Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi

Author:Azar Nafisi [Nafisi, Azar]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-58836-749-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Forough Farrokhzad.

“Only the Voice Endures.” This was the title of a poem by Forough Farrokhzad that I jotted down on the top of a page in my diary and underlined twice. Underneath it I wrote that I had a huge fight with my mother about Forough (she was always referred to by her first name, a liberty seldom if ever taken with the male poets). Mother kept saying she did not educate me to follow in the footsteps of a “woman like that.” I wrote in my diary that I suspected if my mother were more like “women like that” we would all be having much better times.

A few days later, on return from my afternoon class at the British Council, I was summoned to the library. Mother was sitting upright on a soft leather chair. Rahman was slumped on a seat nearby and Aunt Mina, clearly uncomfortable, sat opposite him. The culprit, my diary, with its dull black plastic cover, was on the side table for all to see. Mr. Rahman leered at me with a benevolent and knowing smile. Usually he would rise to my defense, but this time he remained silent, at times clicking reproachfully, his bulging eyes merry with mischief.

Mother wanted to know how I could say that I preferred that woman to my own mother, as I had, in fact, in my diary. Aunt Mina was trying to be conciliatory. I wanted to know why my mother had read my private diary; what gave her that right? Rahman offered piously that a mother had the right to prevent a sin from happening. In Islam even strangers had that right. The more helpless I felt, the more insolent I became. In defense, I offered up a brief consideration of Forough’s importance as a poet.

At this point Mother took on that terrible, impersonal, mocking tone of hers. “You are of course right,” she said sarcastically. “You are a treasure trove of knowledge. How could an ignorant woman such as myself ever hope to reach such heights!” When she was cross with us, her expression was glacial and she deliberately chose formal words. She would call me Madam, as she did when she wrote me admonishing notes. She would write letters which she would leave about the house. Other families talked, we wrote: what we felt or hoped for, our complaints—we wrote all this, as if we could not bear to look into one another’s eyes and just talk.

Sometimes Mother’s notes would be short and straightforward, congratulating us on our birthdays, on the New Year, or some accomplishment. But mainly she wrote when she was angry. Then she would address us in generic terms: My Model Husband, My Grateful Children, My Dutiful Daughter. It was not uncommon for her to enumerate all the different sacrifices she had made for us. “A mother’s task in life is to nurture upright children …” she wrote in one. “I am happy that I have raised two individuals,” she began, before turning to our misdeeds.

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