“…”
While listening to the mournful sound of a sitar, during moments when his eyes can see straight, Dara sees the head and shoulders of a man wearing a hat made of long wriggling fur and a Turkmen fur coat on the television screen. Like all Iranian traditional musicians, the man is most likely sitting cross-legged on the floor. As is their custom, he has closed his eyes and gently moves his shoulders to the rhythm of the music. But at this moment of half consciousness, this familiar image seems strange to Dara. The camera does not under any circumstances move below the man’s shoulders, and when the man raises his arms even slightly, the camera quickly moves up. Because of the movements of his head and shoulders, because of the intoxicated or gratified manner in which he has closed his eyes, Dara imagines that the man is engaged in an unbecoming and rude act with his hands. The truth is that years after the revolution, generally speaking, all forms of music were banned, as was ownership of musical instruments. However, there came a time when it was decided that traditional Iranian music, which has two-thousand-year-old roots, should be more or less allowed. This decision came under strong opposition by many fanatics, yet once in a while, from the crooks and curves of our television sets, we the people of Iran would hear the melody of our heartrending traditional music. Still, the heads of government-run television stations deemed it unethical to show musical instruments and strictly censored these images. After some time, television cameramen developed such expertise in their vocation that they could film any musician without his instrument ever appearing in the frame. That is why musicians often look like they are in the process of committing an act compared to which the unethical playing of a musical instrument seems innocent.
Dara does not know whether to laugh or to cry at his discovery of this imagery.
An hour later, he opens the window in his room. It is still snowing, but because of the particular state he is in, Dara does not feel the cold at all. He takes a fistful of snow from the window ledge and makes a small snowball. Gently and delicately he makes the ball perfectly round. He caresses it, and then with a silent holler he pitilessly hurls it at Tehran.
It is among my powers as a writer to fly this snowball above the streets and buildings of the city until it finds, and arrives at, this moment in my story:
Outside Sara’s house, Sinbad sees the scratch on his car. He looks around angrily and curses out loud.
“Fuck whoever scratched my car!”
But you are wrong, that snowball that is coming and coming does not come to hit him smack on the head.
Ask:
Then where does the snowball go?
For me to answer:
In my dear country, so many strange things happen that I do not need to resort to such wishy-washy ploys of magical realism. By the way, during the past quarter of a century, so many divine and nondivine disasters, including earthquakes, torrential rains, and invasions by legions of frogs, bombs, missiles, and fighter jets, have befallen the people of Iran that they truly have no need for the crashing of a snowball. Of course, I only say this because I really don’t know when and where that dangerous snowball will land.
Therefore, in no danger at all and without noticing the broken lock on the trunk of his BMW, Sinbad utters an unvulgar censure at whoever scratched his car and starts the engine. Half a mile down the street, he notices that the trunk is open. He pulls over, gets out of the car, and discovers the gift that someone has left for him in the trunk …
Seeing that innocent and broken hunchback midget in the trunk, a
succession of obscenities burst out of Sinbad’s mouth.
“…”
Please fill in the three dots yourself. I don’t like to write curse words that somehow reflect on me, too.
At midnight, Dara at last sees the blinking icon on his computer screen inviting him for a chat.
Dara, who is having a difficult time distinguishing the keys on the keyboard and is constantly correcting his misspellings, writes:
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you have a suitor?”
“Because you never asked.”
As far as I can remember, I have from the start written the Sara of my story with a sad and sober personality. I cannot figure out at what point in the story she developed such a sense of humor.
Dara writes:
“I am in no mood for jokes.”
“I’m not joking.”
“I have suffered enough torture in my life.”
“I know.”
“Don’t torture me.”
“I love you.”
“You are lying.”
“Yes.”
“Who is this guy?”
“I don’t know where he first saw me, but one day my father said he had met a very important and wealthy gentleman while waiting in line to buy subsidized rice. They quickly became friends and Father invited him home for tea. I was suspicious from the start and found it strange that this gentleman, with all his wealth, would stand on line for three hours to buy subsidized rice. The third time he came to our house he proposed to me and I knew I had guessed correctly—all along his intention had been to meet me. Tonight was the seventh time he came over. My parents insist that I accept his proposal, but I have not given him an answer … Please don’t ask me what I want to do. I don’t know.”
Dara drunkenly wrote:
“What am I to you?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No.”
“The Dara I know is not this stupid.”
“Your love has made me stupid.”
“Your love too has made me so stupid that I still have not said yes to Mr. Sinbad so that seven days later I can fly with him to Spain.”
“His name is Sinbad?”
“Did you expect it to be Aladdin? You are Aladdin. Except you have no magic lamp and no flying carpet to take me to Spain with.”
“It seems you really like Spain.”
“I have always liked Spain. Spain has Lorca.”
“It has Buñuel, too.”
“It also has self-righteous lovers who kidnap brides from weddings.”
“So you want to say yes to him?”
“To Lorca?”
“No. To Sinbad.”
“What do you think?”
Here, I am confronted with the question that if we Iranian writers cannot be expected to write a beautiful love story because of Mr. Petrovich’s presence, then why is it that in countries where love stories are not censored so few good ones have been written during the past several decades? Could it be that today’s world no longer grants writers inspiration for love stories?
Dara wrote:
“I think you want to marry him.”
“So who are you in the middle of all of this?”
“A snowman.
A plaything.”
“What if it is you who sees me as a toy to be played with?”
“In this world, only those who have the means can play … I have nothing, I am not a player.”
After writing this sentence, Dara angrily turns off his computer.
It was thus that Sara and Dara had their first fight. Dara thought, It was all a game. They are right to say that no woman should ever be trusted. She wanted me so that she could make her Sinbad jealous … I was stabbed in the back again … Dara swore that he would no longer give Sara even a word’s worth of his thoughts. And Sara thought, I will no longer give him even a word’s worth of my thoughts. He was interrogating me. As if he owns me. They’re right to say that if you let them, men will actually believe they own you.
I sometimes think Sara sneaks peeks at the sentences I write about Dara and his thoughts. If my suspicions are correct, I will have to somehow agree with Dara that I should not trust the female characters of my stories. In any case, in this segment I needed narrative tension. Tell me, is it even possible for a love story not to have a fight between the two lovers? Or have you ever seen a love in which there
has been no jealousy and misunderstanding? If you know of such a love, please let me know so that I can go and fall in love with that love and write about it. I am certain that it will turn out to be a beautiful love story, and perhaps because of it there will be one less suicide bomber.
Five nights have passed since Sara and Dara’s screamless and shoutless fight. During this time, they have not contacted each other at all. On the fifth night, Sara for the very first time accepts Sinbad’s invitation to dinner. Promptly at eight in the evening, Sinbad pulls up in front of Sara’s house in his BMW. Sara walks out. Behind her, her parents appear in the doorway and wave at Sinbad. Sinbad waves back. From the doorway, Sara’s mother yells:
“Be careful. Don’t drive too fast.”
Both Sinbad and Sara understand the underlying meaning and the hidden warning of this sentence.
As does Mr. Petrovich.
Sara’s father, still waving, yells:
“Sara, tell Mr. Sinbad all about the excellent grades you have received this term.”
Both Sara and Sinbad understand the underlying meaning and the hidden advice of this sentence.
Sara walks up to Sinbad to shake hands with him. But Sinbad does not extend his hand. He says:
“It is not proper for you and I to shake hands before we get married.”
Sinbad truly believes in the religious principle that a man and woman who are not married and who are not immediate relatives should not shake hands. But even if Sinbad did not want to abide by this important principle, the experience of that film director who won the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival has been an important lesson for him.
If you are curious, ask:
What in the world is the story of this Iranian film director?
For me to answer:
Several years ago, when on the night of the awards ceremony this Iranian director’s name was announced and he was invited to go and receive his Golden Palm, up on the stage he came face-to-face with none other than Catherine Deneuve, who even at her present age is beautiful and enchanting.
Catherine Deneuve held out her hand to shake hands with the Iranian director. The Iranian director, in observance of social courtesy, shook her hand. Then Catherine Deneuve, as is customary, kissed him on the cheek. That night the happy Iranian director either did or did not go back to his hotel room. In any case, the next day he was told that he had been harshly criticized in a few government-owned newspapers in Iran for having shaken hands with a woman outside the circle of immediate kin and, even worse, for having made his cheeks available to the lips of a woman who in her films has revealed her naked body. The criticisms were growing stronger by the day, and it was claimed that this director makes films to the liking of Westerners and intentionally portrays the Iranian public as miserable, destitute, and suicidal, and that he has humiliated Iran. The rebukes had their effect. On the night that the now-famous director was returning to Iran, a group of fervent Muslims gathered at the airport in Tehran so that, instead of welcoming him with flowers for having achieved this international honor for their country, they could punish him with punches and kicks and perhaps shove a totally Iranian palm up his ass.
However, the ending of this story, unlike most Iranian stories, is a happy one. The Iranian police, aware that if this director was beaten up, the next day media worldwide would make fun of Iran, secretly took him out of the airport and escorted him home. As a result of this rescue mission, a few years later this director invited Juliette Binoche, the beautiful French actress with hidden sparrowlike charms, to Iran. Ms. Binoche gladly accepted the invitation and arrived in Tehran wearing a coverall and a headscarf, and she gave tens of photographs to Iranian photographers as gifts. The chance that the lady has read André Malraux’s Anti-Memoirs is far less than the chance that you, my dear readers, have read it. In this book Malraux has an amazing and even maddening description of the Lascaux caves in France and the paintings by prehistoric men on their walls. He so expertly illustrates the fantastical paintings that we the readers truly see the prehistoric hunters shooting their arrows at the mammoths, and we fall captive to the magic of those drawings and Malraux’s words. In another section of the book, Malraux describes the occasion of a speech he gave in one of the French colonies. In this scene, Malraux, as France’s minister of culture and not as a writer active in the resistance movement to free France from the yoke of the Nazis, stands facing the outcry of those opposed to French colonialism and stubbornly continues delivering his speech. Then, from here and there, arrows are shot at him. But the French Malraux is brave enough to ignore the deadly arrows and to finish his speech. Therefore, when the French transform a great writer such as Malraux into a minister of culture, it should not come as any great surprise to see Juliette Binoche don a headscarf and coverall and get introduced in Iranian media as an actress’s actress.
With the aid of your intellect, connect these two illustrations of Malraux with my remarks about Ms. Binoche’s trip to Iran and draw your own special conclusion.
Where were we?
Sinbad apologizes for not shaking hands with the headscarf-clad Sara. Just then, Sara sees the end-to-end scratch on Sinbad’s BMW.
“Oh! Who did this?”
“I don’t know. The night I came to your house some obsessed moron did it.”
“You see all kinds of people in this day and age … It looks really bad.”
Sinbad sighs and thinks, I wish this were my only problem that night.
Given that she knows Dara wanders around her house, Sara thinks this must be his handiwork. She thinks, I didn’t know Dara was this obsessed.
Sinbad takes Sara to a revolving restaurant on the top floor of a high-rise office building. People like Sinbad who belong to the nouveau riche class of Iranian society and, because of their government-granted import monopolies, have amassed wealth that no Western industrialist could ever dream of have no fear of the patrols from the Campaign Against Social Corruption. Even if they commit murder and are arrested, with a single telephone call to a government official their record will be cleared. At the most, they will be obliged to pay blood money to the victim’s family, which will be no more than a few hours’ income for them. Therefore, they do as they wish, of course, while fully adhering to the codes of Islamic dress and appearance. After the recent snow and rain, Tehran’s chronically smoggy air is clean, and from the floor-to-ceiling windows the lights of the city’s tall and short buildings and the river of headlights along its streets can be seen. To start, Sara orders a real orange juice–colored orange juice and Sinbad orders a Coca-Cola also in its original color.
Sinbad says:
“Until a few months ago, this restaurant only had a few customers because it is so expensive. But ever since it was rumored that some of the waiters serve bottles of mineral water filled with vodka to special clients, every night there are ten new customers.”
“Do they really bring it to the tables?”
“Bring what? Orange juice?”
Sara laughs.
“Oh, stop playing with me! I mean what you mentioned.”
“No, dear, it’s just a rumor.”
But apparently the rumor is so widespread that the poor waiters look really frustrated and sweaty. Each time they pass by certain tables, the customers stare at them and wink …
Sara says:
“Maybe the owner started the rumor himself to attract more customers.”
“I hope not, because they will shut down the restaurant, and we won’t be able to come here anymore.”
So far, Sinbad has not revealed to me when and how he learned his subtle and witty approach to women. Like all Iranians, he also always has a few new jokes about government leaders up his sleeve and makes Sara really laugh.
The restaurant slowly turns—of course, with the occasional clanking of its worn-out engine, which is probably among the items embargoed by the United States and which cannot be purchased on the black market as easily as one can purchase centrifuges for
enriching uranium. Now the snow-covered Damavand Peak in the north of Tehran is in Sara’s view. Not the poet who died seven hundred years ago, but the poet who died some one hundred years ago, has likened this conic volcanic peak to a beast in chains above Tehran.
Sinbad is talking about the beauties of his villa on top of a tall hill facing the turquoise Mediterranean Sea. Sara sees herself standing next to the pool of that villa looking out at the horizon across the sea. From somewhere, like a film score, a guitar is playing Fernando Sor’s Étude 22. A white bird, with the blue of the sea reflecting under its wings, flies closely by. The wind blows in Sara’s long hair. It caresses the naked skin of her arms and thighs. And from the other side, from deep within the young flesh of her body, the pleasant and suppressed sense of freedom and intoxication flows toward the pores of her skin. But at the height of this euphoric sensation, Sara feels she is missing something. Suddenly she knows what; it is floating in the sky above the Mediterranean. A white cloud that looks just like Dara’s head … Sara fixes her eyes on Dara’s cloudy eyes and feels how much she wants him to be standing there beside her on that hilltop.
Sinbad walks out of the glittering white villa and asks her a question. The villa disappears. A frustrated waiter walks by.
“Did you say something?”
Sinbad stares intently at Sara’s face.
“I asked you what you were thinking about.”
I am beginning to suspect that perhaps Sinbad keeps company with Mr. Petrovich, because he is constantly asking Sara what she is thinking.
“Nothing.”
“Stop it, girl. It’s impossible for someone to not think about anything … Tell me. I promise I will not tell your parents.”
Censoring an Iranian Love Story Page 19