I was kind of confused at the beggining because the narrator of the book starts talking and describing some other books and then she goes talking about Lolita. Anyways I think that the book is special because these women were just trying to be what they are, women who just want to express themselves. What Nafisi does for the girls is nice, not only is she teaching them about literature, but she is also letting them express her feelings and dress the way they want at her house and I think that this really means a lot to the girls. At the same time the girls at helping Nafisi a lot. I mean she is not working at the university anymore and I assume that for a teacher it most be hard not doing what they love, not being able to express their passion which is teaching, and the girls coming in to her house every Thursday morning most had been a happy visit for Nafisi, and also she was doing what she knew how to do, teaching. Another thing that called my attention was when Yassi was describing the lecture the teacher had given at the university about muslim girls and christian girls. And then one of the girls in the class said "No wonder more and more Muslims are converting to Christianity." I think the mayority (if not all) of the girls at the university felt humiliated. They were not even allowed to get in the university by the main entrance, instead they had to be search before they could get in to the school. I think it was really unfair for them...
Refering back at what they were saying ( in the book) about girls coverting to other religions where they could feel free and without so much pressure or where they could simply feel "women" and not something that cannot be seen or heard, I think that it was also very hard for them. I mean how could they just covert to another religion society was so not understandable with women. I think that if a women converted or something she could be seen as a punishment from god or something. Anyways my point is that if a girl coverted, then she wouldn't be seen with any respect by society, well it's not like by being muslim it was any different, but I think that people wouldn't even talk to girls who converted because then they would be seen as part of their society... Well that was just a thought...Talking more about how Nafisi describes Lolita, she says, "Take Lolita. This was the story of a twelve-year-old girl who had nowhere to go. Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old mand but the confication of one individul's life by another...Yet the novel, the finished work, is hopeful, beautiful even, a defense not just of beauty but of lige, ordinary everyday life, all the normal pleasures that Lolita, like Yassi, was deprived of" (33). I really like the way she describes Lolita's story in this passage. I compared this passage of Lolita's story with the teacher and the girls story as well as the story of a everyday women in Tehran. Women were deprived any pleasure, they could not even get in to the university through the main door but instead they had to go through the side and be checked before they could even get in. Under that regimen I think that women felt like Lotita and that's why Nafisi compares Yassi to Lolita, to give an example of many examples of how women felt in that society...
I wanted to discuss about how women were so discriminated, Nafisi says that, "...once Nassrin had been sent to the disciplinary committee to have her eyelashes checked. Her lashes were long, and she was suspected of using mascara. That's nothing, said Manna, next to what happened to my sister's friends at the Amir Kabir Polytechnic University. During lunch three of the girls were in the yard eating apples. They were reprimanded by the guards: they were biting their apples too seductively!"(59). Can you guys believe this?... I mean it seems so funny to me, and when they are discussing this in their group they are all laughing and it really is funny how could they be biting their apples "too seductively"? It seems so unfair to me, and I think that Nafisi tells this so the reader realizes how hard it really was for a woman in that society. I mean they could do almost nothing...not even bit an apple in public...
Nafisi married very young and she also passed for hard moments. Even though now she was independent and pretty much did want she wanted there, before she hard to live with a man who didn't care about her or her interests. "When my father was jailed, I went back home and was allowed to stay for a year. Later, I was insecure enough to marry on the spur of a moment, before my eighteenth birthday. I married a man whose most important credential was that he wasn't like us...and he was so sure of himself. He didn't value books...he was insanely jealous... The day I said yes, I knew I was going to divorce him. There were no limits to my selfdestructive urges and the risk I was prepared to take with my own life"(83). Poor Nafisi. Her life was not as easy as it seemed. I mean if you read the begining of the book where she talks about her class and how she was waiting for the girls to arrive and seeing the girls having to get to her house in big large robes and then changing you think that the girls were suffering in a certain way, but if you look closer to Nafisi she has really come a long way since she got married so young. I think that now that she had the class she was feeling in a certain way realized. And this husband that she had was so mean, he felt better than everyone else. I think that fe affected her life a lot, and when she could finally leave him she even had to give him the carpet, the car and the money they had in their bank account... what a guy...
"At the time, students and faculty were differentiated mainly by their political affiliations. Gradually I matched names to faces, and learned to read them, to know who was with whom against whom and who belonged to what group. It is almost frightening how these images appear out of the void, like the faces of the dead come back to life to execute some unfulfilled task" (94). I think this quote is really interesting because I think that Nafisi points this out to let the reader know how politics affected the country in every sense. Not only were the student politically active but that was how they were actually recognized. At the university that was how teachers used to know the kids and how they were able to identify them. You get the feeling that even at school it was a constant war and that there was no peace. So problems were not only at home or with their own families but they had to face problems with many people that perhaps they didn't even know. It seems really sad for me, and I don't know but I think this could be a reason for women to feel kind of insecure or not protected at all. For them was even harder and they could do nothing to change that. They couldn't even get out from their country. Nafisi tells how she wanted to come back to America but she couldn't because they wouldn't let her get out. Another thing that I think relates to this is this guy that was killed and his charges were the following: "Being Westernized, brought up in a Westernized family; staying too long in Europe for his studies; smoking Winston cigarettes; displaying leftist tendencies"(96). So people could not get out of the country, and this guy was raised in a foreing country and when he came back from his studies he was sentenced to death penalty and he was also accused for doing what humans do? It was a very tough time in Iran in those days and the fact that Nafisi was being able to have her class at home and that the girls were strong enough and had the courage to do it was pretty amazing and I think that's the reasong for Nafisi talking about this.
I think that Bijan is the same guy she married, if you look in the first part of chapter 2 of part 2 of the book she starts describing this guy she married when her father was put in jail, and she describes him as being "...he offered a way of life which, in contrast to ours, seemed pragmatic and uncomplicated' and he was so sure of himself..."(83). Later in that chapter she starts kind of describing why his dad was put in jail and at the end of that same chapter she talks again about that guy she married, she says his name in that moment which she didn't say before. "The fall of 1977 was memorable for two events: my marriage in September and the Shah's last official and most dramatic visit to the United States in November..."(86). This is when she moves to the USA with her husband who was Bijan. Then she goes on and says something about him that she already said in the first part of the chapter. She says, "...I fell in love with him for all the wrong reasons: not because of his revolutionary rhetoric but because he possessed a sense of confidence in himself and his beliefs that went beyond the hysterics of the movement..."(86). So here she also describes him as being sure of himself and having that strong confidence in himself.
I wanted to discuss about the war and how people were thinking about others during that period. "The war in Irak began that September... The polarization created by the regime confused every aspect of life. Not only were the forces of God fighting an emissary of Satan, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, but they were also fighting agents of Satan inside the country. At all time, from the very beginning of the revolution and all through the war and after, the Islamic regime never forgot its holy battle against its internal enemies..."(158). So now was not only Hussein consider the enemy, but everyone inside the country who had opinions or beliefs that were different from those of the regime. Nafisi goes on saying that "All forms of criticism were now considered Iraqi-inspired and dangerous to national security. Those groups and individuals without a sense of loyalty to the regime's brand of Islam were excluded from the war effort. They could be killed or sent to the front, but they could not voice their social or political preferences (158-159). So nobody could talk or express their feelings. If someone said anything about the regime that went against it, then the regime was going to make sure that the person paid for it by either being killed by the regime or in the front fighting. For the regime, people who were against them instead of with them should be punished because "There were only two forces in the world, the army of God and that of Satan" (159), so anyone who didn't agree with them had to stay quite. I think Nafisi wants to show the reader how far this "revolution" kind of thing was going. I mean how could they be fighting a war in the name of a god? If the same god at last created them all, why then would god want them to be fighting. They thought they were right and that they had the protection of god, and that's why many of them even gave their lives for the cause and they just thought that Satan was the one sending the people other people from the same country just because they didn't think the same way...
(Here I'm answering to the other student who said that people would not give up the Islamic religion even though the religion sent them to war, and asking if Naffisi's husband was different from others in a good or bad way). People were just like blind and I wanted to talk about that because in my beliefs about religion (which ever one it is) people should feel like the person next to you is your brother or you sister. This people were living in the same country and yet they couldn't trust one another, and the regime was even thinking about killing those who they thought were against them. Why would they fight a war in name of religion if religion is suppose to teach peace...???Well about the guy she married, I believe the reason she married him was so his dad could get out from the jail, that's why as soon as her dad got out from jail she divorced him. While I was reading that part, I felt that her tone was more like he is different in a bad way. I don't think she married him because he was different and she liked that about him. He was mean and he thought he was better than everyone else... Hope I answer your questions, maybe Shugy could give you her point of view...
So the guy Nafisi married was powerful or at least he had money so I guess she married him so he used his influences and the take her dad out of jail......... I found a quote about how women felt about the veil and why many of them didn't want to use it. Nafisi went to talk to Mr. Bahri and she respected him a lot, but he friend had already resigned and now it was Nafisi's turn to choose whether she was going to stay in the school and wear the scarf around her hear or just quit her. She was saying that "What did he imagine our students would think of us if they saw us wearing the veil we had sworn never to do so?..." (165). This was something serious and Nafisi was not going to wear the veil, first because she would be letting down her students and their cause and second because she explained that "it was not the piece of cloth that I rejected, it was the transformation being imposed upon me that mede me look in the mirror and hate the strange I had become" (165). So imagine how Nafisi felt about having to choose between keeping her job or failing her students and herself....
While I was reading through chapter 3, I was deeply touch by the way Nafisi expressed her feelings. She explains how she feels now that she cannot wear what she wants or now that she she has no rights, now that she is just like a ghost walking down the streets, now that she has to wear that veil and all she can wear is a long robe. The way she tells things, and her tone make me feel as if she feels like the most miserable person. She says, "I had not realized how far the routines of one's life create the alusion of stability. Now that I could not wear what I would normally wear... This new feeling of unreality led me to invent new games, survival games I would now call them..." (167). Nafisi feels like she is not herself anymore, now all she does is what the law tells her she is "allowed" to do, like wearing the veil. Inside she does not feel human, she feels like a robot that is receiving order from the government and has to do what they tell her to. She then goes on to describe the part when this idea of creating the "game of survival" came from. "The beginning of this game I can trace back quite specifically to the day I went to the Ministry of Higher Education with a friend who wanted to have her fiploma validated... The female guard told me to hold my hands up, up, and up, she said, as she started to search me meticulously, going over every part of my body... My face was burning and I felt dirty..." (168). For me this really sound terrible. Nafisi is being "sexually molested", and not only her but I guess this happened to every other woman. This people didn't care and her rights as a human being were being violated... Nafisi's tone in this part makes you think about it really serious. How could she stand this? I think that she expresses this in this way because she wants to let the reader know how hard it was for women in those days, and also to let the women readers feel very thankful for being able to live free and have rights.
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