Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [177]
“Where is she now?” asked Mitra after a long pause.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We have to ask Mahshid.”
“Nassrin left for the border two days ago,” Mahshid quietly informed us. “She’s waiting for the smugglers to get in touch with her, so by next week she should be riding a camel or a donkey or a jeep across the desert.”
“Not Without My Daughter,” said Yassi with an uneasy giggle. “I’m so sorry,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth. “I feel so terrible.”
For a while everyone speculated about Nassrin’s journey: the perils of traveling from the Turkish border, her loneliness, her future options. “Let’s not talk about her as if she’s dead,” said Azin. “She’s much better off where she’s going, and we should be happy for her.” Mahshid threw her a sharp glance. But Azin was right. What else could we have wished for her?
The person who reacted most strongly, not to Nassrin’s departure but to my own now that Nassrin’s sudden vanishing act had made concrete the threat of separation, was the one who identified with me most—Manna.
“This class will be over very soon anyway,” she said without looking at anyone. “Nassrin has gotten the message from Dr. Nafisi.” What message? “That we should all leave.”
I was rather startled by the bitterness of her accusation. I felt guilty enough on my own, as if my decision to leave was a betrayal of some promise I had made to them. (Guilt has become part of your makeup. You felt guilty even while you had no notion of leaving, my magician said later, when I complained to him.)
“Don’t be silly,” Azin said, turning to Manna, her voice full of reproach. “It isn’t her fault if you feel trapped living here.”
“I am not being silly,” said Manna savagely, “and, yes, I do feel trapped. Why shouldn’t I?”
Azin’s hand went to her bag, perhaps to fish out a cigarette, and came out empty. “How could you? You talk as if it’s all Mrs. Nafisi’s fault,” she said to Manna, her hand shaking.
“No, let Manna explain what she means,” I said.
“Perhaps she means . . .” Sanaz started lamely.
“I can explain myself, thank you,” said Manna crossly. “I mean, you set up a model for us”—she turned to me—“that staying here is useless, that we should all leave if we want to make something of ourselves.”
“That’s not true,” I told her with some irritation. “I never suggested that my experience should be yours. You can’t follow me in everything, Manna. I mean each one of us has to do what’s best for her. That’s all the advice I can give you.”
“The only way I can convince myself that it’s okay for you to leave us here,” said Manna (I remember she said to leave us here), “is that I know if I had half a chance, I would too. I would leave everything,” she said as an afterthought. Even Nima? “Especially Nima,” she shot back with a wicked little smile. “I am not like Mahshid. I don’t think any of us has a duty to stay. We have only one life to live.”
For so many years now I had acted as their confessor. They’d poured out their heartaches, their troubles, as if I never had any troubles of my own to cope with, as if I lived under a magical spell that allowed me to avoid all the pitfalls and hardships not just of life in the Islamic Republic but of life in general. And now they wanted me to carry the burden of their choices as well. People’s choices were their own. The only way you could help them was if you knew what they wanted. How could you tell someone what she should want? (Nima would call later that night. “Manna is afraid you don’t like her anymore,” he said half jokingly. “She asked me to call.”)
Other people’s sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly empathize with them because we ask ourselves: What about me? What does that say about my life, my pains, my anguish? For us, Nassrin’s departure entailed