Reading Lolita in Tehran: Part II

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.

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...

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 revolutionary cant and romantic atmosphere were infectious, and the Iranian students were at the forefront of the struggle.

They wanted us to avoid the bourgeois habits of studying.

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.

I was greeted with a bemused smile and offered a seat.

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.

It seemed as if with this act, the Islamic faction asserted 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.

One memory curls itself wantonly and imperceptibly around me, teasing me seductively.

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.

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.

The jubilant mood of celebration and freedom that had followed the Shah’s overthrow soon gave way to apprehension and fear as the regime continued to execute and murder “anti-revolutionaries” and a new vigilante justice emerged as bands of self-organized militants terrorized the streets.

When in the States we had shouted Death to this or that, those deaths seemed to be more symbolic, more abstract, as if we were encouraged by the impossibility of our slogans to insist upon them even more. But in Tehran in 1979, these slogans were turning into reality with macabre precision.

Meetings and demonstrations were constantly staged at the university for various reasons; almost every week classes were either boycotted or canceled on the smallest pretext.

The secularists and liberals were being ousted, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s rhetoric against the Great Satan and its domestic agents was growing more virulent every day.

As I look over the pages of my diary, written in different colored inks in a notebook with a black plastic cover, I find the despair that never impinged upon the surface of my life.

In rejecting Bakhtiar and helping to replace the Pahlavi dynasty with a far more reactionary and despotic regime, both the Iranian people and the intellectual elites had shown at best a serious error in judgment.

He was not an agitator—he did not give fine, passionate speeches—but he worked his way up doggedly, with patience and dedication.

He cautiously tried to make me understand what political Islam meant, and I rebuffed him, because it was exactly Islam as a political entity that I rejected.

He was baffled by Hemingway, felt ambivalent about Fitzgerald, loved Twain and thought we should have a national writer like him.

Art is no longer snobbish or cowardly. It teaches peasants to use tractors, gives lyrics to young soldiers, designs textiles for factory women’s dresses, writes burlesque for factory theatres, does a hundred other useful tasks.

I did not want to enter a debate with Mahtab and her friends, whose Marxist organization had tacitly taken sides with the government, denouncing the protesters as deviant, divisive and ultimately acting in the service of the imperialists.

Somehow I found myself arguing not with Mr. Bahri but with them, the ostensibly progressive ones.

I called Mr. Bahri, who walked towards me with respect, gracefully dissimulating any irritation he might have felt at this disruption.

But even those whom he called the functionaries of the old regime, regardless of their guilt, shouldn’t be treated this way.

We should teach Iranian students to fight against American immorality, he said. He looked earnest; he had come to me in all goodwill.

Her looks clashed with her solemn expression, which was neutral and adamantly impenetrable.

Nassrin demurred at first, and then she said: I’m not that good.

“He has given them a sacred mission, much more exalted than that of the materialistic writers in the West. If our Imam is the shepherd who guides the flock to its pasture, then the writers are the faithful watchdogs who must lead according to the shepherd’s dictates.”

“It is true that Gatsby recognizes that money is one of Daisy’s attractions. He is in fact the one who draws Nick’s attention to the fact that in the charm of her voice is the jingle of money. But this novel is not about a poor young charlatan’s love of money.”

I felt uncomfortable, even shy, and reluctant to talk. Zarrin had been doing a great job, and it seemed to me there was no need for my pontifications.

He was almost blue in the face with anger and indignation, and was accusing her in turn of being a liar and a fool.

She had not learned from reading it that adultery was good or that we should all become shysters.

Fires were set to publishing houses and bookstores for disseminating immoral works of fiction.

By the way, you should be thankful to your young protégé.

When he spoke again, it was to say that he felt one single film by Laurel and Hardy was worth more than all their revolutionary tracts, including those of Marx and Lenin.

The city, like Daisy, has in it a promise, a mirage that when reached becomes debased and corrupted.

In the end, the best ideals and the most sordid of realities all come together.

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.