Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [153]
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 fantasy world—we all need to create a paradise to escape into. Besides,” he said, “there is 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 class, 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 spaces, about the need for personal and creative spaces. 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 class 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 class 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 class, 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