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(PART Ⅱ 17 Gatsby)
By Azar Nafisi
I spoke briefly about the next week’s assignment and proceeded to set the trial in motion. First I called forth Mr. Farzan, the judge, and asked him to take his seat in my usual chair, behind the desk. He sauntered up to the front of the class with an ill-disguised air of self-satisfaction. A chair was placed near the judge for the witnesses. I sat beside Zarrin on the left side of the room, by the large window, and Mr. Nyazi sat with some of his friends on the other side, by the wall. The judge called the session to order. And so began the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran versus The Great Gatsby.
Mr. Nyazi was called to state his case against the defendant. Instead of standing, he moved his chair to the center of the room and started to read in a monotonous voice from his paper. The judge sat uncomfortably behind my desk and appeared to be mesmerized by Mr. Nyazi. Every once in a while he blinked rather violently.
A few months ago, I was finally cleaning up my old files and I came across Mr. Nyazi’s paper, written in immaculate handwriting. It began with “In the Name of God,” words that later became mandatory on all official letterheads and in all public talks. Mr. Nyazi picked up the pages of his paper one by one, gripping rather than holding them, as if afraid that they might try to escape his hold. “Islam is the only religion in the world that has assigned a special sacred role to literature in guiding man to a godly life,” he intoned. “This becomes clear when we consider that the Koran, God’s own word, is the Prophet’s miracle. Through the Word you can heal or you can destroy. You can guide or you can corrupt. That is why the Word can belong to Satan or to God.”
“Imam Khomeini has relegated a great task to our poets and writers,” he droned on triumphantly, laying down one page and picking up another. “He has given them a sacred mission, much more exalted than that of the materialistic writers in the West. If our Imam is the shepherd who guides the flock to its pasture, then the writers are the faithful watchdogs who must lead according to the shepherd’s dictates.”
A giggle could be heard from the back of the class. I glanced around behind me and caught Zarrin and Vida whispering. Nassrin was staring intently at Mr. Nyazi and absentmindedly chewing her pencil. Mr. Farzan seemed to be preoccupied with an invisible fly, and blinked exaggeratedly at intervals. When I turned my attention back to Mr. Nyazi, he was saying, “Ask yourself which you would prefer: the guardianship of a sacred and holy task or the materialistic reward of money and position that has corrupted—” and here he paused, without taking his eyes off his paper, seeming to drag the sapless words to the surface—“that has corrupted,” he repeated, “the Western writers and deprived their work of spirituality and purpose. That is why our Imam says that the pen is mightier than the sword.”
The whispers and titters in the back rows had become more audible. Mr. Farzan was too inept a judge to pay attention, but one of Mr. Nyazi’s friends cried out: “Your Honor, could you please instruct the gentlemen and ladies in the back to respect the court and the prosecutor?”
“So be it,” said Mr. Farzan, irrelevantly.
“Our poets and writers in this battle against the Great Satan,” Nyazi continued, “play the same role as our faithful soldiers, and they will be accorded the same reward in heaven. We students, as the future guardians of culture, have a heavy task ahead of us. Today we have planted Islam’s flag of victory inside the nest of spies on our own soil. Our task, as our Imam has stated, is to purge the country of the decadent Western culture and ...”
At this point Zarrin stood up. “Objection, Your Honor!” she cried out.
Mr. Farzan looked at her in some surprise. “What do you object to?”
“This is supposed to be about The Great Gatsby ,” said Zarrin. “The prosecutor has taken up fifteen precious minutes of our time without saying a single word about the defendant. Where is this all going?”
For a few seconds both Mr. Farzan and Mr. Nyazi looked at her in wonder. Then Mr. Nyazi said, without looking at Zarrin, “This is an Islamic court, not Perry Mason. I can present my case the way I want to, and I am setting the context. I want to say that as a Muslim I cannot accept Gatsby .”
Mr. Farzan, attempting to rise up to his role, said, “Well, please move on then.”
Zarrin’s interruptions had upset Mr. Nyazi, who after a short pause lifted his head from his paper and said with some excitement, “You are right, it is not worth it ...”
We were left to wonder what was not worth it for a few seconds, until he continued. “I don’t have to read from a paper, and I don’t need to talk about Islam. I have enough evidence—every page, every single page,” he cried out, “of this book is its own condemnation.” He turned to Zarrin and one look at her indifferent expression was enough to transform him. “All through this revolution we have talked about the fact that the West is our enemy, it is the Great Satan, not because of its military might, not because of its economic power, but because of, because of”—another pause—“because of its sinister assault on the very roots of our culture. What our Imam calls cultural aggression. This I would call a rape of our culture,” Mr. Nyazi stated, using a term that later became the hallmark of the Islamic Republic’s critique of the West. “And if you want to see cultural rape, you need go no further than this very book.” He picked his Gatsby up from beneath the pile of papers and started waving it in our direction.
Zarrin rose again to her feet. “Your Honor,” she said with barely disguised contempt, “these are all baseless allegations, falsehoods...”
Mr. Nyazi did not allow his honor to respond. He half rose from his seat and cried out: “Will you let me finish? You will get your turn! I will tell you why, I will tell you why ...” And then he turned to me and in a softer voice said, “Ma’am, no offense meant to you.”
I, who had by now begun to enjoy the game, said, “Go ahead, please, and remember I am here in the role of the book. I will have my say in the end.”
“Maybe during the reign of the corrupt Pahlavi regime,” Nyazi continued, “adultery was the accepted norm.”
Zarrin was not one to let go. “I object!” she cried out. “There is no factual basis to this statement.”
“Okay,” he conceded, “but the values were such that adultery went unpunished. This book preaches illicit relations between a man and woman. First we have Tom and his mistress, the scene in her apartment—even the narrator, Nick, is implicated. He doesn’t like their lies, but he has no objection to their fornicating and sitting on each other’s laps, and, and, those parties at Gatsby’s ... remember, ladies and gentlemen, this Gatsby is the hero of the book—and who is he? He is a charlatan, he is an adulterer, he is a liar ... this is the man Nick celebrates and feels sorry for, this man, this destroyer of homes!” Mr. Nyazi was clearly agitated as he conjured the fornicators, liars and adulterers roaming freely in Fitzgerald’s luminous world, immune from his wrath and from prosecution. “The only sympathetic person here is the cuckolded husband, Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Nyazi boomed. “When he kills Gatsby, it is the hand of God. He is the only victim. He is the genuine symbol of the oppressed, in the land of, of, of the Great Satan!”
The trouble with Mr. Nyazi was that even when he became excited and did not read from his paper, his delivery was monotonous. Now he mainly shouted and cried out from his semistationary position.