Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  I am teasing you. My story’s Dara doesn’t look like this at all. If you are really interested in picturing his face, then set your imagination in motion. As a hint, I can tell you that in this novel Dara has a hazy face.

  And for the very first time in this universe, their eyes meet.

  It is right here that I, the writer, run into a few snags. In all probability, at this very moment, Mr. Petrovich’s exactitude has heightened, and he will immediately underline the phrase “their eyes meet.” My second problem is that even in front of the ruins of a movie theater that is not playing any romantic film, a few blocks away from which political demonstrations are under way, an Iranian boy and girl cannot simply stand on the sidewalk and stare into each other’s eyes; chances are the patrol from the Campaign Against Social Corruption will arrest them.

  My one hundred and first problem—I still don’t know what the third to the hundredth problems are—is that Sara and Dara are not familiar with those opening lines of dialogue between a man and a woman that throughout the world and in all love stories are identical and equally tedious. Even if they are familiar with Danielle Steel’s novels and their Iranian equivalents, at this moment those clichéd discourses seem dull and idiotic … You may not believe me, but it is true that many of Danielle Steel’s novels have been translated into Farsi and together with their Iranian imitations are reprinted tens of times in large print runs. I really would like to meet Danielle Steel someday and right off the bat ask her, What have you done for Mr. Petrovich to so generously issue permits for your novels to leave the print shop—of course, after having deleted the kissing scenes? What if Mr. Petrovich is smart enough to know that such novels breed tame citizens who never question anything? Or did you perhaps buy a talisman for stirring benevolence in his heart from Jafar ibn-Jafri?

  Sara wants to complain:

  Where did you suddenly disappear to?

  But she doesn’t. And I write:

  In this strange moment, every word, every sentence, seems hollow and absurd …

  From the late Henry James, may God rest his soul, I know that to heighten the dramatic energy of my story, I have to limit its perspective to either Sara or Dara. But then to respect narrative candor, I will have to write of the secret thoughts and desires of that character. Should I fall into this trap, I will also fall prey to Mr. Petrovich. On the other hand, I really don’t want to portray my story’s character as cold or to conceal his or her emotions in the vein of Hemingway and his American successors. So what am I to do? In your opinion, what can one do with words that are at times idiotic when writing a simple scene of a young man and woman looking into each other’s eyes on some sidewalk in Tehran? Let’s leave it up to these old words and see what they themselves will write.

  Suddenly, a bolt of lightning flashes from Sara’s black eyes and sets fire to the wheat fields of Dara’s soul …

  I did say words sometimes become dim-witted. Since Madame Bovary’s death, such sentences seem rather inane. Let us write:

  Four pupils like four black mirrors facing each other …

  Four windows open onto each other’s darkness …

  But where in the world is there something called a nose between two mirrors or two windows. We therefore have to forgo such cliché and nose-y portrayals. I will write:

  In want for words, two pairs of pupils together darken a long silence.

  I think if we Iranian writers continue such exhausting exercises, at long last our syphilis-stricken dream of winning a Nobel Prize might become reality. I should remember to tell that fortunate writer, or unfortunate writer, because in Iran he or she will surely be accused of collaborating with Western intelligence services, to make sure and thank Mr. Petrovich when addressing the Nobel Committee.

  Anyway, perforce, Sara and Dara, start to walk side by side …

  In step with the united steps of the two characters of our story, destiny changes. In the chaos of the clash between the students, the police, and government sympathizers, the frail figure of the hunchback midget receives a hard blow from a person who is either beating an escape or rushing to strike. The midget falls to the ground, his small head smashes against a cement edge, and his eyes forever close …

  BRN AND DANIEL

  In this segment of the story, I come to think that selecting the name Dara for the antagonist was a big mistake. I have just remembered that Dara was not only the name of the character in first-grade textbooks, but it was also the name of one of Iran’s kings. It could therefore make Mr. Petrovich wary of my entire story, and with his conspiracy-seeking eyes he may scour every word and sentence thinking that I am a monarchist. However, given that my story has advanced tens of pages, I cannot simply use the find-and-replace function in Microsoft Word to change the name of my story’s character. For quite some time now, I have come to know him as Dara. Changing his name at this point would be similar to your brother or husband or boyfriend suddenly asking you to delete his old name and to start calling him by a new name, simply because he doesn’t want you to think he is a monarchist. In that case, your problem will be simpler than mine, because your brother or husband or boyfriend has a real existence, and with this real existence he can enforce the censoring of his old name and its replacement with his new one. However, from the start of this story, I have seen Dara in the shape of the word “Dara,” I have grown attached to him, and it is with this name that I have developed his character. If, based on the Sinbad Theory, I change his name at this point, I will also have to change his character. For a writer, this is akin to committing cold-blooded premeditated murder. Yes, it is true that my writings are dark and that because of the darkness in my mind I have sent several of my stories’ characters to death and destruction. But these days, with all my being, as a will and last testament, I want to write a bright love story in which there is no sorrow, no one dies, no hearts suffer, not even the tip of a pencil breaks.

  It is here that I must recount the story of naming my daughter. Even if you don’t ask, I will tell you:

  When my daughter was born I wanted to name her Brn (Rain). In fact, to find this unique and rare name, I had reflected and researched for more than a month. I had told myself that the daughter of a young man who wants to someday become one of the greatest writers of his country, even of the world, should have a name that is Iranian, beautiful, literary, rare, a symbol of life and reflective of the particular creative taste of her parents … But when I went to the General Register Office to get her birth certificate, I was told that I could not name my daughter Brn. I asked:

  “Why can’t I name my daughter Brn?”

  The young bearded administrator in charge of birth certificates looked at me as though he were looking at some idiot who had given no thought to the future and fate of his daughter and said:

  “I have never heard of anyone naming their daughter Brn.”

  “But I want to name my daughter Brn.”

  He scoffed:

  “My good man, who in their right mind names an innocent child Brn? In a few years, when your daughter goes to school, she will stand out, her classmates have never heard of anyone named Brn, they will make fun of her. They will tease her and say your father must have been a cloud … Do you get it, Papa Cloud?”

  “Sir! Brn has a romantic and beautiful nuance. In our desert country rain is a divine gift. Allow me to name my daughter Brn. I am sure that from now on many people will name their daughters Brn.”

  By now he was angry. He roared:

  “No! I will not … We have prepared a list of beautiful, meaningful Islamic names. Look through the list and find a proper name for the poor child.”

  He put a list of hundreds of names in front of me. Most of them were Arab names. Feeling obstinate, and of course not daring to express my anger, I blurted out:

  “Sir, can I name her Roja?”

  He knotted his eyebrows that were thicker than his beard.

  I said:

  “The name is popular in northern Iran. R
oja means the ‘morning star.’ ”

  He agreed.

  In those days, Communist parties were still active in Iran, and they often named their artistic groups and the bands that played their revolutionary anthems Roja or the Red Star … It seems the world’s Communists have taken full ownership of stars, similar to Muslims and the crescent moon … Still, my daughter’s name did not become Roja as easily as that. A month later when I went back to pick up her birth certificate, I saw that instead of “Roja” they had mistakenly, or intentionally, written “Raja,” which is not only an Arab name but a man’s name. The law in Iran requires that to change a name one must petition the court. We were forced to hire an attorney, and a year later, when the court agreed to the correction of my daughter’s name, she finally became Roja. I have never in my life been a Communist, not only because I was born to a bourgeois family, but also because I have read books such as Animal Farm …

  Likewise, I have never been Jewish. Years later, when once again I went to the General Register Office for my son’s birth certificate, the administrator in charge snidely said:

  “You shouldn’t have rushed! You might as well have waited for your golden-weewee’d boy to turn one before you came for his birth certificate.”

  He was right. My wife and I had spent three months debating, researching, and even fighting to come up with a beautiful, unique, and literary name for our son. At home we called our daughter Brn, so it would have been nice for our son’s name to rhyme with Brn. At last, like an inspiration, the name Mhn had come to me. And I told the administrator that I wanted to name my son Mhn … He knotted his eyebrows that were thicker than his beard … and said that he would not allow it. I asked why. He said:

  “First of all, Mhn is an obsolete name. Second, his classmates will make fun of him in school.”

  Then he faked a scholarly mien and added:

  “Third, Mhn is plural.”

  By then I was a known writer, and to develop a pure and unique prose I had practiced thousands of pages of story writing and I had read thousands of pages of old Farsi texts and tens of books on Farsi grammar and linguistics. Still, with modesty I said:

  “My dear brother! First of all, Mhn is the name of a green and lush place in the desert in eastern Iran.”

  “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Years from now, kids in school will make fun of this poor innocent child, taunting him that his father was probably Papa Desert.”

  “Second, in the Farsi language n does not imply a plural form. Mhn means ‘like the moon.’ ”

  He suddenly grew angry and growled:

  “Don’t give me all this hot air. Go get a permission slip from the director of the General Register Office for me to name your kid Mhn.”

  This time, I was determined to insist on my rights as a father and had no intention of giving up that easily. I got in my car, drove past the tomb of our world-renowned poet who died seven hundred years ago, and headed for the other side of town and the Central Office of the General Register. I waited for three hours until I was finally given permission to see the director general. Angry and determined to reclaim my rights, I stepped into his office. But the second I saw him sitting behind his large desk, and before he had even raised his head to see my non-Islamic appearance, I quickly turned around and walked out. I drove back to the opposite side of town and back to the administrator in charge of issuing birth certificates. This time, obstinately, yet with censored anger, I asked:

  “Brother, can I name him Daniel?”

  To my surprise I heard:

  “Why not. Daniel is the name of a prophet.”

  I think despite his exceptionally Islamic appearance—long beard and collarless shirt—the administrator did not participate in Friday prayers and street demonstrations, because he should have known that at all Friday prayers and in all street demonstrations, after the slogans of Death to America, Death to the Soviet Union, Death to England, and Death to France, in a much louder voice participants shouted, Death to Israel … It had slipped his mind that we are strong supporters of the Palestinian people and that our country has been in some sort of an undeclared war against Israel… And that is how one of my children ended up with a Communist name and the other one with a Jewish name. I am glad I did not have a third child, because I don’t know which one of the names favored by our enemies he or she would have ended up with.

  Ask me:

  Does this chapter have anything to do with your love story and censorship?

  It most certainly does. In fact, for you to fully discern the symbols and metaphors of my story, I am forced to introduce you to yet another form of censorship—sociocultural censorship—which in Iran has a history of more than two thousand years … It is a phenomenon in comparison to which the scissor blades of Moharram Ali Khan seem like delicate jasmine petals.

  Now you must want to ask, Who in the world is Moharram Ali Khan?

  That’s strange! You are familiar with the likes of Damocles and his sword; King Arthur’s master swordsman Sir Lancelot; Josef Ignace Guillotin; Josef Mengele, the doctor at Auschwitz who with his scalpel conducted medical experiments on the prisoners; and even with murderers such as the one in The Silence of the Lambs who skinned people and sewed their skin into clothes, but you don’t know who Moharram Ali Khan is?

  In the 1930s, Moharram Ali Khan was responsible for censoring newspapers published in Tehran. Armed with his weapon of choice, meaning a pair of scissors that resembled the jaws of a Nag serpent, he would show up every morning and every evening before the newspapers went to press. He would carefully study the columns prepared for layout, and wherever he found a sentence or sentences that were contrary to the interests of the king, the government, the governor, or even small government departments, he would with great dexterity surgically remove them …

  CENSORED TESTICLES

  The sky above Tehran is filled with smoke from the factories in the outskirts of town and from the purple fires of alchemists in the tales of One Thousand and One Nights. Motorcycles that double as express taxis intricately weave their lone passenger through deadlocked traffic. On the sidewalk the scent of Clinique Happy lingers in the air in the wake of a beautiful woman clad in a coverall and headscarf… Sara and Dara, in the shadow of a postmodern high-rise, approach a street peddler. The man’s clothes are a blend of traditional Arab, Afghani, and Turkish garb … The government of the Islamic Republic has coined this year the Year of Progress and Blossoming. Therefore, this year, we Iranians have a five-month-long spring. Consequently, Sara and Dara have ample time to carry on with their romance in this season. Seeing a handsome couple, in a voice that seems to come from the pit of a magic lantern, the street peddler says:

  “A talisman for bliss … A spell for love and compassion …”

  Sara and Dara sit in front of his box and riffle through the small dark bottles, colorful powders, locks, plaques, and rusted metal talismans with strange designs etched on them.

  Sara asks:

  “Do you have a talisman for hate?”

  Dara says:

  “A talisman to free the mind, so that someone is not in your thoughts night and day …”

  The spellbinding gleam in the old man’s eyes darkens. His eyes fill with sorrow, the sorrow of an aged lover remembering a love Gone with the Wind … He digs into his deep pockets and pulls out a roll of thin yellow paper. He tears off a piece. From his breast pocket he produces a Parker fountain pen and starts to draw strange signs. The ink spreads on the paper and makes the signs look even more ominous … Sara takes the magic paper.

  “After the spell works, I ask that you tell your friends that the potions, talismans, and spells of medicine man Jafar ibn-Jafri are more potent than those of all other medicine men …”

  Sara asks:

  “How much should I pay you?”

  “If I take money from you the magic of the spell will be undone.”

  The magic seller turns to Dara. He stares into his eyes. Then, with the anguish of a
father taking his son to the sacrifice altar, he says:

  “Master! You have ninety-five tumans in your pocket. Offer it to me as a gift.”

  Dara reaches into his pocket and takes out a few crumpled bills and a coin. He counts them and stares at the old man in amazement. The old man kisses the bills as he would a holy object, he touches them to his forehead, and closes his eyes … A few steps away, Dara tells Sara:

  “Actually, I am the one who needs that spell. Let me have it so that I can be free of the agony of thinking of you day and night.”

  Sara, with a mysterious smile on her lips, says:

  “Why are you so sure that I am not the same way and that now that I have seen you I won’t get even worse … I have dropped most of my university credits this term …”

  They are now crossing a bridge over an expressway. The river of cars, taking no notice of them, courses beneath their feet.

  Dara says:

  “I wish I had a car. In a car there is less risk of being caught.”

  “Do you really want to stop thinking of me?”

  “… Were you telling the truth when you said I have been on your mind?”

  They are now two-thirds of the way across the bridge. Sara stops. She takes the magic paper from her pocket and holds it out toward Dara.

  “What shall we do? Shall we get rid of it?”

  Dara takes the other end of the paper and pulls. The paper rips in two. They each tear their half into pieces … The drivers passing under the bridge will never guess what spell the tiny pieces of paper falling on their cars like yellow snow have undone …

  Mr. Petrovich will say:

  You really are a bad writer … This is a nice scene. On a bridge, a young couple bid each other farewell. After their morally wrong correspondence, on the first day of their encounter, the wisest thing they could do was exactly what came to their minds, to part and to never think of each other again … If you separate them on this very bridge, it will turn out to be a nice story. Imagine. One walks to the left of the bridge, the other to the right… and neither one turns to look at the other.