Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  He asked:

  “Have you seen the thief who stole my cloak?”

  BITTER WATER

  On this snowy night, Dara is sitting at the window of his room feeling sad. He feels he was a small pile of snow that Sara with her beautiful hands had delicately and compassionately made into a small snowman, she had caressed it, and then, squish, she had crushed it under her foot. Hearing the sound of the snowman being squashed, Dara angrily punches the wall and curses at himself.

  “You fucking dimwit!”

  Right here, I come face-to-face with another problem in writing my love story. In stories that go to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to receive publishing permits, there should be no foul language uttered by the characters, especially popular curse words associated with the primary sexual organs and auxiliary sexual organs. Now imagine that in one of your stories you have a foulmouthed thug, and you want to develop this character. Let’s suppose you have reached a scene in Iran in which the thug character has grabbed a polite character by the collar and is picking a fight with him. What would you do?

  In an age when every day stressed and troubled people in all corners of the world get into fights over small and petty issues and shout vulgarities at each other, and bystanders become their censors, characters in Iranian stories, in the most critical moments, in climaxes such as fights and brawls, and even on occasions when they are killing each other, can only go so far as: Rude idiot… Snitch… Jackass … Cheeky … I’m going to slap you … This is in direct contrast to American films in which during similarly critical climaxes, or even in the course of revelries and romantic interludes, words such as Shit… Asshole … Son of a bitch … and Fuck you … fly from the lips of characters to the farthest limits of the movie screen. I know polite American television channels have found an effective method of censoring these foul words even when dealing with rap songs. It is that bleep sound that suddenly pops up in the middle of what the character or the rapper is saying. These bleeps may be effective in movies, and they may render rap songs more acceptable, but they are not a solution for us Iranian writers. How in the world can we put the blare of a bleep in the mouths of characters in our stories?

  Please do not tell me that those three infamous dots “…” will solve the problem.

  No, they will not… Ask me why and I will say:

  The use of these three dots is very dangerous to any story. In fact, it is like gaining access to nuclear energy with which one can either produce electricity to light streetlamps so that ghosts from the stories of Gogol and Bram Stoker, and ghosts from the One Thousand and One Nights, cannot go roaming around so easily, or use it to build a nuclear bomb. Readers, however, are generally not interested in lighting lamps on streets inhabited by ghosts. I mean the moment a reader, especially an Iranian one, sees these three villainous dots, a reaction similar to the chain reaction triggered by nuclear fission of the uranium atom takes place in his mind, and it results in the release of terrifying nuclear energy. When readers see these three dots, control of their imagination is no longer in the hands of the writer, nor is it in the hands of Mr. Petrovich. For example, it is possible that at some point Sinbad will discover the existence of our love story’s Dara and will realize that Dara’s love is what is keeping Sara from saying yes to his marriage proposal. One night, Sinbad could grab Dara in a dark corner of his neighborhood, throw him against the wall, and say:

  “Hey chicken! Get out of Sara’s life or I will have you sent to where even the Angel of Death won’t find you.”

  Dara could sneer and say:

  “…”

  And the writer’s intended words would be “to my balls,” but the rude reader could interpret the three dots as “tell my balls to go play racquetball with your ass,” which in Iran, even for homosexuals, would be a vulgar insult… Or Dara could tell Sara:

  “Open your … and …”

  The deleted sentence would be:

  “Open your thirsty lips and suppress my desire.”

  Meaning, for example, let your lips tell me that our heavenly love should not turn into pure lust. However, the reader’s nuclear-enriched imagination will reconstruct the sentence as such:

  “Open your thirsty thighs and with your pink scissors circumcise me once again!”

  Or the reverse, Dara could write to Sara:

  “In the glow of the candle, hand … shadow … flames …”

  The romantic reader could assume the sentence to be:

  “In the glow of the candle, I will wrap my hand around the shadow of your waist, I will dance the tango with you, desiring the blue of the Mediterranean I shall kiss the shadow of your wine-stained lips, I will become a shadow, I will dissolve in your shadow, we shall fly to the Mediterranean where on the beach, on the golden sand, we shall light a fire with our celestial love, and in the blaze of its flames our shadows will part, we will find physical form, we will become two red roses with our stems intertwined, our thorns piercing each other, dancing in the breeze.”

  And Stalin could read the same three dots as:

  “In the glow of the candle, I write by hand the draft of the antigovernment communiqué as shadows of spies lurk behind the window, and tomorrow the flames of the people’s rage and hatred shall reduce this tyrannical regime to ashes, and on the bloody eve of victory I know what I must do with you dissenting writers and poets, traitors to the doctrine of the revolution.”

  It is thus that Iranian writers have become the most polite, the most impolite, the most romantic, the most pornographic, the most political, the most socialist realist, and the most postmodern writers in the world. I just don’t know in which school of story writing I should categorize Iranian stories in which thugs, similar to the gravedigger in Hamlet, speak literary and philosophical words.

  Therefore, when Dara curses at himself with the same words that I have uttered in front of Mr. Petrovich, I cross out “fucking dimwit” and I write:

  Dara punches the wall and says to himself:

  “You idiot!”

  He is only then realizing that Sara is a very complicated person. But still he cannot believe that she would conceal the existence of her suitor from him. The first thought that crosses the mind of a man in love, such as Dara, is that his beloved has duped him, and now, to make her wealthy suitor jealous and to push him to quickly set a wedding date, she is talking about this poor lovelorn man and they are laughing at him …

  The truth is that I too am surprised that Sara, this character that I have created, has suddenly become so complicated. But I tell myself, “You are a nobody in this world. According to all the religious books, Eve managed to surprise all the angels and Satan, too.”

  In any case, while anxiously waiting for Sara’s telephone call so that he could at least hear an explanation from her own lips, quietly, so that his parents would not wake up, Dara went downstairs from his bedroom on the second floor. This old house has a small front yard surrounded by high walls. In the corner of the yard there is a small flower patch in which an old jasmine bush has grown thick and run deep roots. Ignoring the cold and the falling snow, Dara knelt down beside the jasmine bush and quickly dug through the snow and dirt and pulled out a package wrapped in plastic. Back in his room, he unwrapped the package and took out a bottle half filled with a colorless liquid.

  Right here, as if on a dark snowy night I have walked into a dead-end alley and have run headfirst into the dead-end wall, I run into another problem.

  What successful love story do you know of in which the abandoned and tormented lover who has learned of the presence of a wealthy suitor in his beloved’s life does not knock back a few drinks to console himself? Mr. Petrovich, however, does not under any circumstances allow characters in Iranian stories to drink alcohol—just like all those characters in dubbed foreign films screened in Iran who only order milk or orange juice in bars, and we see bartenders bring them gold-colored milk or burgundy orange juice.

  Mr. X asks:

  “Wh
at color is it?”

  The expert on matters offensive to morality says:

  “It is some shade of brownish gold … some sort of burnt gold … It’s hard to tell. It seems this damned whiskey has a very unique color.”

  The scene in Scent of a Woman in which Al Pacino playing Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade has taken his drink from the flight attendant and has raised it to his lips is frozen on the screen, and the debate continues.

  The expert on matters offensive to morality says:

  “Sir, I told you from the start that this film is not worth deliberating over. It is filled with unethical teachings and vulgar language from start to finish.”

  The expert on cinematic affairs angrily objects:

  “Don’t prejudge the film like this.”

  The expert on matters offensive to morality continues with his protests.

  “The guy keeps saying don’t prejudge, don’t prejudge. My good man! Can’t you see that this film is riddled with problems? And it all starts with its title—Scent of a Woman. We can call it Scent of Eve. This way it will have some religious undertones.”

  “Do you even know what you are saying? Your suggestion will only make the problem twofold. It will be an insult to Eve as well.”

  “Boo! Boo! Brother, what insult? Have you forgotten the hell Eve put us through?”

  The expert on cinematic affairs who has completely lost his temper yells:

  “Please stop! This film is about the tenderness of the human soul, it is about the fact that this miserable blind man …”

  He stops himself the instant he realizes what a horrible thing he has said. But it is too late. Mr. X orders him to be thrown out of the room.

  The screening continues with no rash decisions about the film’s continued existence. Shot by shot all is described to Mr. X, and scene by scene they proceed. Finally, they reach the scene in which Al Pacino sits behind the wheel of a Ferrari and wants to drive around the streets of New York.

  The expert on matters offensive to morality snidely says:

  “These American directors have lost their minds. How could this blind asshole …”

  He immediately realizes that he is repeating the same insult as the expert on cinematic affairs. He corrects himself:

  “If I were in his place, instead of driving a Ferrari, I would sit at the helm of a Topolof airplane and gallivant around the sky.”

  Mr. X says:

  “In that case you wouldn’t be gallivanting for long. Don’t you know that every year two or three of our Topolofs crash?”

  The expert on anti-American affairs says:

  “It would have been a great film if this lieutenant colonel would sit at the helm of an airplane and crash it into a high-rise. Like that …”

  The expert on cinematic affairs, who could not give up watching a good film on the big screen and has all the while continued watching from the narrow opening of the door, can’t hold his tongue and blurts out:

  “As a matter of fact, if those guys had seen this movie, perhaps they would have never killed themselves and so many other innocent people.”

  To ingratiate himself, the expert on matters offensive to morality shouts:

  “Sir! Did you see, sir? This guy didn’t leave … He’s been watching through the door.”

  Fed up, Mr. X says:

  “You just noticed him?! I could hear his breathing all along. Come in and stop all these irrelevant arguments, let’s see what happens in the movie.”

  And the lieutenant colonel, shouting “Hoo-ha,” drives through the intersections. Mr. X, motionless, barely breathing, eyes closed, is sitting at the edge of his seat with his ear turned to the speaker as if it is he who is sitting next to the lieutenant colonel and relishing the speed of the Ferrari instead of that young boy.

  Thus, the Ferrari scene, with no pauses and no explanations, continues up to the point when a police officer stops the lieutenant colonel and asks for his driver’s license. Mr. X leans back in his seat. A green halo has suddenly appeared around his head. With the air of a holy man he speaks out:

  “I think none of you has really understood this film. This film is about the art of seeing. The art of seeing things that are hidden behind the things you see that you don’t see. In a way, this film is in praise of the art of cinema and cinema’s angle of view in that, amid the profusion of clichéd, blind, and paper-thin lives of seemingly seeing people, it can focus on a different life and a strange character … And then with the art of cinema, to show how blind all the drivers, police officers, family members, and school principals are. But in this film, even this different life and this strange character are not what is important. This film is showing us the cinematic art of seeing. If I were this film’s director, I would have named the film Scent of Cinema, or Scent of Art… Play the film again from the beginning and all of you get out, I want to watch it alone.”

  We return to our story and the bitter discussion of alcoholic beverages.

  I remind you that, in general, we Iranians have an affinity for surprising the world. Centuries ago, it was one of our people, a great scientist, who discovered alcohol. And now it is we who have contrived thousands of rules, laws, and means of deterrence to prevent the consumption of alcohol, to such an extent that the toil, trouble, and cost of implementing these laws are far greater than the harm done to society by a bunch of drinking nonbelievers. We may someday do the same with respect to enriching uranium.

  It is in this fashion that, seven hundred years ago, the poet whose ghost we saw at the Internet café time and again used the word “wine” in his poems. In Mr. Petrovich’s estimation, that poet’s wine is a mystical and heavenly wine, and in today’s corrupt world, the likes of me do not deserve to have our stories’ characters drink mystical wine. But this is not all that important to me. What is important is that in Iranian stories, even the most vile, the most malicious, and the most nonbelieving characters are not allowed to have a drink or two to show how wicked they are, not even if they are members of the Iranian Mafia. Not even if they are thugs, professional racketeers, or cutthroats fettered neither by Islam nor by any other human and moral principles. It is thus that characters in Iranian stories not only have no weaknesses and flaws, but year after year they become more saintly.

  Therefore, I will only write:

  Dara feels thirsty. He feels he cannot bear the weight of sorrow and of that big “why” in temperance. He grabs the half-filled glass next to him and gulps it down to the last drop.

  His bitter mouth needs no accompanying taste. In fact, he savors this scorching bitterness; it resembles the bitterness of his existence … Like the slithering of molten lava from a volcano between mountain rocks and its sinking into the sea, hot and bitter, Dara feels that phantasmal liquid slide down his esophagus and wash into his stomach.

  If the intelligent Iranian reader asks me, How did this half-filled glass appear in your story, I will not say, You have turned out to be just like Mr. Petrovich. I have a different answer to offer:

  You intelligent readers only single out and nitpick stories by Iranian writers. Why is it that when you read the story of “Young Goodman Brown,” you don’t criticize its writer and ask him how the devil, dressed in those strange clothes, suddenly appears before Goodman in the forest? Or when Gabriel García Márquez writes that flowers rain on Macondo, why don’t you pounce on him and ask how all those flowers appeared in the sky in his story? Or for that matter, why don’t you ask how it is possible that Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde after he gulps down that bizarre liquid? Now be a little charitable and imagine that this half-full glass was placed next to Dara by that devil in the forest or by Mr. Hyde.

  On the other hand, even the least-intelligent Iranian reader, after reading the last sentence I have written about that scorching bitterness, will realize that Dara is drinking homemade or Russian vodka purchased on the black market. Of course, Mr. Petrovich will realize this, too, but I accept this risk because it is with this glass of vodka th
at I can express the extent of Dara’s despondency.

  To escape his bitter thoughts and suspicions, Dara turns on the decrepit television set in his room and surfs the four channels, desperately hoping that, other than lessons on morality, one of them is broadcasting a program in which he can find some comfort. Finally, on the last channel, he finds a tolerable folk music program. Unlike some Iranians, Dara does not have enough money to buy a secondhand Japanese receiver for some thirty dollars, to buy a satellite dish manufactured in underground Iranian workshops for ten dollars, and to buy an original Iranian cover to hide the dish for yet another ten dollars. When rumors spread that the police use helicopters to identify houses with satellite dishes and raid those homes, the creative and ingenious Iranian mind, which in general is shrewder and quicker to react when it comes to unlawful matters, was quickly activated, and it created the means for hiding large satellite dishes. Because of the summer heat, most Iranian houses have large water-cooled air conditioners on their flat rooftops that during the winter months are protected by tarpaulin covers. Therefore, square wooden frames have been built in the same dimensions as the air conditioners and are placed over the satellite dishes, and specially designed tarpaulin covers are draped over them to make them look like air-conditioning units. Of course, air-conditioning units that remain covered even during the hot summer months … Sometime later, satellite dish owners realized that many of the channels had been jammed, especially those broadcast from overseas by Iranians opposed to the revolution. Again the pioneering Iranian mind, the same mind that built a remarkable car named Peykan, was set in motion and found the means of countering the government-inflicted jams. It was a simple device that had an empty can of beans as its most complicated component. Of course, it was later rumored that the police had purchased highly advanced electronic instruments from Europe that accurately trace houses that receive corruptive and antirevolution satellite airwaves, and they raid those homes. Unfortunately, the ingenuity of us Iranians still does not match the technological advancements of profit-seeking multinational corporations in the West. Until it does, people who have satellite dishes have found no other solution than to resort to an ancient Iranian scheme; to shrug their shoulders and say: