Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [66]
I felt it was wrong for me to be the defendant, that this put the prosecutor in an awkward position. At any rate, it would have been more interesting if one of the students had chosen to participate. But no one wanted to speak for Gatsby. There was something so obstinately arrogant about Mr. Nyazi, so inflexible, that in the end I persuaded myself I should have no fear of intimidating him.
A few days later, Mr. Bahri came to see me. We had not met for what seemed like a long time. He was a little outraged. I enjoyed the fact that for the first time, he seemed agitated and had forgotten to talk in his precise and leisurely manner. Was it necessary to put this book on trial? I was somewhat taken aback. Did he want me to throw the book aside without so much as a word in its defense? Anyway, this is a good time for trials, I said, is it not?
17
All through the week before the trial, whatever I did, whether talking to friends and family or preparing for classes, part of my mind was constantly occupied on shaping my arguments for the trial. This after all was not merely a defense of Gatsby but of a whole way of looking at and appraising literature—and reality, for that matter. Bijan, who seemed quite amused by all of this, told me one day that I was studying Gatsby with the same intensity as a lawyer scrutinizing a textbook on law. I turned to him and said, You don’t take this seriously, do you? He said, Of course I take it seriously. You have put yourself in a vulnerable position in relation to your students. You have allowed them—no, not just that; you have forced them into questioning your judgment as a teacher. So you have to win this case. This is very important for a junior member of the faculty in her first semester of teaching. But if you are asking for sympathy, you won’t get it from me. You’re loving it, admit it—you love this sort of drama and anxiety. Next thing you know, you’ll be trying to convince me that the whole revolution depends on this.
But it does—don’t you see? I implored. He shrugged and said, Don’t tell me. I suggest you put your ideas to Ayatollah Khomeini.
On the day of the trial, I left for school early and roamed the leafy avenues before heading to class. As I entered the Faculty of Persian and Foreign Languages and Literature, I saw Mahtab standing by the door with another girl. She wore a peculiar grin that day, like a lazy kid who has just gotten an A. She said, Professor, I wondered if you would mind if Nassrin sits in on the class today. I looked from her to her young companion; she couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old. She was very pretty, despite her own best efforts to hide it. Her looks clashed with her solemn expression, which was neutral and adamantly impenetrable. Only her body seemed to express something: she kept leaning on one leg and then the other as her right hand gripped and released the thick strap of her heavy shoulder bag.
Mahtab, with more animation than usual, told me that Nassrin’s English was better than most college kids’, and when she’d told her about Gatsby’s trial, she was so curious that she’d read the whole book. I turned to Nassrin and asked, What did you think of Gatsby? She paused and then said quietly, I can’t tell. I said, Do you mean you don’t know or you can’t tell me? She said, I don’t know, but maybe I just can’t tell you.
That was the beginning of it all. After the trial, Nassrin asked permission to continue attending my classes whenever