Reading Lolita In Tehran Part 2

When I think of Lolita, I think of that half-alive b.u.t.terfly pinned to the wall. The b.u.t.terfly is not an obvious symbol, but it does suggest that Humbert fixes Lolita in the same manner that the b.u.t.terfly is fixed; he wants her, a living breathing human being, to become stationary, to give up her life for the still life he offers her in return. Lolita's image is forever a.s.sociated in the minds of her readers with that of her jailer. Lolita on her own has no meaning; she can only come to life through her prison bars.

This is how I read Lolita. Lolita. Again and again as we discussed Again and again as we discussed Lolita Lolita in that cla.s.s, our discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys. Like tearstains on a letter, these forays into the hidden and the personal shaded all our discussions of Nabokov. And more and more I thought of that b.u.t.terfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and jailer. in that cla.s.s, our discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys. Like tearstains on a letter, these forays into the hidden and the personal shaded all our discussions of Nabokov. And more and more I thought of that b.u.t.terfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and jailer.

11.

I used big diaries for my cla.s.s notes. The pages of these diaries were almost all blank, except for Thursdays and sometimes spilling over to Fridays, Sat.u.r.days and Sundays. When I left Iran, the diaries were too heavy to take with me, so I tore out the relevant pages, and this is what I have in front of me: torn and scarred pages of those unforgotten diaries. There are some scrawls and references that I can no longer decipher, but my notes for the first few months are tidy and clean. They mostly refer to insights I gained during our discussions.

In the first few weeks of cla.s.s, we read and discussed the books I had a.s.signed in an orderly, almost formal manner. I had prepared a set of questions for my students, modeled on those a friend had sent me from her women's-studies program, aimed at drawing them out. They answered the questions dutifully-What do you think of your mother? Name six personalities you admire most in life and six you dislike most. What two words would you use to describe yourself? . . . Their answers to these dull questions were dull; they wrote what was expected of them. I remember that Manna tried to personalize her responses. In answer to "What is your image of yourself?" she had written, "I am not ready for that question yet." They were not ready-not yet.

From the beginning, I took notes, as if of an experiment. As early as November, just over a month into the meetings, I wrote: "Mitra: other women say that having children is their destiny as if they are doomed." I added: "Some of my girls are more radical than I am in their resentment of men. All of them want to be independent. They think they cannot find men equal to them. They think they have grown and matured, but men in their lives have not, they have not bothered to think." November 23: "Manna: I am scared of myself, nothing I do or have is like that of others around me. Others scare me. I scare me." Throughout, from start to finish, I observe that they have no clear image of themselves; they can only see and shape themselves through other people's eyes-ironically, the very people they despise. I have underlined love yourself, self-confidence. love yourself, self-confidence.

Where they opened up and became excited was in our discussion of the works. The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection, and leave aside our stories about the deans and the university and the morality squads in the streets. There was a certain innocence with which we read these books; we read them apart from our own history and expectations, like Alice running after the White Rabbit and jumping into the hole. This innocence paid off: I do not think that without it we could have understood our own inarticulateness. Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.

Unlike the generation of writers and intellectuals I was brought up with and now consorted with, this new generation, the one my girls belonged to, was not interested in ideologies or political positions. They had a genuine curiosity, a real thirst for the works of great writers, those condemned to obscure shadows by both the regime and the revolutionary intellectuals, most of their books banned and forbidden. Unlike in pre-revolutionary times, now the "non-Revolutionary writers," the bearers of the canon, were the ones celebrated by the young: James, Nabokov, Woolf, Bellow, Austen and Joyce were revered names, emissaries of that forbidden world which we would turn into something more pure and golden than it ever was or will be.

In one sense the desire for beauty, the instinctive urge to struggle with the "wrong shape of things," to borrow from Vadim, the narrator of Nabokov's last novel, Look at the Harlequins!, Look at the Harlequins!, drove many from various ideological poles to what we generally label as culture. This was one domain where ideology played a relatively small part. drove many from various ideological poles to what we generally label as culture. This was one domain where ideology played a relatively small part.

I would like to believe that all this eagerness meant something, that there was in the air, in Tehran, something not quite like spring but a breeze, an aura that promised spring was on its way. This is what I cling to, the faint whiff of a sustained and restrained excitement, reminding me of reading a book like Lolita Lolita in Tehran. I still find it in my former students' letters when, despite all their fears and anxieties for a future without jobs or security and a fragile and disloyal present, they write about their search for beauty. in Tehran. I still find it in my former students' letters when, despite all their fears and anxieties for a future without jobs or security and a fragile and disloyal present, they write about their search for beauty.

12.

I wonder if you can imagine us. We are sitting around the iron-and-gla.s.s table on a cloudy November day; the yellow and red leaves reflected in the dining room mirror are drenched in a haze. I and perhaps two others have copies of Lolita Lolita on our laps. The rest have a heavy Xerox. There is no easy access to these books-you cannot buy them in the bookstores anymore. First the censors banned most of them, then the government stopped them from being sold: most of the foreign-language bookstores were closed or had to rely on their pre-revolutionary stock. Some of these books could be found at secondhand bookstores, and a very few at the annual international book fair in Tehran. A book like on our laps. The rest have a heavy Xerox. There is no easy access to these books-you cannot buy them in the bookstores anymore. First the censors banned most of them, then the government stopped them from being sold: most of the foreign-language bookstores were closed or had to rely on their pre-revolutionary stock. Some of these books could be found at secondhand bookstores, and a very few at the annual international book fair in Tehran. A book like Lolita Lolita was difficult to find, especially the annotated version that my girls wanted to have. We photocopied all three hundred pages for those without copies. In an hour when we take a break, we will have tea or coffee with pastry. I don't remember whose turn it is for pastry. We take turns; every week, one of us provides the pastry. was difficult to find, especially the annotated version that my girls wanted to have. We photocopied all three hundred pages for those without copies. In an hour when we take a break, we will have tea or coffee with pastry. I don't remember whose turn it is for pastry. We take turns; every week, one of us provides the pastry.

13.

"Moppet," "little monster," "corrupt," "shallow," "brat"-these are some of the terms a.s.signed to Lolita by her critics. Compared to these a.s.saults, Humbert's similar attacks on Lolita and her mother seem almost mild. Then there are others-among them Lionel Trilling, no less-who see the story as a great love affair, and still others who condemn Lolita Lolita because they feel Nabokov turned the rape of a twelve-year-old into an aesthetic experience. because they feel Nabokov turned the rape of a twelve-year-old into an aesthetic experience.

We in our cla.s.s disagreed with all of these interpretations. We unanimously (I am rather proud to say) agreed with Vera Nabokov and sided with Lolita. "Lolita discussed by the papers from every possible point of view except one: that of its beauty and pathos," Vera wrote in her diary. "Critics prefer to look for moral symbols, justification, condemnation, or explanation of HH's predicament. . . . I wish, though, somebody would notice the tender description of the child's helplessness, her pathetic dependence on monstrous HH, and her heartrending courage all along culminating in that squalid but essentially pure and healthy marriage, and her letter, and her dog. And that terrible expression on her face when she had been cheated by HH out of some little pleasure that had been promised. They all miss the fact that the 'horrid little brat' Lolita is essentially very good indeed-or she would not have straightened out after being crushed so terribly, and found a decent life with poor d.i.c.k more to her liking than the other kind."

Humbert's narration is confessional, both in the usual sense of the term and in that he is literally writing a confession in jail, awaiting trial for the murder of the playwright Claire Quilty, with whom Lolita ran away to escape him and who cast her off after she refused to partic.i.p.ate in his cruel s.e.x games. Humbert appears to us both as narrator and seducer-not just of Lolita but also of us, his readers, whom throughout the book he addresses as "ladies and gentlemen of the jury" (sometimes as "Winged gentlemen of the jury"). As the story unfolds, a deeper crime, more serious than Quilty's murder, is revealed: the entrapment and rape of Lolita (you will notice that while Lolita's scenes are written with pa.s.sion and tenderness, Quilty's murder is portrayed as farce). Humbert's prose, veering at times towards the shamelessly overwrought, aims at seducing the reader, especially the high-minded reader, who will be taken in by such erudite gymnastics. Lolita belongs to a category of victims who have no defense and are never given a chance to articulate their own story. As such, she becomes a double victim: not only her life but also her life story is taken from her. We told ourselves we were in that cla.s.s to prevent ourselves from falling victim to this second crime.

Lolita and her mother are doomed before we see them: the Haze house, as Humbert calls it, more gray than white, is "the kind of place you know will have a rubber tube affixable to the tub faucet in lieu of shower." By the time we stand in the front hall (graced with door chimes and "that ba.n.a.l darling of arty middle cla.s.s, van Gogh's 'Arlesienne' ") our smile has already turned smug and mocking. We glance at the staircase and hear Mrs. Haze's "contralto voice" before Charlotte ("a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich") descends into view. Sentence by sentence and word by word, Humbert destroys Charlotte even as he describes her: "She was obviously one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or a bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul."

She never has a chance, poor woman; nor does she improve on further acquaintance as the reader is regaled with descriptions of her superficiality, her sentimental and jealous pa.s.sion for Humbert and her nastiness to her daughter. Through his beautiful language ("you can always trust a murderer for his fancy prose style"), Humbert focuses the reader's attention on the ba.n.a.lities and small cruelties of American consumerism, creating a sense of empathy and complicity with the reader, who is encouraged to conceive of as understandable his ruthless seduction of a lonely widow and his eventual marriage to her in order to seduce her daughter.

Nabokov's art is revealed in his ability to make us feel sympathy for Humbert's victims-at least for his two wives, Valeria and Charlotte-without our approving of them. We condemn Humbert's acts of cruelty towards them even as we substantiate his judgment of their ba.n.a.lity. What we have here is the first lesson in democracy: all individuals, no matter how contemptible, have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Invitation to a Beheading Invitation to a Beheading and and Bend Sinister, Bend Sinister, Nabokov's villains are the vulgar and brutal totalitarian rulers trying to possess and control imaginative minds; in Nabokov's villains are the vulgar and brutal totalitarian rulers trying to possess and control imaginative minds; in Lolita, Lolita, the villain is the one with the imaginative mind. The reader could never be confused by Monsieur Pierre, but how is he to judge a Monsieur Humbert? the villain is the one with the imaginative mind. The reader could never be confused by Monsieur Pierre, but how is he to judge a Monsieur Humbert?

Humbert makes fullest use of his art and guile in setting the reader up for his most heinous crime: his first attempt at possessing Lolita. He prepares us for the ultimate scene of seduction with the same immaculate precision with which he prepares to dope Lolita and take advantage of her listless body. He tries to win us to his side by placing us in the same category as himself: as ardent critics of consumer culture. He describes Lolita as a vulgar vixen-"a disgustingly conventional little girl," he calls her. "And neither is she the fragile child of a feminine novel."

Like the best defense attorneys, who dazzle with their rhetoric and appeal to our higher sense of morality, Humbert exonerates himself by implicating his victim-a method we were quite familiar with in the Islamic Republic of Iran. ("We are not against cinema," Ayatollah Khomeini had declared as his henchmen set fire to the movie houses, "we are against prost.i.tution!") Addressing the "Frigid gentlewomen of the jury," Humbert informs us: "I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me. . . . [N]ot a trace of modesty," he confides, "did I perceive in this beautiful badly formed young girl whom modern co-education, juvenile mores, the campfire racket and so forth had utterly and hopelessly depraved. She saw the stark act merely as part of a youngster's furtive world, unknown to others."

So far it would seem that Humbert the criminal, with the help of Humbert the poet, has succeeded in seducing both Lolita and the reader. Yet in fact he fails on both fronts. In the case of Lolita, he never succeeds in possessing her willingly, so that every act of lovemaking from then on becomes a crueler and more tainted act of rape; she evades him at every turn. And he fails to completely seduce the reader, or some readers at least. Again ironically, his ability as a poet, his own fancy prose style, exposes him for what he is.

You do see how Nabokov's prose provides trapdoors for the unsuspecting reader: the credibility of every one of Humbert's a.s.sertions is simultaneously challenged and exposed by the hidden truth implied by his descriptions. Thus another Lolita emerges that reaches beyond the caricature of the vulgar insensitive minx, although she is that, too. A hurt, lonely girl, deprived of her childhood, orphaned and with no refuge. Humbert's rare insights give glimpses into Lolita's character, her vulnerability and aloneness. Were he to paint the murals in the Enchanted Hunters, the motel where he first raped her, he tells us, he would have painted a lake, an arbor in flames and finally there would have been "a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child." (Child, please remember, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, although this child, had she lived in the Islamic Republic, would have been long ripe for marriage to men older than Humbert.) As the story develops, Humbert's list of grievances grows. He calls her "the vile and beloved s.l.u.t" and talks of her "obscene young legs," yet we soon discover what Humbert's complaints mean: she sits on his lap, picking her nose, engrossed in "the lighter section of a newspaper, indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket." Of course, all murderers and all oppressors have a long list of grievances against their victims, only most are not as eloquent as Humbert Humbert.

Nor is he always the gentle lover: her slightest attempt at independence brings on his most furious wrath: "I delivered a tremendous backhand cut that caught her smack on her hot hard little cheek bone. And then the remorse, the poignant sweetness of sobbing atonement, groveling love, the hopelessness of sensual reconciliation. In the velvet night, at Mirana Motel (Mirana!) I kissed the yellowish soles of her long-toed feet, I immolated myself . . . but it was all of no avail. Both doomed were we. And soon I was to enter a new cycle of persecution."

No fact is more touching than Lolita's utter helplessness. The very first morning after their painful (to Lo, putting on a brave show) and ecstatic (to Humbert) s.e.xual encounter, she demands some money to call her mother. "Why can't I call my mother if I want to?" "Because," Humbert answers, "your mother is dead." That night at the hotel, Lo and Humbert have separate rooms, but "in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go."

And this of course was the whole crux of the matter: she had nowhere else to go, and for two years, in dingy motels and byways, in his home or even in school, he forces her to consent to him. He prevents her from mixing with children her own age, watches over her so she never has boyfriends, frightens her into secrecy, bribes her with money for acts of s.e.x, which he revokes when he has had his due.

Before the reader makes his judgment about either Humbert or our own blind censor, I must remind him that at some point Humbert addresses his audience as "Reader! Bruder! Bruder!"-a reminder of a well-known line by Baudelaire, the preface to his book of poems Les Fleurs du Mal:- Les Fleurs du Mal:-"Hypocrite lecteur,-mon semblable,-mon frere!"

14.

Reaching for a pastry, Mitra says that something has been bothering her for some time. Why is it that stories like Lolita Lolita and and Madame Bovary- Madame Bovary-stories that are so sad, so tragic-make us happy? Is it not sinful to feel pleasure when reading about something so terrible? Would we feel this way if we were to read about it in the newspapers or if it happened to us? If we were to write about our lives here in the Islamic Republic of Iran, should we make our readers happy?

That night, like many other nights, I took the cla.s.s to bed with me. I felt I had not adequately answered Mitra's question, and was tempted to call my magician and talk to him about our discussion. It was one of those rare nights when I was kept awake not by my nightmares and anxieties but by something exciting and exhilarating. Most nights I lay awake waiting for some unexpected disaster to descend on our house or for a telephone call that would give us the bad news about a friend or a relative. I think I somehow felt that as long as I was conscious, nothing bad could happen, that bad things would come in the middle of my dreams.

I can trace my nightly tremors back to the time when, in my soph.o.m.ore year, while studying at a horrible school in Switzerland, I was summoned in the middle of a history lesson with a stern American teacher to the princ.i.p.al's office. There I was told that they had just heard on the radio that my father, the youngest mayor in Tehran's history, had been jailed. Only three weeks earlier I had seen a large color photograph of him in Paris Match, Paris Match, standing by General de Gaulle. He was not with the Shah or any other dignitary-it was just Father and the General. Like the rest of my family, my father was a culture sn.o.b, who went into politics despising politicians and defying them almost at every turn. He was insolent to his superiors, at once popular and outspoken and on good terms with journalists. He wrote poetry and thought his real vocation should have been writing. I learned later that the General had taken a special liking to him after my father's welcoming speech, which was delivered in French and filled with allusions to great French writers such as Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo. De Gaulle chose to reward him with the Legion of Honor. This did not go over well with the Iranian elite, who had resented my father's insubordinate att.i.tude before and were now jealous of the extra attentions paid him. standing by General de Gaulle. He was not with the Shah or any other dignitary-it was just Father and the General. Like the rest of my family, my father was a culture sn.o.b, who went into politics despising politicians and defying them almost at every turn. He was insolent to his superiors, at once popular and outspoken and on good terms with journalists. He wrote poetry and thought his real vocation should have been writing. I learned later that the General had taken a special liking to him after my father's welcoming speech, which was delivered in French and filled with allusions to great French writers such as Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo. De Gaulle chose to reward him with the Legion of Honor. This did not go over well with the Iranian elite, who had resented my father's insubordinate att.i.tude before and were now jealous of the extra attentions paid him.

One small compensation for the bad news was that I did not have to continue my Swiss education. That Christmas I went back home with a special escort to take me to the airport. The reality of my father's imprisonment was established for me when I landed at the Tehran airport and did not find him waiting for me there. For the four years that they kept him in his "temporary" jail-in the jail's library, adjacent to the morgue-we were told alternately that he was going to be killed or that he would be set free almost at once. He was eventually exonerated of all charges except one, insubordination. This I always remember-insubordination: it became a way of life for me after that. Much later, when I read a sentence by Nabokov-"curiosity is insubordination in its purest form"-the verdict against my father came to my mind.

I never recovered from the shock of that moment when I was pulled out of the security of Mr. Holmes's-I think that was his name-stern cla.s.sroom and told that my father, the mayor, was now in jail. Later, the Islamic Revolution took away whatever sense of security I had managed to re-establish after my father's release from jail.

Several months into the cla.s.s, my girls and I discovered that almost every one of us had had at least one nightmare in some form or another in which we either had forgotten to wear our veil or had not worn it, and always in these dreams the dreamer was running, running away. In one, perhaps my own, the dreamer wanted to run but she couldn't: she was rooted to the ground, right outside her front door. She could not turn around, open the door and hide inside. The only one among us who claimed she had never experienced such fear was Na.s.srin. "I was always afraid of having to lie. You know what they say: to thine own self be true and all that. I believed in that sort of thing," she said with a shrug. "But I have improved," she added as an afterthought.

Later, Nima told us that the son of one of his friends, a ten-year-old, had awakened his parents in horror telling them he had been having an "illegal dream." He had been dreaming that he was at the seaside with some men and women who were kissing, and he did not know what to do. He kept repeating to his parents that he was having illegal dreams.

In Invitation to a Beheading, Invitation to a Beheading, on the wall of Cincinnatus C.'s jail, which is decorated like a third-rate hotel, there are certain instructions for the prisoners, such as: "A prisoner's meekness is a prison's pride." Rule number six, one that lies at the heart of the novel, is: "It is desirable that the inmate should not have dreams at all, or if he does, should immediately himself suppress nocturnal dreams whose context might be incompatible with the condition and status of the prisoner, such as: resplendent landscapes, outings with friends, family dinners, as well as s.e.xual intercourse with persons who in real life and in the waking state would not suffer said individual to come near, which individual will therefore be considered by the law to be guilty of rape." on the wall of Cincinnatus C.'s jail, which is decorated like a third-rate hotel, there are certain instructions for the prisoners, such as: "A prisoner's meekness is a prison's pride." Rule number six, one that lies at the heart of the novel, is: "It is desirable that the inmate should not have dreams at all, or if he does, should immediately himself suppress nocturnal dreams whose context might be incompatible with the condition and status of the prisoner, such as: resplendent landscapes, outings with friends, family dinners, as well as s.e.xual intercourse with persons who in real life and in the waking state would not suffer said individual to come near, which individual will therefore be considered by the law to be guilty of rape."

In the daytime it was better. I felt brave. I answered the Revolutionary Guards, I argued with them, I was not afraid of following them to the Revolutionary Committees. I did not have time to think about all the dead relatives and friends, about our own narrow and lucky escapes. I paid for it at night, always at night, when I returned. What will happen now? Who will be killed? When will they come? I had internalized the fear, so that I did not think of it always consciously, but I had insomnia; I roamed the house and I read and fell asleep with my gla.s.ses on, often holding on to my book. With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem, as Na.s.srin had painfully reminded us.

Certain things saved me: my family and a small group of friends, the ideas, the thoughts, the books that I discussed with my underground man when we took our afternoon walks. He worried constantly-if we were stopped, what excuse could we give? We were not married; we were not brother and sister. . . . He worried for me and for my family, and every time he worried, I became bolder, letting my scarf slip, laughing out loud. I could not do much to "them," but I could get angry at him or at my husband, at all the men who were so cautious, so worried about me, for "my sake."

After our first discussion of Lolita, Lolita, I went to bed excited, thinking about Mitra's question. Why did I went to bed excited, thinking about Mitra's question. Why did Lolita Lolita or or Madame Bovary Madame Bovary fill us with so much joy? Was there something wrong with these novels, or with us?-were Flaubert and Nabokov unfeeling brutes? By the next Thursday, I had formulated my thoughts and could not wait to share them with the cla.s.s. fill us with so much joy? Was there something wrong with these novels, or with us?-were Flaubert and Nabokov unfeeling brutes? By the next Thursday, I had formulated my thoughts and could not wait to share them with the cla.s.s.

Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it.

Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpa.s.s present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. This is why we love Madame Bovary Madame Bovary and cry for Emma, why we greedily read and cry for Emma, why we greedily read Lolita Lolita as our heart breaks for its small, vulgar, poetic and defiant orphaned heroine. as our heart breaks for its small, vulgar, poetic and defiant orphaned heroine.

15.

Manna and Ya.s.si had come in early. Somehow we got to talking about the definitions we had concocted for the members of the cla.s.s. I told them I called Na.s.srin my Cheshire cat, because she was in the habit of appearing and disappearing at strange times. When Na.s.srin came in with Mahshid, we told her what we had been saying. Manna said, "If I had to come up with a definition for Na.s.srin, I would call her a contradiction in terms." This, for some reason, made Na.s.srin angry. She turned to Manna, almost accusingly: "You are the poet, Mitra the painter, and what am I-a contradiction in terms?"

There was a certain truth to Manna's half-ironic definition. The sun and clouds that defined Na.s.srin's infinite moods and temperaments were too intimate, too inseparable. She lived by startling statements that she blurted out in a most awkward manner. My girls all surprised me at one point or another, but she more than the rest.

One day Na.s.srin had stayed on after cla.s.s, to help me sort out and file my lecture notes. We had talked randomly, about the university days and the hypocrisy of some officials and activists in various Muslim a.s.sociations. She had gone on to tell me, as she calmly put sheets of paper in blue file folders and entered the date and subject for each file, that her youngest uncle, a very pious man, had s.e.xually abused her when she was barely eleven years old. Na.s.srin recounted how he used to say that he wanted to keep himself chaste and pure for his future wife and refused friendships with women on that count. Chaste and pure, Chaste and pure, she mockingly repeated. He used to tutor Na.s.srin-a restless and unruly child-three times a week for over a year. He helped her with Arabic and sometimes with mathematics. During those sessions as they sat side by side at her desk, his hands had wandered over her legs, her whole body, as he repeated the Arabic tenses. she mockingly repeated. He used to tutor Na.s.srin-a restless and unruly child-three times a week for over a year. He helped her with Arabic and sometimes with mathematics. During those sessions as they sat side by side at her desk, his hands had wandered over her legs, her whole body, as he repeated the Arabic tenses.

This was a memorable day in many ways. In cla.s.s, we were discussing the concept of the villain in the novel. I had mentioned that Humbert was a villain because he lacked curiosity about other people and their lives, even about the person he loved most, Lolita. Humbert, like most dictators, was interested only in his own vision of other people. He had created the Lolita he desired, and would not budge from that image. I reminded them of Humbert's statement that he wished to stop time and keep Lolita forever on "an island of entranced time," a task undertaken only by G.o.ds and poets.

I tried to explain how Lolita Lolita was a more complex novel than any of the previous ones we had read by Nabokov. On the surface of course was a more complex novel than any of the previous ones we had read by Nabokov. On the surface of course Lolita Lolita is more realistic, but it also has the same trapdoors and unexpected twists and turns. I showed them a small photograph of Joshua Reynolds's painting is more realistic, but it also has the same trapdoors and unexpected twists and turns. I showed them a small photograph of Joshua Reynolds's painting The Age of Innocence, The Age of Innocence, which I had found accidentally in an old graduate paper. We were discussing the scene in which Humbert, paying a visit to Lolita's school, finds her in a cla.s.sroom. Reynolds's print of a young girl-child in white, with brown curly hair, hangs above the chalkboard. Lolita is sitting behind another "nymphet," an exquisite blonde with a "very naked porcelain-white neck" and "wonderful platinum hair." Humbert settles in beside Lolita, "just behind that neck and that hair," and unb.u.t.tons his overcoat and, for a bribe, forces Lolita to put her "inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand" under her desk to satisfy what in ordinary language is called his l.u.s.t. which I had found accidentally in an old graduate paper. We were discussing the scene in which Humbert, paying a visit to Lolita's school, finds her in a cla.s.sroom. Reynolds's print of a young girl-child in white, with brown curly hair, hangs above the chalkboard. Lolita is sitting behind another "nymphet," an exquisite blonde with a "very naked porcelain-white neck" and "wonderful platinum hair." Humbert settles in beside Lolita, "just behind that neck and that hair," and unb.u.t.tons his overcoat and, for a bribe, forces Lolita to put her "inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand" under her desk to satisfy what in ordinary language is called his l.u.s.t.

Let us pause for a moment on this casual description of Lolita's schoolgirl hands. The innocence of the description belies the action Lolita is forced to perform. The words "inky, chalky, red-knuckled" are enough to take us to the edge of tears. There is a pause. . . . Do I imagine it now?-was there a long pause after we discussed that scene?

"What bothers us most, of course," I said, "is not just the utter helplessness of Lolita but the fact that Humbert robs her of her childhood." Sanaz picked up her Xerox of the novel and began. " 'And it struck me,' " she read, " 'as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply didn't know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate-dim adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions . . .' "

I tried to ignore the meaningful glances they exchanged among themselves.

"It is hard for me," Mahshid said at last, "to read the parts about Lolita's feelings. All she wants is to be a normal girl. Remember the scene when Avis's father comes to pick her up and Lolita notices the way the fat little daughter and father cling to each other? All she wants is to live a normal life."

"It is interesting," said Na.s.srin, "that Nabokov, who is so hard on poshl.u.s.t, would make us pity the loss of the most conventional forms of life."

"Do you think Humbert changes when he sees her in the end," Ya.s.si interrupted, "broken, pregnant and poor?"

The time for our break had come and gone, but we were too absorbed in our discussion to notice. Manna, who seemed engrossed by a pa.s.sage in the book, raised her head. "It's strange," she said, "but some critics seem to treat the text the same way Humbert treats Lolita: they only see themselves and what they want to see." She turned to me and continued: "I mean, the censors, or some of our politicized critics, don't they do the same thing, cutting up books and re-creating them in their own image? What Ayatollah Khomeini tried to do to our lives, turning us, as you said, into figments of his imagination, he also did to our fiction. Look at Salman Rushdie's case."

Sanaz, playing with her long hair and rolling it around her finger, looked up and said, "Many people feel that Rushdie portrayed their religion in a distorted and irreverent manner. I mean, they don't object to his writing fiction but to his being offensive."

"Is it possible to write a reverent novel," said Na.s.srin, "and to have it be good? Besides, the contract with the reader is that this is not reality, it's an invented world. There must be some blasted s.p.a.ce in life," she added crossly, "where we can be offensive, for G.o.d's sake."

Sanaz was a little startled by the vehemence of Na.s.srin's retort. Through most of this discussion, Na.s.srin had been drawing furious lines in her notebook, and after she had delivered her p.r.o.nouncement, she went on with her drawing.

"The problem with the censors is that they are not malleable." We all looked at Ya.s.si. She shrugged as if to say she couldn't help it, the word appealed to her. "Do you remember how on TV they cut Ophelia from the Russian version of Hamlet Hamlet?"

"That would make a good t.i.tle for a paper," I said. " 'Mourning Ophelia.' " Ever since I had started going abroad for talks and conferences in 1991, mainly to the United States and England, every subject immediately took on the shape of a t.i.tle for a presentation or a paper.

"Everything is offensive to them," said Manna. "It's either politically or s.e.xually incorrect." Looking at her short but stylish hairdo, her blue sweatshirt and jeans, I thought how misplaced she looked enveloped in the voluminous fabric of her veil.

Mahshid, who had been quiet until then, suddenly spoke up. "I have a problem with all of this," she said. "We keep talking about how Humbert is wrong, and I do think he is, but we are not talking about the issue of morality. Some things are are offensive to some people." She paused, startled by her own vehemence. "I mean, my parents are very religious-is that a crime?" she asked, raising her eyes to me. "Do they not have a right to expect me to be like them? Why should I condemn Humbert but not the girl in offensive to some people." She paused, startled by her own vehemence. "I mean, my parents are very religious-is that a crime?" she asked, raising her eyes to me. "Do they not have a right to expect me to be like them? Why should I condemn Humbert but not the girl in Loitering with Intent Loitering with Intent and say it's okay to have an adulterous relationship? These are serious questions, and they become difficult when we apply them to our own lives," she said, lowering her gaze, as if looking for a response in the designs on the carpet. and say it's okay to have an adulterous relationship? These are serious questions, and they become difficult when we apply them to our own lives," she said, lowering her gaze, as if looking for a response in the designs on the carpet.

"I think," Azin shot back, "that an adulterous woman is much better than a hypocritical one." Azin was very nervous that day. She had brought her three-year-old daughter (the nursery was closed; there was no one to look after her), and we'd had difficulty convincing her to leave her mother's side and watch cartoons in the hall with Tahereh Khanoom, who helped us with the housework.

Mahshid turned to Azin and said with quiet disdain: "No one was talking about making a choice between adultery and hypocrisy. The point is, do we have any morality at all? Do we consider that anything goes, that we have no responsibility towards others but only for satisfying our needs?"

"Well, that is the crux of the great novels," Manna added, "like Madame Bovary Madame Bovary or or Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, or James's for that matter-the question of doing what is right or what we want to do." or James's for that matter-the question of doing what is right or what we want to do."

"And what if we say that it is right to do what we want to do and not what society or some authority figure tells us to do?" said Na.s.srin, this time without bothering to lift her head from her notebook. There was something in the air that day that did not relate directly to the books we had read. Our discussion had plunged us into more personal and private arenas, and my girls found that they could not resolve their own dilemmas quite as neatly as they could in the case of Emma Bovary or Lolita.

Azin had bent forward, her long gold earrings playing hide-and-seek in the ringlets of her hair. "We need to be honest with ourselves," she said. "I mean, that is the first condition. As women, do we have the same right as men to enjoy s.e.x? How many of us would say yes, we do have a right, we have an equal right to enjoy s.e.x, and if our husbands don't satisfy us, then we have a right to seek satisfaction elsewhere." She tried to make her point as casually as possible, but she had managed to surprise us all.

Azin is the tallest one in our group, the one with the blond hair and milky skin. She would often bite the corner of her lower lip and launch into tirades about love, s.e.x and men-like a child throwing a big stone into the pool; not just to make a splash, but to wet the adults in the bargain. Azin had been married three times, most recently to a good-looking and rich merchant from a traditional provincial bazaari family. I had seen her husband at many of my conferences and meetings, which were usually attended by my girls. He seemed very proud of her and always treated me with exaggerated deference. At every meeting, he made sure I was comfortable; if there was no water at the podium, he would see to it that the mistake was rectified; if extra chairs were needed, he would boss the staff around. Somehow at these meetings it seemed that he was the gracious host, who had granted us his s.p.a.ce, his time, because that was all he had to give.

I was sure that Azin's a.s.sault had been partly directed against Mahshid, and perhaps indirectly against Manna, too. Their clashes were not only the result of their different backgrounds. Azin's outbursts, her seeming frankness about her personal life and desires, made Manna and Mahshid, both reserved by temperament, deeply uncomfortable. They disapproved of her, and Azin sensed that. Her efforts at friendship were rejected as hypocritical.

Mahshid's response, as usual, was silence. She drew into herself and refused to fill the void that Azin's question had left behind. Her silence extended to the others, and was broken finally by a short giggle from Ya.s.si. I thought this was a good time for a break and went to the kitchen to bring in the tea.

When I returned, I heard Ya.s.si laughing. Trying to lighten the mood, she was saying, "How could G.o.d be so cruel as to create a Muslim woman with so much flesh and so little s.e.x appeal?" She turned towards Mahshid and stared at her in mock horror.

Mahshid look down and then shyly and royally lifted her head, her slanted eyes widening in an indulgent smile. "You don't need s.e.x appeal," she told Ya.s.si.

But Ya.s.si would not give up. "Laugh, please, laugh," she implored Mahshid. "Dr. Nafisi, please command her to laugh." And Mahshid's attempt at laughter was drowned out by the others' less guarded hilarity.

There was a pause and a silence as I placed the tray of tea on the table. Na.s.srin suddenly said: "I know what it means to be caught between tradition and change. I've been in the middle of it all my life."

She seated herself on the arm of Mahshid's chair, while Mahshid did her best to drink her tea and keep it from coming into collision with Na.s.srin, whose expressive hands, moving in all directions, came precariously close to knocking the teacup over several times.

"I know it firsthand," Na.s.srin said. "My mother came from a wealthy, secular and modern family. She was the only daughter, had two brothers, both of whom had chosen a diplomatic career. My grandfather was very liberal and he wanted her to finish her education and go to college. He sent her to the American school." "The American school?" echoed Sanaz, her hand lovingly playing with her hair. "Yes, in those days most girls didn't even finish high school, never mind going to the American school, and my mother could speak English and French." Na.s.srin sounded rather pleased and proud of this fact.

"But then what did she do? She fell in love with my father, her tutor. She was terrible in math and science. It is ironic," said Na.s.srin, again lifting her left hand dangerously close to Mahshid's cup. "They thought my father, coming from a religious background, would be safe with a young girl like my mother, and anyway, who would have thought that a modern young woman like her would be interested in a stern young man who seldom smiled, never looked her in the eyes, and whose sisters and mother all wore the chador? But she fell for him, perhaps because he was so different, perhaps because for her, wearing the chador and caring for him seemed more romantic than going to some college and becoming a lady doctor or whatever.

"She said she never regretted it, her marriage, but she always talked about her American school, her old high school friends, whom she never saw again after her marriage. And she taught me English. When I was a kid she used to teach me the ABCs and then she bought me English books. I never had trouble with English, thanks to her. Nor did my sister, who was much older than me, by nine years. Rather strange for a Muslim woman-I mean, she should have taught us Arabic, but she never learned the language. My sister married someone quote, unquote"-Na.s.srin made a large quotation mark with her hands-"'modern' and went to live in England. We only see them when they come home for vacations."

The time for break was over, but Na.s.srin's story had drawn us in, and even Azin and Mahshid seemed to have come to a temporary truce. When Mahshid stretched her hand to pick a cream puff, Azin handed the dish over to her with a friendly smile, forcing a gracious thank-you.

"My mother remained faithful to my dad. She changed her whole life for him, and never really complained," Na.s.srin continued. "His only concession was that he let her make us weird food, fancy French food my father would call it-all fancy food for him was French. Although we were brought up according to my dad's dictates, my mother's family and her past were always in the shadows, hinting at another way of life. It wasn't just that my mother could never get along with my father's family, who considered her uppity and an outsider. She's very lonely, my mother is. Sometimes I think I wish she would commit adultery or something."

Mahshid looked up at her, startled, and Na.s.srin got up and laughed. "Well," she said, "or something."

Na.s.srin's story, and the confrontation between Azin and Mahshid, had changed our mood too much for us to return to our cla.s.s discussion. We ended up making desultory conversation, mainly gossiping about our experiences at the university, until we broke up.

When the girls left that afternoon, they left behind the aura of their unsolved problems and dilemmas. I felt exhausted. I chose the only way I knew to cope with problems: I went to the refrigerator, scooped up the coffee ice cream, poured some cold coffee over it, looked for walnuts, discovered we had none left, went after almonds, crushed them with my teeth and sprinkled them over my concoction.

I knew that Azin's outrageousness was partly defensive, that it was her way of overcoming Mahshid's and Manna's defenses. Mahshid thought Azin was dismissive of her traditional background, her thick, dark scarves, her old-maidenish ways; she didn't know how effective her own contemptuous silences could be. Small and dainty, with her cameo brooches-she did actually wear cameo brooches-her small earrings, pale blue blouses b.u.t.toned up to the neck and her pale smiles, Mahshid was a formidable enemy. Did she and Manna know how their obstinate silences, their cold, immaculate disapproval, affected Azin, made her defenseless?

In one of their confrontations, during the break, I had heard Mahshid telling Azin, "Yes, you have your s.e.xual experiences and your admirers. You are not an old maid like me. Yes, old maid-I don't have a rich husband and I don't drive a car, but still you have no right, no right to disrespect me." When Azin complained, "But how? How was I disrespectful?", Mahshid had turned around and left her there, with a smile like cold leftovers. No amount of talk and discussion on my part, both in cla.s.s and with each of them in private, had helped matters between them. Their only concession had been to try and leave each other alone inside the cla.s.s. Not very malleable, as Ya.s.si might say.