by Azar Nafisi
We all agreed that this was a factional fight and that the culprit most likely worked for some high officials. That would explain how, at such a young age, he could afford the exorbitant rent, the opium and the antique cars in his garage. The hospital guards were told he was one of the terrorists responsible for some of the assassinations in Paris over the past ten years. It was predicted by our self-appointed investigative committee that he would soon be released. As it turned out, these predictions were correct: not only was he released, but he came to our door one day soon after his return and tried to persuade Tahereh Khanoom to lodge a complaint against the Revolutionary Committee members who had barged into our house to arrest him, something we did not do.
That night, as my husband and I were drinking tea at yet another meeting convened at our neighbor’s house, the children, intrigued by the events of the day, decided to inspect all the scenes of the skirmish. In the process, they discovered in the toolshed a small tape recorder in the arrested man’s black leather jacket, which he had hidden there. We were law-abiding citizens and, after listening to an incomprehensible conversation about some trucks, we handed the tape recorder and the jacket over to the Committee, despite passionate protests from the children.
This story was repeated many times, including the following Thursday, when Tahereh Khanoom and my children, who had by then lost their shy curiosity—and with it the necessary decorum to keep them off the premises during my class—re-enacted the scene to an eager and smiling audience. It was interesting to see that “they,” the Committee men, were so helpless, so bungling and unprofessional. As Yassi pointed out, we had seen better action movies. Still, it was no consolation to learn that our lives were in the hands of bungling fools. Despite all the jokes and the power we felt then, the house became a little less secure after that, and for a long time we were startled by the sound of the doorbell.
In fact, the bell became like a warning from that other world we had tried to turn into a joke. It was only a few months later when the sound of another bell brought two more Committee members to our house. They were there to raid our house and to take our satellite dish away. This time there were no heroics: when they left, our house was in semi-mourning. My daughter, in response to my admonition about her spoiled attitude, asked me with bitter disdain how I could possibly understand her affliction. When I was her age, she said, was I punished for wearing colored shoelaces, for running in the school yard, for licking ice cream in public?
All this was discussed in my class the following Thursday, in detail. Again we skipped back and forth between our lives and novels: was it surprising that we so appreciated Invitation to a Beheading? We were all victims of the arbitrary nature of a totalitarian regime that constantly intruded into the most private corners of our lives and imposed its relentless fictions on us. Was this rule the rule of Islam? What memories were we creating for our children? This constant assault, this persistent lack of kindness, was what frightened me most.
20
A few months earlier, Manna and Nima had come to me for advice. They had saved some money and had to choose between buying some “necessities of life,” as they put it, or a satellite dish. They had very little money and they had saved what little they had from private tutoring. After four years of marriage, like many other young couples, they could not afford to live on their own. They lived with Manna’s mother and younger sister. I don’t remember what advice I gave them that day, but I know that shortly afterward they bought a satellite dish. They were euphoric about their satellite dish, and every day after that I would hear about a new American classic they had watched the night before.
Satellite dishes were becoming the rage all over Iran. It was not merely people like me, or the educated classes, who craved them. Tahereh Khanoom informed us that in the poorer, more religious sections of Tehran, the family with a dish would rent out certain programs to their neighbors. I remember that when I was on a visit to the United States in 1996, David Hasselhoff, the star of Baywatch, bragged that his show was the most popular show in Iran.
Manna and Nima were never, strictly speaking, my students. Both were working towards their master’s degree in English literature at the University of Tehran. They had read my articles and had heard about my classes from some friends, and one day they just appeared in class. They asked me afterward if they could audit my courses. After that, they attended every hour of every class I taught, as well as my talks and public lectures. I would see them at those lectures, mostly standing near the door, always with a smile. I felt their smiles were meant to encourage me to continue talking about Nabokov and Bellow and Fielding, that they were meant to tell me how crucial it was that I should go on doing so at all costs to myself or them.
They had met at the University of Shiraz and had fallen in love in large part because of their common interest in literature and their isolation from university life in general. Manna later explained how their attachment was based, more than anything else, on words. During their courtship they wrote letters and read poetry to each other. They became addicted to the secure world they created through words, a conspiratorial world in which everything that was hostile and uncontrollable became soft and articulated. She was writing her thesis on Virginia Woolf and the Impressionists; he, on Henry James.
Manna used to get excited in a very quiet way; her happiness seemed to come from some unknown depth inside of her. I can still remember the very first day I saw her and Nima in my class. They reminded me of my two children whenever they entered a conspiracy to make me happy. At first Nima was the more talkative of the two. He would walk beside me, and Manna followed a little behind him. Nima would talk and tell stories and I’d notice Manna peering past Nima to catch my reaction. Seldom did she ever volunteer herself to talk. It was only after several months, when at my insistence she showed me some of her poetry, that she was forced to talk to me directly and not through Nima.
I have chosen to give them rhyming names, although their names sound different in real life. Yet I was so used to seeing them together, voicing the same thoughts and feelings, that to me they were like two siblings who had just discovered something wondrous in their back garden, a doorway into a magic kingdom. I was the fairy godmother, the madwoman in whom they could confide.
While we sorted papers and reorganized my office at home, placing the novels side by side, arranging my notes in different files, they shared stories and gossip from the University of Tehran, where I had held a post years before. I knew many of the people they mentioned, including our favorite villain, Professor X, who nurtured a sophisticated and persistent hatred towards them both, Nima and Manna. He was one of the very few professors who had not resigned or been expelled since I had left that university. In the meantime, he thought they did not sufficiently respect him. He had developed an efficient way of solving all of the complicated problems of literary criticism: he put all matters of interpretation to a vote. Since the voting was performed by a show of hands, debates tended to be resolved in his favor.
His principal quarrel with Manna and Nima was sparked by a paper Manna wrote on Robert Frost. At the next session, he informed the class about his various disagreements with her thesis, and asked them to vote on the matter. All of the students except for Manna, Nima and one other voted for the professor’s views. After the vote, the professor turned to Nima and asked him why he was such a turncoat. Was it perhaps because his wife had brainwashed him? The more he questioned them and put their ideas to vote, the more obstinate they became. They brought him books by prominent critics that supported their ideas against his. In one outburst of anger, he expelled them from his class.
One of his students had decided to write his thesis on Lolita. He used no sources, had not read Nabokov, but his thesis fascinated the professor, who had a thing about young girls spoiling the lives of intellectual men. This student wanted to write about how Lolita had seduced Humbert, an “intellectual poet,” and ruined his life. Professor X, with a look of thoughtf
ul intensity, asked the student if he knew about Nabokov’s own sexual perversions. Nima, with ripples of contempt in his voice, mimicked the professor, shaking his head sadly and saying how, in novel after novel, we find the lives of intellectual men being destroyed by flighty females. Manna swore that he kept throwing her poisonous glances as he embarked on his pet subject. Yet despite his views on Nabokov’s flighty young vixens, when this man had been “looking” for a new wife, his main condition had been that her age should not exceed twenty-three. His second wife, duly recruited, was at least two decades younger than he.
21
One Thursday morning so hot that the heat seemed to have permeated the cool of our air-conditioned house, seven of us were talking aimlessly before the class began. We were talking about Sanaz. She had missed class the preceding week without calling to explain, and now we didn’t know if she would come again. No one, not even Mitra, had heard from her. We were speculating that maybe the troublesome brother had hatched a new plot. Sanaz’s brother was by now a constant topic of conversation, one of a series of male villains who resurfaced from week to week.
“Nima tells me we don’t understand the difficulty men face here,” said Manna with a hint of sarcasm. “They too don’t know how to act. Sometimes they act like macho bullies because they feel vulnerable.”
“Well, that’s to an extent true,” I said. “After all, it takes two to create a relationship, and when you make half the population invisible, the other half suffers as well.”
“Can you imagine the kind of man who’d get sexually provoked just by looking at a strand of my hair?” said Nassrin. “Someone who goes crazy at the sight of a woman’s toe . . . wow!” she continued, “My toe as a lethal weapon!”
“Women who cover themselves are aiding and abetting the regime,” said Azin with a defiant flourish.
Mahshid remained silent, her eyes targeting the table’s iron leg.
“And those whose trademark is painting their lips fiery red and flirting with male professors,” said Manna with an icy stare. “I suppose they are doing all this to further the cause?” Azin turned red and said nothing.
“How about genitally mutilating men,” Nassrin suggested coolly, “so as to curb their sexual appetites?” She had been reading Nawal al-Sadawi’s book on brutality against women in some Muslim societies. Sadawi, a doctor, had gone to some lengths to explain the horrendous effects of genitally mutilating young girls in order to curb their sexual appetites. “I was working on this text for my translation project—”
“Your translation project?”
“Yes, don’t you remember? I told my father I was translating Islamic texts into English to help Mahshid.”
“But I thought that was just an excuse so that you could come here,” I said.
“It was, but I decided to do these translations for at least three hours a week, sometimes more, for the extra lies. I reached a compromise with my conscience,” she said with a smile.
“I have to tell you that the Ayatollah himself was no novice in sexual matters,” Nassrin went on. “I’ve been translating his magnum opus, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, and he has some interesting points to make.”
“But it’s already been translated,” said Manna. “What’s the point?”
“Yes,” said Nassrin, “parts of it have been translated, but after it became the butt of party jokes, ever since the embassies abroad found out that people were reading the book not for their edification but for fun, the translations have been very hard to find. And anyway, my translation is thorough—it has references and cross-references to works by other worthies. Did you know that one way to cure a man’s sexual appetites is by having sex with animals? And then there’s the problem of sex with chickens. You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can then eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken’s meat, but it’s okay for a neighbor who lives two doors away. My father would rather I spent my time on such texts than on Jane Austen or Nabokov?” she added, rather mischievously.
We were not startled by Nassrin’s erudite allusions to the works of Ayatollah Khomeini. She was referring to a famous text by Khomeini, the equivalent of his dissertation—required to be written by all who reach the rank of ayatollah—aimed at responding to the questions and dilemmas that could be posed to them by their disciples. Many others before Khomeini had written in almost identical manner. What was disturbing was that these texts were taken seriously by people who ruled us and in whose hands lay our fate and the fate of our country. Every day on national television and radio these guardians of morality and culture would make similar statements and discuss such matters as if they were the most serious themes for contemplation and consideration.
It was in the middle of this scholarly discussion, peppered with loud laughter on Azin’s part and increasing moroseness on Mahshid’s, that we heard the sound of screeching brakes, and I knew that Sanaz was being deposited by her brother. A pause, a car door slamming, the doorbell and a few moments later Sanaz entered, the first words on her lips an apology. She seemed so distraught at being late and having missed the class that she was ready to burst into tears.
I tried to calm her down, and Yassi went into the kitchen to bring her tea. She held a big box of pastries in her hands. What’s this for, Sanaz? It was my turn last week, she said lamely, so I brought it this week instead. I took the pastries from her hand—she was sweating—and she uncoiled her black robe and scarf. She had tied her hair tightly behind her ears with a rubber band. Her face looked naked and forlorn.
Finally she took her usual place, beside Mitra, with a big glass of ice water in her hand and her tea stationed in front of her on the table, and we all waited in silence to hear what she would say. Azin tried to break the silence with a joke. We all thought you’d gone to Turkey for your engagement party and forgot to invite us. Sanaz attempted a smile and took a sip of water instead of responding. She seemed to want to at once say something and reveal nothing. There were tears in her voice before they became visible in her eyes.
Her story was familiar. A fortnight earlier, Sanaz and five of her girlfriends had gone for a two-day vacation by the Caspian Sea. On their first day, they had decided to visit her friend’s fiancé in an adjoining villa. Sanaz kept emphasizing that they were all properly dressed, with their scarves and long robes. They were all sitting outside, in the garden: six girls and one boy. There were no alcoholic beverages in the house, no undesirable tapes or CDs. She seemed to be suggesting that if there had been, they might have deserved the treatment they received at the hands of the Revolutionary Guards.
And then “they” came with their guns, the morality squads, surprising them by jumping over the low walls. They claimed to have received a report of illegal activities, and wanted to search the premises. Unable to find fault with their appearance, one of the guards sarcastically said that looking at them, with their Western attitudes. . . . What is a Western attitude? Nassrin interrupted. Sanaz looked at her and smiled. I’ll ask him next time I run into him. The truth of the matter was that their search for alcoholic beverages, tapes and CDs had led to nothing, but they already had a search warrant and didn’t want it to go to waste. The guards took all of them to a special jail for infractions in matters of morality. There, despite their protests, the girls were kept in a small, dark room, which they shared the first night with several prostitutes and a drug addict. Their jail wardens came into their room two or three times in the middle of the night to wake up those who might have dozed off, and hurled insults at them.
They were held in that room for forty-eight hours. Despite their repeated requests, they were denied the right to call their parents. Apart from brief excursions to the rest room at appointed times, they left the room twice—the first time to be led to a hospital, where they were given virginity tests by a woman gynecol
ogist, who had her students observe the examinations. Not satisfied with her verdict, the guards took them to a private clinic for a second check.
On the third day, their anxious parents in Tehran, unable to locate them, were told by the concierge at their villa that their children might have been killed in a recent car accident. They set off at once to the resort town in search of their daughters, and finally found them. The girls were then given a summary trial, forced to sign a document confessing to sins they had not committed and subjected to twenty-five lashes.
Sanaz, who is very thin, was wearing a T-shirt under her robe. Her jailers jokingly suggested that since she was wearing an extra garment, she might not feel the pain, so they gave her more. For her, the physical pain had been more bearable than the indignity of the virginity tests and her self-loathing at having signed a forced confession. In some perverse way, the physical punishment was a source of satisfaction to her, a compensation for having yielded to those other humiliations.
When they were finally released and taken home by their parents, Sanaz had to deal with another indignity: her brother’s admonitions. What did they expect? How could they let six unruly girls go on a trip without male supervision? Would nobody ever listen to him, just because he was a few years younger than his scatterbrained sister, who should have been married by now? Sanaz’s parents, although sympathetic to her and her ordeal, did have to agree that perhaps it had not been such a good idea to let her go on the trip; not that they did not trust her, but conditions in the country were unsuitable for such indiscretions. On top of everything else, I am now the guilty party, she said. I’ve been deprived of the use of my car and am being chaperoned by my wise younger brother.
I cannot leave Sanaz and her story alone. Time and again I have gone back to it—I still do—re-creating it bit by bit: the garden fence, the six girls and one boy sitting on the veranda, perhaps telling jokes and laughing. And then “they” come. I remember this incident just as I remember so many others from my own life in Iran; I even remember the events people have written or told me about since I left. Strangely, they too have become my own memories.