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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who is Mr. Bahir?
(a) One of Nafisi's students.
(b) The owner of her favorite bookstore.
(c) The department chair of the Language Department at the University of Tehran.
(d) A man executed for charges of being too Westernized.

2. What is Nafisi's occupation after she leaves Iran?
(a) She is an Iranian travel guide.
(b) She is a demonstrator against the Iranian regime.
(c) She is a teacher and writer.
(d) She is a mentor for Iranian graduate students.

3. Who is Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar?
(a) A nationalist leader who became prime minister in 1979.
(b) Nafisi's colleague at the University of Tehran.
(c) An Iranian intellectual who escaped to Iraq to avoid jail.
(d) One of Nafisi's students.

4. Why does Nafisi say that war was a blessing to some Iranians?
(a) War allowed some Iranians to get rich quickly.
(b) War gave some Iranians a sense of community, purpose, and power.
(c) War gave some Iranians a chance to kill people they disliked.
(d) War caused Iranians to return to their religious roots.

5. How does Nafisi feel when she hears the announcement that Iraq has attacked Iran?
(a) Ambivalent, both angry and full of love and desire to protect her home country.
(b) Unhappy, because she realizes what war will do to her friends and family.
(c) Relieved that someone will finally help end the political situation in her home country.
(d) Nervous, because she is afraid that she will be killed during the impending war.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Part 3, Chapter 6, why does Nafisi join a group?

2. What right does Nafisi fantasize about being added to the Bill of Rights?

3. In Part 4, Chapter 20, what does Nassrin decide to do?

4. In Part 3, Chapter 4, who asks to meet with Nafisi?

5. In Part 3, Chapter 13, what does Nafisi get on the first day she begins teaching?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Nafisi call Catherine in "Washington Square" the inverse of our ideas about what a heroine should be?

2. How has Miss Ruhi changed since her introduction in Part 3, Chapter 14?

3. In Part 3, Chapter 14, why does Nafisi describe her students in such detail?

4. Why does Nafisi focus on Azin's painted fingernails?

5. How does Nafisi react to the increase in protests, demonstrations, and violence associated with the revolution?

6. Why does a university staff member describe the Ayatollah's funeral as an event?

7. Why does Nafisi describe herself as becoming irrelevant?

8. Why does Nafisi refer to the concert she attends as a parody of the real thing?

9. Part 2, Chapter 11 begins with a quote from Mike Gold, "Art is useful as bread." How is this quote related to the rest of the chapter and to previous incidents in Nafisi's text?

10. What does Nassrin mean when she talks about the "ordeal of freedom" in Part 4, Chapter 20?

(see the answer keys)

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