Censoring an Iranian Love Story (19 page)

The old womanizing poet who terribly regrets his past escapades and has repented now wants to spend the final years of his life in purity and beauty with an old love. Therefore, stammering bashfully, he tells Sara:

“This handwritten book is worthless compared to my love for you. I will burn all my wicked poems and to you I will dedicate all the innocent romantic masterpieces that I shall write eulogizing our love. For you I will compose all the world’s red roses, all the world’s sparrows, all the world’s Ferraris. You shall have it all. Yours will be the joy of my repentance. Let us get married so that you can then take off your headscarf for me.”

Dara shouts:

“No, Sara! Don’t ruin us!”

Sara, blushing, with her eyes cast down, asks:

“Do you really like my scarf that much?”

The poet, blushing, with his eyes cast down, replies:

“More than you can imagine. I am not like those ignoble Iranian men. I will give my life for your scarf. I will give my life to write one verse on the hidden beauty of your hair. I will die and in my coffin, from the perfume of your hair, I shall come to life again.”

“If I become your wife, will you buy me a silk scarf with tassels on it?”

“I will buy all the scarves in the world for you.”

Signs of consent begin to appear on Sara’s mesmerized face. She deeply feels the poet’s poetic, hairy, mystical, headscarfy, handwritten love. She feels that it would be impossible for her to find another man as sensitive and another love as pure. Looking appraisingly at the poet’s face, it seems to her that the tragic wrinkles of his aging beauty are fading away. Sara opens her lips to say yes to that handsome, besotted, mystic poet.

Dara shouts:

“Sara! Sara! What about me?”

I shout:

“Sara! Sara! What about my love story?”

And with the power of my pen, I shut Sara’s mouth.

The only solution that comes to my mind is to rely on my readers’ intelligence and imagination. Therefore, the final sentences of this scene will be:

Dara shouts:

“Sara!”

“Are you sure you want it?”

“I already said I do. What do you want in return?”

The old man looks at Sara’s headscarf, and under his breath, in a way that in this world only Sara can hear, he whispers …

Half an hour later, walking side by side in silence, Sara and Dara arrive at the beautiful Vanak Circle that somehow resembles London’s Trafalgar Square.
I want the time in my story to be a romantic autumn afternoon, but unfortunately the president of Iran has at this very moment, in a revolutionary speech, proclaimed that on this hot afternoon he has hot news for the people of Iran—we have resumed our efforts at enriching uranium.
Sara shifts the handwritten book under her arm and briskly asks:

“Well, what should we do now?”

In utter rage Dara roars:

“Nothing … You have to go home.”

He hails a taxi for her.
Finding an empty taxi in Tehran is not an easy task. When a taxi driver picks up a passenger who has yelled his destination in through the side window of his twenty-year-old car, he will slow down in front of other passengers for them to also yell their destination in through the side window. If their route matches that of the first passenger, he will let them on—at times cramming as many as six people in the car. But I, in support of Dara, send an empty taxi their way.
Dara pays an extra fee, hires it exclusively, and ushers Sara into the car. Sara is still so intoxicated by the handwritten book that she pays no attention to Dara’s anger. Dara slams the car door shut and through the window shouts:

“If you love me, burn it.”

“In your dreams.”

I LOVE YOU BUT I NEVER WANT
TO SEE YOU AGAIN

D
ara starts walking toward his house. As he nears his poor neighborhood, his anger slowly turns into bitter sorrow. He has resolved to use his iron will, a remnant of his prison days, to rid himself of
The Agony and the Ecstasy
of Sara. He repeats to himself
the title of this chapter which I have put in his head
: I love you but I never want to see you again …

However, at precisely eleven o’clock at night, he adds another imprint of his fist to the wall of his room
and thinks, The hell with that intelligence agent who may be tapping my telephone
. Aware that Sara’s parents are asleep at this hour, he dials her telephone number and tells her that he has fallen even more deeply in love with her because she is different from all the other girls in the world. They arrange to meet three days later. After a half-hour exchange of ideas about where in Tehran it would be safest for them to meet, they finally say good night so that Sara, who feels tired, can go to sleep.

How? It’s obvious. With the five-hundred-year-old handwritten book in her arms.

The three days that remain until another romantic rendezvous pass like three hundred years for Dara. They have arranged to meet in a mosque. In its front yard, where the color of the turquoise tiles of the inscriptions pray upon the water of the shallow pool, they will have the opportunity to quietly talk for a short while. They both believe that the spiritual environment will help keep their love pure. But they are both shocked when they arrive at the mosque. There are cheap flyers giving notice of a death taped to the walls. Below the beautiful sentence “From God we come and to God we shall return,” there is a picture of someone familiar to them: the old lovesick poet. Inside, a modest memorial service is under way with only a handful of old men and women present. Sara goes to the women’s section of the mosque and Dara to the men’s. Separated, they will not have to worry about seeing each other’s tears.

When entering the mosque, neither Sara nor Dara saw the ghost of the poet who, with the sorrow of having remained incomplete and the agony of the poems he had not composed, was standing beside the old shallow pool. But the moment the poet lay eyes on Sara, his sad lips curved into a smile. He quickly moved to her side and at very close proximity accompanied her as far as the women’s entrance. His ghost is not allowed to enter that section.

Sara, together with the poet’s old sister, begins to weep. Dara, together with the poet’s closest friend, a long-forgotten writer whose works never received a reprint permit after the revolution, with tearful eyes stares at some distant point. He regrets that four days earlier, at the height of his anger, he had wanted to kill that cheeky poet, and he is ashamed that, having seen his picture on the death notice, for a few seconds he had felt joy deep in his heart. He therefore allows the tears seeking absolution to flow from his eyes.

Up on the pulpit, the preacher preaches about the seven stages of hell. Fire, pits filled with foul-smelling boiling liquids, women who have violated the Islamic dress code hanging by their hair, snakes with bites so painful that fearing them hell’s residents take refuge with the venomous vipers, and other infinite horrors. Then he proceeds to describe the beauties of heaven. Streams of milk and honey, fruit trees that bend their branches down to heaven dwellers who crave their fruit, beautiful heavenly nymphs with skin so translucent that their insides can be seen. The lot of every male heaven dweller is seven thousand of these nymphs
who are all virgins and who after every sexual encounter become virgins again, and each sexual encounter lasts approximately three earth days
… Then the preacher begins to talk about the deceased poet. Of course, he mispronounces his name and makes no mention of his pseudonym.

An hour later, having sufficiently cried, Dara and Sara walk out of the mosque. With no particular destination in mind, they begin to walk. Subconsciously, they are scared of going to an Internet café, and they don’t feel like seeing yet another film abounding with misery.
The problem is, when a young boy and girl walk together, at times their arms come into contact. For two virgins, such contacts are both pleasurable and frustrating.

Every half mile they ask each other, “Well, where should we go?” or “What should we do?” and they find no answers to their questions.
At the very moment of hopelessness when they both despair, and for being together they see no solution other than to part ways, in the interest of my story I am forced to inspire Dara. I whisper in his ear, “Boy! Look to your right. What do you see?”

“A hospital.”

“Well, this hospital has an emergency room. Do you get it?”

Dara looks at me sheepishly. I say:

“You really deserve to be a virgin at thirty-something. Go to the emergency room, sit comfortably in a couple of chairs, and talk … Do you get it?”

He looks at me with such surprise it is as if he is looking at Bacchus. I say:

“This is one of the few benefits of having a writer for a friend. It will never occur to the police or the patrols that a young couple would take advantage of an emergency room like this.”

Dara does not wait around to hear what I have to say. The two rush into the hospital. I write:

Seeing a hospital sign, Dara suddenly changes their course in that direction.

Sara says:

“Why here?”

“Be clever, my dear.”

The two sit next to each other in the emergency room. Tehran’s morning and evening newspapers, even the English-language
Tehran Times,
are arranged on the coffee table in front of them. They each pick up a newspaper and open it.

Sara says:

“You don’t look like someone who would know such tricks.
Maybe you have lots of experience with girls.
”

“No … I saw the hospital sign and I was suddenly inspired.”

It doesn’t matter. I, being a writer in whose country copyright laws do not exist, am very much accustomed to others passing off my ideas as their own. I have absolutely no problem with them doing so. But I just don’t understand why as soon as they do such things they suddenly become my enemy, so much so that they wish for my existence to be censored from the pages of time. What troubles me more is that there are a few writers who on the outside are opposed to the regime but who secretly collaborate with Mr. Petrovich and read some of the more complicated books to expose their concealed scenes and inferences. I worry that they will tell Mr. Petrovich, By handing two newspapers to his story’s characters, this guy is suggesting to his readers that the newspapers published by the Islamic Republic are worthless and that they are only good for this girl and boy to use as a cover for their transgressions. Consequently, in the final edit of my story, I will probably do away with Sara and Dara holding newspapers, hoping that Mr. Petrovich will like their innocence and creativity in taking refuge in an emergency room and not censor the scene.

Now I must explain the setting of my story. Hospital emergency rooms in Iran are places that perhaps even the art of cinema cannot justly portray. For you to have some concept of an Iranian emergency room, let me say only that the annual average number of people killed in road accidents in Iran is ten times greater than the number of Americans killed to date in the second war with Iraq. Therefore,
as Sara and Dara sit in that hospital, the doors to the emergency room constantly open, and the casualties of highways, freeways, and streets, and the casualties of hundreds of other locations and accidents, are rushed in. Typically, they are drenched in blood; they scream in pain and their stretchers are being pushed by family members or friends who in typical Middle Eastern fashion often wail and scream louder than the injured or dying person. And they all pass in front of Sara and Dara. Other emergency room patients lie moaning on stretchers parked along the hallways because there are very few emergency room personnel and they don’t have the strength and energy to tend to everyone. Tired and stressed, they too are forced to shout as they talk to each other or when they ask each other for assistance.

Please set your imagination in motion. First, imagine that you are one of the world’s greatest writers. Then, imagine how, given all your writing skills, you can move your love story along in that horrifying setting …

I have learned from experience that if I put myself and my story’s characters in a predicament, if I can tolerate their reprimands, after a while I can come up with a good narrative solution. The emergency room scene is one of these predicaments. Now, after three days of thinking about how I should advance my story, I have come up with an idea. To compare the brightness of your mind with the darkness of the mind of an Iranian writer, you should first tell me what your plan is for this segment of the story, and then ask me about mine. And I will say:

Dara opens his mouth to speak a candid and unambiguous sentence to Sara. A sentence that more or less all the world’s lovers speak. That same sentence that all the world’s lovers count the seconds to hear from their own lips and from the lips of their beloved. You know what that sentence is, so tell Dara that, with the same make-believe seriousness, looking as if he is reading news of the most critical nature in that censored newspaper, he should turn the page and suddenly say:

“Sara! I am so in love with you.”

Sara, looking very serious, as if she is reading news of the most critical nature, in the shelter of the newspaper turns to Dara, stares into his eyes, and with her eyes she answers:

“…”

This time, I have no fear of Mr. Petrovich’s censorship, because this segment of the story takes place in my imagination. In this world of imagination, away from Mr. Petrovich’s eyes, I want to invite you to inspire Sara to tell Dara anything you like—of course, only if you succeed in your efforts at preserving your freedoms.

The emergency room doors open, and four men, two of them pushing a stretcher and the other two escorting it, walk in. One of the most beautiful and delicate women in the world is lying on the stretcher.
I said one of the most beautiful women in the world because the most beautiful woman in the world does not exist in the world; although, when many men in the world want to tame a woman, they magnanimously call her the most beautiful.
But what is most strange about the newly arrived group is not the woman’s beauty. It is that the four men accompanying her are wearing clothes reminiscent of outfits worn by Iranian commanders one thousand five hundred years ago. They are wearing shields and helmets adorned with shining stripes of what looks like gold, and the hilts of their swords sparkle from gems that resemble rubies and diamonds. They could be actors in a play about the lost Persian Empire. Perhaps during the show or the rehearsal the actress had an accident and they have brought her to the emergency room still dressed in their costumes. On entering the emergency room, the injured woman’s conveyors and companions have completely lost their composure and look overwhelmed. It is obvious that they don’t know what to do. The tormented eyes of the woman lying on the stretcher find Sara’s eyes from among the multitude of lecherous male eyes ogling her and appeal for help. She is terribly embarrassed in front of the four men accompanying her and cannot cry out from her feminine pain.
The center of the silk sheet covering the woman is stained with blood.
To stifle her groans she gnashes her bloodless lips between her teeth. Sara walks over to her. They whisper to each other. Then Sara pulls herself away and nervously runs around the emergency room until she finds a female nurse. Together they push the stretcher into a room and close the door.

Dara pounds his fist on his knee. He is not sure whether he should think, Just my luck …, or be happy that Sara has rushed to someone’s aid. He hears mocking laughter. He looks around and sees the man who sells talismans and spells sitting a few seats away laughing at him. Dara turns away from the magic peddler and stares at the closed door of the room Sara is in. Smelling of incense, Jafar ibn-Jafri walks over and sits next to him.

“I see you have not used my magic spell.”

Dara asks:

“Do you also have someone sick or injured here?”

“Yes and no. I mean, almost like you.”

A rare smile of understanding and sympathy forms on his lips. He whispers:

“The person who led you here did not have the brains to know that he should send young lovers to beautiful places and gardens and not to the thick of blood and pain.”

Dara shrugs and says:

“It was my own ingenuity.”

And again he looks at the closed door of the room. The magic seller says:

“Your friend isn’t coming out anytime soon. The injured lady is holding her hand and begging her not to leave her alone.”

He scoffs and, pointing to the door, continues:

“It is a violent world. Some brides end up with excessive bleeding.”

The four commanders, who contrary to their warriorlike appearance look scared and ill at ease, are standing in the corner whispering. The emergency room security guard walks up to them and points to the exit. They try to ignore him. The security guard gets angry. He calls his colleague, and together they throw the four men out. The magic peddler laughs out loud. Half an hour later, Sara walks out of the room. There is a drop of blood on her hand; she asks Dara for a handkerchief. Dara again gives Sara his grandmother’s handkerchief. The bloodstain spreads on the handkerchief like one of the delicate red flowers embroidered on its edge.