Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran Questions 1.) Azar Nafisi includes the description of her two contrasting pictures to symbolize what she wishes Tehran would be more like, and what it is now, a dull hidden and very conservative. Tehran women must wear head scarves and black robes, they pretty much hide themselves completely; while on the other picture the same group of women stand except they have taken off their coverings and wearing ever day clothes. I think Nafisi includes this description to show that the two photographs are argument images that are trying to prove the lack of individuality in Tehran. Nafisi’s goal in describing these two photographs at the opening of the novel is to show us how in Tehran there is no freedom of expression, and that she really dislikes that part of the customs of her homeland. 2.) Tehran is Nafisi’s homeland but her relationship with he home is not the best. She does not like a lot of the customs and laws, she shows her loath toward this when she says “Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn’t dare to imagine ourselves; in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita Tehran. And then imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us.”(6). Nafisi really dislikes how all their individuality is unable to be shown because they are in Tehran. Nassrin, one of her students, always seems to be “hidden behind something”(5) , then Nafisi later states that Tehran is kind of like Nassrin, “This is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences”(5). Nafisi clearly thinks that this problem needs to have some light shed on it instead of hiding it like it isn’t a