Reading Lolita In Tehran Part 8

24.

And so began a new cycle of violent demonstrations. We would start marching, usually in front of the University of Tehran, and as we moved, the crowd would increase. We marched towards the poorer areas, and, usually at a narrow alley or a particular intersection, "they" would come, attacking us with knives and clubs. The demonstrators would disperse, only to reorganize quietly farther up the street. We walked the meandering streets and unpaved winding alleys and suddenly "they" would come again and attack us at the point of another intersection, with their knives drawn, and we would run again, and again we would meet at some other point a few blocks away.

I remember one day particularly well. I had left home early with Bijan; he dropped me off near the university on his way to work. A few blocks before the university, I noticed a group, mainly young people, carrying signs and walking towards campus. I noticed Na.s.srin, whom I had not seen for a few weeks. She had some leaflets in her hand and was walking in the front row. At a certain street corner, she and another girl separated from the group and turned into the street. I suddenly remembered that Na.s.srin had never given me her promised paper on Gatsby; Gatsby; she had dropped out of my life as suddenly as she had entered it. I wondered if I would ever see her again. she had dropped out of my life as suddenly as she had entered it. I wondered if I would ever see her again.

I found myself walking with a group of chanting students who had appeared magically. Suddenly, we heard the sound of bullets, which seemed to be coming out of nowhere. The bullets were real. One moment we were standing in front of the wide iron gate of the university and then I found myself running towards the bookstores, most of which had closed because of the unrest. I took cover under the awning of one that was still open. Nearby, a music vendor had left his tape deck running; some singer's mournful voice lamenting his love's betrayal.

That whole day was one long nightmare. I had no sense of time or place and felt myself joining groups that sooner or later dispersed, drifting from one street to another. In the afternoon a large demonstration was convened. It soon became the bloodiest confrontation between students and the government. The government had bused workers in from different factories, in addition to its usual goons and thugs and militia, arming them with batons and knives to stage a counterdemonstration against the students. The workers were chosen because of the leftists' idealization of the proletariat as their natural allies.

Once the guns started to fire, we all ran in different directions. I remember at one point I ran into a former cla.s.smate of mine, my best friend from sixth grade, in fact. In the midst of gunshots and chants we hugged, and chatted about the almost two decades since we had last seen each other. She told me everyone was moving towards the hospital near the University of Tehran, where the bodies of murdered and wounded students were supposedly being kept.

Somehow, I lost her in the crowd and found myself alone on the grounds of the large hospital whose name had recently been changed from Pahlavi, the name of the last shah, to Imam Khomeini. The rumor now was that the police and guards had stolen the bodies of murdered students in order to prevent the news of their death from getting out. The students wanted to storm the hospital to stop the transfer of bodies.

I walked towards the main building, and now in my memory I seem to be forever walking towards that building, never quite reaching it: I was walking in a trance, with people running towards me as well as in the opposite direction. Everyone seemed to have a purpose, some destination in mind-except me; I was walking alone. Suddenly, coming towards me, I saw a familiar face: it was Mahtab.

At that moment as I looked at her, paralyzed and frozen, she looked more than anything like a lost animal in danger. Perhaps it was shock that forced her to walk in a straight line, almost mechanically, and not swerve to the left or right, keeping near perfect balance. Imagine Mahtab walking towards me. Two girls block my view, and then she appears, wearing a loose beige shirt over jeans: she moves into my line of vision and our eyes meet. She was prepared to pa.s.s me by, but she stopped for a short second. So there we were, the two of us, sharing a moment in our ghastly search. She paused to inform me that "they" had managed to hijack the bodies from the hospital morgues. No one knew where the bodies had been transferred. She said this and disappeared, and I did not see her for another seven years.

As I stood there alone on the hospital grounds, with people rushing around me, I had a strange experience: I felt as if my heart had been torn from my body and had landed with a thump in an empty s.p.a.ce, a vast void that I did not know existed. I felt tired and frightened. The fear was not of bullets: they were too immediate. I was scared of some lack, as if the future were receding from me.

25.

The students kept a vigil on the grounds of the university, to prevent it from closing down. They kept their vigil until, in what almost amounted to a b.l.o.o.d.y battle-although the government forces were the only ones with guns-they were evacuated and the militia, the Revolutionary Guards and the police conquered the university grounds.

It was during one of these vigils that I saw Mr. Bahri. The night was filled with anxiety, as well as the false coziness of such events, as we sat on the ground in close proximity, exchanging jokes, information or stories, sometimes arguing away the pleasantly warm nights. He was standing alone in a dark corner, leaning against a tree. So what do you think of this? I asked him. He smiled a precocious smile and said, No, ma'am, what do you you think? Mr. Bahri, I said slowly. What I think is becoming increasingly irrelevant. So irrelevant, in fact, that I think I will go home, grab a good book and try to get some sleep. think? Mr. Bahri, I said slowly. What I think is becoming increasingly irrelevant. So irrelevant, in fact, that I think I will go home, grab a good book and try to get some sleep.

I knew I had startled him, but I had also startled myself. All of a sudden I felt as if this was not my fight. For most of those present, the excitement of the battle meant almost everything, and I was not excited, not in that way. Did it matter to me who closed the university down, whether it was my leftist students or the Islamic ones? What mattered was that the university should not be closed at all, that it should be allowed to function as a university and not become a battleground for different political forces. But it took me a long time, in fact seventeen more years, to finally digest and formulate this understanding. For the time being, I went home.

Soon after that, the government managed to shut down the universities. They purged the faculty, students and staff. Some students were killed or jailed; others simply disappeared. The University of Tehran had become the seat of too much disappointment, too much sorrow and hurt. Never again would I rush so innocently, so eagerly, to a cla.s.s as I did in those days at the dawn of the revolution.

26.

One day in the spring of 1981-I can still feel the sun and the morning breeze on my cheeks-I became irrelevant. Just over a year after I had returned to my country, my city, my home, I discovered that the same decree that had transformed the single word Iran Iran into the into the Islamic Republic of Iran Islamic Republic of Iran had made me and all that I had been irrelevant. The fact that I shared this fate with many others did not help much. had made me and all that I had been irrelevant. The fact that I shared this fate with many others did not help much.

In fact, I had become irrelevant sometime before then. After the so-called cultural revolution that led to the closing down of universities, I was essentially out of a job. We went to the university, but we had nothing much to do. I took to writing a diary and reading Agatha Christie. I roamed the streets with my American reporter, talking about Mike Gold's Lower East Side and Fitzgerald's West Egg. Instead of cla.s.ses, we were summoned to endless meetings. The administration wanted us to stop working and at the same time to pretend that nothing had changed. Although the universities were closed, the faculty was required to be present and to offer projects to the Committee on the Cultural Revolution.

These were idle days, whose only enduring feature was the lasting friendships we formed with colleagues in our own and other departments. I was the youngest and newest addition to the group and had a great deal to learn. They told me about the pre-revolutionary days, about excitement and hope; they talked about some of their colleagues who had never returned.

The newly elected committee for the implementation of the cultural revolution visited the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences and the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature at the auditorium in the School of Law. Despite the formal and informal instructions to the female faculty and staff on the issue of the veil, until that day most women at our university had not obeyed the new rules. That meeting was the first I had attended at which all the female partic.i.p.ants wore head scarves. All, that is, except three: Farideh, Laleh and me. We were independent and considered eccentric, so the three of us went to that meeting unveiled.

The three members of the Committee on the Cultural Revolution sat rather uncomfortably on the very high stage. Their expressions were by turns haughty, nervous and defiant. That meeting was the last at the University of Tehran in which the faculty openly criticized the government and its policies regarding higher education. Most were rewarded for their impertinence by being expelled.

Farideh, Laleh and I sat together conspicuously, like naughty children. We whispered, we consulted one another, we kept thrusting our hands up to talk. Farideh took the committee to task for using the university grounds to torture and intimidate the students. I told the Revolutionary Committee that my integrity as a teacher and a woman was being compromised by its insistence that I wear the veil under false pretenses for a few thousand tumans a month. The issue was not so much the veil itself as freedom of choice. My grandmother had refused to leave the house for three months when she was forced to unveil. I would be similarly adamant in my own refusal. Little did I know that I would soon be given the choice of either veiling or being jailed, flogged and perhaps killed if I disobeyed.

After that meeting, one of my more pragmatic colleagues, a "modern" woman, who decided to take up the veil and stayed there for another seventeen years after I was gone, told me with a hint of sarcasm in her voice, "You are fighting a losing battle. Why lose your job over an issue like this? In another couple of weeks you will be forced to wear the veil in the grocery stores."

The simplest answer, of course, was that the university was not a grocery store. But she was right. Soon we would be forced to wear it everywhere. And the morality squads, with their guns and Toyota patrols, would guard the streets to ensure our adherence. On that sunny day, however, when my colleagues and I made our protest known, these incidents did not seem to be preordained. So much of the faculty protested, we thought we might yet win.

We left the meeting with a feeling of jubilance. The committee had clearly been defeated: their responses had been lame, and as the meeting progressed, they became more incoherent and defensive. When we emerged from the a.s.sembly hall, Mr. Bahri was waiting for me with a friend. He did not talk to my other colleagues but directed all his comments towards me. He did not understand it: how could I do this? Were we not friends? Yes, we were friends, but this really wasn't personal-not in that way. Don't you see, you are unconsciously helping the enemy, the imperialists? he said mournfully. Is it too much to ask you to comply with a few rules to save the revolution? I could have asked him whose revolution, but I didn't. Farideh, Laleh and I were too euphoric, and we were going out to lunch to celebrate.

A few months after that, committees were established that led to the purging of some of the best faculty and students. Dr. A would resign and leave for the United States. Farideh would be expelled and later would go to Europe. The bright young professor whom I had met that first day in Dr. A's office was also expelled in due time-I met him eleven years later, at a conference in Austin, Texas. Of the old group, only Laleh and I would remain, and soon we too would be expelled. The government would make the veil mandatory and put more students and faculty members on trial. I went to one more demonstration, called by the Mujahideen but supported by all the opposition forces, except the Communist Tudeh Party and the Fedayin Organization. By then, the first president of the Republic was in hiding and would soon flee the country. Over half a million partic.i.p.ated in what turned out to be one of the bloodiest battles of the revolution. Over a thousand people were arrested, many, including teenagers, executed on the spot. Eight days later, on June 28, the Islamic Republic Party's headquarters were bombed, and over eighty of its members and top leaders in the government were killed. The government took revenge by executing and arresting individuals almost randomly.

Oddly, when the university administration began the process of my dismissal, it was not secular colleagues but Mr. Bahri and his friends-former students who almost all got F's that semester for not attending cla.s.ses-who defended me and delayed my expulsion for as long as they could.

The feelings I thought I had left behind returned when, almost nineteen years later, the Islamic regime would once again turn against its students. This time it would open fire on those it had admitted to the universities, those who were its own children, the children of the revolution. Once more my students would go to the hospitals in search of the murdered bodies that were stolen by the guards and vigilantes and try to prevent them from stealing the wounded. Only this time I was walking those grounds in my imagination as I read faxes and e-mails in my office in Washington, D.C., from my former students in Iran, trying to decipher something beyond the hysteria of their words.

I would like to know where Mr. Bahri is right now, at this moment, and to ask him: how did it all turn out, Mr. Bahri-was this your dream, your dream of the revolution? Who will pay for all those ghosts in my memory? Who will pay for the snapshots of the murdered and the executed that we hid in our shoes and closets as we moved on to other things? Tell me, Mr. Bahri-or, to use that odd expression of Gatsby's, Tell me, old sport-what shall we do with all these corpses on our hands?

PART III.

James

1.

The war came one morning, suddenly and unexpectedly. It was announced on September 23, 1980, the day before the opening of schools and universities: we were in the car returning to Tehran from a trip to the Caspian Sea when we heard about the Iraqi attack on the radio. It all started very simply. The newscaster announced it matter-of-factly, the way people announce a birth or a death, and we accepted it as an irrevocable fact that would permeate all other considerations and gradually insinuate itself into the four corners of our lives. How many events go into that unexpected and decisive moment when you wake up one morning and discover that your life has forever been changed by forces beyond your control?

What triggered the war? Was it the arrogance of the new Islamic revolutionaries, who kept provoking what they deemed to be reactionary and heretical regimes in the Middle East and inciting the people of those countries to revolutionary uprisings? Was it the fact that the new regime held a special animosity towards Saddam Hussein, who had expelled the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini from Iraq after reportedly making a deal with the Shah? Was it the old hostility between Iraq and Iran and the fact that the Iraqis, with promises of support from a West hostile to Iran's new revolutionary government, dreamed of a swift and sweet victory?

In retrospect, when historical events are gathered up, a.n.a.lyzed and categorized into articles and books, their messiness disappears and they gain a certain logic and clarity that one never feels at the time. For me, as for millions of ordinary Iranians, the war came out of nowhere one mild fall morning: unexpected, unwelcome and utterly senseless.

All through that fall I took long walks around the wide, leafy alleys near our home, surrounded by scented gardens and meandering streams, and thought of my own ambivalence towards the war, for my anger was mixed with feelings of love and a desire to protect my home and country. One September evening-it was that twilight moment between seasons, when for a very short time the air is filled with a mixture of summer and fall-I was diverted from my thoughts by the colors of a magnificent sunset unfolding in front of me. I happened to catch the play of fading light between the thin branches of a creeper on a nearby clump of trees. I stood there watching the diaphanous reflection of the sunset until two pa.s.sersby, walking from the opposite direction, distracted me and I continued on my way.

Down the slope of the street, on the wall to my right, in big black letters, was a quotation from Ayatollah Khomeini: THIS WAR IS A GREAT BLESSING FOR US! THIS WAR IS A GREAT BLESSING FOR US! I registered the slogan in anger. A great blessing for whom? I registered the slogan in anger. A great blessing for whom?

2.

The war with Iraq began that September and did not end until late July 1988. Everything that happened to us during those eight years of war, and the direction our lives took afterward, was in some way shaped by this conflict. It was not the worst war in the world, although it left over a million dead and injured. At first the war seemed to pull the divided country together: we were all Iranian and the enemy had attacked our homeland. But even in this, many were not allowed to partic.i.p.ate fully. From the regime's point of view, the enemy had attacked not just Iran; it had attacked the Islamic Republic, and it had attacked Islam.

The polarization created by the regime confused every aspect of life. Not only were the forces of G.o.d fighting an emissary of Satan, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, but they were also fighting agents of Satan inside the country. At all times, from the very beginning of the revolution and all through the war and after, the Islamic regime never forgot its holy battle against its internal enemies. All forms of criticism were now considered Iraqi-inspired and dangerous to national security. Those groups and individuals without a sense of loyalty to the regime's brand of Islam were excluded from the war effort. They could be killed or sent to the front, but they could not voice their social or political preferences. There were only two forces in the world, the army of G.o.d and that of Satan.

Thus every event, every social gesture, also embodied a symbolic allegiance. The new regime had reached far beyond the romantic symbolism more or less prevalent in every political system to inhabit a realm of pure myth, with devastating consequences. The Islamic Republic was not merely modeled on the order established by the Prophet Muhammad during his reign over Arabia; it was the Prophet's rule itself. Iran's war with Iraq was the same as the war carried on by the third and most militant imam, Imam Hussein, against the infidels, and the Iranians were going to conquer Karballa, the holy city in Iraq where Imam Hussein's shrine was located. The Iranian battalions were named after the Prophet or the Twelve Shiite Saints; they were the army of Ali, Hussein and Mahdy, the twelfth imam, whose arrival the Shia Muslims awaited, and the military a.s.saults against Iraq were invariably code-named after Muhammad's celebrated battles. Ayatollah Khomeini was not a religious or political leader but an imam in his own right.

In those days, I had become an avid and insatiable collector. I saved pictures of martyrs, young men, some mere children, published in the daily papers beside the wills they had made before going to the front. I cut out Ayatollah Khomeini's praise of the thirteen-year-old boy who had thrown himself in front of an enemy tank and collected accounts of young men who were given keys to heaven to wear around their neck as they were sent off to the front: they were told that when they were martyred, they would go straight to heaven. What had begun with an impulse to record events in my diary turned gradually into a greedy and feverish act of h.o.a.rding, as if through such actions I could place a jinx on forces beyond my control and impose upon them my own rhyme and reason.

It took us a while to understand what the war really meant, although the radio, television and papers were filled with it. They encouraged people to take advantage of the blackouts and used a system of alarms to instruct us: after the red siren a voice would say, "Attention! Attention! This is the alarm. Please go to your shelters . . ." Shelters? What shelters? Never once during the eight years of war did the government create a cohesive program for the safety and security of its citizens. Shelters meant the bas.e.m.e.nts or the lower levels of apartment houses that sometimes buried you. Yet most of us did not realize our own vulnerability until later, when Tehran was also hit, like the other cities.

Our ambivalent att.i.tude towards the war mainly stemmed from our ambivalence towards the regime. In those first air raids against Tehran, a house in the affluent part of the city was. .h.i.t. It was rumored that its bas.e.m.e.nt had been occupied by anti-government guerrillas. Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of the Parliament, in an effort to appease the frightened population, claimed in a Friday prayer ceremony that the bombing so far had done no real harm, as its victims were the "arrogant rich and subversives," who probably would have been executed sooner or later anyway. He also recommended that women dress properly when sleeping, so that if their houses were hit, they would not be "indecently exposed to strangers' eyes."

3.

"Let's celebrate!" my friend Laleh cried before sitting down at a table in our favorite restaurant, where I had been waiting for her. This was a few weeks after our encounter with the Committee on the Cultural Revolution, and by now we knew it was only a matter of time before we would either have to comply with the rules or be expelled. Since the government had recently made the veil mandatory at the workplace, I did not see much reason for her exuberance. Celebrate what? I wanted to know. "Today"-she paused and took an excited breath-"after nine years-eight and a half, to be exact-I was formally expelled from the university. I am now officially irrelevant, as you would put it, so lunch is on me! Since we can't drink publicly to my newly acquired status, let's eat ourselves to death," she added in a brave effort to make light of a development that would leave her penniless and, more important, force her to give up a job she loved and was good at. Stiff upper lip, I believe they call it. Well, this stiff upper lip was becoming quite a trend among friends and colleagues.

She had gone to the university that day to discuss her situation with the head of the Psychology Department, where she had been teaching since her return from Germany a few years earlier, and she had not worn a head scarf, of course. Of course! The guard at the gate had called out to her from inside his cage. As I imagine it now, the guard's post is literally a cage, a large protrusion of bars, but it may have been more of an outpost; made of metal perhaps? Or cement? With a window and a side door? I could pick up the phone and call Laleh, who two years ago finally moved to the U.S. and now lives in Los Angeles. I could ask her; she, unlike me, has a very precise memory.

Have you come across that new guard? she asked me, a limp captive lettuce leaf dangling from the end of her fork. The clumsy one with a mournful countenance. The very big one . . . She was trying to avoid using the word fat. fat. No, I had not had the pleasure of meeting the aforementioned guard. Anyhow, he is of Oliver Hardy dimensions. Bigger, she said, chewing now on her lettuce with ferocious determination. But the resemblance ends there. I mean, this guy was flabby but not jovial, one of those dour, mirthless overweight men who don't even enjoy their food-you know the type. No, I had not had the pleasure of meeting the aforementioned guard. Anyhow, he is of Oliver Hardy dimensions. Bigger, she said, chewing now on her lettuce with ferocious determination. But the resemblance ends there. I mean, this guy was flabby but not jovial, one of those dour, mirthless overweight men who don't even enjoy their food-you know the type.

Could you please lay off the guard of the mournful countenance, I pleaded with her, and get on with your story? She attacked a small cherry tomato that kept slipping from under her fork and did not begin again until she had finally speared it. He came out of his cage, Laleh at last continued, and said, Ma'am, your I.D. please. So I took out my I.D. and waved it in his face and started walking, but then he called me again. Ma'am, you know you can't go in like this? I said, I've been going in through this gate like this like this for the past eight years. No, ma'am, you have to have a head cover-new orders. That's my problem, I said, not yours. But he wouldn't let it rest. I am authorized to stop any woman who-at this point I interrupted him. I am not for the past eight years. No, ma'am, you have to have a head cover-new orders. That's my problem, I said, not yours. But he wouldn't let it rest. I am authorized to stop any woman who-at this point I interrupted him. I am not any woman any woman! I said with all the authority I could muster.

It's right here, he protested, a written order signed by the president himself, that no girl, he corrected himself-no woman-is to pa.s.s in your condition. He said in your condition in your condition? I asked. Yep, that's what he said. I took another step; he blocked my way. I took a step to the right; he took a step to the right. I stopped; he stopped. For a few seconds we stood there looking at each other, and then he said, If you go through in that condition I will be held responsible. In what what condition? I asked him. The last time I checked, I was the condition? I asked him. The last time I checked, I was the only only person responsible for my condition, so don't you go around claiming responsibility for me. I don't know what perversion made me argue with this poor guy, said Laleh, her hand now trembling in excitement, and to tell him things he couldn't possibly understand. For a few minutes we just stood there, and then, on a sudden impulse, I looked over his shoulder to the left and, as he turned around, I ducked and started to run. To run? Yes, I ran. person responsible for my condition, so don't you go around claiming responsibility for me. I don't know what perversion made me argue with this poor guy, said Laleh, her hand now trembling in excitement, and to tell him things he couldn't possibly understand. For a few minutes we just stood there, and then, on a sudden impulse, I looked over his shoulder to the left and, as he turned around, I ducked and started to run. To run? Yes, I ran.

At this point we were served our veal scallopini and mashed potatoes. Laleh began to search for some hidden treasure in her potatoes, making investigative circles with her inquisitive fork. I thought he'd give up, she said at last. I mean, all he had to do was take the b.l.o.o.d.y phone and call the higher authorities. But no, not him. I stopped for a second to look back to see if he had fallen off, but there he was, and I swear, he pulled his belt up and swung his hips from side to side. He swung his hips? He swung his hips? Honestly, he did. She made a swinging movement with her fork inside the mashed potatoes. And then he started to run after me, she said. Honestly, he did. She made a swinging movement with her fork inside the mashed potatoes. And then he started to run after me, she said.

Laleh and the fat guard had sprinted across the wide, leafy avenues of the university. Every once in a while Laleh would look back to see if he was still at it, but she swore that every time she stopped, rather than trying to catch up with her, he'd come to a halt, as if pushing invisible brakes to a sudden stop, then he'd pull his belt up, do the thing with his hips, and continue the chase. He reminded me, she said, of a panting, clumsy giant fish.

Laleh ran by three startled students, made it down the short steps leading to the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature, nearly toppled herself as her heel caught in a crack, pa.s.sed the wide open area in front of the building, ran up past the open door into the cool, dark hall and up the wide flights of stairs to the second floor, where she came to a sudden halt at the entrance to the Department of Psychology and nearly fell into the arms of her department head, who was standing in the doorway talking to a colleague. He tried to cover his embarra.s.sment by exclaiming, What's the matter, Professor Na.s.sri, has there been an uprising? A few moments later the dutiful guard, sweat trickling down his cheeks like tears of desperation, his cap in his hand, came to a grinding halt by the door. There he made his explanations and the department head, not knowing whether to laugh or frown, dismissed him, promising to make a proper report to the proper authorities. An hour later Laleh had emerged from the door of the department, walked back to the entrance gate and, without so much as glancing at the guard, had marched out, a free woman.

A free woman? Yes, I was given a choice, to immediately comply with the rules or be sacked. I chose not to comply, so now I am a free woman. What will you do? I asked, as if I were not myself in exactly the same position. I don't know. She shrugged. I guess I will go back to sewing or baking cakes.

This was the astonishing thing about Laleh. She looked like the last person in the world to bake a cake, but she was an accomplished tailor, and a fantastic cook. The first time I met her, she struck me as everything that I was not: tidy and rather dry, the kind of person you would call correct. Her German education added to this illusion. I used to tease her that the word immaculate immaculate had been created for her. When I got to know her better, I came to see that all this orderliness was a camouflage for a pa.s.sionate nature matched by insatiable desires. had been created for her. When I got to know her better, I came to see that all this orderliness was a camouflage for a pa.s.sionate nature matched by insatiable desires.

Her hair was thick and obstinately unmanageable: it would not succ.u.mb to comb, brush, gels, even perms. Yet she tamed it through hours of painstaking straightening and styling, giving her the appearance of an exacting and foreboding matron. I have to either shave my head or do it this way, she would tell me, her voice tainted with exasperation. Only her big black eyes, flickering with mischievous designs, belied her otherwise conservative appearance. Later, when she would climb the trees with my three-year-old daughter, I could see the amount of discipline it must have taken for her to control her wayward longings.

As it happened, she was forced to make a living from her sewing for almost two years. She was not granted a license to practice child psychology, her specialty, and she had refused to teach with the veil. So she took up sewing, a task she abhorred, and for a while I and our other friends would go around wearing pretty chintz skirts with beautiful flower patterns, until a friend asked her to work at her school.

Our appet.i.tes that day seemed insatiable: Laleh ordered a creme caramel and I two scoops of ice cream, vanilla and coffee, with Turkish coffee and a side of walnuts. I sprinkled my walnuts thoughtfully over the coffee-drenched ice cream. We brooded over the fact that in our department, Farideh had been expelled, and Dr. A had left for the States. Our more cautious colleagues, who had managed to remain unscathed, said that Farideh's expulsion was more a result of her headstrong resistance, a certain mulishness as one colleague creatively put it, than the administration's efforts.

4.

A few days later I went to the University of Tehran for one more meeting with Mr. Bahri. He had asked for this meeting, hoping to convince me to comply with the new rules. I was fully prepared for a running contest at the gate, but to my surprise I was not accorded the same treatment as Laleh. The morose guard on duty was not the one she had described. He was neither lean nor fat; he did not even ask for my I.D. He simply pretended not to see me. I had my suspicions that Mr. Bahri had warned him not to interfere.

The conference room looked and felt just as it had when I first met Mr. Bahri to discuss the role of literature and revolution: large, cool and bare, with a dusty feel to it, although, except for the long table and twelve chairs, there were no surfaces to collect dust. Mr. Bahri and his friend were already sitting near the middle of the table, facing the door. They both stood up when I entered, and waited until I had taken a seat before settling back down. I chose to position myself opposite them.

Mr. Bahri did not take long to get to the point. He mentioned Laleh's escapade and the administration's admirable patience with "this sort of behavior." All through the meeting his eyes appeared to be glued to a black fountain pen, which he kept turning around and around in his hands like a curious object whose mystery he was hoping to fathom. He and his friends were well aware that before the revolution, whenever Professor Na.s.sri went to the poorer, more traditional areas of town, she wore a scarf. Yes, she did this out of respect for those people's faith, I said coldly, and not because it was mandatory. All through this talk, Mr. Bahri's friend remained almost completely silent.

Mr. Bahri could not understand why we were making such a fuss over a piece of cloth. Did we not see that there were more important issues to think about, that the whole life of the revolution was at stake? What was more important, to fight against the satanic influence of Western imperialists or to obstinately hold on to a personal preference that created division among the ranks of the revolutionaries? These might not have been his exact words, but they were the gist of his language. In those days, people really talked that way. One had a feeling, in revolutionary and intellectual circles, that they spoke from a script, playing characters from an Islamized version of a Soviet novel.

It was ironic that Mr. Bahri, the defender of the faith, described the veil as a piece of cloth. I had to remind him that we had to have more respect for that "piece of cloth" than to force it on reluctant people. What did he imagine our students would think of us if they saw us wearing the veil when we had sworn never to do so? Would they not say that we had sold out our beliefs for a few thousand tumans a month? What would you think, Mr. Bahri?

What could he think? A stern ayatollah, a blind and improbable philosopher-king, had decided to impose his dream on a country and a people and to re-create us in his own myopic vision. So he had formulated an ideal of me as a Muslim woman, as a Muslim woman teacher, and wanted me to look, act and in short live according to that ideal. Laleh and I, in refusing to accept that ideal, were taking not a political stance but an existential one. No, I could tell Mr. Bahri, it was not that piece of cloth that I rejected, it was the transformation being imposed upon me that made me look in the mirror and hate the stranger I had become.

I think that day I realized how futile it was to "discuss" my views with Mr. Bahri. How could one argue against the representative of G.o.d on earth? Mr. Bahri, for the time being at least, derived his energy from the undeniable fact that he was on the side of Right; I was at best a stray sinner. For a few months I had seen it coming, but I think it was that day, after I left Mr. Bahri and his friend, that it first hit me how irrelevant I had become.

When I left the room, I did not make the mistake of trying to shake his hand. Mr. Bahri walked with me like a polite host seeing an honored guest to the door, his hands firmly clasped behind his back. I kept repeating, Please don't bother, and almost toppled down the stairs in my eagerness to get away. When I had nearly reached the first floor, I looked back. He was still standing there, in his frayed brown suit, his Mao shirt b.u.t.toned up to the neck, hands behind his back, gazing down at me with a look of perplexity. A lover's good-bye, Laleh would later mischievously say as I told her my story over another dish of ice cream, this time in the cool of her living room.

When I left Mr. Bahri that afternoon, I walked for about forty-five minutes and stopped by my favorite English bookstore. I went in there on a sudden inspiration, fearful that I might not have the opportunity to do so in the near future. And I was right: only a few months later, the Revolutionary Guards raided the bookstore and closed it down. The big iron bolt and chain they installed on the door signified the finality of their action.

I started picking books up with a greedy urgency. I went after the paperbacks, collecting almost all the Jameses and all six novels by Austen. I picked up Howards End Howards End and and A Room with a View. A Room with a View. Then I went after ones I had not read, four novels by Heinrich Boll, and some I had read a long time ago Then I went after ones I had not read, four novels by Heinrich Boll, and some I had read a long time ago-Vanity Fair and and The Adventures of Roderick Random, Humboldt's Gift The Adventures of Roderick Random, Humboldt's Gift and and Henderson the Rain King. Henderson the Rain King. I picked up a bilingual selection of Rilke's poems and Nabokov's I picked up a bilingual selection of Rilke's poems and Nabokov's Speak, Memory. Speak, Memory. I even lingered for a while debating over an unexpurgated copy of I even lingered for a while debating over an unexpurgated copy of f.a.n.n.y Hill. f.a.n.n.y Hill. Then I went after the mysteries. I picked up some Dorothy Sayers and, to my utter delight, found Then I went after the mysteries. I picked up some Dorothy Sayers and, to my utter delight, found Trent's Last Case, Trent's Last Case, two or three new Agatha Christies, a selection of Ross Macdonalds, all of Raymond Chandler and two Dashiell Hammetts. two or three new Agatha Christies, a selection of Ross Macdonalds, all of Raymond Chandler and two Dashiell Hammetts.

I didn't have enough money to pay for them all. I took the few I could afford and refused the bookstore owner's very gallant offer to take the rest on credit. As he placed the books I had put on hold in two large paper bags, he smiled with amus.e.m.e.nt and told me, Don't worry; no one is going to take these away from you. No one knows who they are anymore. Besides, who wants to read them now, at this time?

Who indeed? People like me seemed as irrelevant as Fitzgerald was to Mike Gold, or Nabokov to Stalin's Soviet Union, or James to the Fabian Society, or Austen to the revolutionaries of her time. In the taxi, I took out the few books I had paid for and surveyed their covers, caressing their glossy surfaces, so giving to the touch. I knew that my meeting with Mr. Bahri meant it would only be a matter of time before I was expelled. I decided I would stop going to the university until they expelled me. Now that I would have a great deal of time on my hands, I could read without any feelings of guilt.

5.

The government didn't take long to pa.s.s new regulations restricting women's clothing in public and forcing us to wear either a chador or a long robe and scarf. Experience had proven that the only way these regulations would be heeded was if they were implemented by force. Because of women's overwhelming objection to the laws, the government enforced the new rule first in the workplaces and later in shops, which were forbidden from transacting with unveiled women. Disobedience was punished by fines, up to seventy-six lashes and jail terms. Later, the government created the notorious morality squads: four armed men and women in white Toyota patrols, monitoring the streets, ensuring the enforcement of the laws.

As I try now to piece together the disjointed and incoherent events of that period, I notice how my growing sense that I was descending into an abyss or void was accompanied by two momentous events that happened simultaneously: the war and the loss of my teaching job. I had not realized how far the routines of one's life create the illusion of stability. Now that I could not call myself a teacher, a writer, now that I could not wear what I would normally wear, walk in the streets to the beat of my own body, shout if I wanted to or pat a male colleague on the back on the spur of the moment, now that all this was illegal, I felt light and fictional, as if I were walking on air, as if I had been written into being and then erased in one quick swipe.

This new feeling of unreality led me to invent new games, survival games I would now call them. My constant obsession with the veil had made me buy a very wide black robe that covered me down to my ankles, with kimonolike sleeves, wide and long. I had gotten into the habit of withdrawing my hands into the sleeves and pretending that I had no hands. Gradually, I pretended that when I wore the robe, my whole body disappeared: my arms, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, stomach and legs melted and disappeared and what was left was a piece of cloth the shape of my body that moved here and there, guided by some invisible force.

The beginning of this game I can trace back quite specifically to the day I went to the Ministry of Higher Education with a friend who wanted to have her diploma validated. They searched us from head to foot and of the many s.e.xual molestations I have had to suffer in my life, this was among the worst. The female guard told me to hold my hands up, up and up, she said, as she started to search me meticulously, going over every part of my body. She objected to the fact that I seemed to be wearing almost nothing under the robe. I explained to her that what I wore under my robe was none of her business. She took a tissue and told me to rub my cheeks clean of the muck I was wearing. I explained that I wore no muck. Then she took the tissue herself and rubbed it against my cheeks, and since she did not achieve the desired results, because I had not worn any makeup, as I had told her, she rubbed it even harder, until I thought she might be trying to rub my skin off.