Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

by Azar Nafisi

Perhaps she married so often because marriage was easier in Iran than having a boyfriend.

More than the beatings, it was his taunts that disturbed me

He would tell her all this and yet he could not leave her.

now you know why I am so often late for class. Later, Manna would say, without much sympathy, Trust Azin to try to get something cheap even out of her own troubles.

It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from intruding on our individual lives.

Are you not overdramatizing a bit, you will inquire, for the narrative effect of your story?

Lol she is nabokov

and any other son of a . . . who issued such orders

Lpol

burning the American flag on the one hand and being obsequious to Westerners, especially American journalists, on the other.

Do you mean to say that in other parts of the world women are not abused by their husbands, that they are not jilted?”

“Because the regime won’t leave you alone, do you intend to conspire with it and give it complete control over your life?”

“That’s easy,” said Nassrin. “In the old days, women from the man’s family used to scrutinize the would-be bride. Even her teeth.”

Dr. A, the one who said his only reason for leaving was because he liked to drink beer freely.

love this country, he repeated. Did I not love this country? I asked myself.

Lol its easier for him for sure

the most reactionary elements in Iran had come to identify with and co-opt the work and theories of those considered revolutionary in the West.

Remember her relations with Wickham? How the basis for her sympathy is not so much her feelings for him as his antipathy for Darcy?

“My golden daffodil!” shouted Sanaz, bursting into laughter.

how all of us—girls like me, who have read their Austen and Nabokov and all that, who talk about Derrida and Barthes and the world situation—how we know nothing, nothing about the relation between a man and a woman, about what it means to go out with a man.

I protested as if he were responsible for all the woes brought upon us by the regime, and this in turn made him withdraw into himself and act as if he were indifferent about things he actually felt very strongly about.

I mean if she wamts to immigrate and he's against it then he kinda is respmsible for how it affects her

she had never imaginatively experienced love in a Persian context.

almost all of my girls separated what they described as intellectual or spiritual love (good) from sex (not good).

“He too has no one else to talk to. Misery loves company—and can be as strong a force as love.”

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

the guilty knowledge that Bijan bore his hardships without much complaint

What are they tho i dunno what Bijan does all day

our culture shunned sex because it was too involved with it.

I am going to leave, I told myself. I can’t live like this anymore.

Look at Somalia or Afghanistan. Compared to them, we live like queens.

somehow there was little consolation in the fact that millions of people were unhappier than we were.

girls,

Well girl

How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.

My parents wanted us to leave, despite the fact that our departure would mean their loneliness. The offer of a better life for their children—even if it is an illusion—is so attractive to most parents.

:(

he was taking it so graciously

Wut he argued super hard

but do we have to fall in love with our politicians?

who have to win the hearts and minds of the children of the revolution by promising them—at least implicitly—access to all things Western.

“No, I won’t,” he said. “We won’t communicate once you go.” In response to my startled look, he said, “Call it self-defense or cowardice; I don’t want to be in touch with those of my friends who are lucky enough to leave.”

:(

he was not happy with me.

Not necessarily itight just be painful

When? In about a week or so, she said.

Uh oh is she preggers

I thought he didn’t know about the class, I said. Apparently, he did; he

This was Nassrin, or to be honest, this was the two of us together: sharing the most intimate moments with a shrug, pretending they were not intimate. It wasn’t courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice, a destructive defense mechanism, forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don’t feel sorry for me; nothing is too big for me to handle. This is nothing, nothing really.

:(

he knew how much I wanted to leave, because of this illness I have, you know, from my jail time. We, my sister, my mother and I, have been thinking for a long time that there might be a better way of handling it over there. I never asked her what exactly the illness was.

Ugh sounds like an std

He was . . . he is no better than the others. Do you remember that line you read from Bellow about people emptying their garbage of thought all over you? Again she smiled. Well, that’s Ramin and his intellectual friends for you.

I was his Simone de Beauvoir, minus the sex part.

At least you know where you stand with Ayatollah Khamenei, but these others, the ones with all sorts of claims and politically correct ideas—they were the worst.

Lol

Outside, the sky was the color of dusk—not dark, not light, not even gray.

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. You’d call it the ordeal of freedom, I guess, she said, smiling.

walking with him like that had suddenly transformed him into a stranger.

Kinda hot

Things that come naturally to me are considered sinful, so how am I supposed to act?”

even contemplated leaving Bijan.” (You did? Bijan asked me later, when I recounted our conversation to him. You never told me.)

Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe,

Lol getting fucked by the government

I didn’t know you were allowed to have a heart in your group.

I want my daughter to be what I never was—like Daisy. You know, courageous.