Reading Lolita In Tehran Part 4

22.

In his memoir, Speak, Memory, Speak, Memory, Nabokov describes a watercolor that hung above his bed when he was a young child. It is a landscape, an image of a narrow path disappearing into a forest full of trees. His mother read a story to him about a boy who disappeared one day into the painting above his bed and this became young Vladimir's wish as he prayed every night. As you imagine us in that room, you must also understand our desire for this dangerous vanishing act. The more we withdrew into our sanctuary, the more we became alienated from our day-to-day life. When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, Are these my people, is this my hometown, am I who I am? Nabokov describes a watercolor that hung above his bed when he was a young child. It is a landscape, an image of a narrow path disappearing into a forest full of trees. His mother read a story to him about a boy who disappeared one day into the painting above his bed and this became young Vladimir's wish as he prayed every night. As you imagine us in that room, you must also understand our desire for this dangerous vanishing act. The more we withdrew into our sanctuary, the more we became alienated from our day-to-day life. When I walked down the streets, I asked myself, Are these my people, is this my hometown, am I who I am?

Neither Humbert nor the blind censor ever possesses his victims; they always elude him, just as objects of fantasy are always simultaneously within reach and inaccessible. No matter how they may be broken, the victims will not be forced into submission.

All this was on my mind one Thursday evening after cla.s.s as I was looking at the diaries my girls had left behind, with their new essays and poems. At the start of our cla.s.s, I had asked them to describe their image of themselves. They were not ready then to face that question, but every once in a while I returned to it and asked them again. Now, as I sat curled up on the love seat, I looked at dozens of pages of their recent responses.

I have one of these responses in front of me. It belongs to Sanaz, who handed it in shortly after her jail experience at the seaside. It is a simple drawing in black and white, of a naked girl, the white of her body caught in a black bubble. She is crouched in an almost fetal position, hugging one bent knee. Her other leg is stretched out behind her. Her long, straight hair follows the same curved line as the contour of her back, but her face is hidden. The bubble is lifted in the air by a giant bird with long black talons. What interests me is a small detail as opposed to the more obvious imagery of the girl, the bubble and the girl's hand that reaches out of the bubble and holds on to the talon. Her subservient nakedness is dependent on that talon, and she reaches out to it.

The drawing immediately brought to my mind Nabokov's statement in his famous afterword to Lolita Lolita about how the "first little throb of about how the "first little throb of Lolita Lolita" went through him in 1939 or early 1940, when he was ill with a severe attack of intercostal neuralgia. He recalls that "the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage."

The two images, one from the novel and the other from reality, reveal a terrible truth. Its terribleness goes beyond the fact that in each case an act of violence has been committed. It goes beyond the bars, revealing the victim's proximity and intimacy with its jailer. Our focus in each is on the delicate spot where the prisoner touches the bar, on the invisible contact between flesh and cold metal.

Most of the others expressed themselves in words. Manna saw herself as fog, moving over concrete objects, taking on their form but never becoming concrete herself. Ya.s.si described herself as a figment. Na.s.srin, in one response, gave me the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of the word paradox. paradox. Implicit in almost all their descriptions was the way they saw themselves in the context of an outside reality that prevented them from defining themselves clearly and separately. Implicit in almost all their descriptions was the way they saw themselves in the context of an outside reality that prevented them from defining themselves clearly and separately.

Manna had once written about a pair of pink socks for which she was reprimanded by the Muslim Students' a.s.sociation. When she complained to a favorite professor, he started teasing her about how she had already ensnared and trapped her man, Nima, and did not need the pink socks to entrap him further.

These students, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exiles in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.

I wonder if right now, at this moment, I were to turn to the people sitting next to me in this cafe in a country that is not Iran and talk to them about life in Tehran, how they would react. Would they condemn the tortures, the executions and the extreme acts of aggression? I think they would. But what about the acts of transgression on our ordinary lives, like the desire to wear pink socks?

I had asked my students if they remember the dance scene in Invitation to a Beheading: Invitation to a Beheading: the jailer invites Cincinnatus to a dance. They begin a waltz and move out into the hall. In a corner they run into a guard: "They described a circle near him and glided back into the cell, and now Cincinnatus regretted that the swoon's friendly embrace had been so brief." This movement in circles is the main movement of the novel. As long as he accepts the sham world the jailers impose upon him, Cincinnatus will remain their prisoner and will move within the circles of their creation. The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, partic.i.p.ating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality. My students witnessed it in show trials on television and enacted it every time they went out into the streets dressed as they were told to dress. They had not become part of the crowd who watched the executions, but they did not have the power to protest them, either. the jailer invites Cincinnatus to a dance. They begin a waltz and move out into the hall. In a corner they run into a guard: "They described a circle near him and glided back into the cell, and now Cincinnatus regretted that the swoon's friendly embrace had been so brief." This movement in circles is the main movement of the novel. As long as he accepts the sham world the jailers impose upon him, Cincinnatus will remain their prisoner and will move within the circles of their creation. The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, partic.i.p.ating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality. My students witnessed it in show trials on television and enacted it every time they went out into the streets dressed as they were told to dress. They had not become part of the crowd who watched the executions, but they did not have the power to protest them, either.

The only way to leave the circle, to stop dancing with the jailer, is to find a way to preserve one's individuality, that unique quality which evades description but differentiates one human being from the other. That is why, in their world, rituals-empty rituals-become so central. There was not much difference between our jailers and Cincinnatus's executioners. They invaded all private s.p.a.ces and tried to shape every gesture, to force us to become one of them, and that in itself was another form of execution.

In the end, when Cincinnatus is led to the scaffold, and as he lays his head on the scaffold, in preparation for his execution, he repeats the magic mantra: "by myself." This constant reminder of his uniqueness, and his attempts to write, to articulate and create a language different from the one imposed upon him by his jailers, saves him at the last moment, when he takes his head in his hands and walks away towards voices that beckon him from that other world, while the scaffold and all the sham world around him, along with his executioner, disintegrate.

PART II.

Gatsby

1.

A young woman stands alone in the midst of a crowd at the Tehran airport, backpack on her back, a large bag hanging from one shoulder, pushing an oversize carry-on with the tips of her toes. She knows that her husband of two years and her father must be somewhere out there with the suitcases. She stands in the customs area, teary-eyed, desperately looking for a sympathetic face, for someone she can cling to and say, Oh how happy, how glad, how absolutely happy I am to be back home. At long last, here to stay. But no one so much as smiles. The walls of the airport have dissolved into an alien spectacle, with giant posters of an ayatollah staring down reproachfully. Their mood is echoed in the black and bloodred slogans: DEATH TO AMERICA! DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM & ZIONISM! AMERICA IS OUR NUMBER-ONE ENEMY! DEATH TO AMERICA! DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM & ZIONISM! AMERICA IS OUR NUMBER-ONE ENEMY!

Not having registered as yet that the home she had left seventeen years before, at the age of thirteen, was not home anymore, she stands alone, filled with emotions wriggling this way and that, ready to burst at the slightest provocation. I try not to see her, not to b.u.mp into her, to pa.s.s by unnoticed. Yet there is no way I can avoid her.

This airport, the Tehran airport, has always brought out the worst in me. When I left it the first time, it was a hospitable and magical place, with a fine restaurant that hosted dances on Friday evenings and a coffee shop with big French windows opening onto a balcony. As children my brother and I stood transfixed by those windows, eating ice cream as we counted the planes. Always on arrival there was a particular moment of epiphany, when suddenly a blanket of lights signaled that we had arrived, that Tehran was lying in wait for us below. For seventeen years I dreamed of those lights, so beckoning and seductive. I dreamed of being submerged in them and of never having to leave again.

The dream had finally come true. I was home, but the mood in the airport was not welcoming. It was somber and slightly menacing, like the unsmiling portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and his anointed successor, Ayatollah Montazeri, that covered the walls. It seemed as if a bad witch with her broomstick had flown over the building and in one sweep had taken away the restaurants, the children and the women in colorful clothes that I remembered. This feeling was confirmed when I noticed the cagey anxiety in the eyes of my mother and friends, who had come to the airport to welcome us home.

As we were leaving the customs area, a morose young man stopped us: he wanted to search me. We've already been searched, I reminded him. Not the carry-on bags, he said curtly. But why? This is my home, I wanted to say, as if this should have offered me protection against suspicion and scrutiny. He needed to search me for alcoholic beverages. I was taken to a corner. Bijan, my husband, observed me anxiously, not knowing whom to fear most, the morose guard or me. His face took on a smile that later became very familiar to me: complicit, reconciling, cynical. Do you argue with a mad dog? someone later asked me.

First they emptied my bag: lipstick, pens and pencils, my diary and gla.s.ses case. Then they attacked my backpack, from which they extracted my diploma, my marriage license, my books-Ada, Jews Without Money, The Great Gatsby . . . The guard picked them up disdainfully, as if handling someone else's dirty laundry. But he did not confiscate them-not then. That came sometime later. The guard picked them up disdainfully, as if handling someone else's dirty laundry. But he did not confiscate them-not then. That came sometime later.

2.

During my first years abroad-when I was in school in England and Switzerland, and later, when I lived in America, I attempted to shape other places according to my concept of Iran. I tried to Persianize the landscape and even transferred for a term to a small college in New Mexico, mainly because it reminded me of home. You see, Frank and Nancy, this little stream surrounded by trees, meandering its way through a parched land, is just like Iran. Just like Iran, just like home. You see, Frank and Nancy, this little stream surrounded by trees, meandering its way through a parched land, is just like Iran. Just like Iran, just like home. What impressed me most about Tehran, I told whoever cared to listen, were the mountains and its dry yet generous climate, the trees and flowers that bloomed and thrived on its parched soil and seemed to suck the light out of the sun. What impressed me most about Tehran, I told whoever cared to listen, were the mountains and its dry yet generous climate, the trees and flowers that bloomed and thrived on its parched soil and seemed to suck the light out of the sun.

When my father was jailed, I went back home and was allowed to stay for a year. Later, I was insecure enough to marry on the spur of a moment, before my eighteenth birthday. I married a man whose most important credential was that he wasn't like us-he offered a way of life which, in contrast to ours, seemed pragmatic and uncomplicated; and he was so sure of himself. He didn't value books ("the problem with you and your family is that you live more in books than in reality"), he was insanely jealous-jealousy was part of the image he had of himself as a man in command of his destiny and property-he was success-oriented ("When I have my own office, my chair will be higher than those of the visitors, so they'll always feel intimidated by my presence") and he admired Frank Sinatra. The day I said yes, I knew I was going to divorce him. There were no limits to my self-destructive urges and the risks I was prepared to take with my own life.

I moved with him to Norman, Oklahoma, where he was getting his master's in engineering at the University of Oklahoma, and in six months' time I had reached the conclusion that I would divorce him as soon as my father was out of jail. That took another three years. He refused to divorce me ("A woman enters her husband's home in her wedding gown and leaves it in her shroud"). He had underestimated me. He wanted his wife to dress smartly, do her nails, go to the hairdresser every week. I defied him with my long skirts and tattered jeans, wore my hair long and sat on the campus green with my American friends while his friends pa.s.sing by threw sly glances in our direction.

My father was all in favor of divorce, and threatened to sue for alimony, a woman's only protection under Islamic law. My husband finally consented when I agreed not to sue for alimony and let him have the money in our bank account, the car and the carpets. He returned home while I stayed on in Norman, the only foreign student in the English Department. I shunned the company of the Iranian community, especially the men, who had numerous illusions about a young divorcee's availability.

These are my memories of Norman: red earth and fireflies, singing and demonstrating on the Oval, reading Melville, Poe, Lenin and Mao Tse Tung, reading Ovid and Shakespeare on warm spring mornings with a favorite professor, of conservative political leaning, and accompanying another in the afternoons, singing revolutionary songs. At night watching new films by Bergman, Fellini, G.o.dard and Pasolini. As I remember those days, the disparate sights and sounds mix and mingle in my memory: sad stills of Bergman's women merge into the soothing sound of David, my radical professor, singing on his guitar: Long-haired preachers come out every night And they tell you what's wrong and what's right And when you ask them for something to eat They tell you in voices so sweet: You will eat by and by, in that glorious place in the sky Work and pray, live on hay, you will get pie in sky when you die.

That's a lie! a lie!

We would demonstrate in the mornings, taking over the administration building, singing songs on the green in front of the English Department, called South Oval, watching as the occasional streakers ran across the green towards the redbrick building that was the library. I marched while the suffering ROTC students, in those days of protest against the Vietnam War, tried to ignore our presence on the gra.s.s. Later I would go to parties with my true love, who introduced me to Nabokov when he gave me Ada, Ada, in whose flyleaf he had written: in whose flyleaf he had written: To Azar, my Ada, Ted. To Azar, my Ada, Ted.

My family had always looked down on politics, with a certain rebellious condescension. They prided themselves on the fact that as far back as eight hundred years ago-fourteen generations, my mother would proudly emphasize-the Nafisis were known for their contributions to literature and science. The men were called my mother would proudly emphasize-the Nafisis were known for their contributions to literature and science. The men were called hakim hakims, men of knowledge, and later, in this century, the Nafisi women had gone to universities and taught at a time when few women dared leave home. When my father became the mayor of Tehran, instead of celebration there was a sense of unease in the family. My younger uncles, who at the time were university students, refused to acknowledge my father as their brother. Later, when my father fell out of favor, my parents managed to make us feel more proud of his term in jail than we had ever been when he was mayor.

I joined the Iranian student movement reluctantly. My father's imprisonment and my family's vague nationalist sympathies had sensitized me towards politics, but I was more of a rebel than a political activist-though in those days there was not much difference between them. One attraction was the fact that the men in the movement didn't try to a.s.sault or seduce me. Instead, they held study groups in which we read and discussed Engels's Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and Marx's and Marx's The 18 The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In the seventies, the mood-not just among Iranians, but among American and European students-was revolutionary. There was the Cuban example, and China of course. The revolutionary cant and romantic atmosphere were infectious, and the Iranian students were at the forefront of the struggle. They were active, and even confrontational, going to jail for occupying the Iranian consulate in San Francisco. In the seventies, the mood-not just among Iranians, but among American and European students-was revolutionary. There was the Cuban example, and China of course. The revolutionary cant and romantic atmosphere were infectious, and the Iranian students were at the forefront of the struggle. They were active, and even confrontational, going to jail for occupying the Iranian consulate in San Francisco.

The Iranian student group at the University of Oklahoma was a chapter of the World Confederation of Iranian Students, which had members and chapters in most major cities in Europe and the United States. In Oklahoma, it was responsible for the introduction on campus of the RSB, the militant student branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the creation of the Third World Committee Against Imperialism, composed of radical students from different nationalities. The confederation, fashioning itself after Lenin's democratic centralism, exerted a strong hold over its members' lifestyles and social activities. As time went by, the more militant and Marxist elements came to dominate the group, ousting or isolating those with more moderate and nationalist tendencies. Its members usually sported Che Guevara sports jackets and boots; the women usually cropped their hair short, seldom used makeup and wore Mao jackets and khakis.

I then began a schizophrenic period in my life in which I tried to reconcile my revolutionary aspirations with the lifestyle I most enjoyed. I never fully integrated into the movement. During the long and confrontational meetings between rival factions, I would often leave the room under different pretenses, and sometimes locked myself in the bathroom to escape. I insisted on wearing long dresses outside the meetings and refused to cut my hair. I never gave up the habit of reading and loving "counterrevolutionary" writers-T. S. Eliot, Austen, Plath, Nabokov, Fitzgerald-but I spoke pa.s.sionately at the rallies; inspired by phrases I had read in novels and poems, I would weave words together into sounds of revolution. My oppressive yearning for home was shaped into excited speeches against the tyrants back home and their American backers, and although I felt alienated from the movement itself, which was never a home to me at any point, I had found an ideological framework within which to justify this unbridled, unreflective pa.s.sion.

The fall of 1977 was memorable for two events: my marriage in September and the Shah's last official and most dramatic visit to the United States in November. I had met Bijan Naderi two years earlier, at a meeting at Berkeley. He was the leader of the group I most sympathized with. I fell in love with him for all the wrong reasons: not because of his revolutionary rhetoric but because he possessed a sense of confidence in himself and his beliefs that went beyond the hysterics of the movement. He was loyal, pa.s.sionately committed to whatever he undertook, be it his family, his job or the movement, but his loyalty never made him blind to what the movement would become. I admired him as much for this as for his refusal, later, to follow the revolutionary mandates.

In the many demonstrations in which I partic.i.p.ated, shouting slogans against U.S. involvement in Iran, in the protest meetings during which we argued into the night, thinking we were talking about Iran but in reality more concerned with what had happened in China, the picture of home loomed large. It was mine and I could constantly conjure it, and relate to the world through its hazy image.

There were discrepancies, or essential paradoxes, in my idea of "home." There was the familiar Iran I felt nostalgic about, the place of parents and friends and summer nights by the Caspian Sea. Yet just as real was this other, reconstructed, Iran about which we talked in meeting after meeting, quarreling about what the ma.s.ses in Iran wanted. Apparently, as the movement grew more radical in the seventies, the ma.s.ses wanted us to serve no alcohol in our celebrations and not to dance or play "decadent" music: only folk and revolutionary music were allowed. They wanted the girls to cut their hair short or wear it in pigtails. They wanted us to avoid the bourgeois habits of studying.

3.

Just over a month after we landed at the Tehran airport, I found myself standing in the English Department at the University of Tehran. As I arrived, I almost ran into a young man in a gray suit, curly-haired and friendly-looking. I later discovered he was another recent recruit, just back from the United States and, like me, filled with new and exciting ideas. The secretary, who radiated a certain saintliness despite her corpulent beauty, smiled at me and shuffled in through a door to the department head's office. She came back a moment later and nodded me into the room. Walking in, I tripped over a small wooden wedge between the two doors and lost my balance, nearly landing on the department head's desk.

I was greeted with a bemused smile and offered a seat. I had last been in this office two weeks before, when I had been interviewed by a different department head, a tall and friendly man who had asked me about various relatives, prominent writers and academicians. I was grateful to him for trying to put me at ease, but also worried that for the rest of my life I would live in compet.i.tion with prominent family shadows.

This new man, Dr. A, was different. His smile was friendly but not intimate; it was more appraising. He invited me to a party at his house, that very night, yet his manner was distant. We talked about literature and not relatives. I tried to explain to him why I had changed my mind about my dissertation. You see, I told him, I wanted to do a comparative study of the literature of the twenties and thirties, the proletarians and the non-proletarians. The best person was Fitzgerald-for the twenties, I mean. This seemed obvious to him. But then I had difficulty choosing his counterpoint-should I choose Steinbeck, Farrell or Dos Pa.s.sos? You didn't think any of them would measure up to Fitzgerald, did you? Well, not in a literary sense. What other sense is there? So, anyway, then I came across the real proletarians, whose spirit was best captured by Mike Gold. Who? Mike Gold: he was the editor of the radical popular literary journal New Ma.s.ses. New Ma.s.ses. You may not believe it, but he was a big shot in his day. He was the first person to formulate the concept of proletarian art in the United States. Even writers like Hemingway took note of what he said-calling Hemingway a white-collar writer and Thornton Wilder "the Emily Post of culture." You may not believe it, but he was a big shot in his day. He was the first person to formulate the concept of proletarian art in the United States. Even writers like Hemingway took note of what he said-calling Hemingway a white-collar writer and Thornton Wilder "the Emily Post of culture."

Well, in the end I decided to leave Fitzgerald out of it. I was curious about Gold, and why he took over-for he did take over. In the thirties people like Fitzgerald were pushed out by this new breed, and I wanted to know why. Plus I was a revolutionary myself; I wanted to understand the pa.s.sion that drove the likes of Mike Gold. You wanted pa.s.sion, he asked, and you went from Fitzgerald to this other fellow? Our discussion was interesting, and I did accept his invitation to his party that evening.

The other one, the tall, friendly department head I had met on my first visit, I was informed, was now in jail. No one knew when he would be released, or even if he would be released at all. Many professors had been expelled by now, and others would soon follow suit. This is how things were in those first days of the revolution, when I innocently and with feelings utterly inappropriate to the circ.u.mstances started my teaching career as the youngest and newest member of the English Department at the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Tehran. Had I been offered a similar position at Oxford or Harvard, I would not have felt more honored or intimidated.

The look in Dr. A's face as I tripped on the edge of his door was one with which many others, very different from him, would greet me over the years. It was a look of surprise tinged with leniency. A funny child, it seemed to say, who needs to be guided and sometimes put in her place. Later on, a different look would emerge, a look of frustration, as if I had not acted according to our initial contract: I had become a wayward and unruly child and could not be controlled.

4.

All my memories of those first years revolve around the University of Tehran. It was the navel, the immovable center to which all political and social activities were tied. When in the U.S. we read or heard about the turmoil in Iran, the University of Tehran seemed to be the scene of the most important battles. All groups used the university to make their statements.

It was thus not surprising that the new Islamic government took over the university as the site of its weekly Friday prayers. This act gained added significance, because at all times, even after the revolution, the Muslim students, especially the more fanatical ones, were a minority overshadowed by the leftist and secular student groups. It seemed as if with this act, the Islamic faction a.s.serted its victory over other political groups: like a victorious army it positioned itself on the most cherished site of the occupied land, at the heart of the vanquished territory. Every week, one of the most prominent clergymen would stand on the podium to address the thousands who occupied the university grounds, men on one side, women on the other. He would stand with a gun in one hand and offer the sermon of the week, preaching on the most important political issues of the day. Yet it seemed as if the grounds themselves rebelled against this occupation.

I felt in those days that there was a turf war going on between different political groups and that this struggle was being fought out mainly at the university. I did not know then that I would also have my own battle to fight. Looking back, I am glad I was unaware of my special vulnerability: with my small collection of books, I was like an emissary from a land that did not exist, with a stock of dreams, coming to reclaim this land as my home. Amid the talk of treason and changes in government, events that now in my mind have become confused and timeless, I sat whenever I had a chance with books and notes scattered around me, trying to shape my cla.s.ses. I taught a very large seminar in that first semester, called Research, in which we focused on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a survey of twentieth-century fiction. and a survey of twentieth-century fiction.

I tried to be somewhat fair politically. Side by side with The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby and and A Farewell to Arms, A Farewell to Arms, I would teach works by Maxim Gorky and Mike Gold. I spent most days browsing the bookstores lining the street opposite the university. That street, newly renamed Avenue of the Revolution, was the center for the most important bookstores and publishers in Tehran. It was such a pleasure to go from one store to another and to find an occasional seller or customer who would introduce you to a sudden gem, or startle you by knowing about an obscure English writer by the name of Henry Green. I would teach works by Maxim Gorky and Mike Gold. I spent most days browsing the bookstores lining the street opposite the university. That street, newly renamed Avenue of the Revolution, was the center for the most important bookstores and publishers in Tehran. It was such a pleasure to go from one store to another and to find an occasional seller or customer who would introduce you to a sudden gem, or startle you by knowing about an obscure English writer by the name of Henry Green.

In the midst of my feverish preparation, I would be summoned to the university for matters that had nothing to do with my cla.s.ses and books. Almost every week, sometimes every day of the week, there were either demonstrations or meetings, and we were drawn to these like a magnet, independently of our will.

One memory curls itself wantonly and imperceptibly around me, teasing me seductively. With coffee in one hand and a pen and notebook in the other, I was preparing to go to the balcony to work on my cla.s.s syllabus. The phone rang. It was the agitated and urgent voice of a friend. She wanted to know if I had heard: Ayatollah Taleghani, a very popular, controversial clergyman, one of the most important figures of the revolution, had died. He was relatively young and radical, and there were already rumors he had been killed. A procession had been scheduled for him beginning at the University of Tehran.

I cannot remember the distance between the phone call and my presence, almost an hour later, at the entrance of the university. There was a traffic jam. Bijan and I got out of the taxi in the vicinity of the university and started to walk. For some reason, after a while, as if pushed by some invisible source of energy, our pace quickened into a run. A huge crowd of mourners had gathered, blocking the streets that led to the university. There were reports of a fight having broken out between members of the Mujahideen, a radical religious organization that claimed to be Taleghani's spiritual and political heir, and those belonging to what was loosely called the Hizbollah, Party of Allah, mainly composed of fanatics and vigilantes determined to implement the laws of G.o.d on earth. The fight was over who should have the honor of carrying Taleghani's body. Many were crying, beating their chests and their heads, calling out: "Today is the day of mourning! Taleghani has gone to heaven today."

Over the next two decades, this particular chant would be used for many others, a symptom of the symbiosis between the revolution's founders and death. That was the first time I experienced the desperate, orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, s.e.xually flavored frenzy in the air. Later, when I saw a slogan by Khomeini saying that the Islamic Republic survives through its mourning ceremonies, I could testify to its truth.

I met many people that day who appeared and disappeared like characters in a cartoon. Was it there that I saw Farideh? She belonged to an extremely radical leftist group-my brother, who knew some of her comrades, had introduced her to me, thinking she could help me settle in. I saw her for a vague second, busy as always, on the verge of attacking someone or something: I saw her and lost her.

I stood in the middle of the whirlpool, struggling to find a familiar face. Always in these demonstrations I would lose sight of those who'd come with me. Now I had lost my husband, and for a while I kept looking for him. The crowd pushed towards me. Voices appeared to be echoing out of different loudspeakers. Posters of Taleghani had mushroomed everywhere: on the walls, on the doors and windows of the bookshops, even on trees. The wide street in front of the university contracted and expanded to accommodate our movements and for a long time I moved senselessly, swaying to the beat of the crowd. Then I found myself beating my fists against a tree and crying, crying, as if the person closest to me had died and I was now all alone in the whole wide world.

5.

Before the new term began in September 1979, I spent most of my time hunting for the books on my syllabus. In one bookstore, as I was rummaging through a few copies of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby and and A Farewell to Arms, A Farewell to Arms, the owner approached me. "If you're interested in those, you'd better buy them now," he said, shaking his head sadly. I looked at him sympathetically and said smugly, "There's too much demand for them. They can't do anything about that-can they?" the owner approached me. "If you're interested in those, you'd better buy them now," he said, shaking his head sadly. I looked at him sympathetically and said smugly, "There's too much demand for them. They can't do anything about that-can they?"

He was right. In a few months' time, Fitzgerald and Hemingway were very difficult to find. The government could not remove all of the books from the stores, but gradually it closed down some of the most important foreign-language bookstores and blocked the distribution of foreign books in Iran.

The night before my first cla.s.s I was very nervous, like a child on her first day of school. I had chosen my clothes with unusual care, and also went over my meager stock of books. I had left most of them in the U.S. with my sister-in-law, along with an antique mirror: my father's present. I thought I would bring them back later, not knowing that I would not return for another eleven years, by which time my sister-in-law had given away most of my books.

That first day, I went to the university armed with my trusty Gatsby. Gatsby. It was showing signs of wear: the dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became. It was showing signs of wear: the dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became. Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn was still available in bookstores, and I bought a new copy in antic.i.p.ation. After some hesitation, I also picked up was still available in bookstores, and I bought a new copy in antic.i.p.ation. After some hesitation, I also picked up Ada, Ada, which wasn't on the syllabus, and threw it in as a security blanket. which wasn't on the syllabus, and threw it in as a security blanket.

The university was built during the reign of Reza Shah, in the thirties. The main buildings on campus had very high ceilings, propped up by thick cement columns. They were always a little cold in winter and dank in summer. Memory has given them gargantuan proportions they probably didn't have in reality, but those expansive buildings of the thirties had a strange feel about them. They were made for crowds: you never felt quite at home.

On my way to the English Department, I absentmindedly registered the different stands set out in the big hall at the foot of the over-wide staircase. There were long tables-more than ten of them-filled with literature belonging to various revolutionary groups. Students were standing in cl.u.s.ters, talking and sometimes quarreling, ready to defend their territory at a moment's notice. There were no visible enemies, but a sense of menace lingered over the room.

Those were crucial days in Iranian history. A battle was being fought on all levels over the shape of the const.i.tution and the soul of the new regime. The majority of people, among them important clerics, were in favor of a secular const.i.tution. Powerful opposition groups-both secular and religious-were forming to protest the autocratic tendencies within the ruling elite. The strongest of the opposition groups were Ayatollah Shariatmadari's Muslim People's Republican Party and the National Democratic Front, made up of secular progressives who were at the forefront of the struggle to preserve democratic rights, including women's rights and freedom of the press. They were very popular at the time and drew about a million people on the twelfth anniversary of the death of the late nationalist hero Mossadegh to the village of Ahamad Abad, where Mossadegh was buried. They campaigned vigorously for a const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. The closing down of the most popular and progressive paper, Ayandegan, Ayandegan, had led to a series of large violent demonstrations, in which the demonstrators were attacked by the government-backed vigilantes. In those days it was normal to see these goons on their motorbikes carrying black flags and banners, at times led by a cleric riding in front of them in a bulletproof Mercedes-Benz. Despite these ominous signs, the Communist Tudeh Party and the Marxist Fedayin Organization supported the radical reactionaries against what they called the liberals, and continued to put pressure on Prime Minister Bazargan, whom they suspected of having American sympathies. had led to a series of large violent demonstrations, in which the demonstrators were attacked by the government-backed vigilantes. In those days it was normal to see these goons on their motorbikes carrying black flags and banners, at times led by a cleric riding in front of them in a bulletproof Mercedes-Benz. Despite these ominous signs, the Communist Tudeh Party and the Marxist Fedayin Organization supported the radical reactionaries against what they called the liberals, and continued to put pressure on Prime Minister Bazargan, whom they suspected of having American sympathies.

The opposition was greeted with brutal violence. "The clog-wearers and the turbaned have given you a chance," Khomeini warned. "After each revolution several thousands of the corrupt elements are executed in public and burned and the story is over. They are not allowed to publish newspapers." Citing the example of the October Revolution and the fact that the state still controlled the press, he went on to say, "We will close all parties except the one, or a few which will act in a proper manner . . . we all made mistakes. We thought we were dealing with human beings. It is evident we are not. We are dealing with wild animals. We will not tolerate them anymore."

It now seems amazing to me, as I relate the events of those years, how focused I was on my work. For I was as anxious about how my cla.s.s would receive me as I was about the political upheavals.

My first cla.s.s was in a long room with windows down one side. The room was full when I walked in, but as soon as I took my place behind the desk, my nervousness left me. The students were unusually quiet. My hands were loaded with all the books and Xeroxes I had brought for the cla.s.s, an eclectic mix of revolutionary writers whose works had been translated into Persian and "elitists" such as Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Woolf.

That cla.s.s went all right, and the ones after it became easier. I was enthusiastic, naive and idealistic, and I was in love with my books. The students were curious about me and Dr. K, the curly-haired young man I had b.u.mped into at Dr. A's office, strange new recruits at a time when most students were doing their best to expel their professors: they were all "anti-revolutionary," a term that covered a vast range-anything from working with the previous regime to using obscene language in cla.s.s.

That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was an odd way to start, but I did succeed in getting their attention. I explained that we would in the course of the semester read and discuss many different authors, but that one thing these authors all had in common was their subversiveness. Some, like Gorky or Gold, were overtly subversive in their political aims; others, like Fitzgerald and Mark Twain, were in my opinion more subversive, if less obviously so. I told them we would come back to this term, because my understanding of it was somewhat different from its usual definition. I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home." I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes.

At that time, students and faculty were differentiated mainly by their political affiliations. Gradually I matched names to faces, and learned to read them, to know who was with whom against whom and who belonged to what group. It is almost frightening how these images appear out of the void, like the faces of the dead come back to life to execute some unfulfilled task.

I can see Mr. Bahri in the middle row, playing with his pencil, his head down, writing. Is he writing my words, I wonder, or only pretending to do so? Every once in a while he lifts his head and gazes at me, as if trying to decipher a puzzle, and then he bends back down and continues with his writing.

In the second row, by the window, is a man whose face I remember well. He sits with both arms folded across his chest, listening defiantly, taking in every word, not so much because he wants or needs to learn but because, for reasons of his own, he has decided not to miss any of this. I will call him Mr. Nyazi.

My most radical students sit in the very back rows, with sardonic smiles. One face I remember well: Mahtab's. She sits self-consciously, looking straight at the blackboard, acutely aware of those sitting to her right and left. She is dark-skinned, with a simple face that seems to have retained its baby fat and resigned, sad eyes. I later discovered that she came from Abadan, an oil city in the south of Iran.

Then of course there is Zarrin, and her friend Vida. They caught my eye on that first day because they looked so different, as if they had no right to be in that cla.s.s, or on the university grounds for that matter. They didn't fit any of the categories into which students in those days were so clearly divided. Leftists' mustaches covered their upper lips, to distinguish them from the Muslims, who carved out a razor-thin line between upper lip and mustache. Some Muslims also grew beards or what stubble they could muster. The leftist women wore khaki or dull green-large, loose shirts over loose trousers-and the Muslim girls scarves or chadors. In between these two immutable rivers stood the non-political students, who were all mechanically branded as monarchists. But not even the real monarchists stood out like Zarrin and Vida.

Zarrin had fair, fragile skin, eyes the color of melting honey and light brown hair, which she had gathered behind her ears. She and Vida were sitting in the first row, at the far right, near the door. Both were smiling. It seemed slightly rude of them to be there, looking like that, so pastel and serene. Even I, who had abdicated by now all revolutionary claims, was surprised by their appearance.

Vida was more sober, more conventionally academic, but with Zarrin there was always a danger of swerving, of losing control. Unlike many others, they were not defensive about their non-revolutionary att.i.tude, nor did they seem to feel a need for justification. In those days the students canceled cla.s.ses at the slightest provocation. Almost every day there were new debates, new events, and in the midst of all this Zarrin and her friend-more deliberately than dutifully-attended all cla.s.ses, looking fresh and neat and immaculate.

I remember one day when my leftist students had canceled cla.s.ses, protesting the fresh murder of three revolutionaries, I was walking downstairs when they caught up with me. In the previous session I had mentioned that they might have trouble finding copies of some of the books I had a.s.signed. They wanted to tell me about a bookstore with the largest stock of English books in Tehran and eagerly volunteered that it still carried copies of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby and and Herzog. Herzog.

They had already read Gatsby. Gatsby. Were Fitzgerald's other books similar to this? We went on talking Fitzgerald as we walked down the wide staircase, past the various tables with their political goods for sale and the rather large crowd a.s.sembled in front of a wall plastered with newspapers. We walked onto the hot asphalt and sat on one of the benches by the stream running through the campus, and talked like children sharing coveted stolen cherries. I felt very young, and we laughed as we talked. Then we went our separate ways. We never became more intimate than that. Were Fitzgerald's other books similar to this? We went on talking Fitzgerald as we walked down the wide staircase, past the various tables with their political goods for sale and the rather large crowd a.s.sembled in front of a wall plastered with newspapers. We walked onto the hot asphalt and sat on one of the benches by the stream running through the campus, and talked like children sharing coveted stolen cherries. I felt very young, and we laughed as we talked. Then we went our separate ways. We never became more intimate than that.

6.