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85569bf
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I once heard my father tell a friend that his relationship with my mother reminded him of a story by Attar, the twelfth-century Persian mystic poet, about a man who fearlessly rode a ferocious lion. When the narrator followed this brave man to his home, he was shocked to see how easily he was cowed by his wife. How could a man who was not afraid of a fierce beast be so intimidated by his own wife? His host shot back: If it weren't for what ..
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Azar Nafisi |
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0a38aaf
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correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of education, the incredible divide between private and public schools that makes all of the fine speeches by our policy makers-- most of whom send their children to private schools anyway, just as they ..
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reading
imagination
education
art
culture
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Azar Nafisi |
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c8e009b
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Those who can afford private schooling need not worry about their children being deprived of art, music and literature in the classroom: they are more sheltered, for now, from the doctrine of efficiency that has been radically refashioning the public school curriculum.
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Azar Nafisi |
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42a7f72
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Incapaci di decifrare o di capire tutto cio che fosse complicato o fuori dagli schemi, infuriati con quelli che consideravano serpi in seno, gli integralisti furono costretti a imporre le loro formule rudimentali anche alla narrativa. E cosi come perseguitarono i colori della realta, cercando di adattarla al loro mondo in bianco e nero, si accanirono - al pari dei loro antagonisti ideologici - contro qualsiasi forma di interiorita in narrat..
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jane-austen
fundamentalism
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Azar Nafisi |
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8900c98
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These women, genteel and beautiful, are the rebels who say no to the choices made by silly mothers, incompetent fathers (there are seldom any wise fathers in Austen's novels) and the rigidly orthodox society. They risk ostracism and poverty to gain love and companionship, and to embrace that elusive goal at the heart of democracy: the right to choose.
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Azar Nafisi |
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19b915f
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the dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became.
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Azar Nafisi |
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01c2d2a
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It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not --a word that is central in Austen's novels but is seldom used in James's universe. What James's characters gain is self-respect.
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Azar Nafisi |
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3d25f90
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The class's favorite book was Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading. In this novel, Nabokov differentiates Cincinnatus C., his imaginative and lonely hero, from those around him through his originality in a society where uniformity is not only the norm but also the law.
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Azar Nafisi |
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d9736dd
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What I am searching for is the gaps - the silences. This is how I see the past: as an excavation. You sift through the rubble, pick up one fragment here, another there, label it and record where you found it, noting the time and date of discovery. It is not just the foundations I am looking for but something at once more and less tangible.
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silence
past
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Azar Nafisi |
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71a366b
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But it was women like Rudabeh who planted in my mind the idea of a different kind of woman whose courage is private and personal. Without making any grand claims, without aiming to save humanity or defeat the forces of Satan, these women were engaged in a quiet rebellion, courageous not because it would get them accolades, but because they could not be otherwise. If they were limited and vulnerable, it was an audacious vulnerability, transc..
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rebellion
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Azar Nafisi |
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97e1fee
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I say "then, as now" because the revolution that imposed the scarf on others did not relieve Mahshid of her loneliness. Before the revolution, she could in a sense take pride in her isolation. At that time, she had worn the scarf as a testament to her faith. Her decision was a voluntary act. When the revolution forced the scarf on others, her action became meaningless."
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Azar Nafisi |
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f0e57d4
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Look at these magnificent women, I thought, created in such misogynistic and hierarchical societies, yet they are the subversive centers around which the plot is shaped. Everything is supposed to revolve around the male hero. But it is the active presence of these women that changes events and diverts the man's life from its traditional course, that shocks him into changing his very mode of existence. In the classical Iranian narrative, act..
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women
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Azar Nafisi |
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a341398
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Even the mild-mannered Sophia Western of Tom Jones and Richardson's annoyingly pious Clarissa Harlow distinguished themselves by saying no to the authority of their parents, their societies, and norms and demanding to marry the man they chose. Perhaps it was exactly because women were deprived of so much in their real lives that they became so subversive in the realm of fiction, refusing the authority imposed on them, breaking out of old st..
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women
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Azar Nafisi |
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5f119db
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Why is it that in novels with a message, the villains are so reduced that it is as if they come to us with a sign on their forehead saying: Beware, I am a monster? Doesn't the Koran state that Satan is a seducer, a tempter with an insidious smile?
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Azar Nafisi |
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612f5f8
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Un romanzo non e un'allegoria, e l'esperienza sensoriale di un altro mondo. Se non entrate in quel mondo, se non trattenete il respiro insieme ai personaggi, se non vi lasciate coinvolgere nel loro destino, non arriverete mai ad identificarvi con loro, non arriverete mai al cuore del libro. E cosi che si legge un romanzo: come se fosse qualcosa da inalare, da tenere nei polmoni. Dunque, cominciate a respirare.
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Azar Nafisi |
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dcf18a1
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In our case, the law really was blind; in its mistreatment of women, it knew no religion, race or creed.
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Azar Nafisi |
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56bae82
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All our lives my brother and I were caught by the fictions my parents told us--fictions about themselves as well as others. Each wanted us to judge the other in his or her favor. Sometimes I felt cheated, as if they never allowed us to have a story of our own. It is only now that I understand how much their story was also mine.
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parents
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Azar Nafisi |
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5f80f76
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It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.
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Azar Nafisi |
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a36d39a
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Pain and loss, like love and joy, are unique and personal; they cannot be modified by comparison to others.
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Azar Nafisi |
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228338f
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I used to joke that we had prepared ourselves for a time like this by living with Mother. The problem with such a state of affairs was not that you did not get to do what you wanted---sometimes you did---but the effort to appease or resist the reigning deities left you so exhausted that it prevented you from ever really having fun. To this day having fun, just plain enjoying myself, comes at the cost of a conviction that I have committed an..
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growing-up
mothers-and-daughters
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Azar Nafisi |
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c39cda2
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the dearer a book was to my heart, the more battered and bruised it became.
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Azar Nafisi |
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0f93002
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I explained that most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed to immutable.
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Azar Nafisi |
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94589b5
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A message was sent by the regime to the faithful: to survive they would have to be loyal to only one interpretation of the faith, and to accept the new political role of the clergy. Father felt that this spelled the end of Islam in our country, and he did have a point. 'No foreign power,' he said, 'could destroy Islam the way these people have.
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islam
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Azar Nafisi |
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3237dbe
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she felt secure only in her terrible sense of insecurity.
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Azar Nafisi |
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caad75e
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As we grown-ups talked and speculated, my five-year-old daughter looked intently out of the window. Suddenly she turned around and shouted, "Mommy, Mommy, he is not dead! Women are still wearing their scarves." I always associate Khomeini's death with Negar's simple pronouncement--for she was right: the day women did not wear the scarf in public would be the real day of his death and the end of his revolution. Until then, we would continue ..
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Azar Nafisi |
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3f10506
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I have now become something of an expert in the ways of "decisive" men. They are not firm, they just seem to be. Because they have a formula for everything, which they forcibly impose, they seem confident. But they cannot face the unexpected. They can be far less capable in a crisis than the seemingly fragile women they bully and are secretly afraid of."
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Azar Nafisi |
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160abf0
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Primo Levi once said, "I write in order to rejoin the community of mankind." Reading is a private act, but it joins us across continents and time." --
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Azar Nafisi |
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c845285
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We had always segregated sex from feeling and from intellectual love, so you were either pure and virtuous, as Nassrin's uncle had said, or dirty and fun. What was alien to us was eros, true sensuality.
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love
sensuality
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Azar Nafisi |
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d9bb51c
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That was the first time I experienced the desperate orgiastic pleasure of this form of public mourning: it was the one place where people mingled and touched bodies and shared emotions without restraint or guilt. There was a wild, sexually flavored frenzy in the air. Later, when I saw a slogan by Khomeini saying that the Islamic Republic survives through its mourning ceremonies, I could testify to its truth.
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mourning
iran
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Azar Nafisi |
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d83a712
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La curiosite, disait-elle, est la forme la plus pure de l'insoumission.
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Azar Nafisi |
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b5bf266
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Mais la magie vient du pouvoir du bien, de cette force qui nous dit que nous n'avons pas besoin de nous soumettre aux limites et restrictions que nous impose M. destin, comme l'appelle Nabokov.
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Azar Nafisi |
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f570538
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These are my memories of Norman: red earth and fireflies, singing and demonstrating on the Oval, reading Melville, Poe, Lenin and Mao Tse Tung, reading Ovid and Shakespeare on warm spring mornings with a favorite professor, of conservative political leaning, and accompanying another in the afternoons, singing revolutionary songs.
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Azar Nafisi |
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22aa496
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We were, to borrow from Nabokov, to experience how the ordinary pebble of ordinary life could be transformed into a jewel through the magic eye of fiction.
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Azar Nafisi |
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5aafb4b
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Almost every day, my students would recount such stories. We laughed over them, and later felt angry and sad, although we repeated them endlessly at parties and over cups of coffee, in breadlines, in taxis. It was as if the sheer act of recounting these stories gave us some control over them; the deprecating tone we used, our gestures, even our hysterical laughter seemed to reduce their hold over our lives.
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Azar Nafisi |
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40ba294
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Later, we all wondered how it was that our concern was not so much for our lives or for the fact that five armed strangers were using our house for a shooting match with a neighbor who was also armed and hiding somewhere in our garden. We, like all normal Iranian citizens, were guilty and had something to hide: we were worried about our satellite dish.
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Azar Nafisi |
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f8471aa
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Whoever fights monsters," Nietzsche had said, "should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
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Azar Nafisi |
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44fb6b3
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Some of my girls are more radical than I am in their resentment of men. All of them want to be independent. They think they cannot find men equal to them. They think they have grown and matured, but men in their lives have not, they have not bothered to think.
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Azar Nafisi |
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f381e40
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Why do tyrants understand the dangers of a democratic imagination more than our policy makers appreciate its necessity?
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Azar Nafisi |
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8e1781e
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Non sminuire mai, in nessuna circostanza, un'opera letteraria cercando di trasformarla in una copia della vita reale.
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Azar Nafisi |
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fe8c3d0
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In the final analysis we are our own betrayers.
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Azar Nafisi |
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43f8883
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La curiosita e insubordinazione allo stato puro.
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Azar Nafisi |
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b83c421
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The more I discovered the lyrical quality of our lives, the more my own life became a web of fiction.
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Azar Nafisi |
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457ffd4
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Some within the government and some former revolutionaries had finally realized that there was no way the Islamic regime could make us intellectuals vanish. In forcing us underground, it had also made us more appealing, more dangerous and, in a strange way, more powerful. It had made us scarce and, because of this, also in demand.
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Azar Nafisi |
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6bf8ebb
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The room was full when I walked in, but as soon as I took my place behind the desk, my nervousness left me.
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Azar Nafisi |