Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  On the day Dara saw Sara and thought this was the girl he should fall in love with, back in Shiraz, I was afflicted with a familiar attack of discovering my own loneliness. From time to time I suffer this emotional attack, especially when I am happy, when I have succeeded at something, and on those rare occasions when I am pleased with myself. Immediately, a gentle and soothing sorrow engulfs my entire being. In truth, I have always seen myself as a lonely person, even though I have very good friends, even though I have a kind family. The attack of discovering one’s loneliness is different from the common feelings of loneliness … Although my work is to grapple with words, I have no words with which to describe and explain this feeling. Perhaps I write stories to show that in life there are moments, emotions, and events that cannot be explained with words.

  On that fall day, I headed for the old garden estates of Shiraz. It was drizzling. There were hardly any passersby in the narrow winding alleys between the mud walls surrounding the gardens. The winds of previous days had piled the dried leaves at the foot of the walls, and now the rain was weighing them down. The poet who died seven hundred years ago was standing at the end of the alley sending inspiration for one of his most beautiful ghazals to himself seven hundred years back.

  They have closed the tavern door O God do not approve,

  for they open the door to deceit and hypocrisy …

  Then he held his thirsty mouth open to the sky to drink the dust of centuries-old grapevines in the drops of rain. With no need for words we waved to each other. I retraced my steps. Years ago this poet had inspired me to write one of my rare love stories. In that story, I wrote of the dust of his body scattered across the city of Shiraz, and I wrote that he believes the more people can create true and lasting love, the more his dust will gather and he will come to acquire form and color. Lucky him and lucky those who can fall in love.

  I was deep in such thoughts when I realized I was walking along Zand Avenue. The crowded sidewalk of one of Shiraz’s oldest avenues can exaggerate as well as console one’s sense of loneliness. After every rain, ghosts of the perfumes of roses that blossomed and withered seven hundred years ago, and ghosts of the aromas of wines that poets drank in secret seven hundred years ago, are released in the air in Shiraz. One side of the sidewalk is lined with stores that sell cheap clothes made in China and the other side with maple trees. Their leafless branches reach up to the clouds like nerves, and ghosts of their winged samaras twirl as they rain down on the sidewalk.

  Suddenly I see Mr. Petrovich walking toward me. Years have passed since I first met him. He must have come to Shiraz on his vacation. I try to hide behind the pedestrians, but he sees me and walks toward me.

  “How are you? You look like a drenched mouse … What are you doing here?”

  “I’m well. I was just out for a walk.”

  “I noticed you were deep in thought. Has something happened?”

  “No, not at all. I was just thinking.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “About how wonderful it would be if we could not think at all.”

  Mr. Petrovich stares into my eyes. I freeze. I feel he is capable of reading people’s minds. He says:

  “It’s been a while since I heard anything about that love story you wanted to write.”

  I didn’t know that years later I would attempt to write a love story, but he knew. I say:

  “I haven’t decided to write a love story yet. I am sometimes tempted, but I won’t find the courage for some time.”

  “Why?”

  “As you know, writing a love story is as difficult as starting a love affair and holding on to it.”

  “You surprise me. You are comfortable sharing your feelings with me.”

  “I surprise myself, too. I always censor myself with others, but when it comes to you, something makes me pour my heart out.”

  The two jagged blades of his eyes take aim at me.

  “Look here! You’re not playacting, are you? You don’t have some trick up your sleeve, do you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Women in black coveralls and men wearing dark shabby clothes and muddy shoes pass by. High above the street, a flying carpet drop by drop melts in the rain. Turquoise and ocher-colored raindrops fall onto the city. The carpet shrinks and flies away.

  Mr. Petrovich, in that persistently suspicious tone, says:

  “I am familiar with the temperament of you writers. I know you are fragile and sensitive. That’s why the cursed devil targets you more than it does ordinary people. He tries to tempt and deceive you into writing things that are not in your best interest. I wonder if you realize that I only want what is best for the likes of you.”

  “Thank you for your concern.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “No … not at all.”

  “I sensed sarcasm in your voice.”

  “No. I truly am grateful. But I do find it strange that someone like you …”

  “Well, people like me need a vacation too once in a while. We can’t sit in a room all our lives reading rubbish books.”

  What is left of my energy to speak is rapidly draining. A long silence prevails. As always, I try to avoid locking eyes with Mr. Petrovich.

  “I honestly feel some sort of friendly intimacy toward you. I sense you are thinking of writing things that you shouldn’t write, and that if you do, writing them will not have been in your best interest. It’s like thinking of killing someone when you have no rational reason for doing so. Be careful not to kill your innocence by thinking of forbidden things.”

  “I am sure I have killed the desire to kill in my soul by killing plenty of fictitious characters.”

  “In this world of reckoning and retribution, there are all sorts of killings. Remember, thinking of sin is itself a sin. You writers should know that if the thought of writing a sinful story enters your mind, your sin is far greater than that of an ordinary person, because your sin infects the minds of your readers, and the more readers you have, the greater your sin. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, brother …”

  To change the subject, in a voice that seems to come from the pit of a well, I say:

  “While in Shiraz, make sure to stop by the Vakil Bazaar. If you can manage not to forget that it was built hundreds of years ago, in some corner you will see a peddler who sells talismans and spells for making wishes come true. You can ask him for a spell that would stop all Iranian writers from ever thinking of a sinful scene. If you buy this spell, it will not only ease your mind, but it will also ease the minds of us writers.”

  “What delicacies does this Shiraz of yours have that one can take back as gifts?”

  “Well, just as pomegranates from Saveh are famous, or almonds from wherever and corals from some sea, before the revolution, wine from Shiraz was famous. But after the revolution, well … Now they make Shiraz wine in Australia and California.”

  “Where did you get such accurate information? Don’t tell me you’ve been—”

  “No, not at all… One of my friends told me … I’m sorry, brother, I’m not feeling well. If you don’t mind, I have to return home.”

  Shiraz, too, is a city that oscillates in time; its past seasons, even its past hundreds of years, mirror on its present time. I walk away. For a long time I feel the weight of Mr. Petrovich’s eyes on the back of my neck. I turn around and look back. He is still standing there watching me. This time, his fluid shape-shifting face has a short brow, an Arab nose, Mongol eyes, and thick greasy lips that look as if he has just eaten fat-laden mouton stew.

  I’D RATHER BE A SPARROW THAN A SNAKE

  The next scene of our story begins in a movie theater. After ten late-night computer chats and several e-mails, Sara and Dara have planned to meet at the cinema. They saw each other only for ten minutes in the brightly lit hall and are now sitting in the dark. In the film Sara and Dara have chosen to see, there are no images of the modern life of Iranian urbanites.
Instead, like many arty Iranian films that receive golden awards from reputable film festivals around the world, the film portrays misery, poverty, and despair in Iran. In the forty-fourth minute of the film, finally, for the first time, Dara’s right forearm and Sara’s left forearm are positioned on their shared armrest. A few minutes later, the armrest begins to shake.

  Ask me whether this is the climax of my story, so that I can say:

  No … What is going through your mind?

  The shaking armrest has nothing to do with those actions that take place in dark movie theaters in the West. Sara and Dara’s arms have started to shake from a mysterious force, from some sort of telepathy. It is the same force that drove the cavemen of the Lascaux caves in France to carve magical images on the cave walls. It is perhaps the same force that can trigger the fuse of a suicide bomber in Baghdad …

  Now you know that you are not dealing with an ordinary love story. So don’t ask and let me tell you:

  One of the sexiest scenes I have ever seen in a movie belongs to a film made in Iran after the Islamic revolution. In one scene, the man and woman find a small bird on the street, a sparrow that has fallen. They take the sparrow to a café, and they sit facing each other at a small table. The woman is as usual wearing a headscarf and a coverall. The man is wearing a long-sleeved shirt. In Iran it is forbidden for men to wear short sleeves. The woman begins caressing the sparrow. Then the man reaches out from across the table and, ever so carefully, so that his fingers do not come into contact with the woman’s hand, caresses the sparrow’s head and neck. In turn, one caress from the woman, one caress from the man … Meanwhile, they talk about their daily problems and about sparrows.

  If you ask Dara, he can explain the thousandfold process of making a film in Iran. First, a permit to make the film must be obtained. Therefore, the screenplay is delivered to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to determine whether it is suitable to be made into a movie or not. Then the competency of the screenplay writer, the competency of the director, the competency of the actors and other participants must be determined and approved by the ministry. After these stages, which can sometimes take up to a year or even longer, the switch to shoot the film is flipped on. But the ordeal is not over yet. After editing, the film must again be delivered to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for the responsible parties to carefully watch it. They will either categorically forbid it from being played on movie screens, or if the filmmaker is lucky, they will issue orders for certain scenes to be revised or cut for it to receive a screening permit. In the final stage, the esteemed responsible parties will even determine which movie theaters the film can be shown at—in movie theaters in the provinces, in movie theaters with tolerable seats, functional projectors, and speakers that allow the audience to actually understand the dialogue between the characters, or in run-down movie theaters with wooden or metal seats, with audio systems that play sound mixes of their own composition, and that reek of natural odors emanating from their bathrooms.

  I think at the time the sparrow film was made, the person responsible for issuing screening permits was that famed blind censor.

  Don’t smile. I am completely serious. During our thousands of years of history, we Iranians have always sought to make the impossible possible. During a particular period when the censorship imposed on movies and television programs was at its most severe, the censor responsible for the state-operated channel 3 was a blind man. To determine whether films or television programs should be aired or archived, one or several people would sit with this blind man and describe the scenes to him. Shot by shot. It was he who would decide whether a particular scene was appropriate for broadcast or not.

  Here I must divulge one of Dara’s secrets. He has participated in two of these meetings.

  How?

  Well, some of us Iranians like to do contradictory things. In the morning we walk down the street shouting, “Long live Mossadeq, Iran’s nationalist prime minister.” In the afternoon we walk up that same street shouting, “Death to Mossadeq, the turncoat traitor.” And just this effortlessly, we help the architects of Operation Ajax, who have given up all hope, watch in total disbelief as their failed coup d’état succeeds at the hands of a group of Iranians … In a recurrence of this Iranian contradiction-making enterprise, after the Islamic revolution a large number of skilled professionals were dismissed from their jobs because it seemed they were not committed to the revolution. To replace them, people who were committed to the revolution but who were not skilled were hired. The plan was that in several years, with the strength of their commitment, they too would become skilled. But many of the new hires were so committed that they never became skilled. Much later, a small number of these people decided to secretly exploit the skills of the dismissed skilled professionals. By coincidence, Dara became party to one of these secret operations. One evening when he had finished painting a house and had received his pay, he decided to treat himself to a water pipe at a café. While smoking it, he was listening to two young men discuss a sparrow-caressing scene in an Iranian film. As was his habit, he could not hold his tongue and joined in the discussion by offering a sharp critique of the film from the famed film theoretician Robin Wood’s perspective. The two young men, who did not understand much of what he was saying, were observing his enthusiasm and soaring excitement in mocking silence. When Dara finished his argument, one of them turned to the other and asked:

  “Hey, Upchuck Essi, did you delight in the gentleman’s pomposities?”

  “The gentleman is a cinema swami. His book smarts are way beyond our Ph.D.’s. I guess he’s John Wayne’s cousin.”

  “And Sophia Loren is his mama.”

  Dara finally realized they were making fun of him. He turned away, and his eyes locked onto a pair of eyes with a strange look in them. The man, together with a burly companion who had the appearance of a bodyguard, was sitting at the next table.

  He said:

  “Brother, you seem to know a thing or two about cinema.”

  “A little.”

  “Come to the television station tomorrow, channel 3. I have work for you.”

  “Sir! They will not let me into the television station building. My name is on the blacklist.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Dara M.”

  “Come tomorrow morning at eleven and tell the guard your name is M. Dara. From now on that is what your name will be at the television station … Don’t forget! If you slip up and give them your real name, I’ll get into trouble. As of this minute you are my expert on cinematic affairs.”

  The man got up, he gestured for his bodyguard to pay for M. Dara’s water pipe as well. He put his hand on the bodyguard’s shoulder, and Dara, with his jaw hanging, watched them leave. Upchuck Essi turned to his friend and said:

  “You see! Didn’t I tell you John Wayne is the gentleman’s cousin? He pulled a few strings and got him a job … And look at us miserable wretches. Jackie Chan won’t even hire us as the slobs who get beaten to a pulp.”

  Now let us together picture a meeting of the blind censorship supervisor and his group of seeing expert consultants. In this meeting they have to make a decision about an American anti-American film—which these days is not hard to find. The film was recently hunted down by television station detectives after an exhaustive worldwide search. It is scheduled to be broadcast on a public holiday when television stations become charitable and air feature films. The meeting takes place in a small private screening room with magnificent furniture and a very expensive sound system.

  Before the private screening, the expert consultant on matters offensive to morality, says:

  “Sir, I am totally against broadcasting this film.”

  He is asked why. He responds:

  “Because the word ‘dance’ appears in the title. ‘Dance’ is a vulgar and obscene word.”

  Dara, as the expert on cinematic affairs, says:

  “But the title of this film is D
ances with Wolves. There is nothing wrong with dancing with wolves.”

  The expert on matters offensive to morality says:

  “Dancing is dancing. Do you think Iranians will think of dancing with wolves when they see or hear the word ‘dances’? They will immediately think of Arabic belly dancing. The Westernized ones will think of the tango, and the minute they think of dancing, they will start dancing … The burden of their sin is on your shoulders, brother.”

  The expert on anti-American affairs says:

  “But in this film they show how wonderful and civilized the Indians were and how savage the Americans were. We have to broadcast this film so that the people of Iran realize that, without us, the Americans will either massacre them or banish them to parched wastelands in America.”

  The blind censorship supervisor, whom we will call Mr. X, says:

  “It seems you have all watched this film many times without me. Now play it and tell me what you see.”

  They play the film. Shot by shot they have to press PAUSE and explain every detail of the film and every action of its characters. They even describe facial and hand gestures.

  Mr. X, who unlike his experts is well versed in English, has no difficulty understanding the film’s dialogue; his problem is with the sound effects.

  “What was that sound?”

  They explain that it was the howling of a wolf.

  “Are you sure? I’ve heard that sound in some of the dirty sexy films. Brutish men howl like that. Look carefully deep into the scene and see if there is some filthy action going on somewhere in the background.”

  They rewind and watch carefully. No, fortunately there is nothing going on in the background. They continue playing the film and describing it to Mr. X, until the film’s first woman appears on the screen. With the first shot of the woman, the expert on matters offensive to morality yells: