An Iranian Exile

Description: Nafisi was studying in the U.S. when the Revolution broke out in 1979. She chose to go back.

Question: Where are you from and how has that shaped you?

Transcript: That’s a very interesting and a very difficult question because at some point I decided that what shapes me is a portable world that I can take with me everywhere I go. Because I . . . I stayed in Iran until I was 13, and then I was sent to England and to Switzerland, and later to the United States to continue my studies. So from a very early age the idea of going back home . . . I think that the strange thing about Iran for me is that the idea of returning to Iran has shaped me more than the idea of being in Iran. And then when I went back home, I realized home was not home because I went back to the Islamic Revolution, you know. And the best that it has given me has been the memories of the culture, the poetry. I think that is what I most identify with. The start of the revolution I was in U.S. then. I was writing my dissertation actually when it happened in 1979. And as luck would have it, I finished my oral defense the summer of 1979 and I went back. So I wasn’t there for the very beginning, but I was there for, you know, pretty much from the start of it. And I left Iran in ’97, so I was there for 18 years.

Question: What were your hopes for Iran?

Transcript: Well you know when I was in America I was part of this very huge student organization. It was sort of an international – by international I mean Europe and U.S. mainly – student movement, which was at the time against the __________. Looking back on it I do understand our stupidities actually. I cannot find a better word for it. Not because we wanted a better and a more democratic political organization; but because in trying to gain that we ourselves were not more democratic in our manner. You know we were very radical Marxists, you know, in the worst sense of the word in many ways, and so we didn’t see the pitfalls. I . . . So at the start of the revolution it wasn’t Islamic. It was sort of people from all across the board. The slogans were mainly very secular, and we felt that there is going to be a serious change. But right before I went back to Iran, I had already become disillusioned because of Ayatollah Khomeini and his fatwas, and his edicts – like for example about women. So when I went to Iran I had my hopes that the extremists won’t win. But I also was very worried. So from the beginning the hope was pinched with disillusion or despair.

Question: Why did you go back?

Transcript: You know leave . . . leaving so early and leaving the people you love, the things you miss about are the places you . . . Well in this case the things you miss about home are all in the details – like the mountains surrounding Iran or Tehran, the city I was born in – that makes me always homesick; the way in Tehran it snows and then the sun comes out. So the idea of home was always very strong because I left so early. You know and I would go back for summer vacations, but that would only make it worse; make me want to go back more. I just felt . . . First of all I never knew that what happened would happen. I think few did. And I thought that this is a time to give back. You know I have been sent abroad. I have gotten the education. The time for me now . . . I finished my work, my studies. I need to go back. Actually well I was so excited. The whole . . . In those days when you would go back, there would be so many others who were coming back with you in the airplane. You know once the plane was over the city, people would start singing songs. And you know many exiles were returning. Many people were returning with a lot of hope. That is how my husband and I returned, and we had just married when we had gone back. The very first scene in the airport brought to me the frightening ideas that I later experienced, because Tehran airport was always a place of joy since childhood. It had lovely restaurants and coffee shops where we would go as children. We’d have ice cream there. It was always a social place, and they had a restaurant where . . . I think it was Thursday afternoons young people went there to dance. It was called “_____________”. During teatime you would go for a dance. So it was a very joyous and sort of communal place, not just a place where people departed and arrived. And the first thing that I noticed in the airport was the somberness. There were women there veiled and in black head to foot. There were people with guns. There were big posters of Ayatollah Khomeini and other Islamic leaders with slogans against America, and Britain, and the west as a whole. And rather than welcoming they were searching our suitcases –not for weapons; for alcohol. You know so there wasn’t any welcoming back, you know? That was the first impression. But there was still a lot of excitement in the air, especially because I went directly to teach at the University of Tehran that had been the seat of so many struggles from 30 or 40 years before the revolution. It was a very sacred place for many Iranians. And for me I mentioned it in my book. Had I been offered a job in the best universities in the world, I would not have felt the awe that I had felt about going to the University of Tehran. And that excitement was still there. In the mornings there would be heated debates between various factions. Everybody had a table – you know different groups. So it was a very lively place still, despite the disquieting signs, you know, on the side. Alongside this excitement already they had started doing things which were terrible. The first thing was the executions – very brutal executions of people they connected to the old system. And some of the people would did belong to the old system were also among the best. Not everyone was ___________, and that system was better than this one anyway in many ways. They had started closing down the progressive newspapers. In early ‘80s . . . I think it was 1980 or ’81, they started coming down on the university because universities were so secular and they were just seat of protests all the time. And they had sort of a Chinese style cultural revolution where they said they needed to close down the universities for an indefinite number of years until they were purged and, you know, became Islamized. So we were . . . Both the faculty and the students protested, and there were sit-ins . . . all night sit-ins and protests. Many students were jailed and some were murdered. There were . . . I remember we used to demonstrate in the streets of Tehran. At some point the vigilantes . . . the Islamic vigilantes would start attacking with knives and with stones. And you would disperse, and then some of the unlucky ones would be arrested and you wouldn’t know about their fate. So finally they did that. They closed down the universities and started a very, very serious purge. They didn’t start until those purges were done. They never got what they wanted. The universities remained basically secular, and the Islamic students who had first expelled people like me became like me, you know?

Recorded on: 2/22/08