Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [56]
When we spoke, we always seemed to be in some private conference. We almost never agreed, but it seemed necessary that we argue out our differences and persuade each other of the rightness of our position. The more irrelevant I became, the more powerful he grew, and slowly and imperceptibly our roles reversed. He was not an agitator—he did not give fine, passionate speeches—but he worked his way up doggedly, with patience and dedication. By the time I was expelled from the university, he had become the head of the Muslim Students’ Association.
When the radical students canceled classes, he was among the few who showed up, with evident disapproval. During these canceled classes, we usually talked about the various events unfolding at the university or the political issues of the day. He cautiously tried to make me understand what political Islam meant, and I rebuffed him, because it was exactly Islam as a political entity that I rejected. I told him about my grandmother, who was the most devout Muslim I had ever known, even more than you, Mr. Bahri, and still she shunned politics. She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of her sacred relationship to God, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols. Where do your loyalties lie, Mr. Bahri, with Islam or the state?
I was not unfond of Mr. Bahri, and yet I developed a habit of blaming him and holding him responsible for everything that went wrong. He was baffled by Hemingway, felt ambivalent about Fitzgerald, loved Twain and thought we should have a national writer like him. I loved and admired Twain but thought all writers were national writers and that there was no such thing as a National Writer.
9
I do not remember what I was doing or where I was on that Sunday when I first heard the news that the American embassy had been occupied by a ragtag group of students. It is strange, but the only thing I remember was that it was sunny and mild, and the news did not sink in until the next day, when Ahmad, Khomeini’s son, announced his father’s support of the students and issued a defiant statement: “If they do not give us the criminals,” he said, referring to the Shah and Bakhtiar, “then we will do whatever is necessary.” Two days later, on November 6, Prime Minister Bazargan, who was being increasingly attacked by the religious hard-liners and the left as liberal and pro-Western, resigned.
Soon the walls of the embassy were covered with new slogans: AMERICA CAN’T DO A DAMN THING AGAINST US! THIS IS NOT A STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE U.S. AND IRAN, IT’S A STRUGGLE BETWEEN ISLAM AND BLASPHEMY. THE MORE WE DIE, THE STRONGER WE WILL BECOME. A tent was raised on the sidewalk and filled with propaganda against America, exposing its crimes around the world and proclaiming the necessity to export the revolution. At the university, the mood was both jubilant and apprehensive. Some of my students, Bahri and Nyazi among them, had disappeared and were presumably active on the front lines of this new struggle. Tense discussions and excited whispers replaced regular classes.
Both the religious and leftist organizations, especially the Mujahideen and the Marxist Fedayin, supported the hostage-taking. I remember one heated debate where one of the students who was mocked as a liberal kept saying, What’s the point of taking them hostage? Haven’t we already kicked them out? And one of my students unreasonably reasoned that no, not yet, that American influence was still everywhere. We wouldn’t be free until the Voice of America was shut down.
By now the American embassy was no longer known as the American embassy—it was “the nest of spies.” When taxi drivers asked us where we wanted to go, we would say, Please take us to the nest