Stendhal
I would never say that I am SIMPLY experimenting with her, because I refuse to live my life that way. But I am allowing myself to record my experiences disjointedly so that I can learn more from them, so that patterns will flow FROM experience instead of into it. I am more a learner and experimenter than a "liver" of life as such. I am not a man given over to the art of living, whatever THAT is. I live my life reflectively and I choose to live it that way. Therefore, necessarily, I squeeze much out of little. I don't think I necessarily become too intense or remain indifferent. But I certainly lack the self-contained, self-confidence of the worldly, of those who are good at playing the game of life, whose normal experience is finding people who are less skilled than they, who always find themselves ahead, above, who always get what they want, but never want what they get.
Ortega says that Don Juan always ends up falling in love with the Nun, or the Unattainable in-itself. Have I, in fact, become what I thought was impossible? Through a kind of absolute non-attachment have I come full circle to the position of Don Juan? She herself said that I have fallen in love with her because she is unattainable.
What she can't see is that she is just as involved in the chase as I am. And she knows that I want an affair, not marriage. She has always known that because I have never attempted to hide it from her. I think it is even possible that she saw my name on the list of students in French conversation class. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT I have even allowed myself to think that. I know the list was short, and I read all of the names before I signed it. I didn't even know her name then but there were only a few names on it, and I would remember if one of them was Iranian. She knew my name because Vida Nazafarin's friend had certainly told her by then.
Was she really just taking another French class to get an easy grade?
She is a hypocrite and a fool! Either Ortega is wrong, or I too am a hypocrite and a fool.
All I feel now is that she is a coquette and that I am a 38-year-old fool. I HOPE she had to explain to her family. I HOPE she had three days of agony. She is a coquette who played with me, who died her hair blond..…A primitive, a barbarian. I am full of aggression for this wild woman, this "redskin," this woman of no principles who in the depths of her soul is nothing but a sexual object and who can only exist as the slave and possession of a man. I won't TAKE her, so I can't have her. She is either possessed or alone, which amounts to the same thing. She can't give or receive love, she can only admire, revere, or WORSHIP. I told her that I don't want her to "respect" me.
Why can't I simply KNOW all of this? Why do I have to live it?
I think essentially my love for her is a gift from us to them, from one aristocrat of feeling to another.
When I asked her if she wanted to know who I am, she cried out, "No!" and pleaded with me not to tell her! As if she thought I was someone important or rich! And again, I honored her feelings. Because I love her. I just looked at her with love and incomprehension and said nothing.
That you should be made a fool of by a young woman, why, it is many an honest man's case.
The Pirate, Vol. III. (Quoted by Stendhal)
I am listening to a radio program that is a round table discussion of Palestinians. An Arab woman is speaking on behalf of the Palestinian Cause. Her voice has a pleading, wailing sound. The men speak in dry, staccato voices. They are mildly cynical voices, domineering, paternalistic voices. There is occasional background music that sounds like a distillation of their conversation: dry and staccato, yet plaintive like the woman. It suggests submission to fate, and yet also, the eye of the assassin who waits for his chance, but not without trips to the seraglio and the opium den. It suggests the eternally oppressed, the servile and base masses, the more than arrogant Sheiks, and the insanely powerful Kings of those despotic countries, and finally the wailing, deeply defiant women, who expect to be taken someday by one of these mad Caliphs, or at least by some ridiculous imitator.
Now the woman is saying that an American born Jewish nurse gave her "the greatest possible feeling that she could have about human goodness." The Jewish nurse felt that it was her duty to go to Palestine and help the Palestinians! The Arab woman turns out to be an American citizen! Probably married to an American. And she is arguing that our American taxes shouldn't go to support Israel. She is calling for a Peace and Freedom/Socialism for all Eternity. It sounds like a secular form of Islam: the shadow of Mohammed will fall on the Middle East for a thousand years after Islam has died.
Well, I suppose I should go to the library and study the Middle Eastern problem. But I've done enough. My intuition sees them clearly enough. I don't NEED to learn about the Middle East. I almost REFUSE to learn about it now. (But I confess, I am STILL curious!)
"Eyeless in Gaza at a mill with slaves"
The Book of Judges
January
I saw her at State, on the first day of classes! We were in the library. I think she saw me first. It looked like she was wearing rouge but I think her cheeks were simply inflamed because of our new encounter. And she said on the phone that she would "probably" try to avoid me! It was ten minutes before my first class. We were walking towards each other. I dropped my eyes and began to walk past her, towards the doors to the steps, determined to keep my word. Then she turned and walked toward the same doors. I said, "Oh, no," meaning "not again," turned my back and walked away. She looked like a flower, a pretty, blushing, opened flower.
Once a woman knows that a man loves her desperately -- well, passionately -- something changes in her with regard to him. She involuntarily reveals her deepest self, her tenderest reactions to him. In his presence, she opens her senses to the slightest movements, sounds, odors, and colors. She shows herself in simultaneously the most sensitive and yet single-minded state. It is the hypnotic single pointedness that is characteristic of all passion, whether musical, scientific, mystical.... When this rapture is frankly mixed with love and sex it can almost be confused with pure physical passion. But love is always mixed with extreme modesty or sensitivity to the other, while pure physical passion is insouciant and irreverent. It is full of animal spirits and it is self-confident, and often counterfeit and exaggerated.
After I turned my back, I went and stood by the card catalogue, but couldn't even pretend to look for a book. I waited for a few minutes and then went through the doors and up the steps, following her. When I got to the landing, I rounded a corner and saw her standing near the exit, by a turnstile, about fifty feet from me. She was talking to an Iranian girl that I didn't recognize. Although she was at least fifty feet from me, I thought that I saw her face turn white as she saw me from the corner of her eye. Then I turned my back on her again, rather ostentatiously I'm afraid. Obviously it was a harsh thing to do. But how could I talk to her just three minutes before my first class was scheduled to start and with another Iranian woman there? I'm not used to duplicity and playing games anyway. I walked back down the stairs and left the library by another exit. Then I ran into Farah whom I didn't recognize at first. Suddenly, I imagined that she was the Iranian girl who had just been talking with Soheila. I was very emotional and late for my first class, and even though I tried to be civil and even nice to her, she obviously felt that I was trying to get away from her. I imagined that Soheila told her that I said I will hate all Iranians. And I DO imagine Soheila telling ALL of her friends EVERYTHING and I hate myself and her and all of the Iranians for that.
I went to Hossein's new office after class and gave him hell. I told him how stupid I thought Islam was. He responded by saying that he reads Bertrand Russell! I didn't say anything about Soheila. He began rambling about everything and nothing. He said that in Iran he had a girlfriend, a rich girlfriend, that he lived with for 5 years? He wasn't very clear. All I allowed to show was my frustration, and he just responded with his. At one point it became obvious that he was making a homosexual advance and I just pretended that I didn't understand what he was doing. He said that when he gets frustrated he feels like going to San Francisco.
Well, I'm not sure how much of a diary I want this to be. A record of my dealings with Iranians!? I felt that she wanted me to pursue her again. She is weak. She lies perpetually and she is probably a hypocrite. I hate her. I will certainly never talk to her again. I will avoid HER. It will cause me pain but she will graduate this quarter and then it will be over.
I SHOULD surround myself with beautiful women to punish her, to make her suffer more. "I don't love you at all." The coquette! It is ugly, the bassist of actions. It is why I hate them. Hossein, at 39, wants a young woman, a woman between 25 and 30, he says. He is dissatisfied with his 38-year-old American mistress who, he proudly tells me, loves him. It is a kind a bestialism. They are animals. Islam is a kind of anachronistic abomination. I will certainly never look at an Iranian in the same way. And yet what about my vulnerable little friend Vida Nazafarin? How could I hate her?
It is not seemly to love a woman whom one would be ashamed to want in marriage
Stendhal
After talking to Hossein and then to Soheila, I am beginning to see the Iranian as corrupt to the very foundation of his being.
The Iranian and Arab male seem to be obsessed with sex. Even Ali, the Islamic scholar turned Computer Scientist, gives women a sort of haughty yet appreciative look. But the Iranian women act as if sex doesn't exist.
Larry Andrews called the Iranians "low life", which is surprising coming from such an unworldly, non-judgmental computer science professor. He said he had a friend who became interested in the Persian language, lived there for about a year, and came away with the feeling that they were all liars, cheaters and totally corrupt.
The conversation with Vida Nazafarin was interesting. I know that she knows Soheila and maybe is a kind of ... friend of sorts. After all, she was .... I started talking about being in love, and then being hurt. I didn't place the event in time or space, and didn't describe anything. And yet she said, "I assume you are talking about a Middle Eastern girl." I, a little shocked, looked into her eyes, searching for a sign that she knew something. She pretended that she knew nothing. I said "yes." A few minutes later she said, "if a girl doesn't want to hear a lot of things said to her by a man, she shouldn't give him the opportunity to say them, she should say clearly what she feels." And Soheila said she doesn't talk about this to anyone! Then after talking further, always leaving the lady unnamed, I lied or certainly exaggerated. I said, truthfully, that I had given my heart to her, opened myself up totally and that she had hurt me badly, that I was knocked down onto my back, etc. But as she commiserated with me, I lied, saying I would probably never be able to open myself up like that again. I said once you open yourself up to a woman, a woman that you might marry and live with for the rest of your life, and she treats you so badly then something dies in you, forever. But I have never been foolish enough to think that marriage with such a woman would be possible. If only because of her bad character. But character IS the person. Well, what I said to Vida was an indication of depth of feeling, and it was a form of truth. It was an Iranian truth.
Vida said, "she isn't worth it then," after I said something mean about her character. I said, "you are right, but I am speaking as a Christian now, and you as a Moslem. I am speaking from my heart out of love, that is something that you don't do. Islam expects you to act first from reason and not the heart." She seemed to accept that. But I said, "I know you are right and I am wrong....," even though I wasn't certain if what I said about Islam is correct. But I think that it is.
Woman is afraid of "the interesting man." He causes her unbearable anxiety so she escapes to "the comfortable man," the provider. But when passion is lacking in either one then it will be absent in the other also. The illusion of love might exist but he will still feel like wandering. His experience of sex with his wife will not touch him deeply. Because the feelings of comfort and ease, the narcissistic feelings, aren't central to him. His instinct will be to continue the search.
I have capitulated to my own narcissism in choosing warmth, security, comfort, over my own deepest felt needs which are danger, the need for change, the need to be prodded by life, to be touched by life, to live without concern for money, whether rich or poor, without reference to material possessions. The need to live for ideas, people, to reproduce myself in a family that reflects my deepest feelings.
The problem is vastly complicated by the fact that people play their parts without awareness. For example, a black man can minister to the needs of such a woman, keeping his inner distance, refusing the more difficult path of relating to a black woman, of building a life for himself and his family based on a deep connection with a woman who is similar to him, or really, who truly complements him, truly completes him, whose struggles reflect his own life. The children of these marriages will reflect this failure: the mulatto child will be self-centered, narcissistic, exhibiting that fundamental distance. The marriage of equals, of two who share honest passion, who don't hold back, who bring everything to every encounter, will produce children who are a viable synthesis, an ongoing, a continuation. The children of narcissism will be torn between two alien selves as reflected in the distance between the parents.
I feel that my failure in this is real also. I have always projected unreal images onto women.
I too know the need to pay rent and buy food and clothes. It is the focus on it, the FEAR that I hate. I know the causes of the fear well: I am again completely without money. I can hardly pay for gas or food. But I have a job, at least through June.
I admire Wittgenstein, Nietzsche... Yet they were bachelors! Men without women, the first a homosexual and born rich. I am curious about Ortega. What kind of life did he live? I don't want to live for money but I have to pay for my health insurance, for rent....
It is far worse between women, since the success of their lives depends on inspiring passion, and, since, as a rule, the lady in whom they confide has also exposed her sweetness to a lover's gaze.
Stendhal
I saw Ali today in the Computer Center. I saw him first. I looked away to let him think that he saw me first. Then when I looked up, he looked away. His eyes glowed with passion .... for her? She has confided in him too! He loves her also and is jealous! He began talking to an American couple who work with him in the Computer Center. They pretended not to know his name. Their tone was condescending and intolerably supercilious. He allowed his anger to show and said, "you've known me for two years and you still don't know my name?" They continued in the same tone and joked about his socialism. They started calling him "comrade Ali." It was time for him to leave work and he began putting his work badge away. I decided that I should have some verbal contact with him to sound out his feelings. I asked him for help with a computer terminal problem, specifically calling him by his name. He seemed cold, distant, and even harsh, but he helped me and I felt that underneath he was forgiving and possibly even admired me for the courage of my love.
Vida Behnaz walked by me in the library without saying hello. It felt like she was ignoring me. But I didn't go out of my way to say hello either. Then I saw her again, in a secluded spot in the stacks, and she said hello. She said, "You're not saying hello to me anymore. You're pretending not to see me." Then she said, very emotionally, "Maybe I shouldn't have said that," and looked convincingly over my shoulder as if someone was listening to us. I turned around to look and when I turned back she had fled!
Vida Nazafarin gave me a searching look. I looked back, questioningly, into her eyes. Finally we smiled, cautiously, and I hurried on.
It is clear that I've been hurt by them. That she has done what I feared she would do. I'm suddenly wary of them all. I've been burned by a Persian woman. No! By a Moslem woman. I can't forget. I won’t be comfortable until she goes back to Iran. When I know she is there, I will be back to myself.
Why do I still assume that she loves me? After all of this? (It is 2 in the morning, I have to get up at 6:30.) Is this obsessive, intuitive passion a hallucination? Am I sane?? I AM sane, therefore it CAN’T be!?
When the daughter reaches the age of two or three, she has also to wear a veil and hide her face from strangers and avoid them.
Kand-o-kav dar Masa'el-e Tarbiati-ye
Incredibly, I saw her again. About a month after I turned my back on her in the library. She was wearing a green sweater (that I've never seen before) over that same white blouse, talking with a small Iranian woman who was wearing too much make-up. It was in the snack bar, fifteen minutes before my afternoon class. I was getting my usual cup of coffee. They looked incongruous together: the nun and the whore. Soheila seemed to be looking into her eyes too intensely. I became very agitated, just like I was in the bookstore.
I feel black hatred. She pretended very seriously, and very well, not to see me. She didn't look at me. She seemed almost unaffected by my presence, except for that syrupy smile, and that servile look that she gets. And even THAT wasn't pronounced. My feeling was wounded pride and a wish for revenge. Adrienne was sitting at a table with a friend and said hello to me but she didn't seem to notice anything unusual! I've declined her not very subtle invitations to have an affair and her pride has been wounded. Her pride probably won’t even allow her to admit to herself that she has tried and been rejected! I made a half-hearted attempt to use her for revenge, but it was impossible. Then I left the snack bar and I ran into Loraine Smith on the way to class. She also has been after me but is too young to know that I have, gently, rejected HER. She thinks she's irresistible! I asked her to explain some computer idiosyncrasy as an excuse to walk back past the snack bar to the Computer Center. She thought my agitation was caused by her! She was very nice. It was an interesting experience in itself! Soheila might have seen us walking past the door but probably not. If I had been diabolical I would have gone back into the snack bar and bought Lorraine a cup of coffee just to make Soheila jealous. Because Lorraine was obviously carried away by a paroxysm of vanity, it would have been easy.
My wounded pride is turning into hatred. I feel used.
Yet!? Could she be reconsidering? She knows that I have a class at 4:00 P.M. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is infuriating to me to think that she could have already forgotten me so completely that she doesn't even know my schedule. If she is that insensitive and stupid then I hate her.
Or could it be that she IS reconsidering? It has only been a week or so, even less, since I saw Ali and Hossein talking so animatedly in the snack bar. I can't believe it! Is it possible? Maybe THEY have told her that it is all right, that she should give me another chance! Isn't that the way it is done in the Middle East?
I am ready for pure hatred to surface if she is taking this lightly after that telephone conversation.
I was amazed by the emotion that I felt. I was agitated even into my class. It took about 15 minutes to calm myself.
It is a case of wounded pride mixed with hatred of duplicity, hypocrisy and lies. And therefore a feeling that I have been used or cheated and need revenge.
Which has nothing to do with Nietzsche's ressentiment, or a feeling of revenge directed towards one's superiors. This is more from an immediate feeling of duplicity, from the heart. What kind of revenge could I take? But, certainly, causing anonymous pain is ignoble and stupid. And yet they say about women, "Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned." Well, that is only woman's wounded pride speaking. I don't really want to do anything.
But I feel like she has talked to Ali about this. And I feel like Vida Nazafarin acts differently towards me. Vida Behnaz said that I was ignoring her. Then she said with hand over mouth, "I shouldn't have said that." So something HAS clearly been said. Ali acts distant and petulant. Yet when he was talking with Hossein in the snack bar and I walked by, he gave me an almost erotic look. At least it was an open, (loving?) look.
Well, at bottom, I hate her for her weakness, for her inability to stand alone, to love out of the strength of her character. She has no strength, she "has no morality at all," as Pope said. She IS weakness, lies, and immorality. I hate myself for allowing myself to fall in love with an image. And I hate her for allowing it, for aiding and abetting me. That last French Conversation class of Courant's. Why did she do that? Why did she sit facing me? She came in late, she didn't have to sit there. She sat three feet from me, for an hour and a half. And I had CONVINCED MYSELF before that, that I HAD to forget her. And then she stayed after class and made it easy for us to talk.
Well, that is all history. I can read it here. It shook me to my foundation and yet now it is nothing. I know that I can't allow myself to love a woman of such weak character. The signs were there: my immense disappointment when she sat next to the "10-year-old" instead of me. Then she was harshly impolite to me after class. I moved to the other side of the room because I couldn't stand the pain. I tried my best not to show the pain because I thought he was better for her, that I was too old, etc. But after that, SHE gave ME hurt looks. I should have known that she was merely juvenile. Then there was the time in the cafeteria, after the incident with her aunt at the Falafel stand. I tried to ignore her. But I couldn't. I knew that she wanted to talk. She walked by past me sitting at a table. I refused to look at her. But when she came back, I simply couldn't resist her. I allowed her to catch my eye. She sat with me at my table and she became the sweet woman that I love. She seemed to tell me that we would see each other, that we would be friends. Then nothing. Then my desperation.
Judy was the recipient of it all! She said last night that she thought her genital problem stemmed from that time when I became so sensual. It was the time of the flowers. Yet when I said, jokingly, "you're too old for me," she answered, "I probably am."
Well, now I feel like I am in a kind of emotional limbo because of computer science. I can't lose myself in reverie and emotion because of my responsibilities. And so I hate my responsibilities. Yet even last fall when I was on vacation, I was bored, distracted, with nothing to do.
I need to contact the world. I need the leisure to cultivate my feelings with literature, art, music, poetry… but I also need contact with people of delicate feelings, people with manners, people who are devoid of hypocrisy and duplicity. So I created Soheila. And she allowed me to create her. But I know there is nothing there but a fearful Iranian woman. No! A MOSLEM woman! Therefore a fearful, unfree, sub-human woman. A kind of animal that can't soar because of cowardice and lack of imagination. I don't even want to think about a woman like that. I only have to think of one of my Iranian students like Mansoor, servile, furtive, a cheat, a hypocrite, to despise this kind of human being. So revenge is out of the question. These people are despicable.
Even Ali. And even Vida Behnaz. Yet, she has a black boyfriend -- but even SHE told me that she WANTS her parents' approval of any man she goes out with implying they wouldn't approve a black man! They are liars and animals, and of a lower order than us. And I am angry because Hossein can have AMERICAN women. And I know what Soheila's brother is doing, and THAT is my revenge against her. I hate them. SHE had to explain to her family! Hossein doesn't have to explain to HIS family. Well, I need to get her out of my system. I told her I would ignore her, and I will. But now I can't expel this feeling of hatred, of ressentiment. That is what Nietzsche means when he says that a man can be consumed by hatred. One must go beyond. Yet I know that to go beyond is to continue in my search for love and passion.
Suddenly, a 25-year-old woman seems like an infant. And THEY are mature compared to 20 year olds.
Well, I need this analysis, this thought, but I must work. There's the rub. I need to organize my thoughts about myself, my world, but this computer science thing has me by the throat. How nice it would be to get 7 hours sleep tonight for a change! I have to plan for that, to be asleep by 11:30! That is, to start for bed at 10:30 or 11:00. That is part of my problem. These raw nerves produced by lack of sleep. Tryptophan to the rescue. Well, for now, to work!
I was very depressed after talking to Hossein. He talked about the woman he lived with in Iran but he told a completely different story this time. He said they corresponded until last year. He has been here for three years. Something seemed totally wrong. He was enjoying himself immensely. I left very sad and depressed. Physically depressed. At war with myself. He caused and allowed this tormented conflict to resurface in me. He believes that I am as desperately unhappy as he is....
I am able to talk myself into happiness and talk others into happiness. Maybe then I am a born poet! Sadness, tears, feeling, SHOULD be part of life. As should conflict, even insoluble conflict.
She is my poetry. I can bring up her image, remember little sighs and gestures, expressions that lasted for a second, even an expression on someone else's face that SHE caused. Does my love mean I don't love Judy? No! I need passion, fire. Youth is irrelevant.
She is thinking of me today: it is the day before Saint Valentine's day!
I saw her tall friend, laughing. I let her see my infinite sadness. She knows. I don't understand anything anymore.
I don't want to drive a wedge between Judy and me. I don't know what this means. I don't know anything.
Why wasn't I more loving to her when I saw her in the fall? Why did I turn my back on her in the library?
There was an instant when I saw her as nothing but a weak young woman and I thought that I didn't love her at all. But I do, I did. What does it mean? I hate to think of my life as a kind of bovarisme. That I could throw everything away for a foreign woman, a young woman, an uneducated woman. I told Hossein that in 5 years she would be mine. As an excuse to talk about her I said, "every time I see you I think of Soheila." He said, "that is good." Later he said, "I suppose the whole school knows. All the Iranians." I said, "Yes I suppose so." I was sad. He said he would never mention it. It is superfluous to say that I knew he was lying. I asked him about his conversation in the snack bar with Ali. He said they didn't talk about Soheila and me. Well, I feel that my depression is momentary, that it is caused only by Hossein's lies. I felt like I was freeing myself from him by paying for the lunch.
This will pass. How gray the world looks. How unappealing all of the women seem. Is this all just ... that ... I am not in love with Judy? Have I settled for friendship rather than passion-love? I find myself looking at the young women on campus but without any interest. Yet I feel that I need to feel this passion, even though it seems unreal. I suppose I am just tired. Why is it that the Middle Eastern woman does this to me? Even Vida Behnaz, Farah, Vida Nazafarin… Is it the eyes?
In the middle of the street, a man suddenly takes off in full speed toward a woman walking a few yards ahead of him, thrusts his hands into her lower parts and, before anyone can raise any objections, disappears into the crowd. All women assert that at some time in their lives they have been assaulted, raped or nearly raped by men. In justifying this, with the most bestial judgement of women, men say: "You start to rape her, she joins you in the middle, and by God! What a pleasure"
Reza Baraheni
The Crowned Cannibals
She could have avoided me as she has done all this quarter, since the day I turned my back on her. She said she thinks she "handled it badly." She will talk to me. "Don't think it means that I love you," she said. She continued, "When I tell my friends," and I was visibly shaken by her frank admission that she shares this with her friends, "I mean my brother," she corrected herself, and looked into that secret place where she knows I will believe whatever she says even when I know she is lying, "he tells me that I must have done something, that it was my fault."
I am angry now that I KNOW she has talked to everybody about this! In truth, I don't WANT to talk to her. Again, I feel like I made a mistake. She's nothing more than a beautiful, unattainable Middle Eastern coquette.
A child-woman, who cheats, lies, and is of no consequence as a human being. She is a GOOSE.
I am immensely depressed because I am left with my dissatisfaction, with my lust. I feel absurd. To be rejected by such a woman. But then I am pulled in the other direction. "I like you VERY much," she said in a choked voice with unfeigned emotion.
When I said, "you were probably right when you said that I only fell in love with you because you are unattainable," she looked over my shoulder at what seemed to be a vision of me that she has in her mind. She seemed to watch me walk away and she had that sad, almost desperate look that she had the day that we vowed never see or talk to each other again. It is clear that she loves me at least in some way. But I am almost 40 years old.
She allowed me to look at her beautiful face, to love her as she looked dejectedly at the floor, and then I too looked off, over her shoulder and let her look at me. She gave a little cry, as if she was overwhelmed by having me so close. I felt a deep sense of repose, and I was aware of my beauty, grace, and nobility.
I'm afraid that she won’t be capable of meeting me. She will leave a message in my box, but it will be a letter, a parting letter, telling me to forget. And I won’t see her again.
I tried to hug her, as we were parting. She broke away, and said, "Don't embarrass me." Then I said, "I guess I can't call you because your sisters wouldn't like it," and I was really asking her if I could. She said, "I would have to explain it to them." And she has said that she is tired of explaining everything.
I suppose Hossein is right, a secret rendezvous is the only solution. Yet she said, again, apropos our meeting, "I don't want you to make a special trip to school just to see me." It is clear. I should have told her I didn't want to see her or to talk to her again but she is playing games with me. How exciting it is for her, at my expense.
She could have avoided me. She could have disappeared back into the room. I talked to Larry Andrews for at least a few minutes. She saw us there. She could have turned her back as I did in the library. Like a cat, like a Moslem woman, she glided down the deserted hallway, with her hand touching the wall, fixing me with her dark, wild eyes. Those eyes that peek from the Chador. She said "hi" first. I asked if she was mad at me and she almost scolded me: "Don't say that, I have completely forgotten about it." but then she said, "It was such a beautiful thing to do," and she looked down dejectedly, paused, and said, "but not for me," and her voice was soft although not without bitterness.
I can hardly add anything except the exquisite beauty, the otherworldly, almost inhuman passion that came from her. I imagine the semidarkness of the hall corresponding to a narrow, deserted street in Teheran and our meeting, to a fortuitous meeting there.
I remember what Hossein said about following women in Iran, when he was a teenager. "They would let me feel their tits." I asked him what I should do about Soheila and he said I should take her to another city and have an affair with her. Then he began to describe an affair he had in Iran. I let him continue for awhile but then stopped him, saying, "I've never done that, I can't do things like that," etc. I treat him rather harshly at times, but he deserves it: he is a former rich Iranian who exploits women mercilessly. A Don Juan without means. He feels old when in fact he is only poor. He said, "All the Middle Eastern men are just young blades without anything except their dreams. None of them have American girlfriends. Only a few, very few. The ones who are older and have money, yes, they have the whores." Yet he himself has a woman his own age who loves him but whom he doesn't love. I am curious. Is she a sentimental woman, a fool, allowing herself to be used by this charming but unscrupulous man?
Is Soheila commonplace, not worthy, an Odette? I can hardly even allow myself to imagine it but the images seem to come of themselves: she is a hypocrite, a whore! I can't believe it. No! She said, "We go out to a concert and then they want to do something," and she looked at me as if she wanted me to save her.
Well, that isn't it. But she hasn't left a message in my box. I talked to her on Thursday and by Tuesday she hadn't. And I almost ran into her again on Tuesday. She was with a group of four or five women. It was 4:15 or 4:20 and I had to leave my class to get a book. I wondered then if, to avoid me, she always came late to the class, and always left early and if that is why Larry Andrews looked at her askance as he walked by us. Is Ali really just ashamed of her and his country and not really angry at me? Her class starts at 4:00 and lets out at 5:15, and that is why I ran into her on Thursday.
And she said she is taking French poetry again! It must be through independent study, because it isn't offered. So she must be La Princess de Cleves! Or I am a fool.
The reason I slapped Andy so hard on the leg is that I have been hurt and it is better that she experience my pain this way, fast, sharp. To have to experience it like I do is inhuman. It almost gives me cause to believe in the Gods: that some God has chosen me for his diversion, that the Soheilas of my world are simply here to torture me. Like Prometheus, I will have my entrails clawed for an eternity.
I hold almost as a faith that death releases one into either one of the eternal blisses of the two schools of Buddhism but the fear of Hamlet, that we go to some undiscovered country, reborn into the form of some crawling insect, haunts us all.
Would I kill myself if I had no one who needed me? I doubt it. I might tell her that, I might threaten her with it as a tactic, but I wouldn't kill myself. I would die spiritually, enter into limbo, and wait for my wounds to heal, slowly, maybe starving myself, maybe throwing myself into work.
Am I simply eternally reliving some primary experience of rejection? Is it the rejection of my mother when I was a little boy and she had to work and leave me at that detestable childcare center? I've never forgotten those stairs we had to climb every morning when she left me there. The only way I could keep from crying, the only way I could be her "brave little man," was by counting every one of them. She gave her love and admiration for that. And that was the beginning of my interest in mathematics! It was my attempt to get her impossible love, by replacing my dead father, by being her "little man."
Yet I know, in my maturity, that love is the most difficult of all tasks and that even monsters like Quasimoto have inspired love by loving unashamedly, without stint.
Her last dejected look was that she wasn't worthy of the flowers. I would like to send her another letter, a secret letter. But if she would do this?