Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  Sinbad says:

  “My good lady, Iranian tea is most certainly a good tea, but it has lost in the advertising arena, and its name has been tarnished. When I was a vice president at the bureau, I ordered that only Iranian tea be brewed and served there. I even tried to make sure that the employees didn’t drink non-Iranian tea at home.”

  While speaking these words, Sinbad tries to memorize the name and address of the producer of the Two-Sword-labeled premium Indian-English tea printed on the box. He’s thinking that he may also be clever at importing tea. There are many common factors between pencils and tea, and, of course, there are no common factors between Sinbad and those charlatan merchants who sell third-rate Iranian tea, packaged in boxes with Indian writing and the Two-Sword label printed on them, at exorbitant prices on the black market.

  Sinbad says:

  “Miss Sara, why are you so quiet tonight?”

  Since Sinbad’s arrival, Sara constantly sees Dara’s innocent face in front of her. But once in a while she does feel like taking a peek at Sinbad’s face and his beautiful beard. Of all the features on Sinbad’s face, Sara likes his eyes the most. From these eyes, the agony of years of poverty, deprivation, and toil have not yet been erased. Sinbad, in their only private conversation in this house, has candidly poured his heart out about his childhood and about growing up without a father, and he has told her that he is not one of those nouveau riche people blinded by wealth.

  Sara says:

  “I was thinking.”

  “Can you share some of your thoughts with me?”

  “As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask your opinion. Surely you are aware that a few days ago there were demonstrations and clashes in front of the university.”

  “I did hear something about it.”

  “What do you think of those students?”

  Sara’s parents both begin to cough.

  Sara tells them:

  “Please don’t cut me off with your coughs.”

  This is the first time Sara has dared address her parents in this manner.

  Deep in my ear I hear Mr. Petrovich’s voice:

  “You see! This rudeness is the result of Sara’s forbidden and clandestine love affair. You see what sin does to people’s personalities? This is only the beginning. If your story continues like this, this ignorant girl will wreck and ruin her life with her own hands. Give her a stern warning.”

  But instead, Sara’s mother has dragged her husband to the kitchen to give him a stern warning.

  “How many times have I told you not to buy these cheap pastries? You have embarrassed us. Run out and buy a box of the finest pastries … and I’ll see how I can shut Sara up. This ignorant girl will wreck and ruin her life, and ours, with her own hands.”

  Laughing, she returns to the living room and says:

  “Oh dear, Mr. Sinbad, don’t touch that pastry. Sara’s father just went out to buy pastries that you would like.”

  Sinbad obediently puts the pastry back on his plate but continues his conversation with Sara:

  “… for this reason, I think if I were a student, I too would participate in the demonstrations. I truly respect them. They are the assets of the revolution. If you are one of these students, then on my behalf, please …”

  Sara’s mother quickly interrupts him:

  “Sir, what are you saying? My daughter is by no means part of that group of misguided students.”

  Sara dolefully says:

  “In fact, this time my mother is correct. I am not one of them.”

  “In any case, if you ever talk to them, tell them that many of the country’s leaders are aware of the problems and issues that have angered them and that they too are distressed. But for the time being, given that we are in the throes of an outwardly cold yet fiery war with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Israel, it is not wise or prudent for them to create disturbances and provide publicity hype for Western media and the opponents of the revolution living abroad.”

  I am positive Mr. Petrovich will like this sentence.

  But Sara, contrary to my wishes and expectations, says:

  “For years everyone has been told to keep quiet, to not criticize, to not object, with the same excuses of war and conflict with worldwide imperialism and the opponents of the revolution …”

  I, without Sara’s permission, cross out this sentence, and to avoid having to write the rest of her comments, I leave their house. Outside, I see Sara’s father, who, instead of running to the pastry shop, is standing frozen in place with a petrified look on his face. Right next to the front door, a hunchback midget is sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall with his legs spread apart and his lifeless eyes fixed on his thighs. Scared that someone may walk by and see the corpse next to the front door of his house, Sara’s father frantically looks around. I tap him on the shoulder and point to Sinbad’s car that shines like a diamond parked among all the old dilapidated cars. Sara’s father understands that because Sinbad is a wealthy and influential man, he can easily get rid of the midget.

  It doesn’t take too much effort for a writer to open the trunk of a car belonging to a character in his story. Incidentally, since the age of sixteen, I have longed to have a late-model BMW, and I confess that I, like many others, have a BMW complex. In any case, it takes me all of five seconds to take a screwdriver out of my pocket and break the lock on the trunk. I leave the trunk open, and as I walk away, with that same screwdriver, I scratch an end-to-end line along the side of the car. I whistle as I go so that Sara’s father can do the sensible thing without the inconvenience of a witness. Even if Dara still doesn’t know why he always carries his grandmother’s silk handkerchief in his pocket, I now understand why, this morning, I involuntarily put a screwdriver in my pocket as I left the house.

  Now I have something important to do. I must somehow cross paths with Mr. Petrovich. Just last night, as I was writing, I put my head down on my desk to rest my eyes a little. There was a large poster of Dostoyevsky on the wall behind me. In this famous painting of the writer’s bust, Dostoyevsky’s glazed and insanity-stricken eyes stare at some point outside the painting’s frame. I, with my eyes closed, was struggling to see Dara’s sad face after he hears about Sara’s suitor. Suddenly, I thought I heard the sound of a glass object grinding inside a dry and gritty cavity. I swung around and saw that Dostoyevsky’s eyes had turned toward my handwritten pages and were reading what I had written from over my shoulder. But those eyes were neither glazed nor tortured, and they seemed more familiar than Dostoyevsky’s eyes. I froze; I realized that the eyes belonged to none other than Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov; in other words, that same high priest and investigator of the trial of Jesus who, with the most precise scholastic reasoning, somehow accuses Jesus of sedition and sentences him to death.

  If only all the horrors in the world were this simple and unimaginative. No, those were not the eyes of the Grand Inquisitor. Drained, I slumped back in my chair. I turned the pages of my story over and said:

  “How are you, Mr. Petrovich?”

  I woke up. I looked at my watch. My eyes had closed for only a few seconds. I was relieved that the scene was only a fleeting nightmare. But my joy was short-lived. I noticed that the cigarette I had been holding was stubbed out and lay crushed in the ashtray. I never stub out my cigarettes because they usually burn to the end sitting in the ashtray and snuff out, or I extinguish them gently and with respect. Just then I remembered that on the border of sleep and wakefulness, I had sensed someone behind me. He had leaned forward and in a fatherly manner had taken the cigarette out from between my fingers, and while reading the last page of my story and its crossed-out sentences, he had crushed it in the ashtray with disgust …

  That night, after scratching Sinbad’s car, I quickly walked to a state-run cultural center where, as an exception, they had allowed an Iranian poet to give a lecture. As I had expected, Mr. Petrovich was there. He was sitting in the last row
, and with eyes that could read deep into people’s minds he was staring at the face of Iran’s olden-days poet. The poet’s speech was about censorship. For five minutes, in a gentle and edifying tone, he spoke about the harms of censorship, and then he announced that he had recently made a great discovery. A discovery that would see contemporary Iranian literature rapidly gain fame throughout the world, get translated into different languages, produce best sellers, and, at last, secure the Nobel Prize, if not for him, then for another Iranian poet or writer. This great poet’s discovery was that censorship drives a poet or a writer to abstain from superficiality and to instead delve into the layers and depths of love and relationships and achieve a level of creativity that Western poets and writers cannot even dream of.

  I had opted to sit where I was sure to be in Mr. Petrovich’s field of vision. Toward the end of the lecture, when I felt the weight of his eyes on the back of my neck, I knew my plan had worked. After the lecture, I leisurely left the hall. Tehran had again lost track of time, and the ghosts of past winters had laid siege to the city—it was snowing. Large snow -flakes, not blackened by soot, filled the footprints of passersby who had passed by on the fallen snow, and I knew that soon they would fill my footprints, too. Have you ever listened to the sound of your footsteps on snow? Isn’t it mysterious? Isn’t there a measure of crushing and being crushed in it?

  I had been walking for scarcely ten minutes when I heard Mr. Petrovich call me from behind.

  “Where are you going?”

  By now my hair had turned whiter than forty-nine years warranted, and consequently, the snow covering my hair made little change in my appearance. Yet, it seemed as though time had left Mr. Petrovich untouched, except for his eyes, which had become sharper and more chastising. I stood still while he caught up with me.

  “I don’t know. I was just walking. Maybe there is a sandwich shop open and I can have some dinner.”

  “Then you must have been making fun of the government directive that forces cafés and restaurants to close at eleven o’clock.”

  I admire Mr. Petrovich’s ability to read people’s hidden thoughts. It is an ability far superior to the sorrow writers feel when incredulously they manage to read a few seconds of the hidden thoughts of the one they love.

  I said:

  “You said it, not me.”

  He laughed.

  “Forget it, Mr. Writer! Wise up! You who consider yourself to be so clever because you can divert people’s thoughts away from subjects that you don’t like, and toward subjects that you do like, should put all your cleverness to work when you are with me. Don’t make pointless comments and don’t tell stupid lies … Tell me, why did you come to the cultural center tonight? I know you don’t like this poet guy. Did you want to see me?”

  Only then did I realize what a cold and dark night it was.

  Most of the streetlamps were out, and most of the windows were dark. There were only the sounds of our feet and the whish of the falling snow.

  “How is your story coming along?”

  “Sometimes it moves along, sometimes it falls down. When it falls, I fall with it.”

  “Last week I was having lunch with a friend who works at one of the sensitive ministries, and our talk dragged on to you writers. Have you heard the latest joke about writers?”

  I couldn’t hide my delight at learning that Mr. Petrovich is keen on jokes, too. In the light from a window, I saw a torn piece of carpet on the sidewalk. The snow was coating its shades of azure and crimson.

  “It has often happened, and will often happen, that one of you, thinking he is smarter than us, secretly writes something or hides an innuendo in his writings, and then he is thrilled thinking that he has pulled a fast one. Up to this point it isn’t funny. What’s funny is that we know all along what he has done or is doing, but we don’t react, we let him do what he wants. In other words, we let him assume we are stupid. Sometimes, without his knowledge, we even help him put his plan into action … Which one of us do you think is smarter in this intelligence contest?”

  “But the writer doesn’t have anything to hide, because at the end, all he wants is to have his work published. I think writers are the most naked people in the world.”

  “Stop it, stop it… You want to play mind games with me, too?! There are some writers who send their writings overseas, supposedly in secret, to have them published under cowardly pseudonyms in periodicals and on Web sites opposed to the revolution; there are other writers who pretend to write a harmless love story, and by taking advantage of the innocence of love, they hide political inferences behind symbols and metaphors. But I am talking about writers who are even more clever.”

  I realized that although Mr. Petrovich is still as mistrusting of literature as he was in those bygone years, his knowledge has broadened.

  I said:

  “In my opinion, if a writer has any objective other than writing a beautiful story, he will not become a good writer.”

  “Excellent. That is exactly what my argument is. I say, sit down and write nice stories, stories that will make your country proud. Tell me, do you want to give a lecture about your thoughts on this subject at the cultural center? We can invite a large crowd, and the next day nice critiques of your theory will appear in newspapers and magazines. You’ll become famous.”

  “No. Not at all. First of all, the moment I voice my opinion, some of the ideologically predisposed political activists will start rumors that you have paid me off to encourage writers to write shallow, nonprotesting, noncommitted stories. Second, I think a perfect and beautiful story is the most dangerous story.”

  “I think you are a really stupid writer.”

  “Thank you. I use the term ‘dimwit’ to describe myself.”

  “Look here. There is a place where a large number of literature experts—real experts, not these second-string critics—are busy working seriously and meticulously. They know all of you better than you know yourselves. Even more important, they have thoroughly researched your private lives and the style, syntax, and structure of your stories, and they have input their findings into special software that we purchased from a Western country. If you write a story and publish it under a pseudonym, the next day the expert responsible for your work will be able to determine that it is your work, from its words, style, and structure. If he doesn’t want to go to too much trouble, he will simply input some information in the computer program, such as a few key words, and extract your name.”

  I was biting my lips for fear that in my incredible state of shock I would make a sound. It was snowing more heavily, and the cold wind gusting from the end of the street was beating the snowflakes against my face. Mr. Petrovich chuckled sarcastically and continued:

  “Now you are probably thinking how important and precious you writers must be for such an elaborate system to have been set up for you.”

  “No … Quite the opposite. I am sorry, but I am actually amused that all these experts, systems, and software are for a bunch of miserable writers and poets, ninety percent of whom are completely preoccupied with how they are going to feed their family and come up with tomorrow’s rent.”

  “You see! You see! Then when I call you stupid, you take offense; you make fun of me and say that I should call you dimwit … Dimwit! These experts are only working on your works as an exercise. The main stage of their work will be to examine and identify works by the famous and important writers of the world … Forget it. All I meant to say is that, after all these years, you still don’t know your best critic. If he were to publish his reviews and critiques of your work, you would very quickly become famous. Who knows, you may even win the Nobel Prize. Do you want me to arrange a meeting with him?”

  My heart sank. I said:

  “No, please. I am not after fame at all. Honestly, I mostly write for my own pleasure.”

  “Wasn’t it only two weeks ago that you were telling your friend on the telephone that if you get the one-million-dollar reward for t
he Nobel Prize, the first thing you will do is buy a Porsche and drive along the mountain roads in Italy?”

  My knees gave way and I fell. It was a good opportunity to catch my breath and collect my thoughts. I said:

  “Ah, this damned snow … I’m sorry. I slipped.”

  Looming over me, Mr. Petrovich stared at me for a while and then reached down to help me get up. I said:

  “Sir, my friend and I were making fun of those people who are dying to win the Nobel Prize. First of all, I love BMWs, not Porsches. Second, ever since I saw how jealous people scratch BMWs with screwdrivers, I have been thinking that it is better for me to fantasize about having a Harley-Davidson instead.”

  “An American motorcycle?”

  “Harley-Davidson is American?”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  “So I’ll exchange it for a Yamaha.”

  We were crossing the bridge where Sara and Dara had torn up the spell for hatred. By then I was covered with snow and freezing. But as usual, Mr. Petrovich was striding along looking dignified and stately. I could see the snowflakes changing direction as soon as they reached his proximity. The end of the bridge was swallowed up in fog. I asked:

  “Do you think Dara is a good name for a fictitious character?”

  “It depends on the character. Is he the protagonist, antagonist, or narrator? But if you are looking for a name that in translation would be pronounceable for a foreign reader, then why don’t you name him Daniel?”

  My knees froze. A few feet away, suspended in the air, menacing clusters of fog were waiting. There was a hint of purple somewhere deep inside them. I wanted to turn around and walk away without saying goodbye. But Mr. Petrovich’s presence had robbed me of all power of will and strength of anger. The bitter chill crept up my sides and in between my teeth. We entered the fog clusters. Now there was again only the sound of our feet and the whish of the snow still falling. A shadow darker than the night approached us. A frail and haggard figure. It blocked our way. He first looked at Mr. Petrovich, and then he fixed his eyes, two cubes of very old ice, on my eyes. It was him! The same man from beneath whose cloak many of the world’s writers have emerged: Gogol’s Akaky Akakievich.