Azar Nafisi and reading as an instrument of freedom

John

By John

Reading books as an instrument of freedom. But does literature really have this power in people’s lives? Azar Nafisi, recently guest of the Festa dei Libri e della Libertà of the twenty-fifth edition of Pordenonelegge, where she received the Crédit Agricole Prize «The story in a novel», now in its seventeenth edition, is absolutely convinced of this. Nafisi is the Iranian writer, teacher and activist, who has lived in the United States for some time and has always, in her books, together with her personal story, told the history of the world through the power of literature. His latest book «Reading dangerously» (Adelphi, translated by Anna Rusconi), the fourth of a quadrilogy that began with «That other world», continued with «Reading Lolita in Tehran» (more than a literary manifesto) and «La Republic of the imagination”, completes the reflection on the power of literature in contrast to other powers that in this time also undermine our democracies.
«For me, Italy represents my Republic of the imagination» he says, and in the Republic of the imagination and the word Nafisi has built his home, because «the imagination reveals the truth, clarifies it, while the illusion hides it , making it opaque.” He has known this well since, as a thirteen-year-old, he left Iran to study in the USA, with frequent returns to his beloved country, which was increasingly opaque and intolerant. Thus, books and stories became “her talismans”, “her portable home”, the only one she could rely on and from which she would never be removed. And they also provided her with new eyes with which to look at her country of birth and her adopted country. Which she gives an account of in «Reading dangerously» (, a polyphony of voices contained in five letters in which she wrote to her dead father (former mayor of Tehran who later fell into disgrace and imprisoned), who had taught her the stories «bringing the world into his bedroom”, ideally addresses symbolic authors, from Salman Rushdie to Ray Bradbury, from David Grossman to Zora Hurston, from Toni Morrison to Margaret Atwood, through which to affirm how there is a close link between imagination and reality. one – he writes – inevitably leads to suffocating the other. Great literary works are “dangerous” and “subversive” because literature always goes hand in hand with the idea of ​​freedom and warns us of the truth more dangerous because in totalitarian regimes there is only one voice, while the novel has many voices, even those of the bad guys, so literature is the most democratic and dangerous space there is. Every time a totalitarian power takes office, one of its own The first objectives are to attack women, minorities, literature and the arts in general. So I ask myself: what is it that makes men and women of power fear those who use words as their only weapon? Literature is a sort of warning of what could happen to us, because the focal point of literature is the truth while in totalitarian regimes the focal point is lies. Just take a look at what has happened in the world and what is happening today: everything starts from a lie, it was like this for fascism, Nazism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also for the anti-democratic movements and tendencies that they pose in the current United States. They are all based on lies.”
Since the days of «Reading Lolita in Tehran», the women’s movement, states the author, has become increasingly stronger: «Iranian women were the first group to demonstrate when the Ayatollah launched a fatwa to ensure that the hijab became obligatory (and I underline the adjective obligatory) and Mahsa Amini’s movement, whose slogan is “Woman, life and freedom”, made masses of women pour into the streets without the veil, burning it precisely to demonstrate to the government how much they are aware that they have a power, that of showing their body, their hair, which drives the tyrant crazy.”
And it is the tyrant of yesterday and today that Nafisi denounces, appealing to journalists, an important defense, like books, like writers, to fight in the name of freedom, and not only of those countries that are not free. Democracies are fragile, and he is very concerned about the situation in the USA (naturally he hopes that Kamala Harris will win) because «what is most dangerous for democracy are the so-called sleeping consciences, the atrophy of feeling, and at the moment in In the USA, as in other countries, democracy is taken a little too lightly, it is not considered how many people have sacrificed to achieve it.” And if «Iran is the puppet master, because it supports and has always supported Hezbollah, Hamas, it also interfered with the war in Syria and is the one launching Russian drones against Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestinian issue touches me deeply of the heart. Both Hamas and Netanyahu’s government represent a sort of toxic delirium for their population; the Israeli government does not coincide with the Israeli population and Palestinian terrorists do not coincide with the Palestinian people. Hamas and Netanyahu are not interested in the well-being of their people, they are carrying out this war only to protect their personal interests. Let’s not forget that Hamas started the war by raping women and killing children, knowing full well that Israel would retaliate, but Israel has also long since abandoned its population. I am in favor of the two-state solution and I would like there to be a Palestinian government that could grant dignity and freedom to its citizens.”