Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [180]
Bijan and I had become surprisingly closer after our period of arguments, which had been heated and painful. Bijan was most articulate in his silences. Through him I had learned the many moods and nuances of silence: the angry silence and the disapproving one; the appreciative silence and the loving one. Sometimes his silences accumulated and overflowed into torrents of words, but recently we had found ourselves talking for long stretches. It all started when we both decided to describe to each other how we felt about Iran. For the first time, we began seeing the matter through each other’s eyes. Now that he had begun to dismantle his life in Iran, he needed to articulate and share his thoughts and emotions. We spent long hours talking about our feelings, our ideas of home—for me portable, for him more traditional and rooted.
I told him in detail about the arguments we had had in class that day. After they left, I couldn’t get rid of this idea of sexual molestation. I said, I keep tormenting myself with the thought that that’s how Manna must feel.
Bijan didn’t respond—he seemed to be waiting for me to elaborate—but suddenly I had nothing more to say. Feeling a little lighter, I stretched and picked at a few pistachio nuts. Have you ever noticed, I said, cracking a nut, how strange it is when you look in that mirror on the opposite wall that instead of seeing yourself, you see the trees and the mountains, as if you have magically willed yourself away?
Yes, as a matter of fact I have, he said, going into the kitchen for his usual vodka, but I haven’t lost sleep over it. You, however, must have been thinking about it day and night, he added, placing his glass and a new dish of pistachio nuts on the table. As for your most eloquent analogy, your girls must resent the fact that while you’re leaving this guy behind, they have to keep sleeping with him—some of them, at least, he said, taking a sip of his drink. He looked at his glass speculatively. I’m going to miss this, you know. You have to admit, we’ve got the best bootleg vodka in the world.
Cutting through his speculations on the merits of our vodka, I said, Going away isn’t going to help as much as you think. The memory stays with you, and the stain. It’s not something you slough off once you leave.
I have two things to say to that, he said. First, none of us can avoid being contaminated by the world’s evils; it’s all a matter of what attitude you take towards them. And second, you always talk about the effect of “these people” on you. Have you ever thought about your effect on them? I looked at him with some skepticism. This relationship is not equal in both good and bad ways, he continued. They have the power to kill us or flog us, but all of this only reminds them of their weakness. They must be scared out of their wits to see what’s happening to their own former comrades, and to their children.
23
It was a warm summer day, about a fortnight after my conversation with Bijan. I had taken refuge in a coffee shop. It was really a pastry shop, one of the very few that still remained from my childhood. It had great piroshki for which people stood in long lines, and near the entrance, next to the large French windows, two or three small tables. I was sitting at one of these with a café glacé in front of me. I took out my pen and paper and, staring into the air, started to write. This staring into the air and writing had become my forte, especially in those last few months in Tehran.
Suddenly I noticed in the long line of people waiting for piroshki a face that seemed familiar, but not so familiar that I could place it. A woman was looking at me, more like staring. She smiled and, giving up her precious place in line, came towards me. Dr. Nafisi, she said. Don’t you remember me? Clearly, she was a former student. Her voice was familiar, but I could not place her. She reminded me of my classes on James and Austen, and gradually her ghost took shape