April 26, 2004

The memory stays, and the stain

Okay, this is the last passage from “Reading Lolita…” that I’m posting here for reference. I will add more passages, later, to the “source” part of the site hopefully.
And yes, yes, I finally finished reading the book and I will write my precious notes about it in my Persian journal. Yep, too bad if you can’t read Persian!
Here the author is talking to her husband, Bijan: (p.329)
“Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with a man you loathe, I said to Bijan that evening after the Thursday class. He had come home to find me sitting in my customary chair in the living room, Nassrin’s folder on my lap, my student’s notes scattered on the table and beside them a dish of melting coffee ice cream. Boy, you must be feeling rotten, he said after a glance at the ice cream. He took a seat opposite me and said, Don’t just let that sentence hang in the air. Explain a little.
Well, it’s like this: if you’re forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank-you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That’s what we do over here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere else-we either plan it or dream it. Ever since my girls left this afternoon, I have been thinking of this issue.
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Bijan didn’t respond-he seemed to be waiting for me to elaborate-but suddenly I had nothing more to say. Feeling a little lighter, I stretched and picked a few pistachio nuts. Have you ever noticed, I said, cracking a nut, how strange it is when you look in the mirror on the opposite wall that instead of seeing yourself, you see the trees and the mountains, as if you have magically willed yourself away?
Yes, as a matter of fact I have, he said, going into the kitchen for usual vodka, but I haven’t lost sleep over it. You, however, must have been thinking about it day and night, he added, placing his glass and a new dish of pistachio nuts on the table. As for your most eloquent analogy, your girls must resent the fact that while you’re leaving this guy behind, they have to keep sleeping with him-some of them, at least, he said, taking a sip of his drink. He looked at his glass speculatively. I’m going to miss this, you know. You have to admit, we’ve got the best bootleg vodka in the world.
Cutting through his speculations on the merits of our vodka, I said, Going away isn’t going to help as much as you think. The memory stays with you, and the stain. It’s not something you slough off once you leave.”

April 26, 2004 08:16 PM

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