Reading Lolita in Tehran: Part IV–Epilogue

So declared Yassi in that special tone of hers, deadpan and mildly ironic, which on rare occasions, and this was one of them, bordered on the burlesque.

We had developed a hidden code between us and only when she felt offended—and she could easily be offended—would she lower and divert her gaze to one side, the playful inflections wiped from her words.

Mitra, her dimples making a temporary appearance, had informed the class that Sanaz wanted us to wait for her—she had a surprise. All our wild speculations were met with a reticent smile.

“I’m so sorry I’m late again,” she said with a disarming smile that showed no sign of repentance.

Sharia law replaced the existing system of jurisprudence and became the norm.

It was then that the myth of Islamic feminism—a contradictory notion, attempting to reconcile the concept of women’s rights with the tenets of Islam—took root.

Mahshid decided not to take the bait, and remained demurely silent.

She is shy and refuses to dance. We start to tease her and goad her on, and form a circle around her.

There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to.

Absolute commitment to the works, to the class, I said with an impetuous air of finality.

Note for example how terrible Mr. Collins is on the dance floor, as is the uncouth Thorpe in Northanger Abbey.

Cantankerous! No, Yassi, that’s not it. Definitely not cantankerous. Yes, well, indecisive as well as inadequate—that I do feel; maybe I also feel cantankerous.

With a fixed smile, she related how he felt humiliated by what she called her “independent spirit”; he beat her up and then tried to placate her by swearing his undying love.

These forays into the personal were not supposed to be part of the class, but they infiltrated our discussions, bringing with them further incursions.

It was a time of peace, a time for reconstruction, for the ordinary rhyme and rhythm of life to take over again, and instead a cacophony of voices overwhelmed us and came to supersede the somber sounds of war.

Political parties and political enemies were in jail and banned, but in the field of culture—literature, music, art and philosophy—the dominant trend was with the secular forces; the Islamic elite had failed to gain ascendancy in any of these areas.

We had somehow managed to end our discussions with anecdotes about the regime: the number of clerics and high-ranking officials with green cards, the ruling elite’s inferiority complex, burning the American flag on the one hand and being obsequious to Westerners, especially American journalists, on the other.

"You know it might do you some good if you practiced what you preached for a change. Take the example of one Jane Austen,” he said with what appeared to me a patronizing munificence.

Yassi had no choice but to want to be like her uncles—not necessarily like them, but to be possessed of what seemed to her their inalienable rights.

“I have the best excuse for going to America,” said a cheeky Yassi.

What happens, I asked my students, when we deny our characters the smallest speck of individuality? Who is more realized in her humanity, Emma Bovary or Olga of the limpid blue eyes?

One evening after class, Mr. Nahvi had suddenly appeared in front of Mitra. He had not seemed his usual...“Redoubtable self?” the incorrigible Yassi suggested.

“Pontificating? Pompous? Ponderous?” Yassi continued, unabashed.

When Nassrin walked around in her chador or veil, her gait was defiant; she walked as she did everything else—restlessly, but with a sort of bravado.

It’s hard on me, I grumbled, pleading with some unknown interlocutor, who always questioned and mocked my every complaint.

Charlotte Brontë did not like Jane Austen. “The Passions are perfectly unknown to her,” she complained to a friend, “...even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would but ruffle the elegance of her progress.”

Knowing Charlotte Brontë and her proclivities, one can understand how one perfectly good novelist could dislike another as much as Brontë disliked Austen.

Others noticed that certain colleagues had reneged and decided not to go, on the very morning of the trip.

He glanced out the window and saw that the bus had stopped at the tip of a very high precipice.

He talks somewhere about the “atrophy of feeling”—the West is gripped by an “atrophy of feeling...”

For there was a commotion behind us, which I had missed in my eagerness to propound the virtues of Mr. Bellow.

In the end, Bijan, always judicious and far too reasonable, had agreed that we should leave—for a few years at least.

I deferred packing, and refused to talk about it seriously. In class, the light and flippant attitude I espoused made it difficult for my girls to know how to react.

In class, the light and flippant attitude I espoused made it difficult for my girls to know how to react.

To watch a beloved film on video is anathema to him, although he obtains tapes of his favorite movies for us.

I kept remembering her other face, the austere one, so withdrawn that her lips seemed constantly pursed.

I was not about to put another novel on trial. I told her it was immoral to talk about a great novel in this manner, that characters were not vehicles for pedantic moral imperatives, that reading a novel was not an exercise in censure.

I told her it was immoral to talk about a great novel in this manner, that characters were not vehicles for pedantic moral imperatives, that reading a novel was not an exercise in censure.

When I did not have an actual camera with me, I became a camera myself, writing feverishly about the flight of birds in Polur, our mountain resort near Tehran, the quality of air that was so tactile, especially early mornings around sunrise and all the beloved faces that surrounded us during those last weeks.

That day, when I left my magician’s house, the sun was fading and the air was mild, the trees a verdant green, and I had many reasons to feel sad.