Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [83]
The three members of the Committee on the Cultural Revolution sat rather uncomfortably on the very high stage. Their expressions were by turns haughty, nervous and defiant. That meeting was the last at the University of Tehran in which the faculty openly criticized the government and its policies regarding higher education. Most were rewarded for their impertinence by being expelled.
Farideh, Laleh and I sat together conspicuously, like naughty children. We whispered, we consulted one another, we kept thrusting our hands up to talk. Farideh took the committee to task for using the university grounds to torture and intimidate the students. I told the Revolutionary Committee that my integrity as a teacher and a woman was being compromised by its insistence that I wear the veil under false pretenses for a few thousand tumans a month. The issue was not so much the veil itself as freedom of choice. My grandmother had refused to leave the house for three months when she was forced to unveil. I would be similarly adamant in my own refusal. Little did I know that I would soon be given the choice of either veiling or being jailed, flogged and perhaps killed if I disobeyed.
After that meeting, one of my more pragmatic colleagues, a “modern” woman, who decided to take up the veil and stayed there for another seventeen years after I was gone, told me with a hint of sarcasm in her voice, “You are fighting a losing battle. Why lose your job over an issue like this? In another couple of weeks you will be forced to wear the veil in the grocery stores.”
The simplest answer, of course, was that the university was not a grocery store. But she was right. Soon we would be forced to wear it everywhere. And the morality squads, with their guns and Toyota patrols, would guard the streets to ensure our adherence. On that sunny day, however, when my colleagues and I made our protest known, these incidents did not seem to be preordained. So much of the faculty protested, we thought we might yet win.
We left the meeting with a feeling of jubilance. The committee had clearly been defeated: their responses had been lame, and as the meeting progressed, they became more incoherent and defensive. When we emerged from the assembly hall, Mr. Bahri was waiting for me with a friend. He did not talk to my other colleagues but directed all his comments towards me. He did not understand it: how could I do this? Were we not friends? Yes, we were friends, but this really wasn’t personal—not in that way. Don’t you see, you are unconsciously helping the enemy, the imperialists? he said mournfully. Is it too much to ask you to comply with a few rules to save the revolution? I could have asked him whose revolution, but I didn’t. Farideh, Laleh and I were too euphoric, and we were going out to lunch to celebrate.
A few months after that, committees were established that led to the purging of some of the best faculty and students. Dr. A would resign and leave for the United States. Farideh would be expelled and later would go to Europe. The bright young professor whom I had met that first day in Dr. A’s office was also expelled in due time—I met him eleven years later, at a conference in Austin, Texas. Of the old group, only Laleh and I would remain, and soon we too would be expelled. The government would make the veil mandatory and put more students and faculty members on trial. I went to one more demonstration, called by the Mujahideen but supported by all the opposition forces, except the Communist Tudeh Party and the Fedayin Organization. By then, the first president of the Republic was in hiding and would soon flee the country. Over half a million participated in