Memoir Essay

The Iranian Dream

“A novel is not an allegory… It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing” (Nafisi 109). Through her memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Nafisi details her educational and literary journey returning to Tehran from America. Her belief in the power of literature reflects in her writing, motivating and inspiring young women oppressed in the newly formed Islamic state. She knew the city before the wars and bloodshed, and that is what she remembers as home. However, after leaving to study in America, that reality is not what she comes back to. Her stories reveal her core values: education, standing up for one’s beliefs, individuality, and freedom. They also reveal how literature greatly contributed to her identity – how it was her medium through which she spread these values to her students. Nafisi writes of a world devoid of hope, where there is no semblance of the American Dream, where the inhumanities of war leave nothing behind but corpses, and how western literature has the power to restore one’s hope, faith, and humanity.

Nafisi dedicated her life to literature. She became a teacher to pass down that passion to her students, to attempt to broaden the views of the younger generation. But she herself didn’t realize the power of education until the days of Islamic propaganda and brainwashing. While teaching in Tehran, she witnessed the shift in her student’s beliefs in the classroom along with the shift to a strong Islamic government in the country. While teaching at the University of Tehran, her Gatsby unit juxtaposed the freedom and opportunity of the American Dream to the oppressive Islamic regime. She starts contrasting her own experiences in each country when she writes,

When in the states we had shouted Death to this or that, those deaths seemed to be more symbolic, more abstract, as if we were encouraged by the impossibility of our slogans to insist upon them even more. But in Tehran in 1979, these slogans were turning into reality with macabre precision. I felt helpless; all the dreams and slogans were coming true, and there was no escaping them (Nafisi 97).

In the US, we use the word “death” daily as a farce. We have desensitized ourselves to the concept of death because we don’t have to fear for our lives each and every day. But in 1979 Tehran, death was imminent. It wasn’t something to laugh about or poke fun at because everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it happened to them. The farce and adultery of western civilization was preserved through The Great Gatsby, which became a problem for many of Nafisi’s Muslim students who backed Ayatollah Khomeini and the new regime. They argued that The Great Gatsby was “a rape of our culture” (Nafisi 106), and having a thieving adulterer as the protagonist everyone supports was an insult to Islam. It is in that moment Nafisi realizes the sphere of control she had over her student’s beliefs. But instead of forcing her viewpoint upon her students like another political brainwasher. She attempts the purest form of education and takes herself and her beliefs out of the equation entirely, focusing on the fact that all that matters is the growth of her students. She decides to put The Great Gatsby on trial and have her students decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to complete the unit. Towards the end of their trial, as merely a medium between Gatsby and the class, she addresses the beauty Fitzgerald exemplifies through Gatsby’s crimes.  “Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby,” she explains. “The biggest sin is to be blind to other people’s problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence” (Nafisi 132). They never did get around to finishing their unit, but in the end, Nafisi began to realize the meaning of education. Even though she didn’t change the beliefs of her students, she made them fight for it. She made them understand what they were fighting for. All of her students left that day with their minds just a little bit stronger. And at the end of the day, faith in yourself and a knowledge of why you are fighting is more powerful than what you are fighting for. But despite Nafisi’s dedication to her students, her own beliefs against the Islamic state cut her time teaching at the University of Tehran short.

He cautiously tried to make me understand what political Islam meant… I told him about my grandmother, who was the most devout Muslim I had ever known… and still she shunned politics. She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of her sacred relationship to God, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols. (Nafisi 103)

To women, the veil was once a sacred object representative of their fate. However, with Allah at the reins, it has become a symbol of their oppression. Nafisi had many arguments like the one quoted above with her superior in school, Mr. Bahri. It had become the law in the minds of the people that all women in the workplace should be completely covered, but Nafisi refused to put on the veil. And for that, she was fired. Nafisi’s issue wasn’t with Islam but with political Islam, turning religion into a war chant and Iran into a radical state. She stands up for her beliefs– that the veil should not be forced upon people– even though she is aware that she will lose her job. But soon, wearing a veil became mandatory everywhere in public. The consequence was death, and Nafisi could no longer resist. But once again, through literature, Nafisi is able to maintain her core value of standing up for her beliefs, and she does so through education. She finally became a professor again at an all girls college. Once she started teaching here, Nafisi realized how the newer generations have been devoid of a proper education. She comes to this realization after grading a reading assessment where all her students just wrote down exactly what she had said in the lecture, verbatim. She yelled at them about it and didn’t realize what the issue was until one of her students, Razieh, opened her mind.

‘But you must think about where we are coming from. Most of these girls have never had anyone praise them for anything. They have never been told that they are any good or that they should think independently. Now you come in and confront them, accusing them of betraying principles they are taught to value. You should’ve known better.’ (Nafisi 221)

Nafisi shows vulnerability in this moment as she feels she has already failed these girls, and with the public oppression growing stronger, she feels helpless. The new regime was breeding a new generation of girls, quiet and demure, that were never taught to think for themselves. But Nafisi stands up for her students, educating them with literature and teaching them to have their own opinions. She might not have been able to stand up for individual and religious rights in public, but she could spark a flame in her students and influence the next generation to think for themselves. Despite the complexity of his ideals, Nafisi does so through the work of Henry James. Having lived through both the Civil War and World War I, James’ life was full of death and violence. Even though he did not participate in the war, he stayed involved and spoke up through writing and literature. During World War I, James said, ‘“The war has used up words; they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance…’” (Nafisi 213). James attempted to write many works of fiction filled to the brim with allusions to the warfare, but he discovered “the impotence of words in the face of such inhumanity” (Nafisi 213). But still he turned around and kept writing. He started writing nonfiction war pamphlets, convincing Americans to join the fight for their country. He found his way to stand up for what he believed in. Nafisi uses his experience to show that while the written word may seem useless in the face of a war, there is always a way to keep fighting. By using James as a role model, Nafisi stands up for the unique voices and opinions of her students and stands up for a better future for Iran.

“I had not realized how far the routines of one’s life creates the illusion of stability. Now that I could not wear what I would normally wear, walk in the street to the beat of my own body, shout if I wanted to or pat a male colleague on the back on the spur of the moment, now that all this was illegal, I felt light and fictional, as if I were walking on air, as if I had been written into being and then erased in one quick swipe” (Nafisi 167). For as long as she could she held off the veils. She fought out against the oppression, even when it meant losing her job. She fought for her individuality, but soon everything that made her unique was taken from her. Through this quote, Nafisi displays vulnerability. Generally, people feel vulnerable when they are exposed, left out in the open for everyone to criticize. But Nafisi is vulnerable because the things that made her who she was were taken from her, and she feels in danger of losing her identity. Because how long can one stay covered up, hiding their true colors from the world before they forget who they truly are? But Nafisi finds strength and vows to fight for her core values of individuality and equality. “What Nabokov captured was the texture of life in a totalitarian society where you are completely alone in an illusory world of false promises where you no longer differentiate between your savior and executioner” (Nafisi 23). Life in the Islamic Republic for women was life in chains. They were made one and the same, loyal servants to their husbands. Nafisi created clandestine literature groups in the safety of her home for young women who were dedicated to literature as something to give them hope in such a grave time. They read many western classics, including Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. They found many parallels from the world Austen creates to their own situations. They defined the new Islamic Republic by altering Austen’s most famous opening line. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” became “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife. For women loyal to the cloth, religion was their savior, but politics was their executioner. Through her literature groups, Nafisi not only taught her students to express individuality, but to understand the distant concept of freedom. “Our class was shaped within this context, in an attempt to escape the gaze of the blind censor for a few hours every week,” Nafisi explains. “There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita, we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom” (Nafisi 25). This is the message that Nafisi spread to her clandestine literature circle– that even under a government that seeks to oppress you, whose goal is to stifle your voice, one can often find hope, and those ideas are often preserved in literature. Nafisi brought the American Dream to Iran, but it became a paradox because the American Dream has no place in a society with no freedom. Nafisi writes about a vulnerable time reading such freeing words in an oppressive society. She states,

An absurd fictionality ruled our lives. We tried to live in the open spaces, in the chinks created between that room, which had become our protective cocoon, and the censor’s world of witches and goblins outside. Which of these two worlds was more real, and to which did we really belong? We no longer knew the answers. Perhaps one way of finding the truth was to do what we did: to try and imaginatively articulate these two worlds and, through that process, give shape to our vision and identity (Nafisi 26).

In the literature circle, the girls are able to create the version of reality they believed in and live in it, even if just for a little while. By teaching them all this, Nafisi helped the girls believe that in a distant land, freedom was possible.  

Through her memoir, Nafisi left us with many messages about the importance of literature. One quote that summarizes her definition of literature was written while recalling teaching her literature group Lolita. “Every fairytale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairytale offers you freedoms that reality denies. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors, and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter” (Nafisi 47). This quote perfectly embodies the purpose of literature through Nafisi’s eyes: a celebration of acts of defiance against those who attempt to stifle our voices. No matter how ugly things get, or how “impotent” words may seem “in the face of such inhumanity” according to Henry James, literature forms these issues in such a beautiful way it is nearly impossible to not get sucked into the author’s world and be inspired. Through her memoir, it is clear that Nafisi was that force to her students, as she shared with them her core values of education, standing up for one’s beliefs, individuality, and freedom. It is evident that her students learned a lot from her, as one of them proves another equally powerful message about literature: “It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes and understand the other’s different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions, you cannot easily murder them” (Nafisi 118). Nafisi was able to reach her students in making them believe that literature introduces them to new worlds they never would have otherwise seen. Nafisi’s educational journey wasn’t easy, but it was something she was passionate about. Even when the political climate stripped her of everything, including her identity, Nafisi was always able to find the tiniest shred of hope, and through literature she was able to find herself again. She survived because literature was her salvation. And she saved others, touching them with a love for the written word and inspiration in their hearts.

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