Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [172]
Modern fiction brings out the evil in domestic lives, ordinary relations, people like you and me—Reader! Bruder! as Humbert said. Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to “see” others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us (Eliza Bennet) as well as the worst (Humbert). We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, of imposing our visions and desires on others.
Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination. Stalin emptied Russia of its soul by pouring on the old death. Mandelstam and Sinyavsky restored that soul by reciting poetry to fellow convicts and by writing about it in their journals. “Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances,” Bellow wrote, “is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place—the foreground.”
18
Our decision to leave Iran came about casually—at least that is how it appeared. Such decisions, no matter how momentous, are seldom well planned. Like bad marriages, they are the result of years of resentment and anger suddenly exploding into suicidal resolutions. The idea of departure, like the possibility of divorce, lurked somewhere in our minds, shadowy and sinister, ready to surface at the slightest provocation. If anyone asked, I would recount the usual reasons for our departure: my job and my feelings as a woman, our children’s future and my trips to the U.S., which had once more made us aware of our choices and possibilities.
For the first time, Bijan and I had serious fights, and for a while we talked about nothing but leaving or staying. When Bijan discovered that this time I was determined to leave, he went into a period of mortified silence; then a phase began when we had long, torturous arguments, in which family and friends participated as well. Bijan said it wasn’t a good idea, we should at least wait until the children were older, ready for college; my magician said it was the only thing to do; my friends were divided. My girls didn’t want me to leave, but then so many of them had themselves decided to go. My parents wanted us to leave, despite the fact that our departure would mean their loneliness. The offer of a better life for their children—even if it is an illusion—is so attractive to most parents.
In the end, Bijan, always judicious and far too reasonable, had agreed that we should leave—for a few years at least. His acceptance of our new fate had set him in motion. His way of dealing with our impeding departure was practical; he kept himself busy with dismantling eighteen years of life and work and fitting them into the eight suitcases we were allowed to take with us. Mine had been to evade the situation to the point of denial. The fact that he was taking it so graciously made me feel guilty and hesitant. I deferred packing, and refused to talk about it seriously. In class, the light and flippant attitude I espoused made it difficult for my girls to know how to react.
We had never properly discussed in class my decision to leave. It was understood that the class could not continue indefinitely, and I had voiced the hope that my girls would form their own classes, to bring more friends into the fold. I had felt the tension in Manna’s silences and Mahshid’s oblique allusions to duty towards home and country. The others showed a certain anxiety and sadness at the thought of the class coming to an end. Your place will be so empty, Yassi had said, using a Persian expression—but they too began to nurture their own plans to leave.
As soon as our decision was final, everyone stopped talking about it. My father’s eyes became more withdrawn, as if he were looking at a point beyond