Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [94]
So, we will settle for the fact that I called him impulsively for no very good reason. One afternoon I was alone at home, reading all day instead of working. Every once in a while I would look at my watch and say, I will start work in half an hour, in one hour; I’ll quit as soon as I’ve reached the end of the chapter. Then I’d go to the refrigerator and make myself a sandwich, which I ate as I continued to read my book. I think it was after I had finished the sandwich that I got up and dialed his number.
Two rings and I heard a voice on the third: Hello? Mr. R? Yes? I am Azar; a pause. Azar Nafisi. Oh yes, yes. Can I see you? But of course. When would you like to come? When is best for you? How about the day after tomorrow, at five? Later, he explained that the size of his apartment was such that he could answer the phone from anywhere in his apartment on the third ring; otherwise, it meant that he either was out or did not wish to answer.
No matter how intimate we became, I always saw myself the way we were in that first meeting. I sat opposite him on the lonely chair, and he on the hard brown sofa. Both of us had our hands on our knees, he because it was customary with him, me because I was nervous and had unconsciously adopted a schoolkid’s pose in front of a much respected teacher. Between us on the table he had set a tray with two dark green mugs of tea and a box of chocolates, immaculate squares of red with black lettering: Lindt, a rare luxury, all the more so because they could not be found in the shops where foreign chocolates were sold at exorbitant prices. The chocolates were the only luxury he treated himself and his visitors to. There must have been days when he went almost hungry, but he did have a store of chocolates in that half-empty refrigerator, which he did not eat much of himself but reserved for friends and visitors. I forgot to add: it was a cloudy, snowy day; and would it matter if I told you that I wore a yellow sweater, gray pants and black boots and he a brown sweater and jeans?
Unlike me, he appeared very confident. He acted as if I had come to ask for help and our task was to set up an elaborate rescue plan. And in a sense it was true. He talked as if he knew me, as if he knew not only the known facts but also the unknown mysteries, thus creating a formal intimacy, a shared strangeness between us. It seemed from that first meeting that, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, we entered into a conspiracy—not a political one, but one cooked up by children to protect them against the grown-up world.
He finished my sentences for me, articulated my wishes and demands, and by the time I left, we already had a plan. This was what was good about him: people who went to see him somehow ended up with some plan or another, whether it was how to behave towards a lover or how to start a new project or structure a talk. I don’t remember too clearly the exact nature of the plan I went home with, but he does, I am sure, for he seldom forgets. I had not finished my tea, and did not eat my chocolate, but I did go home giddy and satiated. We had talked about my present life, the intellectual state of affairs and then about James and Rumi all in one breath. Without intending to, we had strayed into a long and pointless discussion that had sent him to his immaculate library, and I left with a few books under my arm.
That first day colored our relationship—in my mind at least—until the day I left Iran. I stopped growing up in relation to him because it suited and even pleased me to do so, absolving me of certain responsibilities. While he