Reading Lolita In Tehran Part 14

All dance is performance and presentation, I tell them, but do you see how different dances invite different interpretations? Oh yes, says Na.s.srin. Compare this to the Persian dance. If those British could quiver their bodies the way we do . . . next to us, they are so chaste!

I ask, Who can dance Persian-style? Everyone looks at Sanaz. She is shy and refuses to dance. We start to tease her and goad her on, and form a circle around her. As she begins to move, self-consciously at first, we start to clap and murmur a song. Na.s.srin cautions us to be quieter. Sanaz begins shyly, taking graceful little steps, moving her waist with a l.u.s.ty grace. As we laugh and joke more, she becomes bolder; she starts to move her head from side to side, and every part of her body a.s.serts itself, vying for attention with the other parts. Her body quivers as she takes her small steps and dances with her fingers and her hands. A special look has appeared on her face. It is daring and beckoning, designed to attract, to pull in, but at the same time it retracts and refracts with a power she loses as soon as she stops dancing.

There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to. I have seen women of vastly different backgrounds take on that same expression: a hazy, lazy, flirtatious look in their eyes. I found Sanaz's look, years later, in the face of my sophisticated French-educated friend Leyly as she suddenly began to dance to music that was filled with stretches of naz naz and and eshveh eshveh and and kereshmeh, kereshmeh, all words whose subst.i.tutes in English all words whose subst.i.tutes in English-coquettishness, teasing, flirtatiousness-seem not just poor but irrelevant.

This sort of seduction is elusive; it is sinewy and tactile. It twists, twirls, winds and unwinds. Hands curl and uncurl while the waist seems to coil and recoil. It is calculated. It predicts its effect before another little step is taken, and then another little step. It is flirtatious in a way Miss Daisy Miller and her likes could never dream of being. It is openly seductive but not surrendering. All this is there in Sanaz's dance. Her large black robe and black head scarf-framing her bony face, her large eyes and very slim and fragile body-oddly enough add to the allure of the movements. With each move she seems to free herself from her layers of black cloth. The robe becomes diaphanous; its texture adds to the mystery of her dance.

We were surprised by a startled student who opened the door. The lunch hour was over; we had not noticed the time. Looking at the student standing on the threshold, with one foot in the cla.s.sroom, we started to laugh.

That meeting created a secret pact among us. We talked about creating a clandestine group and calling it the Dear Jane Society. We would meet and dance and eat cream puffs, and we would share the news. Although we never formed any such secret society, the girls referred to themselves from then on as Dear Janes, and it planted the seed for our present complicity. I would have forgotten all about it had I not recently started to think about Na.s.srin.

I now remember that it was that day as Mahs.h.i.+d, Na.s.srin and I walked to my office that quite suddenly, without thinking of it, I asked them to join in my secret cla.s.s. Looking at their astonished faces, I quickly sketched out the concept, improvising perhaps on what I had dreamed of and planned for so many years in my mind. What will be required of us? Mahs.h.i.+d asked. Absolute Absolute commitment to the works, to the cla.s.s, I said with an impetuous air of finality. More than committing them, I had now committed myself. commitment to the works, to the cla.s.s, I said with an impetuous air of finality. More than committing them, I had now committed myself.

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 Pride and Prejudice to my cla.s.ses than to compare it to the eighteenth-century dance, the kind one imagines Darcy and Elizabeth performed in one of the numerous b.a.l.l.s they attended. Although b.a.l.l.s and dances are instruments of plot in some of Austen's other novels-in to my cla.s.ses than to compare it to the eighteenth-century dance, the kind one imagines Darcy and Elizabeth performed in one of the numerous b.a.l.l.s they attended. Although b.a.l.l.s and dances are instruments of plot in some of Austen's other novels-in Mansfield Park, Mansfield Park, for example, and for example, and Emma- 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 Pride and Prejudice does carry the festive air of a ball. 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 s.h.i.+fts 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. Northanger Abbey. Their inability to dance well is a sign of their inability to adapt themselves to the needs of their partners. 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 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. 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 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 s.p.a.ces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also s.p.a.ce-not just s.p.a.ce 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. 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 s.p.a.ces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also s.p.a.ce-not just s.p.a.ce 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 Lolita and Kinbote in and Kinbote in Pale Fire. 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. 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 polis.h.i.+ng them a bright tomato red and appeared totally preoccupied by their shape and color. Throughout cla.s.s, 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," Ya.s.si 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 Ya.s.si'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. Ya.s.si 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 Ya.s.si's head without any reproach. And he did put ideas into her head. First, he had encouraged her to continue her musical practices; 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 Ya.s.si 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 Ya.s.si 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 Ya.s.si, 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, Ya.s.si, 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 Mahs.h.i.+d, 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 quant.i.ty. 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 fis.h.i.+ng a cigarette out of her bag. "What did I say now?"

She did not light the cigarette-she never did during cla.s.s 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?" Na.s.srin 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, pa.s.sed her the box of tissues. Mahs.h.i.+d recoiled into her sh.e.l.l, and Na.s.srin leaned forward, her hands locked together in a ferocious grip. Ya.s.si, 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 t.i.tle. 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 s.h.i.+ne of tears. After she told us her story, she said, And now you know why I am so often late for cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s, 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 refas.h.i.+oning 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 Mahs.h.i.+d, Manna and Ya.s.si, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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, hope, of of reform reform and and peace peace? 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 Mahs.h.i.+d, Na.s.srin and Manna, you will say, They survived-they were given a second chance. survived-they were given a second chance. Are you not overdramatizing a bit, you will inquire, for the narrative effect of your story? 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.

But this same person, the new Supreme Leader-who now held the highest religious and political t.i.tle in the country, demanding the greatest respect-was a fake. He knew it, we knew it and, what was worse, his own colleagues and fellow clerics, who had chosen him, knew it. The media and government propaganda had omitted the fact that this man had been raised overnight to the rank of ayatollah; such a position had to be earned before it could be bestowed, and his elevation was a clear violation of the clerical rules and regulations. Khamenei chose to join the side of the most reactionary. It was not just his religious beliefs that guided his decision; he did it out of necessity, for political support and protection, to compensate for the lack of respect from his own peers. From a tepid liberal he turned overnight into an irredeemable hard-liner. In a moment of rare candor Mrs. Rezvan had said, I know these people better than you; they change their words more often than their clothes. Islam has become a business, she went on, like oil for Texaco. These people who deal in Islam-each one tries to package it better than the next. And we are stuck with them. You don't think they'd ever admit that we could live better without oil, do you? Can they say Islam is not needed for good government? No, but the reformers are shrewder; they will give you the oil a little cheaper, and promise to make it cleaner.

Our president, the powerful former speaker of the house, Hojatol-Islam Rafsanjani, the first to earn the t.i.tle of reformist, was the new hope, but he who called himself the general of reconstruction and was nicknamed Ayatollah Gorbachev was notorious for financial and political corruption and for his involvement in terrorizing dissidents both at home and abroad. He did talk about some liberalization of the laws-again, as Manna reminded us, these reforms meant that you could be a little Islamic, you could cheat around the edges, show a bit of hair from under your scarf. It was like saying you could be a little fascist, a moderate fascist or communist, I added. Or a little pregnant, Nima laughingly concluded.

The result of such moderation was that Sanaz and Mitra were not afraid to wear their scarves more daringly, show a bit of hair, but the morality police also had the right to arrest them. When they reminded the police of the president's words, the Revolutionary Guards would immediately arrest and jail them, hurling insults against the president, his mother and any other son of a . . . who issued such orders in the land of Islam. But the president's liberalism, as would later be the case with his successor, President Khatami, stopped there. Those who took his reforms seriously paid a heavy price, sometimes with their lives, while their captors went free and unpunished. When the dissident writer Saidi Sirjani, who had the illusion of presidential support, was jailed, tortured and finally murdered, no one came to his a.s.sistance-another example of the constant struggle between the Islamic Republic of words and deeds, one that continues to this day. Their own interests precede everything, Mrs. Rezvan was fond of reminding me. No matter how liberal they claim to be, they never give up the Islamic facade: that's their trademark. Who would need Mr. Rafsanjani in a democratic Iran?

This was a period of hope, true, but we harbor the illusion that times of hope are devoid of tensions and conflicts when, in my experience, they are the most dangerous. Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power-the ones who had taken it away-become afraid, more protective of their endangered interests, more repressive. In many ways these times of hope, of greater leniency, were as disquieting as before. Life had acquired the texture of fiction written by a bad writer who cannot impose order and logic on his characters as they run amok. It was a time of peace, a time for reconstruction, for the ordinary rhyme and rhythm of life to take over again, and instead a cacophony of voices overwhelmed us and came to supersede the somber sounds of war.

The war with Iraq had ended, but the government continued its war against internal enemies, against those it considered to be representatives of cultural decadence and Western influence. Rather than weakening these enemies and eliminating them, this campaign of oppression had in some ways strengthened them. Political parties and political enemies were in jail and banned, but in the field of culture-literature, music, art and philosophy-the dominant trend was with the secular forces; the Islamic elite had failed to gain ascendancy in any of these areas. The battle over culture became more central as more radical Muslim youths, intellectuals, journalists and academics defected to the other side. Disillusioned with the Islamic Revolution and confronted by the ideological void that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, they had nowhere to turn but to the Western democracies they had once so vehemently opposed. Those whom the regime had tried to destroy or silence by accusing them of being Westernized could not be silenced or eliminated; they were as much a part of Iranian culture as these others, its self-appointed guardians. But what most frightened the Islamic elite was that these very elements had now become models for the increasingly disenchanted former revolutionaries, as well as for the youth-the so-called children of the revolution.

Many in the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance started taking sides with the writers and artists, allowing books that previously would have been deemed un-Islamic to be published. My book on Nabokov was published in 1994 with the support of some of the enlightened elements in that ministry. Experienced directors whose films had been banned after the revolution were allowed to show their work thanks to the progressive head of the Farabi Film Foundation, who would later be opposed and impeached by the reactionaries within the regime. The ministry itself became a battleground between different factions, what we would now call the hard-liners and the reformists. Many former revolutionaries were reading and interpreting works of Western thinkers and philosophers and questioning their own orthodox approaches. It was a sign of hope, if an ironic one, that they were being transformed by the very ideas and systems they had once set out to destroy.

Unable to decipher or understand complications or irregularities, angered by what they considered betrayals in their own ranks, the officials were forced to impose their simple formulas on fiction as they did on life. Just as they censored the colors and tones of reality to suit their black-and-white world, they censored any form of interiority in fiction; ironically, for them as for their ideological opponents, works of imagination that did not carry a political message were deemed dangerous. Thus, in a writer such as Austen, for example, whether they knew it or not, they found a natural adversary.

7.

"You should stop blaming the Islamic Republic for all our problems," said my magician. I frowned, digging into the snow with the tip of my boots. We had woken up to a snowy, sunny morning, the best part of a Tehran winter. The smooth blanket covering the trees and piling up high on the sidewalks appeared to s.h.i.+ne with millions of tiny suns.

It was the kind of day that made you feel exhilarated and childlike despite your protests against the pollution and the less tangible but more important complaints you carried in your heart and mind. Even as I tried to air my grievances, the pale memory of my mother's homemade cherry syrup, which she used to mix with fresh snow, rebelled against my expressions of gloom. But I was not one to give way easily; I was overburdened with thoughts of Azin's husband and Sanaz's young man. For the past fifteen minutes, I had been trying to convey my girls' trials and tribulations to my magician, peppering my account with justified and unjustified accusations against the root cause of all our woes: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Her first week back after her trip, Sanaz had returned to cla.s.s in a mood of becomingly restrained elation. Photographs were spread out on the gla.s.s-topped table: the family in the hotel lobby; Sanaz and a young man with dark brown hair and gentle brown eyes, in jeans and a blue s.h.i.+rt, leaning against a bal.u.s.trade; the engagement party; Sanaz, in a red dress, her magnificent hair caressing her bare shoulders, looking up at this personable young man in his dark suit and pale blue s.h.i.+rt, and he gazing into her eyes with tender affection-or there he was, slipping an engagement ring on her finger, she looking at it wistfully (it's a shame his parents had bought the ring without consulting us, she said later). And here is the renegade aunt, and the depressed mother, and the obnoxious brother. Before she knew it, he had to return to London and she to Tehran. (There was so little Ali and I said to each other, Sanaz would tell us with some frustration-we were always surrounded by family.) Two weeks later, she was subdued throughout the cla.s.s discussion. During the break, a woeful Sanaz, apologizing for taking up cla.s.s time with her personal stories, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears and her right hand pus.h.i.+ng an absent strand of hair from her forehead, announced that everything was off, the marriage was off. She had been jilted. A phone call again: he just couldn't see how he could make her happy. He was still a student; how could he support her? How long would it take before they could actually live together? It wasn't fair, he kept saying, not fair to her; he was making up all sorts of excuses. I can see his point, she said, I'd shared the same worries, but still, I wish he didn't feel he had to be so G.o.dd.a.m.n fair! He would always love her, he pleaded. What else could he say? Sanaz had asked us. b.l.o.o.d.y coward, I thought.

Everyone as a result was being was extra nice to Sanaz. His family was very angry with him. He had been corrupted by the years he'd spent among the cold and unfeeling English, his mother said. They-Westerners-don't have personal feelings like we do. He'll change his mind, his father said with conviction; just give him time. None of them had seen that perhaps their own meddling and pressure had forced him into taking a step he was not sure of.

It was all so intolerable to Sanaz, all this commiseration. Even her brother had been sympathetic. There were rumors of another woman-there always always are, Azin chimed in; that's men for you. No, Sanaz said in response to Mahs.h.i.+d's questions, she wasn't Persian, not that it mattered. Some said Swedish, others English. are, Azin chimed in; that's men for you. No, Sanaz said in response to Mahs.h.i.+d's questions, she wasn't Persian, not that it mattered. Some said Swedish, others English. Of course! Of course! A foreign girl: always a catch-who had said that? Sanaz was made even more desperate by the silent, funereal way her family and friends walked around her. If only her brother would throw a tantrum, she said, forcing a smile through her tears-confiscate her car or something. Today was the first time she'd had a chance to get away from them, and already she felt better. A foreign girl: always a catch-who had said that? Sanaz was made even more desperate by the silent, funereal way her family and friends walked around her. If only her brother would throw a tantrum, she said, forcing a smile through her tears-confiscate her car or something. Today was the first time she'd had a chance to get away from them, and already she felt better.

Men are always more likable, more desirable, when they're unavailable, Manna said in a surprisingly bitter tone. After a pause, she added enigmatically, And I'm not saying this to be nice to Sanaz.

Men! Na.s.srin said angrily. Men! echoed Azin. Ya.s.si, who seemed to have suddenly shrunk to her normal size, sat up straight with her hands locked in her lap. Only the aunt was happy, Sanaz informed us. "Thank G.o.d, he saved you from your own folly" had been her first words. What do you expect? Only a fool would think it normal that a boy his age, or any age, could live alone for five years without having affairs. I did, Sanaz told her. Well, you were a fool.

Sanaz's reaction on the whole had been calm and collected. She was almost relieved. In the back of her mind, she had always thought it couldn't work, not in this way. But the hurt remained: why had he rejected her? Had she become too provincial for him in comparison with other girls, say, a fine English girl, not coy, not afraid of staying the night? Heartbreak is heartbreak, I reasoned. Even English or American girls are jilted by their lovers. We had read some fine stories-"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," remember? And then of course there was "A Rose for Miss Emily." Sanaz later joked that she was thinking of making herself more memorable by imitating Miss Havisham, her heroine of the moment. Only she had not even bought a wedding dress, she added wistfully.

How had we digressed from Sanaz's predicaments to life in the Islamic Republic? We had somehow managed to end our discussions with anecdotes about the regime: the number of clerics and high-ranking officials with green cards, the ruling elite's inferiority complex, burning the American flag on the one hand and being obsequious to Westerners, especially American journalists, on the other. And then there was Faezeh Rafsanjani, the president's daughter, with her blue jeans and Reeboks and her bleached hair peeking out from under her chador.

I had explained all this in detail to my magician, drawing for him vivid and heartrending pictures of Sanaz's heartbreak and Azin's grief. I had concluded, dramatically, that this regime had so penetrated our hearts and minds, insinuating itself into our homes, spying on us in our bedrooms, that it had come to shape us against our own will. How could we, under such scrutiny, separate our personal woes from the political ones? It felt good to know where to put the blame, one of the few compensations of victimhood-"and suffering is another bad habit," as Bellow had said in Herzog. Herzog.

There was a raising of the right eyebrow, followed by a quizzical ironic look. "Tell me," he said sardonically. "How exactly does the jilting of a beautiful girl relate to the Islamic Republic? Do you mean to say that in other parts of the world women are not abused by their husbands, that they are not jilted?" I felt too petulant and perhaps too helpless to react reasonably, although I could see the logic of his argument; so I kept my silence.

"Because the regime won't leave you alone, do you intend to conspire with it and give it complete control over your life?" he continued, never one not to drive his point home. "Of course you are are right," he said a little later. "This regime has managed to such an extent to colonize our every moment that we can no longer think of our lives as separate from its existence. It's become so omnipotent that perhaps it isn't so far-fetched to hold it responsible for the success or failure of our love affairs. Let me remind you of Mr. Bellow, your latest beau." He paused on the word right," he said a little later. "This regime has managed to such an extent to colonize our every moment that we can no longer think of our lives as separate from its existence. It's become so omnipotent that perhaps it isn't so far-fetched to hold it responsible for the success or failure of our love affairs. Let me remind you of Mr. Bellow, your latest beau." He paused on the word beau beau for a few seconds. "Remember that sentence you were quoting from him-one of the many we have been regaled with in the past two weeks-'first these people murdered you, then they forced you to brood over their crimes.' for a few seconds. "Remember that sentence you were quoting from him-one of the many we have been regaled with in the past two weeks-'first these people murdered you, then they forced you to brood over their crimes.'

"Are you listening?" he said, bringing his quizzical eyes closer to my face. "Where have you wandered off to?"

"Oh, I'm here all right," I said. "I was just thinking."

"Right," he said, remembering his British training.

"Really, I was listening," I said. "You've just clarified something for me, something I'd been thinking of a lot lately." He waited for me to continue. "I was thinking about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, about the fact that my girls are not happy. What I mean is that they feel doomed to be unhappy."

"And how do you propose to go about making them understand that it is is their right?" he asked. "Surely not by encouraging them to act like victims. They have to learn to fight for their happiness." their right?" he asked. "Surely not by encouraging them to act like victims. They have to learn to fight for their happiness."

I continued to dig my boots deeper into the snow, struggling to keep pace with him at the same time. "But so long as we fail to grasp this, and keep fighting for political freedom without understanding its dependence on individual freedoms, on the fact that your Sanaz shouldn't have to go all the way to Turkey to be courted, we don't deserve those rights."

Having listened to his lecture and not finding anything in it to contradict, I allowed myself my own train of thought. We walked for some time in silence. "But don't you see that in trying to make them understand this, I might be doing these girls more harm than good?" I said, perhaps rather dramatically. "You know, being with me, hearing about my past experiences, they keep creating this uncritical, glowing picture of that other world, of the West. . . . I've, I don't know, I think I've . . ."

"You mean you've been helping them create a parallel fantasy," he said, "one that runs against the fantasy that the Islamic Republic has made of their lives."

"Yes, yes!" I said excitedly.

"Well, first of all, it's not all your fault. None of us can live in and survive this this fantasy world-we all need to create a paradise to escape into. Besides," he said, "there fantasy world-we all need to create a paradise to escape into. Besides," he said, "there is is something you can do about it." something you can do about it."

"There is?" I said eagerly, still dejected and dying for once to be told what to do. "Yes, there is, and you are in fact doing it in this cla.s.s, if you don't spoil it. Do what all poets do with their philosopher-kings. You don't need to create a parallel fantasy of the West. Give them the best of what that other world can offer: give them pure fiction-give them back their imagination!" he ended triumphantly, and looked at me as if he expected hurrahs and the clapping of hands for his wise advice. "You know it might do you some good if you practiced what you preached for a change. Take the example of one Jane Austen," he said with what appeared to me a patronizing munificence.

"You used to preach to us all that she ignored politics, not because she didn't know any better but because she didn't allow her work, her imagination, to be swallowed up by the society around her. At a time when the world was engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars, she created her own independent world, a world that you, two centuries later, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, teach as the fictional ideal of democracy. Remember all that talk of yours about how the first lesson in fighting tyranny is to do your own thing and satisfy your own conscience?" he continued patiently. "You keep talking about democratic s.p.a.ces, about the need for personal and creative s.p.a.ces. Well, go and create them, woman! Stop nagging and focusing your energy on what the Islamic Republic does or says and start focusing on your Austen."

I knew he was right, although I was too frustrated and too angry with myself to admit it. Fiction was not a panacea, but it did offer us a critical way of appraising and grasping the world-not just our world but that other world that had become the object of our desires. He was right. I was not listening, otherwise I would have had to admit that my girls, like millions of other citizens, by refusing to give up their right to pursue happiness, had created a dent in the Islamic Republic's stern fantasy world.

When he resumed, his voice seemed to come from afar and to reach me through a fog. "When you were talking of creating this secret cla.s.s of yours, I thought it might be a good idea," he was saying, "partly because it would divert your attention from politics. But I see it's done the opposite-it has involved you even more."

When I first told him about my decision to resign from the university and to create this secret cla.s.s he had said, How are you going to survive? You have severed your public contacts, your teaching is your last refuge. I said I wanted to teach a cla.s.s, a literature workshop at home, with only a few select students who really love literature. Will you help me? I will help you, he said, of course, but do you know what this means? What? You will be leaving us soon. You are withdrawing more and more into yourself. You have gradually resigned from all activities. Yes, but what if I have my cla.s.s? Your cla.s.s will be at home. You used to talk about writing your next book in Persian. Now all we talk about is what you will be saying at your next conference in the U.S. or in Europe. You are writing for other readers. I said, I have you. He said, I am not a good example. You use me as part of your dreamworld.

When we parted and I headed back home, my mood had already changed. I was thinking of the new novel I had lately been planning to add to our list-Saul Bellow's The Dean's December- The Dean's December-one that dealt with the ordeals of the East and those of the West. I felt guilty about my complaints to my magician. I had so much wanted him to change everything right there and then, to rub the magic lamp and make the Revolutionary Guards vanish, along with Azin's husband and Mahs.h.i.+d's boss. I wanted him to put a stop to all this, and he was telling me not to get so involved. I felt ashamed of myself for refusing to understand him, for acting like a petulant child carelessly punching a beloved parent.

The sun had already started to set as I returned home; it seemed to withdraw one by one the brilliant specks it had scattered over the snow. When I got home I felt grateful to see a fire blazing in the fireplace. Bijan looked serene in a chair drawn closer to the fire, a small gla.s.s of bootleg vodka near him on the table, reading The Long Goodbye. The Long Goodbye. From the window I could see the snow-covered branches and the faded outlines of the mountains, barely discernible behind the haze. From the window I could see the snow-covered branches and the faded outlines of the mountains, barely discernible behind the haze.

8.

"They tried to be very modern about it," Ya.s.si said with a hint of sarcasm, sprawled in her usual place on the couch. Ya.s.si was narrating her latest adventure with a "gentleman caller"-her term. There was a great pressure on her to get married: her best friends and closest cousins were either married or spoken for. "Both his family and mine agreed that we had to get to know each other before coming to any decisions. So we go to this park, and we're supposed to become intimately acquainted by walking and talking for the next hour," she said in the same sarcastic tone but with an expression that suggested she was enjoying herself.

"He and I walk in front, followed by my parents, my older sister and two of his sisters. I can almost hear them as they pretend to talk casually about all kinds of things while the two of us pretend to ignore their presence. I ask him about his field: mechanical engineering. Reading anything interesting? Doesn't have time to read. I have a feeling he wants to look at me, but he can't. When he came to my uncle's house to officially ask for my hand, he had to keep his head down the whole time, and here again it's impossible to get a good look. So we walk side by side, our eyes glued to the ground. All the time I'm thinking crazy thoughts, like, How would a man know that the woman he was intending to marry was not bald?"

"That's easy," said Na.s.srin. "In the old days, women from the man's family used to scrutinize the would-be bride. Even her teeth."