.

All during the meeting, as befitted a truly Muslim man, he did not look me in the eyes. Most of the time he kept his head down like a shy eighteen-year-old. He focused on the design of the carpet, or targeted the wall. Sometimes he would play with his pen, looking at it intently, reminding me of my last meeting with Mr. Bahri. I had by now become something of an expert in the manners of pious men. They showed their opinion of you by the manner in which they avoided looking at you. Some made an aggressive point of averting their gaze. Once, a high functionary for whose organization I had prepared an evaluation report at the request of a male colleague, pointedly looked the other way throughout the thirty minutes of my report, and later addressed his points and questions to my male colleague, who I felt was literally sweating with shame. After a while I decided to address myself also solely to my colleague, refusing to acknowledge the high personage's presence-and foolishly, I refused the money the organization paid me for my pains.

But this dean seemed to avert his gaze out of genuine modesty and piety; I did not particularly appreciate his manner, but I could not feel hostile towards him. Had we not lived in the Islamic Republic, I might have shown some sense of humor about our awkward situation, for it was obvious that it was more embarra.s.sing and painful to him than it was to me; and it was clear that he was curious and eager to discuss with me matters of which he knew little, like English literature, and just as eager to show off his knowledge of Plato and Aristotle.

When Mrs. Rezvan heard a report of our conversation she told me with a laugh that I was not the only one afraid of being "compromised." The university officials were also worried about me. In asking me to join the faculty, they had taken certain risks.

The next thing I knew, I was preparing for my first cla.s.s. In my first semester I was loaded with three undergraduate introductory courses, ranging from introduction to the novel to drama and criticism, and two graduate courses, one on eighteenth-century fiction and the other a survey of literary criticism. My undergraduate cla.s.ses each had between thirty and forty students, and the graduate seminars were crowded, some of them with more than thirty students. When I complained about the workload, I was reminded of the fact that some of the faculty taught over twenty hours a week. For the administrators, the quality of the work was of little consequence. They called my expectations unrealistic and idealistic. I called their indifference criminal.

As it turned out, neither one of us kept our promises. I always wore my veil improperly, and that became their prime excuse for constantly hara.s.sing me. And they never gave up on trying to force me to teach and act more acceptably. But for a long time we lived under a sort of truce. Mrs. Rezvan became a buffer between the administration and me, trying to smooth things over like a mediator in a bad marriage. Like all mediators, she did not forget her own advantages-persuading people like me into more active partic.i.p.ation gave her leverage with the university officials-and for as long as she remained at the university, for better and for worse, the marriage somehow lasted.

She would tell me in that ironic tone of hers how we should mount a united front to save literature from the clutches of ignoramuses in the faculty who had no knowledge of literature. Did you know that the woman who taught the twentieth-century novel before you a.s.signed only Steinbeck's The Pearl The Pearl and one Persian novel? Or that a professor at Alzahrah University thought that and one Persian novel? Or that a professor at Alzahrah University thought that Great Expectations Great Expectations was written by Joseph Conrad? was written by Joseph Conrad?

11.

"Attention, attention! The siren you hear is the danger signal. Red alert! Leave at once and repair to your shelters!" I wonder at what point in my life, and after how many years, the echo of the red siren-like a screeching violin that plays mercilessly all over one's body-would cease in my mind. I cannot separate the eight years of war from that shrill voice that several times a day, at the most unexpected hours, would intrude into our lives. Three levels of danger had been established, but I never managed to differentiate between the red (danger), yellow (possibility of danger) and white (danger has stopped) sirens. Somehow, in the sound of the white siren, menace still lurked. Usually the red siren sounded too late, after the bomb had already been dropped, and in any case, even at the university we had no real shelters to repair to.

The air raids over Tehran were memorable for so many different reasons, not least for the sudden friends.h.i.+ps and intimacies they inspired. Acquaintances who came to dinner would have no choice but to stay the night, sometimes over a dozen of them, and by morning it was as if they had known you all their lives. And those sleepless nights! In our house I was the one who slept least. I wanted to sleep close to my children so that if anything happened, it would happen to all of us. My husband slept or tried to sleep through the raids, but I would take two pillows, a few candles and my book to a small hall that separated the children's bedroom from ours and station myself by their doorway. I seemed to think that somehow, by keeping awake, I might throw a jinx and divert the bomb from harming our house.

One night I awoke suddenly at three or four in the morning and discovered that the house was in complete darkness. I knew at once there had been another blackout, because the small light in the hall was out. I looked out the window and saw that the streetlights were also gone. I turned on the flashlight; it cut a small circle of light from the darkness around me. A few minutes later I was ready with my pillows up against the wall, two lit candles and my book. I heard a sudden explosion. My heart heaved up and down and my hand went involuntarily to my stomach, just as it had during similar raids when I was pregnant. My eyes pretended nothing had happened, and rested on a page of Daisy Miller. Daisy Miller.

It was during this time that, while reading certain writers, I unconsciously took up pencil and paper again. I had never wholly given up my pleasurable undergraduate habit of underlining pa.s.sages and taking notes. Most of my notes on Pride and Prejudice, Was.h.i.+ngton Square, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary Pride and Prejudice, Was.h.i.+ngton Square, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary and and Tom Jones Tom Jones were made on these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets. were made on these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.

I had just begun Daisy Miller Daisy Miller and was reading about that Europeanized young American, Winterbourne, who meets in Switzerland the enchanting and enigmatic Miss Daisy Miller. Winterbourne is fascinated by this beautiful-to some, shallow and vulgar; to others, innocent and fresh-young American woman, but he cannot decide if she is a "flirt" or a "nice" girl. The plot centers on Winterbourne's vacillations between Daisy, with her defiance of the rules of nicety, and his aristocratic aunt and her community of sn.o.bbish Americans, who decide to ignore her. The scene I was reading takes place after Daisy asks Winterbourne to introduce her to his aunt. Winterbourne tries to inform her, as delicately as he can, that his aunt will not see her. "Miss Daisy Miller stopped, and stood looking at him. Her prettiness was still visible in the darkness; she was opening and closing her enormous fan. 'She doesn't want to know me!' she said suddenly. 'Why don't you say so?' " and was reading about that Europeanized young American, Winterbourne, who meets in Switzerland the enchanting and enigmatic Miss Daisy Miller. Winterbourne is fascinated by this beautiful-to some, shallow and vulgar; to others, innocent and fresh-young American woman, but he cannot decide if she is a "flirt" or a "nice" girl. The plot centers on Winterbourne's vacillations between Daisy, with her defiance of the rules of nicety, and his aristocratic aunt and her community of sn.o.bbish Americans, who decide to ignore her. The scene I was reading takes place after Daisy asks Winterbourne to introduce her to his aunt. Winterbourne tries to inform her, as delicately as he can, that his aunt will not see her. "Miss Daisy Miller stopped, and stood looking at him. Her prettiness was still visible in the darkness; she was opening and closing her enormous fan. 'She doesn't want to know me!' she said suddenly. 'Why don't you say so?' "

I heard the sound of another explosion. I felt thirsty, but could not make myself get up and get a drink. Then two more explosions. I read on, my eyes sometimes drifting from the book to the darkened hall. I am afraid of the dark, but the war and its explosions had made that fear insignificant. And in a scene I will always remember-not only because of that night-Daisy tells Winterbourne: " 'You needn't be afraid. I am not afraid!' And she gave a little laugh. Winterbourne fancied there was a tremor in her voice; he was touched, shocked, mortified by it. 'My dear young lady,' he protested, 'she knows no one. It's her wretched health.' The young girl walked on a few steps, laughing still. 'You needn't be afraid,' she repeated."

There is so much courage in that sentence, and irony in the fact that what Winterbourne was afraid of was not his aunt but Miss Daisy Miller's charms. For a moment I believe I really was diverted from the explosions, and I did manage to draw a line around the words You needn't be afraid. You needn't be afraid.

As I continued to read, three things happened almost simultaneously. My daughter called me from her room, the phone rang and I heard a knock at the hall door. I picked up one candle and moved towards the phone, telling Negar I would be with her in a second. At that moment, the hall door opened and my mother, holding a candle, entered, saying, Are you okay? Don't be afraid! Almost every night after the explosions, my mother came in with her candle; her action had taken on the form of a ritual. She went to my daughter's room and I answered the phone. It was a friend; she also wanted to know if we were okay. It sounded to them as if the explosions had come from our part of the city. This had also become a ritual, to call friends and family to make sure they were safe, knowing that your own relief implied someone else's death.

During these nights of interchanging red and white sirens, I unconsciously mapped out my future career. Throughout these endless nights of reading I concentrated only on fiction, and when I started to teach again, I found I had already prepared my two courses on the novel. Over the next decade and a half, more than anything else, I thought, wrote about and taught fiction. These readings made me curious about the origins of the novel and what I came to understand as its basically democratic structure. And I became curious as to why the realistic novel was never truly successful in our country. If a sound can be preserved in the same manner as a leaf or a b.u.t.terfly, I would say that within the pages of my Pride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice, that most polyphonic of all novels, and my that most polyphonic of all novels, and my Daisy Miller Daisy Miller is hidden like an autumn leaf the sound of the red siren. is hidden like an autumn leaf the sound of the red siren.

12.

There were the sirens and the mechanical voice that commanded you to attention, the sandbags in the streets and bombs usually early in the morning or after midnight; there were long or short periods of calm in between the bombings and their resumption, and there were Austen and James and the different cla.s.srooms on the fourth floor of the building that housed the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature. Two rows of cla.s.srooms were situated on either side of the long and narrow hall. On one side they opened to a view of the not so distant mountains, and on the other to the rather sad and lovely garden, always a little neglected, with a small ornamental pool and a chipped statue in the middle. Around the pool were circles and squares of shrubs and flowers, surrounded by trees. The flowers appeared to have grown randomly: beautiful roses, large dahlias and daffodils. Always it seemed to me that the garden belonged not to the university but to the pages of a Hawthorne novel.

I developed a ritual in preparation for my public appearance. I was careful not to wear any makeup. The contours and lines of my body would disappear as I slipped on my T-s.h.i.+rt and baggy black trousers, a comfortable half-size too big for me, and over them my long black robe and the black scarf that coiled around my neck. Last, I put my books and notes in my bag. I would stuff my bag with far too many books and notes, most of them unnecessary, but I took them with me anyway, like a safety net.

Somehow the distance between my home and the university has become hazy in my memory. Suddenly and magically, without pa.s.sing the green gate and the guard, without pa.s.sing the gla.s.s entrance door to the building with signs denouncing Western culture, I am inside the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

As I walk up the stairs, I try to ignore the posters and notices pasted haphazardly on the walls. They are mainly black-and-white photographs of the war with Iraq, and slogans denouncing the Great Satan, namely America, and the emissaries of that Satan. Quotations from Ayatollah Khomeini-WHETHER WE KILL OR ARE KILLED WE SHALL BE VICTORIOUS! OUR UNIVERSITIES MUST BE ISLAMIZED! THIS WAR HAS BEEN A DIVINE BLESSING FOR US!-accompany the pictures.