Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [86]
Our ambivalent attitude towards the war mainly stemmed from our ambivalence towards the regime. In those first air raids against Tehran, a house in the affluent part of the city was hit. It was rumored that its basement had been occupied by anti-government guerrillas. Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of the Parliament, in an effort to appease the frightened population, claimed in a Friday prayer ceremony that the bombing so far had done no real harm, as its victims were the “arrogant rich and subversives,” who probably would have been executed sooner or later anyway. He also recommended that women dress properly when sleeping, so that if their houses were hit, they would not be “indecently exposed to strangers’ eyes.”
3
“Let’s celebrate!” my friend Laleh cried before sitting down at a table in our favorite restaurant, where I had been waiting for her. This was a few weeks after our encounter with the Committee on the Cultural Revolution, and by now we knew it was only a matter of time before we would either have to comply with the rules or be expelled. Since the government had recently made the veil mandatory at the workplace, I did not see much reason for her exuberance. Celebrate what? I wanted to know. “Today”—she paused and took an excited breath—“after nine years—eight and a half, to be exact—I was formally expelled from the university. I am now officially irrelevant, as you would put it, so lunch is on me! Since we can’t drink publicly to my newly acquired status, let’s eat ourselves to death,” she added in a brave effort to make light of a development that would leave her penniless and, more important, force her to give up a job she loved and was good at. Stiff upper lip, I believe they call it. Well, this stiff upper lip was becoming quite a trend among friends and colleagues.
She had gone to the university that day to discuss her situation with the head of the Psychology Department, where she had been teaching since her return from Germany a few years earlier, and she had not worn a head scarf, of course. Of course! The guard at the gate had called out to her from inside his cage. As I imagine it now, the guard’s post is literally a cage, a large protrusion of bars, but it may have been more of an outpost; made of metal perhaps? Or cement? With a window and a side door? I could pick up the phone and call Laleh, who two years ago finally moved to the U.S. and now lives in Los Angeles. I could ask her; she, unlike me, has a very precise memory.
Have you come across that new guard? she asked me, a limp captive lettuce leaf dangling from the end of her fork. The clumsy one with a mournful countenance. The very big one . . . She was trying to avoid using the word fat. No, I had not had the pleasure of meeting the aforementioned guard. Anyhow, he is of Oliver Hardy dimensions. Bigger, she said, chewing now on her lettuce with ferocious determination. But the resemblance ends there. I mean, this guy was flabby but not jovial, one of those dour, mirthless overweight men who don’t even enjoy their food—you know the type.
Could you please lay off the guard of the mournful countenance, I pleaded with her, and get on with your story? She attacked a small cherry tomato that kept slipping from under her fork and did not begin again until she had finally speared it. He came out of his cage, Laleh at last continued, and said, Ma’am, your I.D. please. So I took out my I.D. and waved it in his face and started walking, but then he called me again. Ma’am, you know you can’t go in like this? I said, I’ve been going in through this gate like this for the past eight years. No, ma’am, you have to have a head cover—new orders. That’s my problem, I said, not yours.