What is it like to be a reader in Iran? - Azar Nafisi

A book, a tranquil place, a poem, a silence

are enough to enrapture me of life.

no sorrow if Paradise escapes from me,

another also eternal inhabits my heart.

«The Rebellion» by the feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad.

   

The American writer, editor and translator Valerie Miles, who has worked with the author of the bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, presented her as a woman whose understanding of literature, as well as her love and compromise to such art, equal this Iranian's eloquence, grace and enjoyment as a speaker. We, a public who left no vacant seat inside the Expo Guadalajara's Juan Rulfo Auditorium, soon confirmed this ability to be true: Azar Nafisi is a great storyteller, she cares about her message and she knows exactly how to make others care too.Nafisi invited us to examine real life through fiction.

According to Vladimir Nabokov, "The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction". The author of Lolita also defined a "good reader" as" one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense…"; he praised imagination: "So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight"; and gave an essential role to the connection reader-author: "What should be established, I think, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader’s mind and the author’s mind".

The author of The Republic of Imagination quoted Chilean poet and novelist Roberto Bolaño: "Reading is never a waste of time… Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music (oh yes), like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach" (says Barry Seaman, the character from 2666). Our graceful Iranian storyteller told us: "Books connect people, connections go against walls [a tiny silence was immediately followed by a brief round of applauses]; literature is the most democratic world yet to be experienced, one without boundaries, without walls". There she was, touching one of our open wounds as Mexicans but, at the same time, reminding us that ignorance is a curable disease, the one that inflicted the wound, the one that keeps it open.

How about Iran? What is it like to be a reader there, in a country where Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert, Vladimir Nabokov and many others are forbidden authors? According to Arash Hejazi, book censorship in Iran started even before the Islamic Revolution and during the times of SAVAK (Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar, Organization of National Intelligence and Security) it was mainly focused on political issues. During its first two years, the Islamic Republic of Iran allowed complete freedom of expression to the Iranian press and publishing industries; but when the Iran-Iraq war took place (1981-1988) book censorship started and gradually evolved into a truly strict one.

Azar claimed she first knew Mexico through its books. Later came "the opportunity to know the way Mexicans live everyday"; like when she visited Tres Mujeres Distillery and passed by La Minerva in Jalisco, she said. "Mexicans are people who celebrate life… [Donald] Trump does not know this country: its language, its literature, its people. Getting to know others is something we do through curiosity", she remarked. Nafisi was curious about Mexico, "a nation whose artists prove literature and all the other arts to belong to heavens and hell"; she thought "the country that created Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo and Carlos Fuentes must be great".

Juan Rulfo, who wrote about the rural Mexican life that came after the heap of civil wars better known as the Mexican Revolution (1910-1921) and was once considered as "the world's best writer" by Kenzaburō Ōe. Carlos Fuentes, an intellectual frequently called one of the cornerstones of Mexican literature, a novelist who questioned many of the most deeply rooted, regressive and hypocrite aspects within the national ethical systems. Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1990, the poet, the essayist, the philosopher who attempted to describe whatever it was that made Mexicans the way they were.

American citizen since 2008, Azar emphasises the importance of fiction, curiosity, imagination and connections, which go further than entertainment: "Both curiosity and literature make us rebels, urge us to question about the world around us... Such curiosity is an empathy that reminds us there are certain human attributes we all share: emotions… We all have hearts and they all beat. We all celebrate moments, even difficult ones". We write and we read in order "to make moments remain".

Just like Marjane Statrapi (Persepolis, 2007), a young Azar found herself far from home and her family due to her studies abroad, then she knew the importance of feeling home at home and writers became family; she realized: "The whole world will come to me through books". The first time she went back home she found a revolution: Islam, an ancient ideology, turned into a fascist-terrorist one; those who were different were targeted, a child of 9 could get married, polygamy was allowed, there was censorship everywhere (Olive from Popeye the Sailor was edited because she was a «bad woman», so for Iranian kids there was no Olive in this cartoon), women started to loose human rights recently gained before the Revolution…

"Every nation has something to be ashamed of. But every nation can change, that's liberty", Nafisi said to the country of the Ayotzinapa student's forced disappearance, the "White House" scandal, the endless string of master scams, the Internal Security Law… Iranian women, by law, must wear the veil, but many of them, including Azar, know that "If a man goes crazy by looking at my hair, he should not be in the streets". What makes the difference between these women and the rest of them? And what about the difference between those who fight a rotten system and those who don't?

Well, first of all, those who stand for their rights have knowledge. Then: "It is our duty to protect books, arts, literature, imagination, humanity; it is our heritage. Those who are against humankind start by burning books". Or, in Mexico, firing a teacher who tried to approach her students to Fuente's Aura and Gabriel García Márquez' Strange Pilgrims. As far as Nafisi knows, "Women are symbols of resistance, even a girl wearing the veil; reading, understanding is how they fight, the way they choose to resist".

Why are dictators so afraid of imagination, of literature, of arts? Because writers (all sorts of artists actually) tell the truth, dangerous truths. And once you know the truth you can't be silenced: "Books bring hope, not optimism. Sense of dignity as a single individual. Understanding and refusal of the domain of dictators". In this sense, Azar has read in order to be free... and invite us all to do the same. She ended her intervention at the Guadalajara International Book Fair of 2017 by impelling us: "Readers of the world, unite! Readers, do not forget the books".