Things I've Been Silent About

by Azar Nafisi

  Her rancor and bitterness had passed almost as soon as we left Tehran. On the telephone she lavished the affection that she could not show me when I was home. She would say, “Although I am alone and I miss my children and grandchildren terribly, I am so glad none of you are here. I am proud to have educated two dedicated and principled children.” Sometimes she said, “I heard you the other night”—an interview I had given to the Voice of America or the BBC. She lowered her voice in a conspiratorial tone, saying, “What you say is heard. Do you understand?” “Yes, Mom.” “Always tell the truth. I have taught my children to never, never lie.”

  “Soon I shall have more news for you,” she went on. “That person, remember?” “Yes, of course.” I was sure that if anyone was eavesdropping on us, they too would figure out that “that person” was the regime. “You know who I’m talking about?” “Yes, Mom.” “Well, he is very sick, very, very sick.” “Is he?” “Yes, my friends tell me they have no hope for him.”

  “How is Dara?” she would say with a sudden change of tone. “Tell him I feed the birds for him. Now that he is alone there don’t hurt the poor child.” At the end of each and every phone call she would say, “What shall I send you? Walnuts? Do you need anything?” Sometimes a visitor from Tehran would bring me walnuts or dried cherries, some small gold medallion for the children.

  This time when I talked to her at the hospital she sounded different. She complained a little, but she forgot to ask me what I wanted her to send me. I said, “Mom, listen to the doctors.” “Tell Dara I feed the birds,” she said. “Don’t hurt Dara, that poor boy, all alone, none of you appreciate him.” She said, “I am alone, yes, but I am proud to have two such children, educated, with high principles. I am glad you never caved in,” she said. “Please send me dried cherries,” I said. She said, “And walnuts?” “Yes, yes, walnuts, I would love walnuts.”

  The last time I called her she was weaker, but there was a lift to her voice. She sounded so happy to hear from me. She said, “Azi, is that you?” “It’s me, Mom.” I said, “Mom, we miss you. Mom, I owe you so much.” She said, “What?” I said, “I owe so much to you. You came to Lancaster, you sat up nights.” But she had drifted and she was no longer listening. She said, “What do you want me to send you? Do you still have nuts?” “Yes, Mom, yes, please Mom …” Could I tell her, Please Mom, don’t die? But her voice trailed off—she did not need that acknowledgment anymore. When I used to call, she talked so much and I wanted her not to talk so much, and now that I wanted her to talk, she wouldn’t. She must have been so lonely and now she didn’t need us anymore.

  ON THE ACTUAL DAY WHEN THE NEWS OF HER DEATH ARRIVED IT WAS SNOWING. I was alone, waiting for a friend to pick me up to go to work when the phone rang. After I hung up I did nothing. I had imagined her death for so many months, but now I could not dwell on it. What was it that Désirée, my favorite childhood fictional character, had said? It is no consolation when you are told that death lies at everyone’s door. I thought, Father will also die.

  Why don’t we pay more attention to those we love? Why don’t we ask them more about every little detail, about their childhood, about how they feel, what they dream of, and if they are tired or don’t want to talk, why don’t we insist? Why don’t we keep every photograph, take notes, why don’t we ask others about what they know, those who were there before us, those who know things we don’t?

  I was overcome by the unreasonable fear of having to talk to others about my mother’s death. I did not even want to call my brother in London or tell my husband and children. There were things I needed to know before I was ready to acknowledge her death.

  Then there were the invisible inhabitants of that parallel world she had created out of her past, for whose loss she somehow had made us feel responsible. It was inevitable that they would come out, those apparitions kept at bay for decades; they too will demand their own separate story the way I demanded mine. And now every time I tried to write the acknowledgments for my book, beginning with “And my mother, Nezhat,” those ghostly presences stepped out of the shadows, challenging me, “What about your mother, Nezhat? Come on, give us the truth for once.”

  Did she die the way she lived, steeped in her illusions? Those illusions which in life had been destructive, came to her rescue in the end. Pari told me that near the end they told her that the regime was gone and that soon I would return with our family. Mother had asked about specific people in the regime. She wanted to know what had happened to Rafsanjani, the former president, and to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. They told her that they were both awaiting trial. They said, all will end well, everything has happened the way you said it would. Hearing all this I thought, at least to the end she refused to accept what she did not want, forever resisting “the unwanted.”

  In the weeks after my mother’s death I would go up to our bedroom and scatter her pictures around me on the bed, scrutinizing them with a magnifying glass, an act that worried my family although it was strangely soothing to me. One night Negar and Dara joined me. I remember the flickers of anxiety in their eyes that belied the light tone of their voices as they tried to get me to go downstairs and watch Seinfeld with them, as was our habit. Unable to persuade me, they sat on the edge of the bed and started picking up the pictures, commenting on them, exclaiming how young and how different Maman Nessi looked. Dara told us that he missed feeding the birds with her, although it had really been her idea and that he had done it to humor her. “More than feeding the birds,” he said, “Maman Nessi fed me, giving me chocolates and candy.” “That’s because you were her favorite,” Negar said. “I was Babaii’s favorite; he used to call me ‘Little Azi’ and tell me stories from the Shahnameh and plant flowers with me in the garden. Maman Nessi also told us stories. Many of them were fairy tales, but the one I liked best was about her first meeting with Saifi.” Negar asked me if I remembered how Mother would repeat that story, telling us about her beautiful clothes and dancing with Saifi. “Round and round the room,” Negar said, motioning with her hands. Of course I remembered. And once more I tried to retrieve that special tone of my mother’s voice, the one that seemed to come from some faraway place, while she repeated the story of that magical day, now as frozen in time as the fairy tales she liked to tell my children:

  “I met him at my uncle’s wedding. I was only nineteen and looked very beautiful. There were two celebrations, one in mid morning, when I had on my crepe de chine dress, and then in the evening, when I wore a dress made of duchess satin. Saifi was very handsome, son of the prime minister and like me a descendant of the Qajar kings. He kept looking at me, but while my father was present he did not dare to come closer. No other man did, except my uncle, with whom I had the first dance. As soon as my father left Saifi asked me to dance, again and again, four times, until my uncle started to glare at us. The next day he and his family came to our house to ask for my hand …”

  CHAPTER 31

  the perils of love

  WHEN WE LEFT TEHRAN, I tried to preserve the image of my father at the airport as he stood there, watching us as we waited in line to go through. I thought, I will never see him again. I missed him terribly when we were in America, living in Potomac, Maryland, but he was the one who would call and leave messages on our voice mail, and I could hear not in his actual words but in his tone that he was hurt. “I just wanted to hear your voice,” he would say, or “It’s Negar’s birthday,” or “I keep hearing you on Voice of America and the BBC but I cannot hear you on the telephone.” When Reading Lolita in Tehran was published I at first did not send him a copy. “I heard about your book,” he said in one voice mail. “Other people ask me about it and I don’t know what to tell them. It seems your father is the last one to know.” It broke my heart, his voice, but I still could not respond properly.

  Every once in a while I called him back—he mainly called me from his office and I telephoned him there. We talked for a long time and hearing his voice I missed him and pro
mised to write. I told him I’d send him articles about my book. Sometimes he sent a fax, asking me to be kind to his wife, saying that he really loved her, that he always thought I also loved her, and that we were friends. I called him usually after these faxes. “Are you really happy?” I would anxiously ask.

  I DID SEE HIM one last time, in the summer of 2003 in London, when we all gathered for a family reunion. Shahran and Mohammad had divorced and Mohammad had married another wonderful woman, Georgie. We all remained friends and Shahran also lived in London. That summer Father looked so frail. Even then, he was very dapper and alert and charming, but he looked vulnerable. When we met, we both broke into tears and over the next six days whenever we talked at some point or another he burst into tears. I wanted to make sure that he was happy, despite the fact that he reassured me every time we spoke. He seemed so anxious. He said he needed to sell the land. He had promised Shahin that he would bring her security. He said he was assured of the fact that his children were fine, financially sound, and that they had loving families, but she, Shahin, had no one. Apart from her mother who had recently died no one had treated her the way she deserved, and even her mother had loved her son more, a son who never took care of her. Had these words not been familiar to me, had he not repeated similar words almost all through his life with Mother, I might have believed him. He also said that he wanted to leave Iran, to spend his last years with us. In that we both, my brother and I, encouraged him. When he left, Mohammad said he would begin the process of bringing him, and later his wife, to England.

  Father with Mohammad’s son, Sina, in 2002.

  We were in Finsbury Park, my brother was playing with his son, and Father and I walked around the lake. He said, “I was not a womanizer. The only times I was really unfaithful to your mother were with Ziba and with Shahin. Your mother was a good-hearted woman, that is why it was so difficult to leave her. I tried, I tried everything, but she was lost to me, everything that was important to her had already happened before we met.”

  IN THE FALL OF 2004, my brother and Georgie arranged to spend Christmas vacation with us. They wanted us all to go to New Orleans. Suddenly, in November, Mohammad called to say they had to cancel because Father was ill, he had had a heart attack. Mohammad was going to Tehran immediately. Unlike with my mother’s illness, I took this calmly at first. All my life I had been afraid of losing him. I felt my anxiety protect me, as if my desire to keep him alive forever would cast a charm around him, and save him from death. Until the day he went to the hospital he had gone to work every day early in the morning, and had traveled to the Caspian sometimes twice a week, to sell the lands his wife was so keen on selling. He fought and reasoned with the revolutionary committees, the locals who had taken over the land after the revolution, the local clerics, anyone who would be bribed or enlisted to his side. His last diary is filled with notes about his anxiety over the land. There is a reference to Mohammad, Georgie, and her mother visiting Tehran, and a hopeful entry written in shaky handwriting about Mohammad and me wanting him to leave Iran and live with Mohammad in London. He wrote that this was what he desired most in life. And just as in his prison diaries he wrote about Iran and Iranians, about where the country was headed.

  I called him at the hospital. I said, “Hello, Dad.” He said, “Is that you, Mohammad?” “No, it’s me, Azi.” “Oh, Azi,” he said, “I was just reading your book. I have read one hundred fifty pages of it.” (“Anti-Terra and Reading Lolita in Tehran: Azar’s books,” he wrote at the top corner of a page in his diary.) He said he was feeling better. He would soon return home. And yes, as soon as the doctor allowed, he would leave for London.

  A few days after my father was dismissed from the hospital my brother returned to London to prepare for his arrival. Their house had many steps. They sold that place and bought another in great haste and at some financial disadvantage so that it would be convenient for Father. Mohammad called to say that Father would be with them in January, and I should make plans to go to London. I had a great deal to do and I remember I kept telling myself I wish it were another time, maybe in two months’ time, how am I going to go to London in the middle of all this work? I talked to Father on the phone and he said he was feeling better. He said, “I will see you soon.” Two days later Mohammad called again. The day after the doctor had told my father he was well enough to leave for London he had died.

  My mother’s last days and moments had been relayed to me meticulously by trusted friends. I did not hear how Father spent his last hours. All through his illness he had been tended by my uncle and cousin, who were medical doctors. They had sent me the medical reports and diagnosis. Father had gone to work even after he left the hospital. My uncle said the stress and his travels to the Caspian had worsened his situation, but at least he did not suffer long. He never wanted to have the kind of illness that would cause others trouble. Always that. Maybe he died because he did not want to inconvenience his daughter’s plans.

  After he left the hospital he stayed in a spare room because he did not want to disturb his wife in the middle of the night. The night he died he had felt sick around midnight, but it was some time before his wife discovered it. By six in the morning he was declared dead.

  I go over those hours, those days, and try to imagine how he felt. Was he afraid, as he suggested in one sentence in his last diary when he complained of memory lapses, of dear Shahin’s pressuring him about the land in the north, and of his fear of death? Was he at peace as he declared so many times and in the poem he composed for his own tombstone?

  I have been told several times that it was not my fault for not being there when my parents died. None of this is a consolation. I don’t feel better because it was really politics that prevented me from seeing my parents, nor do I feel consoled that other daughters have had to suffer so much more, like my old school principal’s children who were away when their mother was wrapped in a sack and hanged or killed by a firing squad. I curse the totalitarian regimes for holding their citizens by their heartstrings. The revolution taught me not to be consoled by other people’s miseries, not to feel thankful because so many others had suffered more. Pain and loss, like love and joy, are unique and personal; they cannot be modified by comparison to others.

  As it turned out, I did go to London. In their new London home, Mohammad and Georgie gave me my father’s room. It was the only room in the place that had been fully furnished: there were still boxes in the living room. It was a small room on the first floor, with a dresser, a vase of flowers, a window looking out at a small garden. The bed took up most of the room. When I said good-bye to my brother at the airport, Mohammad said, “Well, here we are. We are the elders now.”

  AFTER MY FATHER’S DEATH Mohammad returned to Tehran to be at his funeral and other ceremonies. He called me to say that it was up to us to maintain a friendly and cordial relationship with Shahin Khanoom. After all, Father loved her and expected that we show her every consideration. I called her to offer my condolences and we had a long conversation during which she told me how in his last moments he had held on to her hand, telling her how much he loved her and thanking her for all she had done for him. I also asked her to give Mohammad copies of Father’s poems, some of which we did not have, especially the ones dedicated to our mother, and a few of his paintings—these had been returned to my father after Mother’s death and included his portraits of Mother, Mohammad, and myself. She promised she would. A few days later she called me, her tone exceptionally kind and commiserating. She wanted a copy of my birth certificate, which she needed in order to obtain Father’s pension. I again asked for copies of Father’s poems and some of his paintings. I also asked for a few personal mementos. Once she received a copy of my birth certificate she sent me his glasses, two ties, and a belt. She refused to give us copies of his poems and his paintings. The meanness in this gesture severed any fragile ties we had to her.

  In my first real confrontation with my mother so many decades ago, when, at the age o
f four, I instinctively and with some desperation realized that I did not even have the power to move my bed to my favorite spot in my room, my father taught me to regain control by traveling to that other world no one could take away from me. After the Islamic Revolution I came to realize the fragility of our mundane existence, the ease with which all that you call home, all that gives you an identity, a sense of self and belonging, can be taken away from you. I learned that what my father had given me through his stories was a way to make a home for myself that was not dependent on geography or nationality or anything that other people can take away from me. These stories could not guard me against the pain I felt at my parents’ loss; they did not offer consolation or closure. It was only after their deaths that I came to realize that they each in their own way had given me a portable home that safeguards memory and is a constant resistance against the tyranny of man and of time.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to the memory of my parents, Nezhat and Ahmad Nafisi—with love and appreciation. I’d like to acknowledge my brother, Mohammad, a considerate, meticulous, and generous sibling, who is in no way responsible for the content of this book; my husband, best friend, and critic, Bijan Naderi, and our children, Negar and Dara Naderi, for their love, patience, and support, for stories we shared, and for making it possible to imagine the impossible; and Bryce Nafisi Naderi for so many hours of wonderful companionship.

  I would also like to acknowledge my beloved niece and nephew, Sanam Banoo Nafisi, with whom I shared so many stories; Sina Nafisi, the new storyteller in our family; and my good friend and sister-in-law, Georgiana Perry-Crooke (remembering always the room with the flowers). And Shahran Tabari, who read the manuscript with her usual care and enthusiasm. I am grateful for her insights and suggestions and, as always, for her friendship and love.