Reading Lolita in Tehran_ A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi [99]
When we were in the taxi on our way home, he turned to me again and broke the silence that had descended between us. Seriously, he said, go back and teach. It isn’t forever. You can always get out if you want. Make your deals, but go only as far as you can without compromising the fundamentals. And don’t worry about what we, your colleagues and friends, might say behind your back. We’ll talk behind your back no matter what you do. If you returned, we’d say, She’s caved in; if you didn’t, we’d say, She’s scared of taking up the challenge. So I did what he advised, and they did talk behind my back just as they saw fit.
10
Less than a week after our emergency session, Mrs. Rezvan called me at home. She wanted me to meet with the head of the department, a nice man. You’ll see things are different now, she insisted. They have become more liberal; they realize the value of good academics. What she forgot to mention was that “they” wanted the impossible: good academics who would preach their ideals and conform to their demands. She was right, however, about the head of the department. He was a first-rate linguist, a graduate of one of the best universities in the U.S. He was religious, but not ideological and not a sycophant. And, unlike most, he was genuinely interested in academic standards.
After that first meeting with the head of the department came a less pleasant meeting with the pious and less flexible dean of the faculty. After the usual preliminaries, he took on a serious expression, as if to say, Enough about such trivial matters as philosophy and literature—now let’s get down to the basics. He began by expressing some concern about my “background,” especially my defiance of the veil. I told him that this was now the law of the land, that I could no longer appear anywhere in public without the veil and that therefore I would wear it. But I would not compromise on my classes: I would teach what I wanted to teach as I saw fit to teach it. He was surprised, but decided to accede, at least in principle, to my requirement for freedom.
All during the meeting, as befitted a truly Muslim man, he did not look me in the eyes. Most of the time he kept his head down like a shy eighteen-year-old. He focused on the design of the carpet, or targeted the wall. Sometimes he would play with his pen, looking at it intently, reminding me of my last meeting with Mr. Bahri. I had by now become something of an expert in the manners of pious men. They showed their opinion of you by the manner in which they avoided looking at you. Some made an aggressive point of averting their gaze. Once, a high functionary for whose organization I had prepared an evaluation report at the request of a male colleague, pointedly looked the other way throughout the thirty minutes of my report, and later addressed his points and questions to my male colleague, who I felt was literally sweating with shame. After a while I decided to address myself also solely to my colleague, refusing to acknowledge the high personage’s presence—and foolishly, I refused the money the organization paid me for my pains.
But this dean seemed to avert his gaze out of genuine modesty and piety; I did not particularly appreciate his manner, but I could not feel hostile towards him. Had we not lived in the Islamic Republic, I might have shown some sense of humor about our awkward situation, for it was obvious that it was more embarrassing and painful to him than it was to me; and it was clear that he was curious and eager to discuss with me matters