A few months ago, I picked up the New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. The novel is so popular that it has spent over one hundred weeks on the bestseller list and has already been translated into 32 different languages since its publication in 2003. Indeed, it’s smartly written with a captivating storyline told through a unique point of view, but for some reason, my nose has been in it, but not necessarily stuck in this book. I can’t read more than a few chapters before I have to set it down.
Unlike anything I’ve read recently, I am not setting it down because I am tired or bored, but because of the eery, concerned feeling that creeps in when I read it. I know the ending of the story, but I wish I didn’t. I wish I didn’t see the Jenga blocks slowly being stacked for the inevitable fall. The Iranian Revolution of 1978-1981 ends up accomplishing its goals, and a free, proud and intelligent people is brought to its knees under the guise of religious revival.
I am gripped by Nafisi’s personal narration from the front lines opposing the revolution, but the more she recounts the revolution and its proponents, the more unsettled I become. Nafisi's story depicts her very typical Persian life shredded in front of her as the revolution forced one change upon the next. It was an uncomfortable adjustment to begin associating the term “revolution” with something oppressive in my reading thus far. The term has always suggested hope and improvement in my very American mind, but hearing the word revolution associated with the stripping away of human freedom refuses to settle well in me.
Nafisi’s story of teaching Western literature to a small group of dedicated female students conjures up images and memories of some of my young female Muslim students in Brussels. I see their faces, framed indelibly by a black veil on all sides, with every strand of hair and both ears carefully hidden. Did they remember a time in which the veil was not? I always assumed they didn’t, that the veil was as lasting as clothing itself. For some of my younger students, this was undoubtedly true. But for some of my older students, Nafisi’s account suggests that there was a life before the veil, and that life existed in the not-so-distant past.
In the United States, my parents graduated college during the Iranian Revolution. I was not even a thought yet. Having really only heard about the Middle East in the post 9/11 years, I know nothing of life in Iran or any Arab nation before Islamic rule. Not until recently did I consider that the older generation in many Middle Eastern and North African nations might be living in a completely unrecognizable country compared to the one they knew as youth. Not until this week did I correlate the veil's prevalence today as a product of revolution. Never before have I understood revolution as a potentially negative concept, something that would restrict freedome. How foreign it is to do so.
It is safe to say that Reading Lolita in Tehran and the recent uprising across the Middle East have redefined revolution for me. I understand now that revolution is not always progressive and understandably can not be sorted into categories of good and evil. It is better defined simply as change, and the opportunity to produce either beneficial and detrimental results exists for every people group that demands it. This understanding is likely commonplace for most, but embarassingly radical for me.
So as I watch the news coverage of Egypt and hear the angry shouts for revolution, I feel the same eery concern as I do reading Nafisi's description of the revolution in Iran. When I read warnings of a 'perfect storm of powerful trends' across the Middle East, I can't help but wonder what the results will be. I'm tempted to liken it to what I've been reading about Iran, worried that rocky, haphazard revolution will permit the formation of an unstable and oppressive government, but others discourage doing so. Will democratic freedom or religious rule replace the current iniquities of these governments?
For those of us watching the dominoes stack from a safe distance, all I can think to do is pray. I'm the first to say that I'm terrible at praying for issues and people that aren't right in front of my face, but as children given the privilege and responsibility to pray, we must. Let's do something about the eery feeling you might also get from the news reports and pray that the opportunity for change in the revolts rocking the Middle East produce something beneficial and beautiful in its place.
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