Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [39]
21
One Thursday morning so hot that the heat seemed to have permeated the cool of our air-conditioned house, seven of us were talking aimlessly before the class began. We were talking about Sanaz. She had missed class the preceding week without calling to explain, and now we didn’t know if she would come again. No one, not even Mitra, had heard from her. We were speculating that maybe the troublesome brother had hatched a new plot. Sanaz’s brother was by now a constant topic of conversation, one of a series of male villains who resurfaced from week to week.
“Nima tells me we don’t understand the difficulty men face here,” said Manna with a hint of sarcasm. “They too don’t know how to act. Sometimes they act like macho bullies because they feel vulnerable.”
“Well, that’s to an extent true,” I said. “After all, it takes two to create a relationship, and when you make half the population invisible, the other half suffers as well.”
“Can you imagine the kind of man who’d get sexually provoked just by looking at a strand of my hair?” said Nassrin. “Someone who goes crazy at the sight of a woman’s toe . . . wow!” she continued, “My toe as a lethal weapon!”
“Women who cover themselves are aiding and abetting the regime,” said Azin with a defiant flourish.
Mahshid remained silent, her eyes targeting the table’s iron leg.
“And those whose trademark is painting their lips fiery red and flirting with male professors,” said Manna with an icy stare. “I suppose they are doing all this to further the cause?” Azin turned red and said nothing.
“How about genitally mutilating men,” Nassrin suggested coolly, “so as to curb their sexual appetites?” She had been reading Nawal al-Sadawi’s book on brutality against women in some Muslim societies. Sadawi, a doctor, had gone to some lengths to explain the horrendous effects of genitally mutilating young girls in order to curb their sexual appetites. “I was working on this text for my translation project—”
“Your translation project?”
“Yes, don’t you remember? I told my father I was translating Islamic texts into English to help Mahshid.”
“But I thought that was just an excuse so that you could come here,” I said.
“It was, but I decided to do these translations for at least three hours a week, sometimes more, for the extra lies. I reached a compromise with my conscience,” she said with a smile.
“I have to tell you that the Ayatollah himself was no novice in sexual matters,” Nassrin went on. “I’ve been translating his magnum opus, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, and he has some interesting points to make.”
“But it’s already been translated,” said Manna. “What’s the point?”
“Yes,” said Nassrin, “parts of it have been translated, but after it became the butt of party jokes, ever since the embassies abroad found out that people were reading the book not for their edification but for fun, the translations have been very hard to find. And anyway, my translation is thorough—it has references and cross-references to works by other worthies. Did you know that one way to cure a man’s sexual appetites is by having sex with animals? And then there’s the problem of sex with chickens. You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can then eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken’s meat,