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By Root 1306 0

opposition groups—both secular and religious—were forming to protest the autocratic tendencies within the ruling elite. The strongest of the opposition groups were Ayatollah Shariatmadari’s Muslim People’s Republican Party and the National Democratic Front, made up of secular progressives who were at the forefront of the struggle to preserve democratic rights, including women’s rights and freedom of the press. They were very popular at the time and drew about a million people on the twelfth anniversary of the death of the late nationalist hero Mossadegh to the village of Ahamad Abad, where Mossadegh was buried. They campaigned vigorously for a constituent assembly. The closing down of the most popular and progressive paper, Ayandegan, had led to a series of large violent demonstrations, in which the demonstrators were attacked by the government-backed vigilantes. In those days it was normal to see these goons on their motorbikes carrying black flags and banners, at times led by a cleric riding in front of them in a bulletproof Mercedes-Benz. Despite these ominous signs, the Communist Tudeh Party and the Marxist Fedayin Organization supported the radical reactionaries against what they called the liberals, and continued to put pressure on Prime Minister Bazargan, whom they suspected of having American sympathies.

The opposition was greeted with brutal violence. “The clog-wearers and the turbaned have given you a chance,” Khomeini warned. “After each revolution several thousands of the corrupt elements are executed in public and burned and the story is over. They are not allowed to publish newspapers.” Citing the example of the October Revolution and the fact that the state still controlled the press, he went on to say, “We will close all parties except the one, or a few which will act in a proper manner . . . we all made mistakes. We thought we were dealing with human beings. It is evident we are not. We are dealing with wild animals. We will not tolerate them anymore.”

It now seems amazing to me, as I relate the events of those years, how focused I was on my work. For I was as anxious about how my class would receive me as I was about the political upheavals.

My first class was in a long room with windows down one side. The room was full when I walked in, but as soon as I took my place behind the desk, my nervousness left me. The students were unusually quiet. My hands were loaded with all the books and Xeroxes I had brought for the class, an eclectic mix of revolutionary writers whose works had been translated into Persian and “elitists” such as Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Woolf.

That class went all right, and the ones after it became easier. I was enthusiastic, naÏve and idealistic, and I was in love with my books. The students were curious about me and Dr. K, the curly-haired young man I had bumped into at Dr. A’s office, strange new recruits at a time when most students were doing their best to expel their professors: they were all “anti-revolutionary,” a term that covered a vast range—anything from working with the previous regime to using obscene language in class.

That first day I asked my students what they thought fiction should accomplish, why one should bother to read fiction at all. It was an odd way to start, but I did succeed in getting their attention. I explained that we would in the course of the semester read and discuss many different authors, but that one thing these authors all had in common was their subversiveness. Some, like Gorky or Gold, were overtly subversive in their political aims; others, like Fitzgerald and Mark Twain, were in my opinion more subversive, if less obviously so. I told them we would come back to this term, because my understanding of it was somewhat different from its usual definition. I wrote on the board one of my favorite lines from the German thinker Theodor Adorno: “The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.” I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always