Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

  One evening after class, Mr. Nahvi had suddenly appeared in front of Mitra. He had not seemed his usual . . . “Redoubtable self?” the incorrigible Yassi suggested. No, not exactly. “Pontificating? Pompous? Ponderous?” Yassi continued, unabashed. No. Anyway, Mr. Nahvi did not seem himself. His arrogance had given way to extreme nervousness as he handed Mitra an envelope. Sanaz nudged Mitra to describe the envelope. It was a hideous blue, she said. And it reeked. It reeked? Yes, it smelled of cheap perfume, of rosewater.

  Inside the envelope, Mitra had found a one-page letter, with the same dreadful color and smell, written in immaculate handwriting, in black ink. “Tell ‘em how he started the letter,” Sanaz encouraged Mitra.

  “Well, he, he actually began by writing . . .” Mitra trailed off, as if lost for words.

  “My golden daffodil!” shouted Sanaz, bursting into laughter.

  Really? Golden daffodil? Yes, and he had gone on to express his undying love for Mitra, whose every move and every word were ingrained in his heart and mind. Nothing—no power—had ever done to him what her smile, which he hoped was for him and him alone, could do. And so on and so forth.

  What had Mitra done? we all wanted to know. All this had taken place in the middle of Mitra and Hamid’s highly secretive courtship, Sanaz reminded us. The next day, when Mr. Nahvi happened to jump out of nowhere and waylay her in the street, she tried to explain to him how impossible it was for her to return his affections. He nodded philosophically and went away, only to reappear two days later. She had parked in an alley near the university and was in the process of opening the door to her small car when she became aware of a presence right behind her. “Like the shadow of Death,” Nassrin ominously interjected. Well, she had turned to find Mr. Nahvi, wavy hair, squished eyes, ears jutting out—he had a book in his hands, a book of poems by e. e. cummings. And the blue of another envelope could be detected from between its pages. Before Mitra had time to protest, he thrust the book into her hands and disappeared.

  “Tell Dr. Nafisi what he wrote,” prompted Sanaz. “She’d love to know that her classes were of some use to Mr. Nahvi.” Inside he had written, To my bashful rose. And what else? And, well, he reproduced a poem that you used to teach in your introduction to literature class:

  somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

  any experience,your eyes have their silence:

  in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

  or which i cannot touch because they are too near

  your slightest look easily will unclose me

  though i have closed myself as fingers,

  you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

  (touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

  or if your wish be to close me,i and

  my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

  as when the heart of this flower imagines

  the snow carefully everywhere descending;

  nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

  the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

  compels me with the colour of its countries,

  rendering death and forever with each breathing

  (i do not know what it is about you that closes

  and opens;only something in me understands

  the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

  nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

  It’s enough to put you off teaching poetry, I said, infected by their girlish mood.

  “From now on, you should only teach morbid poems like Childe Harold or ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ ” suggested Mahshid.

  This time, Mitra felt she had to resort to more drastic measures before things got out of hand. After several consultations with her friends, she reached the conclusion that a plain outright no would be dangerous to deliver to someone as influential as Mr. Nahvi. Best to tell him a convincing lie that would put him in an impossible position.

  By the time they next crossed paths, Mitra had plucked up the courage to stop Mr. Nahvi. Blushing and stammering, she told him that she had been too bashful to reveal the real reason for her rejection: she was engaged to be married to a distant relative. His family was influential and very traditional, and she was scared of what they would resort to if they found out about Mr. Nahvi’s outpourings. The young man paused for a fraction of a second, as if rooted to the ground, and then turned away without a word, leaving Mitra, still slightly trembling, in the middle of the wide street.

  10

  The last New Year Mrs. Rezvan was in Tehran, she bought me three small clips. They were hair clips that many women used to keep their head scarves in place. I never learned to wear my scarf properly, and it had become a ritual between us that before talks or lectures she would check and make sure that it was more or less in place. She said, My dear Mrs. Nafisi, I’m sorry that this is what you will remember me by, but I do worry about you. Will you promise me you will wear these when I am gone? I want to see you here when I return.

  Mrs. Rezvan was preparing to go to Canada. She had finally, after years of toil, managed to get her coveted scholarship to pursue her Ph.D. For years she had dreamed of this, but now she was too anxious to enjoy the moment. She constantly fretted about whether she would succeed, whether she was up to the task. I was happy that she was leaving, both for her sake and for my own. It came almost as a relief.

  I felt at the time that she was overly ambitious, and that she used me and people like me to get where she wanted to go. Later I discovered there was more to the story. Hers was not a mere ambition to go places, to become president of the faculty, although she had that in mind too. She yearned to become a literary personage: her love of literature was real, yet her talents were limited and her ambition for power and control sometimes surpassed and even came to clash with that love. She managed to evoke such contradictory feelings in me. I felt she was always on the verge of telling me something important about herself, something that would reveal her to me. Perhaps I should have been more curious. Perhaps if I had been less wrapped up in her intrusions and demands, I would have noticed more.

  In the late summer of 1990, for the first time in eleven years, my family and I left for Cyprus for a vacation and to meet up with my sisters-in-law, who had never seen our children. For years I was not allowed to leave the country, and when they finally did give me permission to leave, I felt paralyzed and could not make myself apply for a passport. If it were not for Bijan’s patience and persistence, I never would have followed through. But I got my passport in the end, and we did really leave, without any misadventures. We stayed with a friend, one of Mrs. Rezvan’s former students. She said Mrs. Rezvan used to ask her about me, my work and my family.

  Later, after we had returned home, my friend informed me that the day we left, probably on the same plane aboard which we had flown to Tehran, Mrs. Rezvan had come to Cyprus on vacation. She was alone. She called my friend inquiring after me and was told that I was gone. My friend told me Mrs. Rezvan wanted her to take her to the same places we had visited together during my stay. She asked what I had done there, where I had gone. One day, they went to the beach where we had gone swimming.

  Mrs. Rezvan was shy. She hesitated about putting on a swimsuit, and when she did, she wanted to go to a deserted part of the beach, where no one could see her. She ran into the water but came out after a short while, telling my friend that no matter how hard she tried, she could not get used to parading around in a swimsuit.

  When she left Iran, Mrs. Rezvan disappeared from my life. Her absence was as complete as her presence had been pervasive. She did not write or call when she came back for her occasional visits; I heard about her from the secretary at the English Department. Twice she had asked for an extension in order to finish her dissertation. At times, walking down the halls or passing by her office, I was reminded of Mrs. Rezvan, whose absence was both a relief and a sorrow.

  A few months after I came to
America, I heard she was ill with cancer. I called her; she was not home. She called me back. Her voice was filled with the intimate formality of Tehran. She wanted to know about some of our common students and my work. And then for the first time she opened up and started talking about herself. She could not write—it involved so much pain—and she was always weak and fatigued. Her eldest daughter helped her. She had so many dreams, and she was hopeful. The openness was not so much in what she said as in her tone of voice, which conferred a certain air of confidence to her simple report of her weakness, her inability to write, her dependence on her daughter. She was optimistic about the latest treatment, although her cancer had spread far. She asked me about my work. I did not tell her that I was healthy and writing a book and, on the whole, enjoying myself.

  That was the last time I talked to her; she was soon too sick to speak on the telephone. I thought of her almost obsessively. It seemed so unfair that she should have cancer when she was so near to reaching her goal. I did not want to talk to her to remind her that once again I had been the lucky one—I was granted a little more time on earth, the time she was so unfairly cheated of.

  She died soon after our last conversation. Her intrusions now have taken a different form. In my mind from time to time, I resurrect and re-create her. I try to penetrate the unsaid feelings and emotions that hung between us. She keeps coming towards me through the flickering light, as in our first meeting, with that ironic sideways glance, and passes through me, leaving me with my doubts and regrets.

  11

  It was around the spring of 1996, early March in fact, that I first noticed Nassrin’s metamorphosis. One day she came to class without her usual robe and scarf. Mahshid and Yassi wore different-colored scarves, and they took these off once they came into my apartment. But Nassrin was always dressed identically; the one variety she allowed herself was the color of her robe, which was interchangeably navy, black or dark brown.

  That day, she had come to class later than usual and had casually taken off her coat, revealing a light blue shirt, a navy jacket and jeans. Her hair was long and soft and black, woven into a single plait that moved from side to side with the movement of her head. Manna and Yassi exchanged looks, and Azin told her she was looking good, as if she had changed her hairstyle. Yassi said in her mocking tone, You look . . . you look absolutely intrepid! I mean, divine. By the end of the class, Nassrin seemed so natural in her new attire that I already had a hard time envisioning the other Nassrin.

  When Nassrin walked around in her chador or veil, her gait was defiant; she walked as she did everything else—restlessly, but with a sort of bravado. Now, without the veil, she slumped, as if she were trying to cover something. It was in the middle of our discussion of Austen’s women that I noticed what it was she was trying to hide. Under the chador, one could not see how curvy and sexy her figure really was. I had to control myself and not command her to drop her hands, to stop covering her breasts. Now that she was unrobed, I noticed how the chador was an excuse to cover what she had tried to disown—mainly because she really and genuinely did not know what to do with it. She had an awkward way of walking, like a toddler taking its first steps, as if at any moment she would fall down.

  A few weeks later, she stayed after class and asked if she could make an appointment to see me. I told her to come to our house, but she had become very formal and asked if we could meet at a coffee shop that my students and I were in the habit of frequenting. Now that I look at those times, I see how many of their most private stories, their confidences, were told in public places: in my office, in coffee shops, in taxis and walking through the winding streets near my home.

  Nassrin was sitting at a small wooden table with a vase of bloodred wax carnations when I entered the coffee shop. We gave our orders: vanilla and chocolate ice cream for Nassrin and café glacé for me. Nassrin had called this meeting to officially register the existence of a boyfriend. Do I know him? I asked her as she ferociously dipped her spoon into the ice cream. No. I mean—she fumbled with her words—you may have seen him. He obviously knows you. I’ve known him for a long time, she continued, as if finally admitting to a shameful act. For over two years now, she sighed, but we have been sort of going together for the past few months.

  I was startled by her news. I tried to hide my surprise, searching for something appropriate to say, but her expression did not allow such evasion. I’ve wanted to introduce him to you for a long time, she said, but I just didn’t know how to go about it. And then I was afraid. Afraid of what? Is he a frightening person? I said, my feeble attempt at a joke. No, I was afraid you might not like him, she said, making swirls with her melting ice cream. Nassrin, I said. I’m not the one who should like him.

  I felt sorry for her. She was in love—this should have been the best time of her life—but she was anxious about so many things. Of course, she had to lie to her father—more time on translating texts. She lived in so many parallel worlds: the so-called real world of her family, work and society; the secret world of our class and her young man; and the world she had created out of her lies. I wasn’t sure what she expected of me. Should I take on the role of a mother and tell her about the facts of life? Should I show more curiosity, ask for more details about him and their relationship? I waited, trying with some effort to pull my eyes off the hypnotic red carnation and to focus on Nassrin.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you made fun of me,” she said with great misery, twirling her spoon in the puddle of ice cream.

  “Nassrin, I would never do such a thing,” I protested. “And why should I? I am very happy for you.”

  “It is pathetic,” she said, without paying attention to my words, following her own thoughts. “My mother had a grown-up kid when she was my age. You were already teaching, and here I am acting like a ten-year-old kid. This is what we should be talking about in class.”

  “About your being ten years old?” I asked, in an awkward attempt to lighten her mood.

  “No, no, about”—she put her spoon down—“about how all of us—girls like me, who have read their Austen and Nabokov and all that, who talk about Derrida and Barthes and the world situation—how we know nothing, nothing about the relation between a man and a woman, about what it means to go out with a man. My twelve-year-old niece probably knows all about this, has probably gone out with more boys than I have.” She spoke furiously, locking and unlocking her fingers.

  In a sense she was right, and the fact that she was prepared to talk about it made me feel tender and protective towards her. Nassrin, I told her, none of us are as sophisticated in these matters as you think. You know I always feel, with every new person, as if I am starting anew. These things are instinctive. What you need to learn is to lay aside your inhibitions, to go back to your childhood when you played marbles or whatever with boys and never thought anything of it.

  Nassrin did not respond. She was playing with the petals of the wax flowers, caressing their slippery surface.

  “You know,” I said, “with my first husband . . . Yes, I was married before Bijan, when I was barely eighteen. You know why he married me? He told me he liked my innocence—I didn’t know what a French kiss was. I was born and bred in liberal times, I grew up in a liberal family—my parents sent me abroad when I was barely thirteen—and yet there you are: I chose to marry a man I despised deep down, someone who wanted a chaste and virginal wife and, I am sorry to say, chose me. He had been out with many girls, and when I went to Oklahoma with him, where he went to college, his friends were surprised, because right up to the day he returned to Iran for the summer, he had been living with an American girl he had introduced to everyone as his wife. So don’t feel too bad. These things are complicated.

  “Are you happy?” I asked her anxiously. There was a long pause during which I picked up the vase and pushed it to the side, next to the wall.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “No one ever taught me how to be happy. We’ve been taught that pleasure is the great si
n, that sex is for procreation and so on and on and forth. I feel guilty, but I shouldn’t—not because I am interested in a man. In a man,” she repeated. “At my age! The fact is I don’t know what I want, and I don’t know if I am doing the right thing. I’ve always been told what is right—and suddenly I don’t know anymore. I know what I don’t want, but I don’t know what I want,” she said, looking down at the ice cream she had hardly touched.

  “Well, you’re not going to get an answer from me,” I said. I leaned over, wanting to touch her hand, to provide her with some consolation. Only I didn’t touch her. I didn’t dare; she seemed so distant and withdrawn. “I’ll be here for you when you need me, but if you’re asking for my advice, I can’t give it—you’ll have to find out for yourself.” Enjoy yourself, I pleaded lamely. How could one be in love and deny oneself a little joy?

  Nassrin’s young man was called Ramin. I had seen him on several occasions, the first time at a gathering for my book on Nabokov. He had a master’s degree in philosophy and taught part-time. Nassrin had met him at a conference where he was presenting a paper and they had started talking afterward. Was it love at first sight? I wanted to ask her. How long had it taken them to confess their feelings? Did they ever kiss? These were some of the details I badly wanted to know, but of course I did not ask.

  As we were leaving the coffee shop, Nassrin said hesitantly, Would you go to a concert with us? A concert? Some of Ramin’s students are playing. We could get you and your family some tickets . . .

  12

  I should put the word concert in quotation marks, because such cultural affairs were parodies of the real thing, performed either in private homes or, more recently, at a cultural center built by the municipality in the south of Tehran. They were the focus of considerable controversy, because despite the many limitations set upon them, many in government considered them disreputable. The performances were closely monitored and mostly featured amateur players like the ones we went to see that night. But the house was always packed, the tickets were always sold out and the programs always started a little late.