Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

“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 can no longer differentiate between your savior and your executioner.”

Nafisi asserts that she is not trying to form direct correlations between her own experiences and those of Nabokov’s characters, such as Lolita, but nevertheless draws inspiration from the way in which Nabokov’s fiction captures the essence of the “texture of life” for those living under oppressive regimes. For Nafisi, the abuse of power is the key to understanding much of Nabokov’s fiction. His characters experience the isolation, the warped idealism (“world of false promises”), and—most crucially—the issue of moral culpability that Nafisi wrestles with throughout the memoir. Nafisi uses repetition in the above quote to create rhythm and emphasis, repeating “where you.”

“We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent—namely ideology.”

Nafisi frequently returns to the idea that there is a fundamental divide between those who wish to preserve the moral and intellectual independence of literature and those who wish to force literature to conform to ideological criteria. Nafisi depicts the Islamic regime as belonging to the latter category. The Ayatollahs have no interest in literature for any aesthetic reasons; rather, they only approve of prose insofar as it can function as a “handmaiden” for their ideological propaganda.

“Whoever we were […] we had become the figment of someone else’s dreams. A stern ayatollah, a self-proclaimed philosopher-king, had come to rule our land. He had come in the name of a past, a past that, he claimed, had been stolen from him. And he now wanted to re-create us in the image of that illusory past.”

Nafisi is deeply concerned with the thin line between idealism and oppression, which will form the key thematic preoccupation in Part 2. Nafisi describes Ayatollah Khomeini in mythical, fairytale-like language: a dangerous stranger come to town. He is “[a] stern ayatollah, a self-proclaimed philosopher-king.” For Khomeini, his dream is based on a history of Islamic purity that he wishes to re-establish in Iran. For Nafisi, the problem with Khomeini’s dream is twofold: First, that past is “illusory,” and second, fulfilling that dream means forcing people like Nafisi to be “re-create[d]” against their will.

“In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world.”

While the Iranian regime attempts to reduce literary works to “handmaidens” of its own ideology—as noted above in Quotation #3—Nafisi defends the essential independence of all great art. She credits literature as having “an essential defiance,” signaling its potentially subversive power and ability to challenge totalitarian ideologies. Like Khomeini and his dreams, Nafisi depicts the writer as capable of “creating a new world. ” Crucially, unlike Khomeini, the writer does so through peaceful means and only in the imaginative realm, leaving readers free to interact with the author’s “world” in whatever way they deem fit.

“[The secret reading seminar] allowed us to defy the repressive reality outside the room—not only that, but to avenge ourselves on those who controlled our lives […] We articulated all that happened to us in our own words and saw ourselves, for once, in our own image.”

Nafisi depicts her secret book club as a space in which she and her “girls” can enjoy a degree of freedom that is denied to them in the outside world of Iranian society. In refusing to give up reading books the regime disapproves of, and in engaging in the free exchange of ideas on even the most sensitive topics, Nafisi believes that the book club participants are able to “defy the repressive reality” of the Islamic Republic and maintain a private form of intellectual freedom. She credits the book club with enabling the participants to use their “own words” and to see themselves “in [their] own image,” which suggests the difficulties of maintaining an authentic identity under a totalitarian regime.

“My generation had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away […] This generation had no past.”

Questions of identity are of central importance in Nafisi’s memoir. In this passage, Nafisi asserts that there is a divide between her own experiences and those of many of her students. While Nafisi remembers what life was like as an adult before the Islamic Revolution, the younger generations do not, since many came of age afterward. There is a radical difference between what society was like under the Shah and what it is now under the Islamic regime. Nafisi sees the younger generations as “hav[ing] no past” because they have no personal memories of the rights and freedoms that “had been taken away.”

“There were discrepancies, or essential paradoxes, in my idea of ‘home.’ There was the familiar Iran I felt nostalgic about, the place of parents and friends and summer nights by the Caspian sea. Yet just as real was this other, reconstructed, Iran about which we talked in meeting after meeting, quarreling about what the masses in Iran wanted.”

Nafisi wrestles continually with The Problems of Identity and Home. In this passage, she reflects on her experiences as a student in the United States in the 1970s, a time when she experimented with left-wing revolutionary ideologies. The young Nafisi struggles with two conflicting conceptions of Iran: the literal one based on her personal lived experiences, and the more abstract, “reconstructed” Iran that she and the other revolutionaries dream of creating on behalf of the “masses.” The issue for the young Nafisi is that both versions of Iran seem equally “real” to her, leaving her oblivious to the potential consequences of her revolutionary dreaming.

“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 recognizes with dismay what her revolutionary dreams have helped to create in reality. She recalls the violent slogans she shouted while as a student, wishing “Death” upon the enemies of her dreams. Now, in 1979, she witnesses actual death and violence inflicted upon dissidents by the new Islamic regime, and is horrified to realize that “all the dreams and slogans [are] coming true.”

“Unconsciously I was developing two different ways of life. Publicly, I was involved in what I considered to be a defense of myself as a person […] At the same time, a more private rebellion began to manifest itself in certain tendencies, like incessant reading, or the Herzog-like passion of writing letters to friends in the States that were never sent. I felt a silent defiance that may also have shaped my public desire to defend a vague and amorphous entity I thought of as myself.”

Nafisi struggles to maintain an authentic identity in public. As challenges mount, she becomes even more protective of her private intellectual freedoms, such as “incessant reading.” For the time being, her “silent defiance” gives her the energy to cling to the “vague and amorphous entity”—her own individuality and sense of self—that she is still trying so desperately to preserve in the public realm.

“A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is democratic—not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels—the biggest sin is to be blind to others’ problems and pains.”

Nafisi represents literature as the antithesis to totalitarian regimes, claiming that a “good novel” shuns hard-and-fast ideologies in favor of creating room for different personalities and perspectives. Nafisi claims that this plurality of perspectives and ideas makes novels “democratic,” even when they are not explicitly so in a political sense. Nafisi also stresses the importance of “empathy,” believing that seeing other people’s challenges and taking them seriously is the key to maintaining humanity and an open mind.

“Like all other ideologues before them, the Islamic Revolutionaries seemed to believe that writers were the guardians of morality. This displaced view of writers, ironically, gave them a sacred place, and at the same time it paralyzed them. The price they had to pay for their new pre-eminence was a kind of aesthetic impotence.”

Nafisi stresses that the Islamic regime does not wish to eradicate literature. What it wants is to control it for its own ideological purposes. In attempting to make writers the “guardians of morality,” the regime hopes to use writers as mouthpieces for its values and ideas. Nafisi argues that this kind of strict ideological regulation thwarts writers since they can no longer create freely and entertain competing ideas and perspectives.

“[Gatsby] wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of a dream?”

The Great Gatsby is the literary centerpiece of Part 2; Nafisi sees an important link between Fitzgerald’s protagonist and the challenges faced by Iranians. Nafisi depicts Gatsby’s tragedy as an obsession with “repeating the past”—something that turns out to be impossible and leads to his downfall. Nafisi argues that Iranians, too, have “wrecked their lives” by blindly following revolutionary ideologies instead of questioning where they would lead.

“The issue was not so much the veil itself as freedom of choice. My grandmother had refused to leave the house for three months when she was forced to unveil. I would be similarly adamant in my own refusal [to wear the veil].”

Nafisi emphasizes more than once that she is not against women wearing the veil, so long as it is something they do of their own free will. She respects women like her grandmother, who wore the veil because it had special meaning for her and as an act of religious devotion. Nafisi argues that forcing the veil on women robs it of its true religious significance, turning it into a symbol of oppression instead of sincere religious faith. Nafisi sees her refusal to wear the veil under the Islamic regime and her grandmother’s earlier refusal to stop wearing the veil under the Shah as mirror images of the same struggle: the struggle to exercise freedom of choice in personal and religious matters.

“The polarization created by the regime confused every aspect of life. Not only were the forces of God fighting an emissary of Satan, but they were also fighting agents of Satan inside the country. At all times […] the Islamic regime never forgot its holy battle against its internal enemies.”

Nafisi describes the tense atmosphere during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), in which the Islamic regime denounces both its external, Iraqi enemies and its internal, dissident enemies. In characterizing the dissidents as “agents of Satan,” the Islamic Republic dehumanizes its opponents and presents them as inherently evil. The regime also attempts to depict political oppression as a “holy battle” that can be justified in the name of both nationalism and faith.

“[N]ow that I could not wear what I would normally wear, walk in the streets 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 describes the psychological impact of the increasingly strict rules governing her life. The Islamic regime now dictates what she wears, how she moves, and even how she speaks. It even makes platonic physical contact between men and women “illegal” outside of marital or familial ties. As a result, Nafisi describes herself as feeling false, as if she is a character whose existence can be created and then eradicated. Again, Nafisi uses repetition—“now that”—creating lyricism and emphasis.

[My husband Bijan] was of the opinion that we had to serve our country, regardless of who ruled it. The problem for me was that I had lost all concept of terms such as home, service, and country.”

The deteriorating situation in Iran creates tension in Nafisi’s marriage. While Bijan maintains that staying in Iran is the right thing to do in spite of who’s in charge, Nafisi is becoming increasingly alienated and detached from her country, as she no longer recognizes it. Nafisi reveals how life under a totalitarian regime is inducing a crisis of identity.

“My father, who all through my childhood would read me Ferdowsi and Rumi, sometimes used to say that our true home, our true history, was in our poetry.”

Nafisi emphasizes the power of literature. She credits the literature of Iran as being both the “true home” and “true history” of the Iranian people. She names two of the most famous Persian poets—“Ferdowsi and Rumi”—and suggests that, while regimes may come and go, literature can endure and preserve a more lasting sense of identity and place.

“At the start of the revolution, a rumor had taken root that Khomeini’s image could be seen in the moon. Many people, even perfectly modern and educated individuals, came to believe this. They had seen him in the moon. He had been a conscious mythmaker, and he had turned himself into a myth […] Like all great mythmakers, he had tried to fashion reality out of his dream, and in the end, like Humbert, he had managed to destroy both reality and his dream.”

Nafisi often acknowledges the more dreamy, mystical side to revolutionary ideas, depicting this form of mythmaking as potentially dangerous. In this passage, she stresses that even “modern and educated individuals” began to believe the myth Khomeini created about himself. Nafisi suggests that even the most worldly of people can become vulnerable to effective propaganda. Her comparison of Khomeini to Humbert—the narrator and abuser in Lolita—depicts Khomeini as someone who, like Nabokov’s protagonist, ultimately destroys his dreams by trying to make them into reality through oppression and abuse.

“Interesting, I thought, how war and revolution have made us even more aware of our own personal ordeals—especially marriage, at the heart of which was the question of individual freedom, as Jane Austen had discovered two centuries before. She had discovered it, I reflected, but what about us, sitting in this room, in another country at the end of another century?”

Nafisi reflects on how Jane Austen—who wrote some of her works during the period of the Napoleonic Wars—placed a special emphasis on the personal and domestic realms in her novels, in particular the dynamics of love and marriage. War illuminates and brings to the forefront, rather than diminishes, individual and domestic challenges. As several of her “girls” in the book club wrestle with unhappiness in their relationships with men, Nafisi links the idea of marriage to the dilemma of autonomy. The ways in which a totalitarian regime can impact even the most intimate parts of an individual’s life is a recurring preoccupation throughout this part of the memoir.

“It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen’s novels are those who are incapable of genuine dialogue with others. They rant. They lecture. They scold. This incapacity for dialogue implies an incapacity for tolerance, self-reflection, and empathy. Later, in Nabokov, this incapacity takes on monstrous forms in characters such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita and Kinbote in Pale Fire.”

Nafisi returns to the idea of the importance of freedom and dialogue, and the ways in which literature can embody and promote these ideals. Nafisi presents the incapacity for dialogue and tolerance as a sliding scale which, at its most extreme end, creates “monstrous” results through the oppressive personalities and actions of Nabokov’s Humbert or, in Nafisi’s real life, the ayatollahs of Iran.

“When I am asked about life in the Islamic Republic of Iran, I cannot separate the most private and personal aspects of our existence from the gaze of the blind censor. I think of my girls, who came from very different backgrounds. Their dilemmas, regardless of their backgrounds and beliefs, were shared, and stemmed from the confiscation of their most intimate moments and private aspirations by the regime.”

Nafisi presents the intrusion of the political into the personal as one of the most insidious tragedies of living in a totalitarian regime. She stresses that all of her “girls,” as different as they may be in terms of background and/or political and religious persuasions, suffer from this constant intrusion. The Islamic regime wishes to dictate their lives for them instead of granting them privacy and freedom of choice.

“There is a term in Persian, ‘the patient stone,’ which is often used in times of anxiety and turbulence. Supposedly, a person pours out all his troubles and secrets [to the stone], and this way he will be cured […] My magician was not my ‘patient stone’ […] Yet he spent sleepless nights listening to and absorbing others’ troubles and woes, and to me his advice was that I should leave: leave and write my own story and teach my own class.”

Nafisi’s “magician” remains a mysterious figure in many ways. In this passage, Nafisi emphasizes his empathy in dealing with others. In invoking the image of “the patient stone,” Nafisi creates an impression of the magician as steadfast and strong, like their friendship. The magician’s willingness to listen to other people suggests that he is living by some of Nafisi’s most cherished ideals—compassion and open-mindedness. His urging that she should leave and return to teaching shows the extent of his influence on her as well as his selflessness, as he doesn’t maintain contact with those who leave Iran.

“[Nassrin] said, More than anything else, I miss the hope. In jail, we had the hope that we might get out, go to college, have fun, go to movies. I am twenty-seven. I don’t know what it means to love. I don’t want to be secret and hidden forever. I want to know, to know who this Nassrin is.”

Nafisi gives a voice to Nassrin’s longings for freedom and identity. Nassrin contrasts her experiences of physical imprisonment—in which she still had hopes that regaining freedom would mean living life on her own terms—with the psychological and emotional imprisonment she suffers in her day-to-day life under the Islamic regime. In doing so, she illustrates that psychological imprisonment can be far worse than literal confinement. Nassrin’s declaration that she desires to know herself foreshadows her imminent departure from Iran in search of freedom and identity elsewhere.