Censoring an Iranian Love Story (12 page)

Sara says:

“The beauty of spring saddens me … Unlike spring, autumn is an unassuming and humble season that quickly makes friends and grows dear.”

She adds:

“I wish I were seventy years old.”

Then together they declare:

“… Yes, I like autumn …”

By concurrently uttering this simple, romantic, and harmless sentence, the two are transformed into the happy-go-lucky characters of cheap romance novels. But I know that such characters belong in nineteenth-century Paris, not in the city of Tehran. I am therefore convinced that their fate will be similar to that of William Shakespeare’s disaster-prone lovers, eternally entangled in a convoluted and ill-fated tragedy.

Ask me, How could such romantic simplicity in the twenty-first century lead to a complicated tragedy?

I will answer:

You see, at twenty-two and thirty-something, Sara and Dara are both virgins. Sara’s virginity is a foregone conclusion, because according to Iranian values (traditional and intellectual), a girl who is neither married nor a virgin cannot possibly fall in love; she has been deceived by false love, has lost her virginity, and must therefore become a woman of ill repute. Should her father or her educated brothers, who night and day chase after their nonvirgin girlfriends, ever discover her secret, they will either drive her to suicide, or if they are truly fanatical, they will kill her. The law of the land gives them the right to protect their honor … Dara’s virginity, too, should not be a surprise. A few months after the Islamic revolution triumphed, all the brothels across Iran that had not already been burned down were shut down, and it was ordered that the shameful word “prostitute” be deleted from the Farsi-language lexicon and replaced by the phrase “vulnerable lady.” Well, a few madams were executed and a large number of vulnerable ladies were left abandoned on the streets. Now, influenced by German law and culture, you want to say:

Then the likes of Dara have access to the vulnerable ladies on the streets, and at the age of thirty-something they should no longer be virgins.

Have the courage to say it like a brave Berliner for me to respond:

First of all, since the vulnerable ladies began working on the streets, their rates have gone up. Second, in Iran, one condition for being able to make vulnerable ladies vulnerable is to at least have an empty house somewhere. Third, if you are arrested while making a vulnerable lady vulnerable, if you are married, your punishment will be death by stoning, and if you are single, you will receive approximately eighty whiplashes, the same as what that vulnerable lady will receive … But none of these is the reason for Dara’s virginity. His problem is that he cannot even make contact with a vulnerable lady.

Ask:

Why …?

I will answer:

Because Dara is interested in reading stories and novels. I don’t know about your country, but in mine a good number of people who are readers cannot sleep with prostitutes. They find shame and disgrace in such an act…

Of course, blushing with embarrassment, Dara wants me to censor this segment of the story to his benefit. Very well … But how can I convey this vital piece of information about the characters of my story to my readers? It is here that the fine art of Iranian storytelling must step in and create a cipher that after the publication of the book will be quickly deciphered by the clever Iranian reader.

I hesitate to write: “No butterfly has ever transferred pollen from the blossom of sin from Dara’s body to Sara’s body …” It is too scientific, too old, and it reminds us of the bedlam of the butterfly effect. I will therefore write:

The perspiration of
vess
l
(union, realization, attainment)
has yet to seep from the pores of their bodies’ imagination …

The word
vess
l,
in the ages-old Iranian literature, has many explicit and implicit religious, mystic, amorous, and sexual connotations and hence is not really translatable. A Sufi, after much self-discipline and worship can “attain,” or
vess
l,
with God. A lover who has suffered can after years “unite,” or
vess
l,
with his beloved. A story writer too can “achieve,” or
vess
l,
a good story. I therefore don’t think Mr. Petrovich will be too exacting when it comes to this word. Though I suspect that the words “perspiration” and “pores” will likely make our readers sweat, and the word “imagination” will direct them to other implicit suggestions.

It is at this very moment that the ghost of the dead poet sitting in a corner at the Internet café notices Sara’s eyes anxiously glancing toward the window, and he is inspired to compose a new simile: two carnivorous black flowers lying in wait for plucked-winged butterflies, for ethereal bees, lewd bees …

Sara opens her mouth to speak an important sentence revealing a terrifying and diabolical secret. But just like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Faith in “Young Goodman Brown,” who at the moment of bidding farewell to her beloved chooses to remain silent, so does Sara. Dara too has a never-asked question on his mind, but he too keeps silent. And thus, an ominous fate awaits their love.

Like a good girl, Sara starts to drink her hot chocolate. Like a good boy, Dara sips his tea.

Sara says:

“It’s very hot.”

Dara says:

“Mine, too.”

Before I can decide on the word “hot,” a boy with a hairdo similar to the gothic hairstyle of some American teenagers and wearing a Linkin Park T-shirt bursts into the Internet café and in a muffled voice warns:

“The patrols … !”

The boy works for the owner of the Internet café as a lookout. The boys and girls quickly separate and rearrange the tables and chairs. The girls pull their scarves down over their highlighted hair, the boys hide their necklaces under their T-shirts. By the time two patrols walk in, the girls are huddled together at one end of the café, the boys are gathered at the opposite end, and they are all staring intently at their computer screens. Sara and Dara, lacking experience, sensed the danger at the very last minute and separated. The patrols carefully inspect each computer screen. Fortunately, everyone has been browsing educational Web sites, Web sites with beautiful pictures of nature and Web sites of government-sponsored newspapers. In Iran millions of Internet sites containing very immoral materials are filtered out by expensive software programs purchased from a very moral American company. Among these, political anti-revolution Web sites and even the Web sites of Voice of America and the U.S.-sponsored Radio Farda are filtered out. Of course, the man responsible for this Internet censorship is not Mr. Petrovich. All Mr. Petrovich knows about computers is that they are machines that in Iran usually make terrible mistakes. For example, they once printed one million tumans instead of ten thousand tumans on his electricity bill, a mistake that took months of trudging through government bureaus to correct.

Today the girls and boys are lucky. The patrols only arrest the Linkin Park fan on the charge of exhibiting a Western appearance. But Sara is not feeling well. This is her first brush with such an experience. Color has drained from her face, and she keeps imagining her father clutching at his ailing heart and suffering a heart attack after hearing of her arrest in the company of a young man. If you have detected any similarities between Sara’s father and Mr. Petrovich, I emphatically deny them.

Besides, Sara must soon return home; her mother is undoubtedly worried. Even though news of incidents such as student protesters being beaten up in front of the university is not broadcast by the media, they quickly spread throughout the city by word of mouth. Sara and Dara exchange e-mail addresses and bid the first scene of our story farewell.

Meanwhile, one of Sara’s classmates wakes up in her shabby rented room in a building near Tehran University. She had known there would be demonstrations at the university and had found it more prudent to stay home. She is a bookish student and doesn’t want any trouble. All she wants is to get her degree as quickly as possible, return to her small town, find a job, and help support her elderly parents who work two shifts a day … To prepare for her next exam, she was forced to stay up until four in the morning to memorize one hundred verses of poetry from one thousand years ago in their proper order. Exhausted, she opens her heavy eyelids. The first thing she remembers is that the night before she had forgotten to lock the door. She glances toward her small stereo—her only valuable possession—and, relieved to see it still there, she looks over at the door. Her eyes fill with horror.

A hunchback midget is sitting on the floor, leaning against the door with his legs spread apart. His head is hanging down on his chest, and his lifeless eyes are fixed on his thighs.

THE BOTTOMLESS WELL

I
n the next scene of our story,
it is midnight. A crescent moon
, resembling the Joker’s sneering lips,
shines in the brown sky above Tehran. Sara, in her room,
under the sheets,
is whispering quietly and having a computer chat with Dara. Because she has no prior experience, she is especially cautious.
Although she may later become more daring.
Her parents are both well educated, but they are terrified that an evil hand may pluck their beautiful sheltered flower. As a result, they strictly monitor her relationships.
Mr. Petrovich will probably appreciate this segment, and he may pardon one of our story’s future censor-worthy sentences.

Dara too is in his room whispering.

Ask me what they are whispering about, and I will say:

They are discussing “A Cliff Somewhere,” a story by Shahriar Mandanipour.

Dara says:

“It is a cowardly story. Even if the man and woman cannot walk together on the street, even if they are too scared to sit in a café and talk, now that they are on top of a mountain, why don’t they talk openly to each other? There are no patrols from the Campaign Against Social Corruption and no informers to call them.”

Sara says:

“Remember that they are sitting beside an old, perhaps ancient, well.”

“I haven’t forgotten. The well actually exists on top of a mountain in Shiraz.”

“A well that the townspeople believe is bottomless.”

“Sara, I know all this. My question is why do a man and a woman who were once in love now constantly talk in codes and metaphors. They can talk frankly about their problems. For example, the man can say that he realizes they are no longer in love. They were together for a certain period of time and used each other’s bodies as much as they could, they secretly made love wherever they could. Maybe that is why their love was ruined.”

“But that is not the point. The point is whether that well is really bottomless or not. The writer wants to tell you and me, his readers, that the physical relationship between a man and a woman is like that well. Perhaps at times it has a bottom and perhaps at times no matter what you throw in it you will never hear it hit the bottom.”

“No, you’ve misunderstood. Their problem is that they have gone too far in their physical relationship, so far that when making love they even bring images of other people to their bed. This is reaching the bottom of the well. But what I’m questioning is why the writer dragged this poor couple to the top of a mountain if even there he has not had the guts to put frank and honest words in their mouths. There on top of the mountain, instead of talking, the two sit and throw stones in the well and listen to hear them land at the bottom … Who in the world does that?”

“Well, if they spoke openly, the story would not have received a publishing permit.”

“Excellent. That’s why I say it’s a cowardly story. The writer has played tricks to pass censorship. I don’t like a writer who plays tricks. A writer who can trick the censorship apparatus can trick his readers, too.”

“But if they had not sat next to that well, if they had not talked as though they did not need to say much, then there wouldn’t be a story.”

“Do you think it is a story?”

“I don’t know. But it has somehow become mysterious. It makes me think.”

If you think I am going to fit this dialogue in my love story, you are wrong. But the self-censorship is not because Dara did not like my story; it is because I don’t want to give away a story that I happen to like and that I hope will one day receive a reprint permit. Therefore, I write:

Dara says:

“I believe people in love don’t need words, letters, and conversations. They simply look at each other and read each other’s thoughts. Just that.”

Sara likes what Dara has said. She thinks the same way. The world’s lovers may have created the most captivating and the greatest number of stories in the world, but they have no need for words.

How about the need to meet? Precisely my problem. My lovers have to meet somewhere in order to read each other’s eyes and mind.

In any case, Sara and Dara’s innocent conversation leads to a discussion of film, Dara’s favorite medium of art. Sara has no access to the black market for DVDs and videotapes and has therefore not seen many films.

Dara reveals a small part of his life’s secret to Sara.

“It was because of film that I lost everything, even my future.” Sara knows that to learn the secrets of this strange man’s life she has to be patient and to do away with superficial curiosities. Their conversation leads to films that they have recently seen on national television.

Just last night, after an entire month of advertising, a very old production of
Othello
was aired on channel 2.

Dara asks:

“… But did you see Desdemona in the movie at all?”

“… Just in the last scene. They showed her dead body on the bed for a few seconds.”

“I guess she was wearing a sleeveless low-cut dress in all the other scenes.”

Dara has guessed correctly. And that is precisely why I will not only make no mention of my Sara’s long black hair, but I will not even describe her without her headscarf and coverall—just like Iranian films that show women wearing a headscarf at all times, even in their homes. However, if one day an Iranian writer decides to describe the black cascade of his Sara’s hair, the best trick is that same defamiliarization envisioned by Russian formalists. The writer can, without mentioning the word “hair,” write: “Rippling nightlike strands that flow from the living marble and that the black wind ushers toward the light …”

Dara talks to Sara about the happy times he had at the university and explains that because no company or business will hire him, he still lives with his parents … Sara explains that she is in her final year of studying literature at the university.
Because she is familiar with the life of her author—me—she knows that with a degree in literature she shouldn’t have high hopes of finding a job either. In Iran, whenever someone asked me about my job and I replied that I am a writer, they would immediately say, “I mean your job. What do you do?” This is because unlike Mr. Petrovich and his superiors, ninety-nine point nine percent of Iranians do not perceive literature as serious work.

Sara and Dara talk about chaste and saintly love, a love untainted by earthly lusts and desires. Together they voice the expression “Platonic love.”
It doesn’t matter. Like many Iranians, they don’t know that in his philosophy of Platonic love Plato was mostly concerned with well-proportioned young boys. The misunderstanding is due to errors made in translating Plato’s writings, much the same way that another one of his works has been attributed to Aristotle and has been incorporated as such in the teachings at seminaries.

I don’t know what the connection is between Plato and apples, but
Sara is now talking about the apple tree in the garden at her parents’ house that is now, for the second time this season, full of blossoms.

She wants me to give her a romantic sentence to speak. A sentence about the flight of the apple blossoms and their dance in the spring breeze of Tehran. But for different reasons, both Dara and I disagree with such a sentence.

Dara bitterly says:

“I really don’t like apples. One of my recurring nightmares is that I bite into a red apple and realize that my teeth are left behind in it.”

Dara’s dislike of apples bears no association with the archetypal forbidden fruit, and I have told him time and time again that I am sick of using repetitive symbols, especially symbols that since the early days of Eve have all too often been manhandled. But my own opposition to the white apple blossoms dancing is more pragmatic than this. I remember years ago, in a story written by one of my friends, Mr. Petrovich censored the sentence “The leaves fall dancing from the trees” because the word “dancing” is deemed vulgar and is forbidden.

It is now one o’clock in the morning. Sara says good-bye to Dara and quickly goes to sleep to have beautiful dreams …

Earlier than her, many people in Tehran, this city that once had one of the most beautiful and light-filled aerial views in the world, hoping for beautiful dreams, have turned out their lights and gone to sleep. The new government has decreed that all restaurants and food sellers must close at eleven o’clock at night so that citizens do not stay up late unnecessarily and harm their health. I remind you that for people in Iran the only after-dark entertainment is to roam around the streets and to eat. Those who are wealthy go to restaurants, and the middle class and below go to hamburger joints. For a family or a few friends going out for a hamburger, by the time they make their way through the traffic from downtown to uptown and to a hamburger joint that looks like McDonald’s, it takes three or four hours and kills the tedious evening. (Have you noticed the contrast between the philosophy underlying the concept of the hamburger in the West and the course of action required for eating a hamburger in Iran?) Now ask the question that is on your mind. Don’t be timid. Ask.

And I will answer:

Fortunately, McDonald’s does not exist in Iran. The daring ingenuity of the person who installed an
M
on the neon sign of his hamburger joint lasted all of one day. On the second day, a group of people raided his eatery, burned it down, and proclaimed that McDonald’s was a symbol of the globe-devouring, McDonald’s-eating America. The incident took place years before Mr. Morgan Spurlock’s experience in
Super Size Me.
You are therefore free to think that these people were concerned about Iranians gaining weight. Given this reasoning, we can be grateful for restaurants and food sellers having to close at eleven o’clock.

What do you suppose the imposed closing hour of restaurants has to do with literature?

Actually, there is a very subtle connection. What else is there to do for people who have nothing in particular to occupy their time with from seven to eleven in the evening? People who, incidentally, are too tired and stressed to engage in the task of increasing the Muslim population of the world, as has been implicitly suggested by the government. Yes, reading and taking refuge in Iranian literature await them.

By enforcing the directive to close restaurants, the government is in fact supporting literature … Mr. Petrovich right away disagrees with our conclusion.

“It is impossible for the government of Iran to support a corrupt and immoral literature that merely has its eyes on the West and its decadent sexual freedoms. Don’t kid yourself …”

Mr. Petrovich is right. To occupy the Iranian population’s leisure time, the government has invested, and continues to invest, in television programs and film series that, more often than not, portray writers, poets, and intellectuals as wimpy, bungling, unprincipled crooks and addicts, much in the same manner that Western spies are always portrayed as well-dressed men wearing neckties. Perhaps the banning of neckties in Iran—which I will elaborate on later—was because they can be perceived as an arrow pointing to a man’s lower organ.

The clock hands in Tehran have just killed the hour of two in the morning. Sara is deep in sweet sleep. She is dreaming of the romantic poem
Khosrow and Shirin.
She sees herself standing beside a beautiful pond. The pond is like a mirror. Sara sees her reflection on the water. She is wearing a magnificent white dress,
like a princess’s dress,
and around her beautiful neck a string of pearls glistens like the moon. Sara looks around to make sure no man is hiding behind the bushes ogling her. Then she slowly steps into the pond. When she is waist deep in the water, the folds of her skirt, like the petals of a water lily, float and spread around her. She wades deeper into the pond. It is as if the water is purifying her body. Now the pearls on her necklace are floating around her neck, and their luster has intensified. Their shimmer brightens the water and deepens Sara’s delight.
With every step that she takes, she first sees the determined three dimensional darts of her breasts, then the beautiful oval of her knees and her shapely calves
… Her pleasure is short-lived. She feels the weight of lecherous eyes on her shoulders. With a deep sense of foreboding she looks back at the dark bushes; fireflies are flickering around them. Suddenly
she feels the water directly touching the nakedness of her body
, she sees her white dress, like a blossoming water lily, float toward the opposite shore. She reaches out to it. But the dress floats beyond her reach. She takes a step forward. The water reaches her thirsty lips, but her dress has floated even farther away. Panicked, with her hand reaching out toward her dress, she takes a long step forward. Contrary to her expectation, her foot does not reach the pond floor. It is as though a dragon has opened up its jaws underneath her. She is sucked into a bottomless abyss. She looks up. The silvery surface of the pond is moving away from her. Terrified, she realizes that the end of her dream has reached the beginning of her death. She feels the gaping maw and the repulsive stroke of the dragon’s tongue against her calves … She struggles to pull herself up. The surface of the pond has changed to a murky green. As if she has inhaled flames, the cavities of her nostrils burn all the way up into her forehead. She can no longer hold the air caged in her lungs. She hears the sound of the bubbles bursting out. The dragon’s scorching tongue is coiled around her body … Her eyes grow dark.

In that final moment when she has surrendered to drowning, she feels her head surface the water on the other side of the world. She opens her burning eyes. She sees herself chest deep in the sea. Around her in the water, there are fully dressed women wearing headscarves. Shocked and terrified, they stare at her. A wave strikes against Sara’s back. Seawater flows down her shoulders
and onto her hardened breasts that like the noses of two ships want to slice their way through the sea … The wave ebbs and the water sinks below Sara’s breasts. The women point their fingers at her and scream in horror. Sara covers her floating breasts with her hands. Only then does she realize that she is in the women’s section of the sea. Not far away, on either side, the area is closed off by green tarpaulin screens. The sun and salt water have corroded the fabric and it has ripped in several places. The rushing waves pull the torn sections back and forth, and half a mile away she can see fat and hairy bodies in the men’s section of the sea
.