Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafísi

Author:Azar Nafísi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Social Science, American literature, Books & Reading, Middle East, English literature - Study and teaching - Iran, Women's Studies, European, Iran, Welsh, English literature, Group reading - Iran, Study and teaching, American literature - Study and teaching - Iran, Women - Books and reading - Iran, Books and reading, American, English, Intellectuals, History, Irish, Educators, Books and reading - Iran, General, Group reading, Azar, Literary Criticism, Literature and state, Scottish, Biography & Autobiography, Nafisi, Women, English teachers, Biography, English teachers - Iran
ISBN: 9780812971064
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2004-04-14T10:00:00+00:00

9

The meeting with Mrs. Rezvan had thrown me off balance. She was like an intermediary pleading on behalf of an unfaithful and unforgotten lover, pledging complete loyalty in return for my affections. Bijan thought I should return; he felt that is what I really wanted to do, if only I would admit it to myself. Most of my friends merely confused me by posing the dilemma back to me: is it better to help the young people who might otherwise not have a chance to learn or to refuse categorically to comply with this regime? Both sides were absolute in their position: some thought I would be a traitor if I neglected the young and left them to the teachings of the corrupt ideologies; others insisted I would be betraying everything I stood for if I worked for a regime responsible for ruining the lives of so many of our colleagues and students. Both were right.

I called the magician one morning in panicked confusion. Another urgent meeting was set up, for late afternoon in a favorite coffee shop. It was a tiny place, a bar in its pre-revolution days, now reincarnated as a café. It belonged to an Armenian, and forever shall I see on the glass door next to the name of the restaurant, which was in small letters, the compulsory sign in large black letters: RELIGIOUS MINORITY. All restaurants run by non-Muslims had to carry this sign on their doors so that good Muslims, who considered all non-Muslims dirty and did not eat from the same dishes, would be forewarned.

The space inside was narrow and shaped like a wide curve, with seven or eight stools on one side of the bar and, on the other, next to the wall-length mirror, another set of stools. When I went in, he was already seated at the far end of the bar. He got up and with an imperceptible mock curtsy, bent down, saying, Here I am, your servant at your service, m’lady, as he drew a stool for me to sit.

We ordered and I said breathlessly, This is an emergency. So I gathered. I have been asked to teach again. Is this new? he asked. No, but this time I’m wavering; I don’t know what to do. Then somehow I managed to divert my own emergency meeting into a discussion of the book I was immersed in at the moment, Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op, and Steve Marcus’s marvelous essay on Hammett in which he cited a line from Nietzsche that struck me as pertinent to our situation. “Whoever fights monsters,” Nietzsche had said, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” I had an amazing talent for subverting my own agendas, and we got so involved in our discussion that I completely forgot about the real purpose of the visit.

Suddenly, he said, Aren’t you going to be late? I

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