And Hafiz wrote his joyous ode of love for you when the pen proscribed all good to the gladsome heart.
Hafiz
It is Sunday after the Friday morning. I said I hated Iran and all Iranians and I would never talk to any of them again. I didn't really SAY that. It was a paroxysm of pain and anguish. And then she said, "if you expect to love me, how can you hate Iran, etc., etc." She was very indignant and passionate. It was the word "expect" that stopped me. And then she got up on her high horse and took out after me. I commanded her to stop, sharply, forcefully. I didn't know it then, but we were making love. First my passionate orgasm, then her irrational heated response. Then my sharp slapping her to her senses, to make her stop. She, carried away, unable to stop, "if you expect to love me...." Then her orgasm. And the tender feelings afterwards, my apologies, "when people get angry they say things that they don't mean. I have Iranian friends, etc."
She said I caused her three days of agony, of intense pain. Then she cried out, "I want to die!" That was her first orgasm. I said, "don't ever say that again," with all of the force of my existence. But her orgasm flooded through the pounding of my masculine will. She cried again, "I want to die!" Then I dissolved into her. "Then I want to die to." There was a silence. "If you die, then I die." We melted into one another.
When I brought up her friend, and talked of how she spied on me during the time I took Andrews' Pascal class, Soheila began to lie, to deny everything. Then I brought up the subject of love and said that it isn't impolite to tell someone that you don't love them. There was a silence and then she said in a very light voice, almost as if she were talking to herself, "I don't love you at all." I gathered my hurt deep into myself, and then, confronted with its black emptiness, simply refused to accept the pain. I said, "I don't believe you." And then I gathered momentum. "Don't say that anymore. Because I won't believe it. If you say it a hundred times I won't believe it. So you might as well not say it. I know you love me." She gave a little laugh. "I know you will never admit it, but you do."
I told her how happy she had made me. She said she was glad for that.
I said, "the whole Iranian community will know that I sent you flowers." She responded very politely, surprised, "I beg your pardon?" I repeated that I feared that the whole Iranian community would find out. She said, "now I know where you're coming from. It makes me very happy to hear that." Then she reassured me that she never talked about "this" to anybody. I said, "your sisters will tell." She said, "No," I said, "nobody's perfect. They will tell their best friends, then it will be all over school." She was silent.
But there were she and Juan, face to face --
When two such faces are so, 'twould be wise,
But very difficult, to shut their eyes.
Byron
When I complained again about the way that Iranian men cynically exploit American women, she said the women were to blame because they think Iranian men are rich. I said, "you shouldn't say that. That is wrong, and you know it. The women fall in love with them." She said, "you should try to argue with the men and tell them not to do it." I said, "no, I will never do it. I won't say anything to them about it. Nothing. I will never discuss it."
I said, "we will probably never see each other again, or ever talk to each other." I said, "I will pretend that I don't know you, that I don't see you." She said she didn't want to have "an enemy out there." I reassured her that I felt exactly as I always have about her, but that I would pretend not to know her anyway. I made it very clear that nothing had changed, that my feelings were the same, that I still love her. That seemed to make her happy but she said she would probably try to avoid me. I said, "as usual," and I was saddened and hurt. I repeated forcefully that I would avoid all eye contact with her, that I would not look at her again. Then she said in her loving voice, "that’s probably best." She used the word probably both times. But I am determined never to look at her or see her again. It feels and seems obvious that she loves me, but my great pain is that I will never know for sure, and I will always be haunted by those quiet, passionless words: "I don't love you at all."
I said, "your brother should be ashamed of himself." She accused me of "living in my imagination." By the way, little phrases like that lead me to believe that she is sharing this with someone, although they could simply come from her reading. I responded by saying, "you’re denying a part of yourself, you're denying the truth, and you're DENYING YOUR CHANCE FOR HAPPINESS." When I talk with her, I allow myself to alter and expand the English language in ways that I couldn't do with a native speaker. She said, "nobody is happy," and then I launched into an impassioned plea for the happy few, who give up everything for happiness. I accused her of wanting safety and comfort, and SHE READILY AGREED. I FELT the irony of her answer even though I could detect only a little irony in her voice. I said, "I thought you were like me, able to defy convention." I accused her of not being free. She said, "yes, that's it. I'm not free." Then I accused Iran of going backwards, that it can't work, that women are degraded there, etc. She almost broke into tears and said she wanted to go home, back where she was born, where she belonged. I regret that I don't remember for sure if she also said, "back to the place I love." I broke down, and remembering my year in France said, "I understand." I repeated it three times. We were silent. I reminded her that she said she was going to stay in America, that she was dating, and that she changed all of the time. Instead of waiting for a response, I went on. I said, "when you said you wouldn't date me NOW, I thought you might change." But I still didn't wait for a response. Then I said, "I never go out on dates with women anyway." She broke in, impassioned, "but you have lunch dates, dates with the doctor...." She went on and on, and it seemed that she was using the same words that I used last spring in the cafeteria when she said SHE didn't go out on dates. "No, you misunderstand me. I like women, I want to know them, but as people, as friends. I like to go places with them, I like to be with them." I seemed to get confused. I said, "I wanted to know you, but it's all over now. It cost me a great deal to love you. I've suffered for it."
At one point I tried to ask her about sex in general for Iranian women. I certainly didn't say anything direct. I said, "I'm curious about something. I wonder if I could ask you a difficult question. I don't know what to say, or how to ask, but...." I paused. She said quickly, defensively, "you are insulting me." I said "OK, you are absolutely pure. I will never ask again." There was no irony in my voice. I responded to what she THOUGHT I was asking about, and I was sincere. She accepted my apology without any feeling that it was exaggerated or ridiculous. I even went on, and I suppose I began to tell her again how beautiful she was, etc. My outpouring of love must have simply inflamed her feeling of power over me, because she said, "this taught me a very good lesson." She sounded supercilious and superior. So I launched into her again. I told her not to wear any makeup or jewelry. She said, "now you think you can tell me what to do." I said, "no, I'm telling you the truth. If you don't want men to fall in love with you, etc." And then I asked, "why do you think your country insists on the veil?" She was silent. "Because to see you is to love you." I admit that I give in to this kind of personal opera too easily, but she accepts my praise greedily and without shame. That is how we make love. It is so innocent. It is almost licentious though, to tell a woman that she is more beautiful than any other woman. It is a part of the preliminaries to love making. It IS our lovemaking. And she MUST have used all of her coquetry to inflame my passions. Yet she said that "the reason I didn't tell you that I don't love you, is that it would have been impolite!"
At the end of pain
A quiet white exhaustion
Your ghost sits down in
To take my head in its hands.
Rumi
So I have to realize that it is possible that she really doesn't love me. She is Iranian. It is possible that I simply didn't inspire love. Maybe it was just a kind of hallucination.
But I really feel like it is all simply a great and ugly denial. It seems like the great and ugly denial of passion that Stekel talks about in his Frigid Woman. She gave up her possibility for happiness when she gave up me, and she even admitted it when she said, "nobody’s happy Jim!" It was then, when I began talking about how you have to sacrifice everything for happiness, and that I said "I would be proud to have you for a wife. It would make me so proud to have you for a wife." I suddenly smelled something burning, and I went into the kitchen and saw a coffee pot sitting on a red hot burner with all of the water boiled away, spewing noxious fumes all over the kitchen. I knocked it off the stove onto the kitchen floor, turned off the stove, and took the phone to the back door and opened it to get some fresh air. I don't know what she was thinking, or how long it took, or even what I said, but she said nothing all that time. I assume that she was simply basking in my love, that greatest and most precious gift to a young girl's heart.
I am certainly left with a kind of hatred for the Middle East, and possibly a wish for revenge. I am glad that I was intelligent enough to figure out what she meant when she said, "I finally got angry. You kept mentioning it for so long that I finally did get angry." I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought at first that someone was listening to the conversation and she had to make them believe that she was REALLY angry with me. In fact, I never thought she was angry with me. I used it as a ruse, so that I could ask her if I could still hope for her LOVE. "I hope you aren't angry with me for something I said or did. CAN I STILL HOPE?" I didn't want to say it directly because I didn't want to risk a love letter getting out into the Iranian community.
Could it be that she actually misunderstood "Can I still hope?" to refer to "I hope you aren't angry with me for something I said or did?" That she didn't figure out my ruse? No! She must have been forced to read the letter in front of her brother and forced to conceal her passion with an outburst of hatred. And she STILL hasn't admitted to herself that she knows my meaning, VERY WELL!
When I said that the reason she would have to wear a veil in Iran is that "to see you is to love you," I maliciously added that her sisters wouldn't have to worry, because they aren't pretty. Yet, even though I hardly know what they look like, I'm sure that they aren't less pretty than Soheila. They simply haven't been awakened to their beauty by a prince as she has! But Soheila didn't defend them at all! Again, she simply basked in my love.
There is something that I am trying to remember. When I told her that I would pretend that I don't know her, she gave an audible sigh. It was in response to this little cry of anguish that I assured her that I still love her, that nothing has changed. I said, "I am not your enemy. But I simply can’t stand to see you and talk to you and pretend that I don't care for you. I can't be a hypocrite."
It was after this that she said that she would probably try to avoid me. I think she said "probably", because I had just said, "we probably will never see each other or talk to each other again."
After I told her it isn't NOT POLITE to tell someone you don't love them, she said in a very quiet voice, "I don't love you at all." I said, "don't say that anymore, because if you said it a hundred times I still wouldn't believe it. So you might as well not say it. You love me." She gave a little laugh, and it may have been then that I said I would never look at her again. That I would pretend not to know her, etc.
She said at one point, "you're driving me crazy." I was hurt. I said, "that was a very mean thing to say. It is an insult." I used the word she had just used. She backed down and said, "maybe our problem is only a problem of communication." And I suppose this indicates that she really DOESN'T love me.
She said, "you are always saying the same things." I defended myself by saying that I NEVER say the same things. Maybe I protested too much. She said that she is always trying to make everything completely clear, but my impression is that NOTHING is clear with her. She said when her American aunt was in Iran she was always explaining to everyone, but she got tired of explaining and just stopped. She implied that she, Soheila, was tired of explaining. It was then that I made my halfhearted attack on Islam: "To say that the moon is a balloon may be clear, but it is certainly false."
What a confused creature she is. And I'll bet her whole family will be confused this Christmas! What a wonderful lesson this has been for ME. Now I know how to properly hate the Middle East! If only because they have a captured princess in their midst.
Just a few more notes. When I asked her, "don't you want to know something about me? Would you like to know who I AM?" she gave a kind of stifled cry and a barely intelligible, "No!" As if she knows in her heart that I am a prince, and that if she finds out, she won't be able to resist me. Her response was so strong, it was as if, psychologically speaking, she was afraid I might be the Shaw himself, and then she would be forced to give in to me. That must be one of the great fear/desires of all Iranian women: to be taken as a concubine by the Shaw. It was said of Louis XIV that all of the women in his court were in love with him.
When I said, "be a saint for ME," she said, "only a few are saints." But just before, I had said that only the very few can do without sex. I should have asked her then about sex. But it was too late. After an hour and a half of loving a woman without inspiring love in return, the best thing to do is, probably, to shoot myself.
She said passionately, "most students come here to study for five years and then they go home. I want to go home where I belong, where I have some chance of happiness." She was so passionate. I'm not even sure if she said, "where someone will want me." But I think I would remember that if she had. I began to remind her that she said she was going to stay, that she had been "socialized" here, etc. But I didn't push it. Why not? Why didn't I ask what had happened to change her mind? I am left with the impression that I missed so many opportunities that I am essentially an inept lover, unable to love, the cause of my own suffering. Yet it is passion itself that eclipses reason. When reason is in full control then passion is absent.
Well, I suppose I've recorded most of the important details. But as Stendhal says, it is the little things uttered in spite of oneself that reveal true passion, and those were present.
A bare subsistence, half a loaf, not more --
Supplied us two alone in the free desert:
What Sultan could we envy on his throne?
Omar Khayyam
It occurs to me that the reason she denied going to Andrews' Pascal class with the real intention of seeing me there, and even denied that her girlfriend was in the class, (not to mention was spying on me), is that they really thought they had fooled me, that they were plotting successfully, without my knowledge. Just after she denied all of that, I said, "what about the time you met me on the lawn that day?" She said, "that WAS a coincidence," as if the others weren't.
She must have stayed home by the phone all day and all night, and then took up the vigil again that next morning.
Actually, when I asked her why she treated me so coldly in the computer center, she almost denied that too by saying that she was trying to study. Then she said she thought that I would "get emotional again."
When she said that American women think Iranian men are rich, I think I actually said, "It's mean to say that, you know they fall in love with them and the men treat them badly."
One thing I have forgotten. She wondered how I knew her address, and I told her one lie. I said, "it was that day in the cafeteria, when you showed me the parking ticket. I knew where those apartments were, all I had to see was the apartment number." She then asked me how I knew how to spell her last name, and then, without waiting for an answer, she pronounced it very slowly and clearly, as if she wanted to make sure that I would know how to pronounce it. Barsin. I just said, "Barsin is not a difficult name to remember or spell." But I suddenly realized that she had never pronounced her last name in front of me before. And, of course, that too seems to be proof that she loves me. But then, I suppose everything is proof to a lover. She accepted my explanation because she seemed to remember that, in fact, I really did try to read her last name on the envelope. Her handwriting wasn't good, and I couldn't make it out. I remember that she noticed, and seemed slightly irritated that I would try to read her name, and address, from the envelope. The irony is that I too was irritated at her, because I really WAS only interested in the sound of her last name. Can't every lover understand that? I did get the first three letters clearly and imagined the rest. Why does she assume that someone in the Iranian community wouldn’t have told me? (In fact, I gave my own telephone number to one of my students when I knew that he was a friend of Soheila’s best friend. And her best friend was watching from a chair about twenty feet away!) She brought it up at the beginning of our telephone conversation, and it seemed that there was a feeling that possibly I had overstepped the bounds of a lecturer, that they might be thinking of going to the authorities. She said, with emotion, that she had only known me as a classmate, almost as if she was repeating what she had said to her brother and family in defense of me. I apologized profusely, and said that if I had known that this would happen I wouldn't have sent the flowers. I even offered to talk to her brother, but she almost pleaded with me not to. She said that would make it worse. I persisted and said I could try to explain, but she sounded very tense, and I realized quickly that I would be dealing with a primitive Iranian male, and so I backed away.
She answered the phone very sweetly. I asked, "is Soheila there?" She said "yes", in a voice that I had never heard before. It was very sweet and soft; a kind of purring edged with pain. I found it perplexing because it seemed unnecessarily hypocritical. I thought she would put the phone down and get Soheila but then I realized that the voice was Soheila’s voice.
And stricken by an angel's hand,
This mortal armour that I wear,
This weight and size, this heart and eyes,
Are touch'd, are turn'd to finest air.
Tennyson
I asked, "is this Soheila?" She said, "yes" again but with more emotion. I asked her if she was eating breakfast, and she said no. She said "wait a minute," and I heard her get up and it seemed like she went into another room and then another room. It seemed that she might even have gone into a closet. It took quite a few seconds. I didn't hear any voices, but it seemed obvious that she was trying to get privacy.
She noted the fact that we had been talking for an hour. I had a sudden fear that she might be recording the conversation! But I doubt it. Yet I am recording all of this. I would feel humiliated if she recorded my conversation and used it to laugh at me with her Iranian friends.
Well, this is simply a ridiculous, failed experiment in love. I suppose it is also the record of a man who loved poorly, not enough, without insight. Would it cause a great deal of pain if it was published? Yet it isn't really true. Haven't I used poetic license? Haven't I changed names, exaggerated, subtracted, unwittingly invented things that later proved not to be true? And Soheila herself. Isn't she just an illusion? Nothing of the truth seems left. So it is, definitely an experiment in fiction. But any high school English teacher would see it as the work of an amateur. So what value could it have for anyone except me? It would be very easy to make it completely fictional. Maybe it’s already completely fictional.
They do not betray their real sentiments except when they speak on impulse; then it becomes a heart cry.
Stendhal
I keep writing without looking back. Maybe this is pure selfishness. An attempt at self-knowledge via a young girl's heart. Like my story of the old man who lives with a young girl's transplanted heart.
She said, "If I get this from a man like you, what can I expect from the others?" I'm not sure if she finished her sentence, and I don't know how I answered her, but I think I said something like, "I've tried to be as good to you as I can be. I've done everything I can to be nice to you. It's cost me a great deal to love you. It hasn't been easy." Well, I know this is over now. My Eustachian tube hurts and my tooth is probably part of the problem. And I'm listening to the great chorus of Aida!
All I feel is a kind of mixture of shame and pride for my attempt. I feel amazement at the confusion of the woman, the wild oscillations of feeling and thought. I'm vaguely afraid that her brother -- that goddamned hypocrite! -- will call the school. But I know he can't. He can't possibly be that hypocritical. They are barbarians. They shouldn't be allowed into this country!
Aida sings, "O Patria Mia." And so did Soheila sing.
She cried out, "How can you expect to love me if you hate my people, my country, my customs." Even while rejecting me, she holds out hope. In my note I used the word "hope=expect" "Can I still hope?" She probably looked up the word in the dictionary. Webster's dictionary gives "expect" as a synonym! To want and expect. Hopeless is defined as having no expectation of a favorable outcome, with synonyms: despondent, despairing, desperate. These examples are given: "Her rejection of his suit left him despondent." and "The despairing lover spoke of suicide."
Well, I suppose I am REACHING too far.
I couldn't see her reaction, obviously, but when I said that I would pretend that I don't know her, she gave what sounded like a cry of pain. I have no idea what else it could have been. But I was in such an emotional state, I was so tragic, that I just ignored the feeling of unexpected hope it produced in me. I used the feeling to assure her that I still feel the same, that I still love her, but then I went on, and repeated that I would pretend not to know her. She said, "it is probably the best." But in a dejected tone. She used the word "probably." I was, and still am, certain.
I have succeeded, after crying on and off for three days, in forgetting her. I have to devote two and a half months to very hard work, and after that she goes back to Iran - or so she says - well, it's too much for me. I've given her as much as I can. Now she MUST make a move towards me.
I am approaching my fortieth year! Nearing the absolute peak of my power. It is not a time for despair. It is the summer of life. A time for the greatest rejoicing! This has been my gift to Iran, to life. It is my electricity, my power, transmitted to a most delicate and responsive human-animal, attuned to the very slightest emotional breezes. It is my gift to the world. I've given. It's finished. I don't want to look back.