Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [57]
Three men sit in a semicircle talking eagerly, while a little farther on two women in black chadors, with three or four small children hovering around them, are making sandwiches and handing them over to the men. A festival? A picnic? An Islamic Woodstock? If you move a little closer to this small group, you can hear their conversation. Their accents indicate that they come from the province of Isfahan. One of them has heard that the Americans are becoming Muslims by the thousands and that Jimmy Carter is really scared. He should be scared, another one says as he bites into his sandwich. I hear the American police are confiscating all portraits of the Imam. Truth is mixed with wild rumors, rumors of the Shah’s mistreatment by his former Western allies, of the imminent Islamic revolution in America. Will America hand him over?
Farther down, you can hear sharper and more clipped cadences. “But this isn’t democratic centralism . . . religious tyranny . . . long-term allies . . .” and, more than any other word, liberals. Four or five students with books and pamphlets under their arms are deep in discussion. I recognize one of my leftist students, who sees me, smiles and comes towards me. Hello, Professor. I see you’ve joined us. Who is us? I ask him. The masses, the real people, he says quite seriously. But this is not your demonstration, I say. You’re wrong there. We have to be present every day, to keep the fire going, to prevent the liberals from striking a deal, he says.
The loudspeakers interrupt us. “Neither East, nor West; we want the Islamic Republic!” “America can’t do a damn thing!” “We will fight, we will die, we won’t compromise!”
I could never accept this air of festivity, the jovial arrogance that dominated the crowds in front of the embassy. Two streets away, a completely different reality was unfolding. Sometimes it seemed to me that the government operated in its own separate universe: it created a big circus, put on a big act, while people went about their business.
The fact was that America, the place I knew and had lived in for so many years, had suddenly been turned into a never-never land by the Islamic Revolution. The America of my past was fast fading in my mind, overtaken by all the clamor of new definitions. That was when the myth of America started to take hold of Iran. Even those who wished its death were obsessed by it. America had become both the land of Satan and Paradise Lost. A sly curiosity about America had been kindled that in time would turn the hostage-takers into its hostages.
10
In my diary for the year 1980 I have a small note: “Gatsby from Jeff.” Jeff was an American reporter from New York with whom I roamed the streets of Tehran for a few months. At the time I didn’t understand why I had become so dependent on these rambles. Some people take up alcohol during periods of stress, and I took up Jeff. I needed desperately to describe what I had witnessed to that other part of the world I had now left behind, seemingly forever. I took up writing letters to my American friends, giving minute and detailed accounts of life in Iran, but most of those letters were never sent.
It was obvious that Jeff was lonely, and, despite his obsessive love for his job, for which he had been greatly acknowledged, he needed to talk to someone who could speak his language and share a few memories. I discovered to my surprise that I was afflicted by the same predicament. I had just returned to my home, where I could speak at last in my mother tongue, and here I was longing to talk to someone who spoke English, preferably with a New York accent, someone who was intelligent and appreciated