Being a Chinese who lived in China for over 50 years, especially the 10 disastrous years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as a university teacher, I can well understand the oppression and frustration Azar Nafri experienced under the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors. “Teaching in the Islamic Republic, like any other vocation, was subservient to politics and subject to arbitrary rules,” she writes at the beginning of her book. That was exactly what happened in China in those years. Everything was politicized, so to speak.

 Terror reigned, especially during the first years following the overthrow of Shah, King of Iran. Those were years when everything was either black or white, either revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, either loyalty or betrayal. There was no space for grey or non-revolutionary, for compromise or reconciliation. People were executed summarily or sentenced to years of imprisonment for the smallest offense against the regime. Western culture was rejected as decadent and poisonous. “Death to America!” and other such slogans reverberated in the air.

The regime tried to control the way people lived their life. Worse still, they tried to control the way they thought. It was against that background that Azar Nafri, a professor of Western literature, launched a secret book club that met once a week in her home. She hand-picked all the seven members from the university where she taught. With her guidance, they devoted themselves to the study of Jane Austin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. Theirs was a double life. Only once a week did they breathe the fresh air of freedom.

I’m not familiar with Nabokov and his works, but I happened to have just read Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby not long ago and Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice and Henry James’ Washington Square back in the 60s. Pride and Prejudice was in fact a designated novel every young faculty member in the English department of my university had to read as part of the effort to improve their English. Still, I must confess that I never reached the kind of understanding of the two novels Azar Nafri reaches in her book.

What interests me most is the creative way Nafri taught The Great Gatsby. Because a revolutionary fanatic in her class at the university considered the novel dangerous and poisonous, she suggested putting the novel on an open trial in class, thus triggering an intense debate among the students. The Great Gatsby was not the first book ever to be tried. Madame Bovary, Ulysess, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita were all tried at one time or another, but in the end, the novel won. And The Great Gatsby was no exception.

As it happened, Mr. Nyazi the fanatic was well prepared as a prosecutor at the trial. He took up 15 precious minutes of the class time lauding the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini for relegating “a great task” to the poets and writers. “He has given them a sacred mission,” he rattled on, “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.”

Nyazi then went on to condemn The Great Gatsby as a novel where “adultery went unpunished.” It was a book, he said, that “preaches illicit relations between a man and woman.” As for the hero of the novel Gatsby, he made it clear that “He is a charlatan, he is an adulterer, he is a liar…this is the man Nick celebrates and feels sorry for, this destroyer of homes!”

Nafri didn’t act as the defense at the trial: her student Zarrin turned out to be the best possible defense for the novel. Being aware that the prosecutor’s focal point was the lure of money and its role in the novel, she started her defense this way:

“It is true that Gatsby recognizes that money is one of Daisy’s attractions. He is in fact the one who draws Nick’s attention to the fact that in the charm of her voice is the jingle of money. But this novel is not about a poor young charlatan’s love of money.” She said categorically, “Whoever claims this has not done his homework.” Then she went on to examine the various characters in the novel to show that the novel was not about “the rich are different from you and me.” “It is about wealth but not about the vulgar materialism …” “This book is no less a condemnation of your wealthy upper classes,” she said to Nyazi, “than any of the revolutionary books we have read.”

Interestingly, Zarrin made the statement that “Careless is the first adjective that comes to mind when describing the rich in this novel.” “The word careless is the key here,” she said. “Remember when Nick reproaches Jordan for her careless driving and she responds lightly that even if she is careless, she counts on other people being careful?”

It was then that Nafri made her remarks. “If a critique of carelessness is a fault,” she said, “then at least I’m in good company. This carelessness, a lack of empathy, appears in Jane Austen’s negative characters; in Lady Catherine, in Mrs. Norris, in Mr. Collins or the Crawfords. The theme recurs in Henry James’s stories and in Nabokov’s monster heroes: Humbert, Kinbote, Van and Ada Veen. Imagination in these works is equated with empathy…”

And here are Nafri’s enlightening words for me: “A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice: in this way a novel is called democratic – not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels – the biggest sin is to be blind to others’ problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.”

Understandably, the majority of students were on the side of Nafri and Zarrin although most of them remained silent during the “trial.” They were afraid to be punished for taking sides with the West.

Reading this part of Nafri’s book helps me to better appreciate great Western novels. Thank you, Nafri.

Another thing that struck me in this book happened in Nafri’s class time, too. She was summing up Henry James when there was a commotion outside the classroom. Somewhere in the school building, a young man had poured gasoline on and set fire to himself and then ran down the hall, shouting revolutionary slogans. He had already lost consciousness with bad burns on his body when people put him on a stretcher and rushed him to hospital. He died soon afterwards.

According to Nafri, the young man, whose name was unknown to her, had been one of the most active students in the Muslim Students’ Association. “To say that he was ‘active’ meant that he was one of the more fanatical. He belonged to the group responsible for the posters and slogans on the walls, the group that had authorized the notices at the entrance to the university listing the names of those who had transgressed the dress code.” He was a spy working for the government.

Also according to Nafri, “There were so many young men like him on all our campuses, those who had been very young at the beginning of the revolution, many from the provinces or from traditional families. Every year, more students were admitted to the universities based on their loyalty to the revolution. They belonged to the families of the Revolutionary Guards or the martyrs of the revolution and were called “the government’s share.’ These were the children of the revolution, those who were to carry its legacy and eventually replace the Westernized workforce. The revolution must have meant many things to them – mainly power, and access. But they were also the usurpers, who had been admitted to the university and given power not because of their merit or hard work but because of their ideological affiliations.”

As it happened, the young man came from a poor family and his only close relative was a very old mother, whom he supported. He had gone to the Iran-Iraqi war as a volunteer. He had been shell-chocked and sent home early. But apparently he never fully recovered. After “peace” with Iraq, he returned to the university. But the peace had created a sense of disillusionment. The excitement of the war was gone, and with that, many young revolutionaries had lost their power.

The story of the young man interests me because partly it reminds me of many of the young Red Guards who emerged at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. It was they who heeded the call to cast away the “four olds”: old ideology, old culture, old customs, and old habits. It was at their hands that many professors and writers were persecuted and numerous historical relics destroyed throughout the country. I mention this just to show how destructive young people can be when they are misled. The real tragedy of the Revolution, however, was that while the Red Guards were instrumental in massive destruction, they were one of its primary victims, too: Many of them lost 10 years of their prime life, not being well educated.

The story of the young man interests me also because it reminds me of the children from senior officials in the country. While many are good, not a small number of them have become super-rich by utilizing the power and position of their revolutionary fathers. They have risen fast “not because of their merit or hard work.” And that has aroused the righteous and unending indignation among millions and millions ordinary Chinese.

The story also reminds me of some of the “angry young Chinese （愤青）” today. It is a good thing that they love China, and love it passionately. But their passion can also be misled. It is my sincere hope that they will be given proper guidance and that will always use their heads when and if they do something dramatic or drastic. What they do might create a sensation, but it won’t solve the problem they want to solve. What they do now might give them a chance to let off their anger or discontent, but some day they are likely to regret it.

Finally, a word about Azar Nafri’s background. Her parents were Iranians. Her father was the mayor of Tehran before the revolution and her mother also actively participated in political activities. As for Nafri herself, she grew up in Iran but was educated in the West. She was so immersed in Western culture that at the end of her book, she compared living in Iran to “having sex with a man you don’t love.” It’s only natural that she and her husband and two small children should leave for the Untied States to settle there. She is a professor at John Hopkins University and writes for a number of leading newspapers and magazines in the United States.