Preparing for the long commute home, I pull out a copy of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and gazed at the cover. On it, two women wearing scarves over their hair huddle together. Presumably they, like the book’s subject matter and its author, are Iranian women. Before I can start reading, I am interrupted.

“Is that a Middle Eastern book,” asks my Saudi Arabian neighbor from across the bus aisle. I have seen this man before and usually try to avoid him. He likes to attempt discussing things with me I find irrelevant and places me on some sort of pedestal because I am, as he describes me, an educated American woman who can write. His opinion, which he reminds me of each time he sees me, and his straightforward yet foreign manner make me uncomfortable.

I am about halfway through the book, so I know it’s not exactly a Middle Eastern book in the sense he’s asking me. Instead, the author has imbued it with strong feminist undertones and commentary on totalitarian regimes and the malleability of human nature within these regimes. Although it’s marketed as — and is — a discussion of Iranian women’s reaction to western literature, the personal reflections of the author and the easily relatable themes make it so much more.
While reading, I often find myself asking why Ms. Nafisi (or is it Doctor?) seems to be the only one expressing her “anti-revolutionary, pro-Western” opinion in 1970’s Iran to readers, even as she reminds us that it is illegal and dangerously risky for others to make such thoughts overt. After all, in one chapter, she tells us of a man who is executed for smoking an American brand of cigarettes.

But my fellow bus rider, I suspect, is one on whom these explanations would be lost. So, instead, I just tell him, “yes, it’s based in Iran.”

“Oh, Iran.” This is somehow hugely significant to him. It won’t be long before I find out why. He continues: “You have to remember that that book doesn’t really describe what most Muslim life is like.”

I think he can tell that I am completely lost. He begins asking me a series of questions.

How many countries claim membership in the United Nations? I guess 200. He says, yes, close, 189. How many muslim countries do I think there are? I guess 50. He is thrilled once again. This is close enough, he tells me. There are 60. How many of those are considered Arab? I haven’t a clue how exactly to define Arab, and I ask him, but he doesn’t help. So I guess anyway: 20. Close again, he is delighted to tell me. Sixteen, according to him, is the correct number.

All the while he is asking me these questions, I feel like someone on Jay Leno’s “jaywalking” segments, just waiting to be busted giving a dumb answer to an elementary question. I sense in his demeanor that he fully expects me not to know, and he truly is excited to find that I am not too far off in my guesses. As someone he has told he likes to talk to because I’m educated, I feel ridiculous having this conversation. Later, I’ll realize it’s because I’m ashamed I don’t know more about his part of the world, and he knows so much about mine.

But back to his Middle Eastern lesson: There are two major sects of Islam, he explains.

Yes, I have heard of them in the news. One of them is Shia, and the other is Sunni. Which is which, I haven’t a clue.

This, again, is a disgrace he is happy to correct. 95% of the world, he says, including himself, belongs to the Sunni sect. The rest follow the Shi’ite verson of Islam (which he briefly explains, is due to difference of opinion about which prophet to follow. I want to ask more, but I sense he’s not interested in a theology question).

Iran, as it happens, mostly subscribes to the Shia sect, he says. So, he concludes, while I’m reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, I should remember that the form of Islam described within its pages, in fact, describes a minority of the Muslim world and I should not take it as representative.

I find this conversation so unreal and fascinating that I start to ask him more about his views of current events. He is strongly opinionated, but I am surprised to find how appealing his opinions are.

“You know the bombing plot on the British airplanes,” he asks.

“Yes, I’ve heard.”

He begins. He thinks our country’s foreign policy needs to change. He doesn’t think the American government recognizes the amount of oppression and miscommunication and anger and propaganda and injustice that it takes for a human being to reach that level of militantism. He doesn’t think we realize just how much of a part we play in causing that situation in this world.

He refers also to the Israel-Hizbollah conflict in this manner. It is horrible, yes, and we need to find a resolution, but because of the way we play politics in this modern world, we will never understand and get to the root of conflict. There are years of history and years of conflict at work here.

He makes me want to laugh at times. The way he talks is melodramatic.

“Imagine if you were happily riding your bike one day. And then a man came and stole your bike. You are upset and when you go to the police station you find that because the police are friends with the man who stole your bike, they will do nothing to get your bike back.”

That is how he describes the relationship of Israel and Palestine. He describes Israel as a gift of a guilty conscience to the refugees of WWII and the Holocaust. The gift was made of Palestinian lands.

A bit elementary, yes, but frighteningly effective.

He has other ways of illustrating his perspective. “Imagine a kid hits another kid on the playground. That other kid hits you in retaliation for the first punch, and the adults on the playground do nothing in your defense.” Hizbollah is the first kid, and I am the innocent Lebanese.

The quizzes of what he is delighted to find is an only slightly ignorant American (although I am thoroughly humbled by how much I don’t know and cannot answer) continue.

Who do I think is responsible for US foreign policy?

Condoleeza, I say.

Yes, yes, very good, excellent! I’m glad to see you know that. But who else has a strong influence on our foreign policy? Who ignores our domestic but is always there pushing our foreign policy?

I shrug.

The Jews, he answers. That’s why we do nothing to stop Israel, because our country is controlled by the Jews.

I am seriously taken back by this. These are racist remarks, and they are tainting a conversation I was enjoying up to this point.

But as he continues, he says things that make it clear he does not hold Jewish people responsible and is instead the victim of a less than native proficiency in the English language (something I can’t begrudge him, a speaker of four languages). He is referring, instead, to pro-Israel lobbyists at certain levels in our government. He mentions his degree in government as well, noting he has studied this phenomenon. I have met many people who are not Jewish and yet are pro-Israel and think our government should be as well. This relaxes me enough to keep listening to his opinions.

He knows I have a young daughter, and he uses her in one example. “You and your daughter go home one day. You have had a long day, and so has your husband. Neither of you feels like cooking dinner, so you order pizza. The pizza arrives, and you ask the delivery person how much it is. He gives you a receipt, and on the receipt you see 5% sales tax has been added on. You pay the entire cost, and go on with your evening with your family at home. Meanwhile, that 5% goes to our government. Your hard-earned money is paying to kill grandmothers and little children in Lebanon because our government is friends with Israel.”

I have to catch my train, but before we part, he has some words for me. “I respect you. You listen. You are educated. You are smart. You are calm. I respect you.”

I blush, and thank him for being patient with me. But he’s not finished. As I’m about to rush off into the depths of Union Station, he waves and signs one last thing with the passion in his eyes clear: “The book! Remember, Shia Muslim is different than 95% of the Islamic World! What you’re reading is not like the rest of us!”

Duly noted, I think with a smile.

I am only with this man for 20 minutes, but I have goosebumps on my arm for the duration. It has been a few days now since that conversation passed, and I’m still thinking about it, obviously.

I know enough not to let one man sway me. I know enough not to let parables of playground squabbles and oversimplified analogies of financial responsibilities turn me into a raging politic. I’ve read Hobbes’ Leviathan, which I think should be required reading for every politician, every leader, every philosopher, and which reads in part:

It is true that certain living creatures, as bees and ants, live sociably one with another (which are therefore by Aristotle numbered amongst political creatures), and yet have no other direction than their particular judgements and appetites; nor speech, whereby one of them can signify to another what he thinks expedient for the common benefit: and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do the same.

I must find this man again one day. I must ask him more questions.

In the course of our conversation, he told me he liked President Bush, a man I still cannot fathom has been elected leader of our country. He cited Bush’s friendship with Saudi Arabia as reason for his moral support, and I’d like to grill him about this.

I’d also like to ask him why he thought American foreign policy was the one thing, the only thing, that we needed to focus on and change.

I’d like to ask him why he didn’t think the environment (now, that’s a global issue) was as important, or issues like world health (AIDS! Come on!) or poverty.

But more than anything else, I’d like to thank him for humbling me. He may not have convinced me of anything, but then again I see now that I really didn’t have a strong informed opinion to begin with. I’d like to thank him for talking to me, for showing me the world through a different lens.

I’d like to thank him for showing me that more than anything else I know, after all my efforts to be “educated,” I really know nothing.