reading lolita...in asheville
by cheryl dietrich

They arrive enclosed in silence and shapeless, dark robes. Their headscarves reveal only a small oval of pale face, though one has carelessly let a wisp of hair escape onto her cheek. She unveils and lets her wild hair fly loose. Another wears gloves despite the warm weather to conceal the nail polish she applies in secret. Now her bright red fingertips flash brazenly, as she removes her anonymous streetwear and joins the other women. A woman conservatively dressed in soft pastels looks askance at her and at her companion who flaunts her movie-star form in tight blue jeans. Another woman slouches comfortably in a sweatsuit. Two sit giggling together in skirts and boots that would not look out of place in Paris. They have left public restraint hanging in the closet with their robes and scarves. For the next few hours, they’re allowed to be themselves.

Asheville, 2003. We meet once a month, a lively bunch of women who have only one thing in common: each has the ability to immerse herself in books. We come into our meetings, chattering and laughing. We wear jeans and flowered skirts and tailored trousers, chambray workshirts, blazers, pastel cardigans. Each of us bears a food offering, perhaps a vegan casserole, a fruit salad, bread so warm it crumbles under the knife, or a dessert heavy on the chocolate. We greet one another in a babble of high-pitched voices. “How are you?” “What have you been doing with yourself?” “So what did you think of the book?”

The book this month is Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, an account of her life in Iran under the worst excesses of the Islamic Republic. Nafisi, a professor of English Literature, is forced out of the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil. Later, frustrated by conditions at a private university, she resigns from teaching, except for these clandestine meetings. With her group of dedicated and trustworthy women students, she discusses books banned by the fundamentalist regime—“dangerous” books like Pride and Prejudice, Daisy Miller and even the Persian classic, A Thousand and One Nights.

The women eagerly pull their books from their bags, their pockets, their sleeves, from whatever hiding place they’ve tucked them. Most Western literature has been banned, and possessing it could be evidence of a decadent attitude. These women could be punished not just for reading the wrong thing but for being the wrong person. They don’t know what will happen to them if they’re caught with the books. Officialdom is capricious and punishment arbitrary. Women have been imprisoned, raped, tortured and executed for less.

We sit casually next to open windows and talk about what it would mean to live in a world where the right to read whatever we choose is stripped from us. We spare a moment to allow ourselves to feel grateful for our freedom. Then we think about American investigators who subpoena bookstore records and who interrogate a man just because someone thinks what he’s reading looks suspicious. We imagine being librarians and finding our courage being put to the test. We think of books banned and books burned. We think of Huckleberry Finn and Peyton Place and even Look Homeward, Angel. We think of movements today from the religious right to ban innocent little Harry Potter because he’s a wizard. We think of movements from the righteous left to ban The Story of O, because it features female masochism and is categorized “pornography.” We wonder if a book like Lolita could even get published today.

Nafisi’s students read Lolita as if it is a chilling metaphor for their lives. They don’t miss the irony that in Iran the age of marriage has recently been lowered to nine for girls. To their fundamentalist leaders, Lolita, because of her sex, age, and social condition, doesn’t possess full personhood anyway. So why shouldn’t Nabokov’s Humbert yield to his obsession? He doesn’t even know who Lolita is, and it never occurs to him to findout or to care. As a person, Lolita doesn’t count.

Neither do the women of Iran during this time. “One day in the spring of 1981,” Nafisi writes, “...I became irrelevant.” This is the goal after all: to make women disappear in identical, bodyless garments and to silence them by reducing their voices to whispers. To make them irrelevant.

We wonder about these women, women who once enjoyed most of the same rights that we do, women accustomed to taking part freely in public life. How did they suddenly find themselves pushed into the margins of society? How did they become public ghosts? It can’t happen here, we think. We’re probably right. Still, we worry that the hard-earned rights obtained just within the last two generations of women could be siphoned away from our daughters and granddaughters. We make internal pledges to guard our freedoms. We are determined to remain relevant.

When she’s perturbed, Azar Nafisi eats coffee ice cream with cold coffee poured on top and walnuts sprinkled all over. We make this for dessert in a lighthearted gesture of solidarity, the bubble of laughter that women share even in adversity and across cultures. We agree that we should read Lolita for a future meeting. We depart loudly, in a flurry of hugs and farewells. The world outside hears us coming.

In Tehran, the women of Nafisi’s book group grow quiet as they enrobe themselves to leave her apartment for another week. They slip out singly and in pairs, letting several minutes elapse between departures. Outside they walk briskly with lowered eyes and necks bowed. They join a parade of dark, silent ghosts gliding invisibly through the city streets.

Cheryl Dietrich is a retired Air Force officer, now living in Asheville. She enjoys developing her interest in writing through ClarityWorks classes. She volunteers with the Literacy Council, tutoring English as a Second Language. And of course, she loves to read and belongs to the Asheville Women’s Book Club. [ Maisiebuds@cs.com,
828-277-1757 ]