Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Hebden

I’m not a big non-fiction reader. I feel I ought to read more, and a while ago decided that I’d always have one non-fiction book on the go as well as a novel. I didn’t get very far, as one of the first books I tried (Tulip by Anna Pavord) was deadly dull. (Johnny reads lots of non-fiction, and assured me that as non-fiction goes that book is hard going). The determination sort of fizzled out with that one unfinished book – though I suppose as I still haven’t finished it, I could still say it’s ‘on the go’!

So I had no idea how I would get on with Reading Lolita in Tehran. I was prepared to find it hard going, and to come to the meeting filled with apologies.

I was pleasantly surprised. More than pleasantly. I was ecstatically surprised. I read it as voraciously as if it were a novel, picking it up at every opportunity – waiting for the kettle to boil, walking to school, tea breaks at work. When I got to the end I read the acknowledgements and the printing details and the back cover, not wanting it to finish. I wanted to meet Azar Nafisi, have a coffee with her and talk about books. I felt as though I’d made a friend.

So I came to the meeting filled with enthusiasm rather than apologies. And so did some of the rest of the group. The others didn’t, couldn’t understand what I liked about it; thought the author was pompous and opinionated; the book discussions dreary and longwinded; the only slight interest was the lives of the women and this was not explored thoroughly enough. Undeflated, I put forward my opinion. So did everyone else. My daughters, trying to sleep upstairs, said that we were very loud, especially Mummy. It was a good discussion.

It was fascinating to look at the lives of these women living in a society so completely different to out own. So different we cannot really comprehend it. And as someone pointed out, even before the revolution, life in Iran was far removed from western societies. I think this is partly why some of us had a problem with her voice, her ‘pompousness’. For a start it is written in translation, which means that Azar Nafisi’s voice is coming to us through a filter. But it isn’t just a language filter, it is also a cultural filter. The way literature is taught in the University of Tehran is different to the way we discuss books here. It does use more formal, slightly more old fashioned, language and form. This is mirrored in life by the formal way Nafisi addresses her students (male students anyway). It is more like an English University of the twenties or thirties, before we had our own post war cultural revolution. This is also reflected in the books she chooses to write about – other than Lolita which was published in 1950, they are all older classics. This isn’t a memoir of twenty first century books, but books from an earlier era. And with that older style comes a tone, which some of us found pompous.

Nafisi was also accused of being too didactic. She was teaching the group about these books, rather than discussing them on equal terms. But I think that was the point of the group. Nafisi was a teacher of literature, and these were her students. She was unable to teach properly at the university, so she brought them secretly to her home where they could talk freely.

I had read most of the books which Nafisi discussed (and I have since read Daisy Miller), which helped in my understanding and enjoyment of the book. I enjoy reading novels, but I also enjoy reading about novels. I identified with Azar Nafisi, with her passion about books; her way of looking at the world through literature, of trying to make sense of madness by looking at other explorations of madness; finding parallels in the wider world that could help her come to terms with the awful situation in which she was living. It’s a way of connecting with the world, and also somewhere to retreat to.

Helen mentioned the scene when the bombs were falling on Tehran, and Azar sat in the doorway to her children’s room, reading Henry James. When the situation is too much to bear, a book is somewhere to go to get away from it. This is an escape mechanism that I completely identify with. But it isn’t purely escape. You can come back to the present enriched by what you’ve been reading, better able to cope.

It is this parallel between coping and escaping, living within the regime and retreating from it, which carries the book and is its strength. Some of the group felt that it would have been improved if it was just a story of the lives of the women in the group. But I feel that would be to disarm it, disable it. It is a Memoir in Books, and it is through those books that we come to know Nafisi and the world she inhabits.

The Gatsby trial is a perfect example. We can understand her students by their reactions to the book. If there was no discussion of the characters in Gatsby and their motivations, we would have no stick by which to measure the reactions of the students. We need to understand the love between Gatsby and Daisy in order to feel the dismissal of it by the prosecutor in their classroom trial.

The stories from the lives of Nafisi and her students, living in oppression, were indeed fascinating. We talked about some of the more shocking laws which the revolution brought in – the legal marriageable age for girls of nine years old; the temporary marriages men could have, as well as four permanent wives, an unlimited number of marriage contracts could be made for as little as ten minutes! We agreed that it made us feel lucky to be living in the west, where nobody tells us what to wear, read or think. Where none of us worry about having illegal dreams.

And within that, it was wonderful to meet these individual women, who in their different ways struggle against that oppression. Some by demonstrating and fighting, others by escaping. And poor Mashid, trying to hold on to her faith despite all. Robert was indignant, wondering why any of them would keep faith, when the logical extreme of that faith is the harsh regime under which they are forced to live. But faith, like love, is not something easily abandoned, and Mashid’s confession towards the end of the book, that she is struggling to keep hers, is very painful.

We talked about Azar’s relationships with the men in her life, her husband and her friend the magician. Some of us thought the magician was made up by Azar, a figment from her mind to help her keep her sanity. Both men help us to understand Azar better. Her husband is a slow burner in the book, who never takes centre stage. At first she mentions him only occasionally and in passing. Later we see them arguing, see him drinking his vodka quietly while she rails against the world. We see his love for his country in that he wants to stay, and his love for Azar in that he is willing to go. He is a voice of calm in her life. He sits back, a smile on his face, while Azar takes the stage, and he is there for her when she crumples.

The magician is someone she goes to for reassurance, someone she looks up to. She can sit on his sofa and rant and rail about the world and he listens, advicses, gives her chocolates. He is someone she looks up to intellectually, someone she has true respect for. It is possible that he is imaginary. He is certainly someone she might make up if he didn’t already exist. But there is enough material evidence – the gifts he gives her, the friends they share – to suggest that he was real enough. For the purposes of the book it doesn’t matter.

I came to the book expecting to be shocked by the strictures of a regime like Iran’s under Khomeini. In that I was not disappointed. I also hoped to gain fresh insights into books which I know and love. That too I got. What I couldn’t have expected was to meet such a warm and vibrant person, making sense of her world in ways which I could relate too. I didn’t expect identification. Although some of the group were repelled by her, I was drawn. And if you ever read this, Azar Nafisi, drop me an email. Or better still, come round for a cup of tea.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/04/AR2005050401875.html