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By Root 1356 0

veins moving under her pale skin. Mahshid, I thought, more than my more secular students, has the most troubling questions about religion. In her class diary and papers, with a rage as restrained as her smile, she reviewed and questioned minute details of life under Islamic law. Mahshid later wrote in her class diary: “Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah’s time, it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my faith against all odds. Now that my religion is in power, I feel more helpless than ever before, and more alienated.” She wrote about how ever since she could remember, she had been told that life in the land of infidels was pure hell. She had been promised that all would be different under a just Islamic rule. Islamic rule! It was a pageant of hypocrisy and shame. She wrote about how at work her male superiors never look her in the eye, about how in movies even a six-year-old girl must wear a scarf and cannot play with boys. Although she wore the veil, she described the pain of being required to wear it, calling it a mask behind which women were forced to hide. She talked about all of this coldly, furiously, always with a question mark after each point.

“This decision to leave was a difficult one,” I said, feeling for the first time that I was ready to speak to them honestly about what I was doing and what it meant. “I had to go through many torturous deliberations. I even contemplated leaving Bijan.” (You did? Bijan asked me later, when I recounted our conversation to him. You never told me.) This had the effect of diverting them momentarily from their anger and frustrations. I told them about my own fears, about waking up at night feeling as if I were choking, as if I would never be able to get out, about the dizzy spells and nausea and pacing around the apartment at all hours of the night. For the first time I opened up to them, talking about my own feelings and emotions, and it seemed to have an oddly soothing effect on them. By the time Azin suddenly jumped up, remembering that today was her turn to visit her daughter—named after my own Negar—who now lived temporarily with her husband’s family, we felt lighter. We joked about Sanaz’s various gentleman callers and Yassi’s attempts to lose some weight.

Before they left, Mahshid picked up a little parcel she had brought with her. She said, “I have something for you. Nassrin sends her regards. She asked me to give this to you.” She handed me a thick folder and a bundle of notes. I have the folder here on this other desk, in this other office, right now. It is brilliantly colored: white with bright bubble-gum-orange stripes and three cartoon characters. In vivid green and purple characters it says: Be Seeing You in Fabulous Florida. Things Go Better with Sunshine! Inside the folder, Nassrin had transcribed every word of my classes during my last three terms at Allameh, neatly written in her handwriting, with headings and subheadings. All the sentences and anecdotes were recorded. James, Austen, Fielding, Brontë, Poe, Twain—all of them were there. She left behind nothing else—no photograph, and no personal note—except for one line on the last page of the folder: I still owe you a paper on Gatsby.

22

Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe, I said to Bijan that evening after the Thursday class. He had come home to find me sitting in my customary chair in the living room, Nassrin’s folder on my lap, my students’ notes scattered on the table and beside them a dish of melting coffee ice cream. Boy, you must be feeling rotten, he said after a glance at the ice cream. He took a seat opposite me and said, Don’t just let that sentence hang in the air. Explain a little.

Well, it’s like this: if you’re forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank—you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That’s what we do over here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere