Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

  3

  I am too much of an academic: I have written too many papers and articles to be able to turn my experiences and ideas into narratives without pontificating. Although that is in fact my urge—to narrate, to reinvent myself along with all those others. As I write the road is clear, the tin man recovers his heart and the lion his courage, but this is not my story. I walk down a different road, whose end I cannot foresee. I know as little about where this road leads as Alice knew when she first ran after the White Rabbit, the one who was wearing a waistcoat and a watch and muttering, “I’m late, I’m late.”

  I could not find a better way of explaining the overall structure of Pride and Prejudice to my classes than to compare it to the eighteenth-century dance, the kind one imagines Darcy and Elizabeth performed in one of the numerous balls they attended. Although balls and dances are instruments of plot in some of Austen’s other novels—in Mansfield Park, for example, and Emma—in no other novel does dance play such a focal role. It is not the specific number of dances that I am concerned with here. As I said, the whole structure of the novel is like a dance, which is both a public and a private act. The atmosphere in Pride and Prejudice does carry the festive air of a ball.

  So the structure is that of dance and digression. It moves in parallels, contrapuntally, in terms not only of events and characters but also settings. First we see Elizabeth in her setting, then we see her out of her setting and in Darcy’s, then we see Darcy in his true setting—each of these shifts in perspective brings them closer. Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth runs parallel to Collins’s proposal. There are also parallels between the characters of Darcy and Wickham. Like a camera, Darcy’s view of Elizabeth pans in to a close-up; in the second part of the novel, the reverse happens as Elizabeth moves closer to Darcy.

  All the main actors are introduced at the first dance, and the conflict sparked there is the tension that will carry us through the novel. Elizabeth becomes Darcy’s enemy at that first dance, when she overhears him telling Bingley she is not handsome enough to dance with. Later, when he meets her at the next ball, he has begun to change his mind, but she refuses his offer to dance. At Netherfield they meet again, and this time they dance, a dance that, despite its civilized appearance, is charged with tension; his attraction to her increases in direct ratio to her repulsion. The discordant notes in their dialogue contradict the smooth movements of their bodies on the dance floor.

  Austen’s protagonists are private individuals set in public places. Their desire for privacy and reflection is continually being adjusted to their situation within a very small community, which keeps them under its constant scrutiny. The balance between the public and the private is essential to this world.

  The backwards-and-forward rhythm of the dance is repeated in the actions and movements of the two protagonists, around whom the plot is shaped. Parallel events bring them closer together and then thrust them apart. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth and Darcy constantly move towards and away from each other. Each time they move forward, the ground is prepared for the next move. Moving backwards is accompanied by a re-appraisal of the former forward move. There is a give-and-take in the dance, a constant adapting to the partner’s needs and steps. Note for example how terrible Mr. Collins is on the dance floor, as is the uncouth Thorpe in Northanger Abbey. Their inability to dance well is a sign of their inability to adapt themselves to the needs of their partners.

  The centrality of dialogue in Pride and Prejudice fits well into the dancelike structure of the novel. It seems that in almost every scene there is an ongoing dialogue between Elizabeth and Darcy. This dialogue is either real or imagined, but it is a constant preoccupation, leading from exchanges with the other to exchanges with the self. This central dialogue, between Elizabeth and Darcy and Elizabeth and herself, is accompanied by a multiplicity of other conversations.

  One of the most wonderful things about Pride and Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are so many different forms of dialogue: between several people, between two people, internal dialogue and dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen’s ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one of the best examples of the democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen’s novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also space—not just space but a necessity—for self-reflection and self-criticism. Such reflection is the cause of change. We needed no message, no outright call for plurality, to prove our point. All we needed was to read and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. This was where Austen’s danger lay.

  It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen’s novels are those who are incapable of genuine dialogue with others. They rant. They lecture. They scold. This incapacity for true dialogue implies an incapacity for tolerance, self-reflection and empathy. Later, in Nabokov, this incapacity takes on monstrous forms in characters such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita and Kinbote in Pale Fire.

  Pride and Prejudice is not poetic, but it has its own cacophonies and harmonies; voices approach and depart and take a turn around the room. Right now, as I flip through the pages, I can hear them leaping out. I catch Mary’s pathetic, dry voice and Kitty’s cough and Miss Bingley’s chaste insinuations, and here I catch a word by the courtly Sir Lucas. I can’t quite hear Miss Darcy, shy and reserved as she is, but I hear steps going up and down the stairs, and Elizabeth’s light mockery and Darcy’s reserved, tender tone, and as I close the book, I hear the ironic tone of the narrator. And even with the book closed, the voices do not stop—there are echoes and reverberations that seem to leap off the pages and mischievously leave the novel tingling in our ears.

  4

  “Our Sanaz has so many qualifications,” Azin was saying as she meticulously inspected her fingernails. “She doesn’t need a two-bit boy whose greatest accomplishment has been to dodge the draft and move to England.” Her tone was needlessly ferocious, and at the moment, she was targeting no one in particular. This was when I began to pay serious attention to Azin’s nails. She had taken to polishing them a bright tomato red and appeared totally preoccupied by their shape and color. Throughout class, whenever she found the opportunity, she would scrutinize her nails as if the red varnish connected her to a different dimension, a place known only to Azin. When she stretched her hand to take a pastry or an orange, her eyes attentively followed the movement of her red-tipped fingers.

  We were discussing Sanaz during the break. She was due back from Turkey the following week. Mitra, the only one who was in touch with her, updated us: he was very sweet, she loved him, they were engaged. They had gone together to the seaside; there will be pictures, lots of pictures. The aunt doesn’t think he’s such a catch. She thinks he’s a nice boy, better as a boyfriend, needs someone to help him hold up his pants (dimples widen). That didn’t seem to bother our Sanaz.

  “Nothing wrong with being young,” Yassi chirped in. “That’s how my uncle and his wife started—and on top of that, they had no money. Actually, come to think of it, three of my uncles married that way. All but the youngest, who never married—he joined a political organization,” she added, as if that explained why he had never married.

  We were hearing about the uncles more often now, because the eldest was in Iran for a three-week vacation. He was Yassi’s favorite. He listened to her poetry, looked over her sister Mina’s paintings, commented on their shy mother’s stories. He was patient, attentive, encouraging and at the same time a bit critical, pointing out this little flaw, that weakness. Yassi was elated whenever he came for visits, or on the rare occasions he wrote home or called from the States and asked specifically to talk to her. He was the only one who was allowed to put ideas into Yassi’s head without any reproach. And he did put ideas into her head. First, he had encouraged her to continue her musical p
ractices; then he had said, Why not go to the university in Tehran? Now he advised her to continue her studies in America. Everything he told Yassi about life in America—events that seemed routine to him—gained a magical glow in her greedy eyes. She regularly checked these stories with me, and I always had something of my own to add. I felt as if her uncle and I were co-conspirators, leading young Yassi astray. And I worried: what if we were encouraging her into a life that was essentially not good for her? I could see how our encouragements also made Yassi, an affectionate and loyal girl, very much attached to her affectionate family, feel conflicted and depressed for days on end. She’d make fun of herself and say that she constantly feels . . . Indecisive? I’d ask. Nooo, what’s the word? Suddenly her face would light up. Cantankerous! No, Yassi, that’s not it. Definitely not cantankerous. Yes, well, indecisive as well as inadequate—that I do feel; maybe I also feel cantankerous.

  Nowadays all my girls seemed to want to leave Iran—all except Mahshid, who was more than ever preoccupied by her job. She wanted a promotion and permanence, which she was denied on the basis of her past political affiliation with a religious opposition group. Mitra had already applied for a visa to Canada, although she and Hamid had their doubts. His mother was against it, and then there was the prospect of an unknown future in Canada, while this life, despite its flaws, was a known quantity. Hamid had a good job; they were secure. “Over here, as his mother keeps reminding us, we are somebody, but over there . . .”

  “I’m thinking of going,” Azin said suddenly. “If Sanaz had an inkling of sense, she’d just go, or marry the guy, go there and then divorce him. What?” she asked defensively, confronted by the others’ startled look, nervously fishing a cigarette out of her bag. “What did I say now?”

  She did not light the cigarette—she never did during class sessions—but she held it between her long white fingers, with their tomato-red nails. Suddenly she noticed our silence and, like a child caught stealing a chocolate, she looked at her unlit cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray with a disarming smile.

  How do you get away with those nails? I asked her, to change the subject. I wear gloves, she said. Even in summer I wear dark gloves. Polished nails, like makeup, were a punishable offense, resulting in flogging, fines and up to one year imprisonment. Of course they know the trick, she said, and if they really want to bug you, they’ll tell you to take off the gloves. She babbled on, talking about gloves and fingernails, and then she came to a sudden halt. It makes me happy, she said in a thin voice that did not suggest any trace of happiness. It’s so red it takes my mind off things.

  “Off what things?” Nassrin asked, gently for once.

  “Oh, things. You know.” And then she burst into tears. We were startled into silence. Manna grudgingly, with an obvious attempt to resist Azin’s tears, passed her the box of tissues. Mahshid recoiled into her shell, and Nassrin leaned forward, her hands locked together in a ferocious grip. Yassi, who sat closest to Azin, leaned towards her, gently pressing her right shoulder.

  5

  I will never now discover the real wounds Azin hid, and the unreal ones she revealed. I look for some answer in the photograph we took on my last night in Tehran, my eyes diverted by a glint in Azin’s round, gold earrings. Photographs can be deceptive, unless, like my magician, one has the gift of discovering something from the curve of a person’s nose. I do not possess such gifts.

  As I look at that photograph, none of Azin’s troubles can be imagined. She looks carefree; her blond hair suits her pale skin and dark-honey eyes. She loved to seem outrageous, and the fact that she had been married three times supported her claims to this title. She had married her first husband before she’d turned eighteen and had divorced him within a year. She never explained what had happened with her second husband. Perhaps she married so often because marriage was easier in Iran than having a boyfriend.

  Her husband, she told us, seemed to be frustrated by all that interested her. He was jealous of her books, her computer and her Thursday mornings. With a fixed smile, she related how he felt humiliated by what she called her “independent spirit”; he beat her up and then tried to placate her by swearing his undying love. I was almost physically hurt by her account. More than the beatings, it was his taunts that disturbed me—how he shouted that no one would marry her, that she was “used,” like a secondhand car, that no man would want to have a secondhand wife. He would tell her that he could marry an eighteen-year-old girl; he could marry a fresh, firsthand eighteen-year-old any old time. He would tell her all this and yet he could not leave her. I remember not so much her words but how, as she continued her terrible story, her smile was belied by the shine of tears. After she told us her story, she said, And now you know why I am so often late for class. Later, Manna would say, without much sympathy, Trust Azin to try to get something cheap even out of her own troubles.

  Soon we were all involved in Azin’s marital problems. First I recounted them to Bijan after dinner, and then I talked to my best friend, a great lawyer with a weakness for lost causes, and convinced her to accept her case. From then on Azin—her vacillations, her husband, her complaints, her sincerity or lack of it—became a constant topic of our discussions.

  These forays into the personal were not supposed to be part of the class, but they infiltrated our discussions, bringing with them further incursions. Starting with abstractions, we wandered into the realm of our own experiences. We talked about different instances in which the physical and mental abuse of women had been considered insufficient grounds for divorce by the ruling judge. We discussed cases in which the judge not only refused the wife’s request for divorce but tried to blame her for her husband’s beatings, ordering her to reflect on the wrongs she had committed to bring on his displeasure. We joked about the judge who used to regularly beat his own wife. In our case, the law really was blind; in its mistreatment of women, it knew no religion, race or creed.

  6

  It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our individual lives. Personal and political are interdependent but not one and the same thing. The realm of imagination is a bridge between them, constantly refashioning one in terms of the other. Plato’s philosopher-king knew this and so did the blind censor, so it was perhaps not surprising that the Islamic Republic’s first task had been to blur the lines and boundaries between the personal and the political, thereby destroying both.

  When I am asked about life in the Islamic Republic of Iran, I cannot separate the most personal and private aspects of our existence from the gaze of the blind censor. I think of my girls, who came from very different backgrounds. Their dilemmas, regardless of their backgrounds and beliefs, were shared, and stemmed from the confiscation of their most intimate moments and private aspirations by the regime. This conflict lay at the heart of the paradox created by Islamic rule. Now that the mullahs ruled the land, religion was used as an instrument of power, an ideology. It was this ideological approach to faith that differentiated those in power from millions of ordinary citizens, believers like Mahshid, Manna and Yassi, who found the Islamic Republic their worst enemy. People like me hated the oppression, but these others had to deal with the betrayal. Yet even for them, the contradictions and inhibitions in their personal lives involved them more directly than the great matters of war and revolution. I lived in the Islamic Republic for eighteen years, yet I did not fully grasp this truth during the first years of upheaval, in the midst of the public executions and bloody demonstrations or over the eight years of war, when the red and white sirens mixed with the sounds of rockets and bombs. It became clear to me only after the war and after Khomeini’s death, the two factors that had kept the country forcibly united, preventing the discordant voices and contradictions from surfacing.

  Wait, you will say—discord, contradictions? Was this not the time of hope, of reform and pea
ce? Were we not told how Mr. Ghomi’s star was descending and that of Mr. Forsati was in ascension? You will remind me of the end of the previous section, where the choices for the radical revolutionaries appeared to be either to set fire to themselves or to change with the times. As for Mahshid, Nassrin and Manna, you will say, They survived—they were given a second chance. Are you not overdramatizing a bit, you will inquire, for the narrative effect of your story?

  No, I am not overdramatizing. Life in the Islamic Republic was always too explosive, too dramatic and chaotic, to shape into the desired order required for a narrative effect. Times of peace often bring to the surface the extent of the damage, placing in the foreground the gaping craters where houses used to be. It is then that the muted voices, the evil spirits that had been trapped in the bottle, fly out in different directions.

  Manna used to say that there are two Islamic Republics: the one of words and the one of reality. In the Islamic Republic of words, the decade of the nineties began with promises of peace and reform. One morning we had woken up to hear that the Council of Guardians, after deliberations, had chosen former president Hojatol-Islam Ali Khamenei as the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini. Before his election, Khamenei’s political position was dubious; he was linked to some of the most conservative and reactionary groups within the ruling elite, but he was also known to be a patron of the arts. He had consorted with poets and had earned a severe rebuke from Khomeini for softening the tone of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.