Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [113]
After the first attack, the notoriously overpopulated and polluted city of Tehran had become a ghost town. Many people fled to safer places. I recently read in an account that over a quarter of the population, including many government officials, had deserted the city. A new joke making the rounds was that this was the government’s most effective policy yet to deal with Tehran’s pollution and population problems. To me, the city had suddenly gained a new pathos, as if, under the attacks and the desertions, it had shed its vulgar veil to reveal a decent, humane face. Tehran looked the way most of its remaining citizens must have felt: sad, forlorn and defenseless, yet not without a certain dignity. The adhesive tape pasted on the windowpanes to prevent the implosion of shattered glass told the story of its suffering, a suffering made more poignant because of its newly recovered beauty, the fresh green of trees, washed by spring showers, the blossoms and the rising snowcapped mountains now so near, as if pasted against the sky.
Two years into the war, Iran liberated the city of Khorramshahr, which had been captured by the Iraqis. In the context of other noticeable defeats, Saddam Hussein, encouraged by his worried Arab neighbors, had shown serious signs of reconciliation. But Ayatollah Khomeini and some within the ruling elite refused to sign a truce. They were determined now to capture the holy city of Karballa, in Iraq, the site of martyrdom of Imam Hussein. Any and all methods were used to achieve their purposes, including what became known as “human wave” attacks, where thousands of Iranian soldiers, mainly very young boys ranging in age from ten to sixteen and middle-aged and old men, cleared the minefields by walking over them. The very young were caught up in the government propaganda that offered them a heroic and adventurous life at the front and encouraged them to join the militia, even against their parents’ wishes.
My vigils at night with Dashiell Hammett and others resumed. The result was that four years later I added a new section to my class—the mystery tale, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe.
21
With the resumption of the bombing, we moved our classes to the second floor. Every time there was an attack, people impulsively ran to the door and down the stairs; it was safer to move the classes downstairs. The new emergency had emptied the classrooms, so most were now half-full. Many students went back to their hometowns or to towns and cities that were not under attack; some simply stayed home.
The renewal of bombing had made people like Mr. Ghomi more important. They came and went after this with a new sense of urgency. The Islamic associations used every opportunity to disrupt the classes, playing military marches to announce a new victory, or to mourn for a member of the university community who had been martyred in the war. Midway through a passage from Washington Square or Great Expectations, suddenly the sound of the military march would take over, and after that, no matter how hard we tried to continue, all attempts at discussion were conquered by the march.
This boisterous cacophony was in marked contrast to the silence of the majority of the students and staff. I was actually surprised that more students didn’t use these events as an excuse to cut classes or to refrain from doing their homework. Their seeming docility reflected a larger mood of resignation in the city itself.