Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, I told him, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
You know, I feel all my life has been a series of departures.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
From Reading Lolita in Tehran
Mahshid: You mean you don't have any sense of belonging here? I seem to be the only one who feels she owes something to this place.
Mitra: I can't live with this constant fear, with having to worry all the time about the way I dress or walk. Things that come naturally to me are considered sinful, so how am I supposed to act?
Mahshid: But you know what is expected of you, you know the laws. This is nothing new. What has changed? Why is it bothering you so much more now?
Sanaz: Maybe for you, it is easier...
Mahshid: You think I have it easy? Do you think only people like you suffer in this country? You don't even know what fear is. Just because of my faith and the fact that I wear the veil, you think that I don't feel threatened? You think I don't feel fear? It's rather superficial, isn't it, to think that the only kind of fear is your kind.
Sanaz: I didn't mean that. The fact that we know about these laws, the fact that they are familiar, doesn't make them any better. It doesn't mean that we don't feel the pressure and the fear. But for you, at least, wearing the veil is natural; it's your religion, your choice.
Mahshid: My choice. What else do I have but my religion, and if I lose that...
Yassi: I know what Mahshid's talking about. The worst fear you can have is losing your faith. Because then you're not accepted by anyone-not by those who consider themselves secular or by people of your own faith. It's terrible. Mahshid and I have been talking about that, about how ever since we could remember, our religion has defined every single action we've taken. If one day I lose my faith, it will be like dying and having to start new again in a world without guarantee.
We were unhappy. We compared our situation to our own potentials, to what we could have had, and somehow there was little consolation in the fact that millions of people were unhappier than we were. Why should other people’s misery make us happier or more content?
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
I had come to a conclusion: our culture shunned sex because it was too involved with it. It had to suppress sex violently, for the same reason that an impotent man will put his beautiful wife under lock and key. We had always segregated sex from feeling and from intellectual love, so you were either pure and virtuous…or dirty and fun. What was alien to us was eros, true sensuality.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
I was scared of some lack, as if the future were receding from me.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
I had a feeling that day that I was losing something, that I was mourning a death that had not yet occurred. I felt as if all things personal were being crushed like small wildflowers to make way for a more ornate garden, where everything would be tame and organized. I had never felt this sense of loss…My yearning was tied to the certainty that home was mine for the having, that I could go back anytime I wished. It was not until I had reached home that I realized the true meaning of exile. As I walked those dearly beloved, dearly remembered streets, I felt I was squashing the memories that lay underfoot.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
From Reading Lolita in Tehran
Zarin: What am I to think of your slogans claiming that women who don't wear the veil are prostitutes and agents of Satan? You call this morality?...What about Christian women who don't believe in wearing veils? Are they all - every single one of them - decadent floozies?
Nyazi: But this is an Islamic country and this is the law, and whoever . . .
Vida: The law? You guys came in and changed the laws. Is it the law? So was wearing the yellow star in Nazi Germany. Should all the Jews have worn the star because it was the blasted law?
Zarin: Oh, don't even try to talk to him about that. He would call them all Zionists who deserved what they got.
Lolita belongs to a category of victims who have no defense and are never given a chance to articulate their own story. As such, she becomes a double victim: not only her life but also her life story is taken from her.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
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 how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom. And like Lolita, we took every opportunity to flaunt our insubordination: by showing a little hair from under our scarves, insinuating a little color into the drab uniformity of our appearances, growing our nails, falling in love and listening to forbidden music.
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| — | From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi |
