by Azar Nafisi
The White Revolution involved a host of modernizing measures: redistributing the land among peasants; giving women the right to vote and to stand as candidates for Parliament and local government; nationalizing natural resources; establishing a literacy corps for remote towns and villages; and an industrial profit-sharing scheme by which workers could benefit from factories’ profits. Much was made by some of the Shah’s opponents of the fact that the plan had the blessing and strong support of President Kennedy. Some supported the White Revolution, feeling that its basic tenets were progressive, while others believed that revolution from above would not solve the country’s many problems.
A date, January 26, 1963, was set for the referendum. While the nationalists and leftists had been weakened by the 1953 coup that had toppled Mossadegh and reinstated the Shah, the clerics had been quietly mustering support among the influential ba^aris (the traditional businessmen) and in religious seminaries. On January 23, Khomeini’s followers closed down the shops in the bazaar as an act of protest. This was followed by marches and provocative preaching from the pulpits. Confrontations ensued between the police and the crowds, leading to more violent protests in the religious city of Qom. These protests resulted, in turn, in the shutting down of the seminaries.
IT IS STRANGE the difference between living through a historic moment and reflecting on its aftermath. In my memory the many events of that spring and summer seem to be crammed into the first few days of June, culminating in what was later known as the June 5th uprising. Those of us who lived through this period could not of course wholly comprehend what it would come to signify. The days come to me as frantic moments, haphazard freeze-frames that need to be edited and organized for them to make sense. Even then it was clear that something significant was happening. For the first time I could detect the rifts between traditional and modern worlds whose side-by-side existence I had taken so much for granted. It appears now as if all the events of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 were playing themselves out in advance on a miniature scale.
My concept of traditional Muslims came from my father’s family, strict and firm in their religious practices but flexible enough to tolerate the intellectual experimentation of their children. My paternal grandmother enveloped her children, believer and nonbeliever alike, with love and compassion. My cousins in Esfahan did not object to giving women the right to vote. They confronted on a daily basis the paradoxes of their lives as modern, educated women who had chosen to be bound by a traditional lifestyle. Who were these people using such strong rhetoric, calling women like my mother prostitutes?
Gatherings at our home in Tehran took on the frenzied atmo sphere prevailing through the whole country. My father was busier than usual. In addition to his responsibilities as mayor he had been appointed head of the Congress for Free Men and Free Women, a group that was tasked with garnering popular support for the Shah’s reforms and drawing up a list of candidates for the new government. This further alienated my young uncles and cousins who, if not actively rebellious, still disapproved of the Shah’s government. Mother’s coffee sessions were haunted by the alien and persistent beat outside our doors.
The question of the real Iran kept coming up in discussions between my parents and their friends. Which was more legitimate: the ancient traditions with which the Shah propped up his power, or the strict Islamic principle of Ayatollah Khomeini? As I write about those questions that I heard my parents and their friends repeat at so many different times in my life, I would like to add a few of my own: What of Ferdowsi with his sensual women and his pre-Islamic heroes and kings? Or of the satirical turn-of-the-century poet Iraj Mirza, with his erotic satires of clerics and religious hypocrisy? What of Omar Khayyam, the agnostic poet-astrologer who urged us to defy life’s transience by drinking wine and making love, or the great mystic poets Rumi and Hafez, who rebelled in their miraculous poetry against religious orthodoxy?
“Don’t ever trust the wily clerics, their livelihood depends on deceit.” I could hear voices crisscrossing our living room. “How can you believe the Shah when he says he wants to give women the freedom to vote? Do men in this country have the freedom to vote? How many free elections have we had in the last decade?” So went the arguments, round and round, back and forth, returning to the question of trust and the fickleness of the Iranian people, who would one moment ardently support one leader, only to support his worst enemy the next. Many were surprised by the violence of Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters; they appeared to have organized their own vigilante groups who beat unveiled women and set fire to various government institutions.
What I remember most vividly from that summer—perhaps because its truth came to me only many years later—was a comment by Mr. Meshgin, the reporter. “What is amazing,” he said, “is not how strong the clerics are, but how, in such a short period of time, the seculars have managed to take over our imagination.” Mr. Meshgin did not live to see the truth of his words—he died of cancer a few years later—but even after the Islamic Revolution, the academic and cultural realms were fiercely dominated by the secular and nonreligious elite. It was in these areas that the clerics remained vulnerable, and gradually it was through them that secularism made its comeback, often by way of the very Islamists who had so persistently fought against them.
It was during one such meeting and heated discussion that I first met a new addition to my parents’ circle, a striking man with a receding hairline and a low, booming voice that preceded his entrance into the room. I took an instant dislike to him. He was obese. His stomach burst out of his crumpled white shirt and his tie seemed to be tied too tightly around his neck. What I remember most clearly about him are his eyes, jumping out of their sockets, peering at me with lascivious greed. Everything about him seemed charged with a demonic energy, as if some evil genie were trying to release itself from within. He was introduced as Mr. Rahman.
He was a carpet merchant who claimed to have spiritual powers: he summoned ghosts, could tell the future with the help of the Koran, and, as I soon discovered, he had become my mother’s number one confidant. My parents met him through one of my mother’s relatives. Upon seeing him, Mother blossomed into a welcoming smile. Father’s expression was more sardonic. When Mr. Rahman came to greet me, he held my hand in both of his for an uncomfortably long time. “So this is the little lady,” he said. “Remarkable, remarkable indeed.” His hands felt clammy. He didn’t so much scare as repulse me.
Mr. Rahman would appear and disappear like the Cheshire cat throughout the next decade of our lives. He surfaces several times in my father’s memoirs: “Rahman looked into my eyes and gazed at them for a while, then he gazed at the palm of my hand,” Father writes at one point. “He said a few things about my personal characteristics and then he started to tell me about problems at work. He named those who were my sworn enemies and went on to claim that the Shah was still very much on my side and had not given in to the slanders and lies and false reports against me. But this struggle would end with my enemies’ victories and he advised me to resign.” Father was wary of Mr. Rahman and suspected that his information was not the result of his prophetic powers but because he was an agent of SAVAK, the intelligence service. He pointed out in his memoir that he had already offered to resign twice over his differences with the prime minister and Pirasteh, the minister of the interior, who among other things accused him of appeasing the mullahs. But the Shah had firmly refused his offer to resign and forced Pirasteh, who was Father’s main rival, to apologize to my father in front of the minister of court.
I don’t remember when exactly the big flare-up happened between my mother and Mr. Khalighi, of all people. There had been talk of including her among the first female candidates for Parliament in the next election, scheduled for the fall. She would run from the Kerman province, where she was born and where the Nafisis had originated. Suddenly she had become enamored of the Shah and would not tolerate all the rubbish being said about him. “You, my dear Nezhat Kha -noom,�
�� Mr. Khalighi said, “are even less equipped than your husband here to enter this arena.”
Mother missed the goodwill behind those words and took them as a clear sign of contempt. No entreaty would rectify the situation. Later that evening, my father’s attempts to mollify her fell on deaf ears. From that day on until my father’s imprisonment several months later, we didn’t see Mr. Khalighi again—on Fridays or at any other time. Although, as he did with other banished friends and acquaintances, Father continued to see him on the sly.
Father was on good terms with many of the clerics, especially those he considered progressive. He ignored the prime minister’s “recommendation” that he keep his distance and participated in a mourning ceremony at the house of the respected Ayatollah Behbehani, where dis paraging remarks against the Shah and the gov ernment were made by a young cleric. The prime minister told Father that the government had decided to take strong mea sures against the pro testors and advised my father not to meddle. He suggested it would be to his advantage to keep a low profile, and ordered him to close the shops on June 5th, the day Khomeini and his supporters had chosen for widespread protests and demonstrations. My father disobeyed this order. Instead he decided to let the stores open earlier than usual that day, so that people could stock up on necessities. He created emergency centers in different parts of the city, and alerted the hospitals to be prepared to receive any protestors who were wounded.
Father can be seen standing behind the Shah, as he meets with a cleric.
ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 5TH we were all up very early. Father had left at dawn and Mother was growing increasingly agitated because she could not locate him on the phone. Sometime early in the morning a chauffeur from the municipality came to let her know that Father was okay but that he was moving around so much it was difficult for him to call home. He was on his way to the fire station, which he had turned into one of his headquarters.
Mother had her own headquarters, in our living room, where throughout the day different people rushed in and out, breathlessly offering the latest news. The coffeepot was on constant duty. My brother and Uncle Reza had left early in the morning, to see what was happening around town. I stayed home. With a book in hand, I drifted in and out of the living room, where Mother presided with calm while managing to convey the impression that underneath she was all nerves, worried about my father, the city, the people. What could she do under the circumstances but hold the fort and be prepared in case of emergency? And in truth she was worried about him. As my observant aunt Mina had said, she had seen women pretend to love their husbands when they did not, but she had never seen a case like that of Nezhat, who adamantly insisted she didn’t care for her husband while in fact she cared about him a great deal.
Thinking of the people who came by that day, I marvel at how dissimilar they were. All were there because of her. This was a peculiarity of hers: no number of recommendations would persuade her to hire a person, or go to a doctor or hairdresser, unless she liked him or her. She liked these people partly because they agreed with her, and partly, I think, because they knew how to manipulate her and make her believe that they were on her side. This was true not just of people she knew; there were many strangers who knocked on our door saying that they had met Mrs. Nafisi at a shop, in a taxi, on the bus, and she had asked them to come over and have coffee with her.
Although most were not politically minded, in our living room they became passionately involved in political discussions. We were disastrous as politicians in our family, but avidly civic-minded. I could perhaps generalize and say that this was true of almost every Iranian family—the state has had such an intrusive presence in our lives that no Iranian citizen can choose to ignore it. But my parents liked to ponder and analyze events in a way that others did not. Aunt Mina’s loyalties and preoccupations were private and personal; her allegiances were to her family and her small group of friends. Mother, on the other hand, was at heart a public person and a political meddler. She was not interested in exchanging recipes.
Around mid-morning we had an unexpected visit. Ameh Ham-dam, who never visited unannounced, suddenly dropped in. She said she couldn’t stay long, but she needed to talk to Mother. Her presence always intrigued me. I tried to make myself invisible and remained within earshot. They talked quietly and I could hear snatches of conversation. “But it isn’t because of him,” Ameh Hamdam said. “Oh yes, it is,” Mother said, shaking her head knowingly. “He never wanted me to amount to anything. Remember when I wanted to get my driver’s license? Even then he interfered.”
I began to suspect that Father had sent Ameh Hamdam to dissuade Mother from running for Parliament. He knew there was no way he could control her and her wayward tongue. “You know better than anyone,” she insisted. “I was cut out to be a career woman. I wanted to become a doctor.” “This is different,” Ameh Hamdam said quietly. “They are like wolves. They will not have pity”
Mother was pursuing her own train of thought. She said that her brother, Ali, had become a doctor and that medicine was in her blood. “I was so good at it,” she said wistfully, “but I was not allowed to pursue it. You see, Saifi was so sick. I couldn’t leave him. And then,” she sighed, “it became too late. Now that I can do what I want he doesn’t let me.” All the time she was saying this, her eyes were focused on the coffee percolator, avoiding the eyes of Ameh Hamdam.
“You know I’ve never wanted anything but your own good,” Ameh Hamdam said, accepting a cup of coffee. “But this job will bring you nothing but grief.” “How can you say that?” Mother shot back, turning to look at her. “You have been a model to me.” Ameh Hamdam protested that she was a teacher and had nothing to do with government. The other women candidates had all been in one way or another public figures. “Believe me, Nezhat jan, I would not be here if I did not believe this job would bring you grief.”
Mother stiffened. “I should have been a man,” she said, shaking her head knowingly. “Then I would be free to do what I want. Will there ever be a time when I can do what I was born to do?” “This has nothing to do with your being a woman,” Ameh Hamdam said patiently. “Our family is not good at politics. I wish Ahmad were out of it. Look at my own brother, Said. He is out of favor and out of a job. His poor family has to suffer. Politics brings us bad luck.”
I was by this point firmly on Ameh Hamdam’s side. My father had told me in confidence, with some exasperation, that it was impossible to persuade my mother not to run. By now her name had been put forward and approved by the Shah among the list of suggested candidates for Senate and Parliament—no candidate could run without this process. In his memoir, Father explains that his opposition was based on my mother’s lack of political experience and her unpredictable temper. Mother, however, saw things differently: this was her only chance to prove herself in the public arena. Later she forgot her eagerness to run for Parliament and would claim that she had been forced by my father into accepting the nomination. She even told the story of how she had gone to see the Shah and pleaded with him to release her, but the Shah, although very kind to her, had pointed out that this was her husband’s wish. When we lied to her we knew that we were lying, but she seldom lied knowingly. In this sense she was telling the truth when she boasted of her insistence on honesty at all costs.
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a messenger from my father, this time from the fire station. Mother invited him in excitedly, made him coffee, and peppered him with questions. Ameh Hamdam made her excuse and left. Around three our dentist showed up. He had been forced to close shop early. “All hell will break loose now!” he said excitedly. “They’ve arrested Haji Tayeb!” The boss of Tehran’s vegetable market had been an active organizer of the protests. As it turned out, hell would take sixteen more years to fully break loose, but that day we got a taste of what was to come.
Around lunchtime Goli arrived, then Shirin Khanoom. At some point they both left. The day seemed interminable. I moved in and out of the liv
ing room and with each ring of the bell some new person barged in with news. The protestors had attacked the ministries of justice and the interior and were making their way to the radio station. The prime minister’s house had been surrounded by over two hundred men wielding clubs. The protestors had set fire to the Zoorkhaneh, where traditional sports were performed. They were beating women without veils and had attacked the fire station before my father got there. The government had opened fire on the protestors and the hospitals were filled with those who were killed or wounded, and their relatives.
Sometime in the afternoon Aunt Mina came in, looking (unusually for her) ruffled and excited. “It took me an hour just to get here from outside the Parliament,” she told my mother, accepting a cup of coffee. “You won’t believe the commotion outside.” She took a look around the room. “Do you know where Ahmad Khan is?” she asked. “I am concerned for him. People are saying in the streets that the clerics’ supporters, protesting against the government, are all armed. The wildest rumors are circulating—I heard that the British have secretly armed a group of fake mullahs to assassinate the prominent politicians.”
Mother was patience personified. She pursed her lips and said, “Well, I am sure that is a rumor, but yes, I am worried. Only, do you think anyone listens to me?” After a while, despite the urgency of the moment, they did not forget to gossip about mutual acquaintances. She had been seen with the colonel in a compromising situation. “Her husband is so blind.” “Some men, how foolish they can be.” “Yes,” Mother almost sighed.
In between chats about politics and sex, my mother would pick up the phone and dial a few numbers in an effort to locate my father. She returned every time with the same expression of patient suffering. At one point she was very agitated because she had been told that Father had gone visiting the hospitals and that the areas surrounding the hospitals and the fire station were very dangerous. She’d mumble something about how she had pleaded with him not to take this job, if not for her at least for her children’s sake. “He does love them, we know that,” she sighed. “Whatever else we might say about him, we know he loves his children.”