Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  “I was thinking of one of Lorca’s poems.”

  “Is this Lorca Kurdish?”

  “No.”

  “His name sounds Kurdish.”

  “He is Spanish. I really like his poems. They are filled with sun and love and blood.”

  “I’ll go and buy all his books tomorrow. I want to learn and like everything you like.”

  “You won’t find any of them.”

  “Why?”

  “For years translations of his poetry have not received a reprint permit.”

  “No problem. I have friends at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. If this Mr. Lorca writes an application letter, I could perhaps speak to my friends and get the reprint permit for his books.”

  Sara smiles and turns to the window. Now she sees the southern part of Tehran with its tight clusters of light from the small beehivelike houses of the poor and its patches of dark from the immigrant villagers’ hovels. Near the horizon a few flames from Tehran’s oil refinery lick toward the sky.

  At eleven o’clock, Sinbad takes Sara home. The streets of Tehran are slowly emptying of their maddening traffic. On one of these streets, Dr. Farhad is driving back from the free clinic he runs in the poor section of town. Unlike other nights when he would return home tired but with a deep sense of satisfaction, tonight his entire body is stiff with fear and drenched in sweat. The corpse of that hunchback midget is in the trunk of his old car. Someone had secretly left the corpse in the waiting room at his clinic and run off. Dr. Farhad knows that no one, not even the clever Iranian detectives, will believe his innocence. These are terrifying and breathtaking moments for the noble doctor. He can, at any moment, run into a police checkpoint.

  I am not suggesting that the police at checkpoints on Tehran’s streets are searching for the hunchback’s corpse. However, in the process of searching all the exposed and concealed parts of a car, they sometimes ask the driver to get out and they smell his breath; if he has consumed any alcohol they can arrest him, and if the driver has not consumed any alcohol, but happens to have a woman in the car with no documents proving his immediate kinship with her, they can arrest him, and if he has no woman in the car, but they discover cassette tapes or CDs of forbidden Western music, they can arrest him, and if …

  Let us see how Dr. Farhad plans to rid himself of that corpse.

  Dr. Farhad is convinced that he must get the corpse to the northern part of Tehran. He doesn’t want to create any problems for the poor people who live in the southern part of the city—they have neither the means to hire a lawyer nor any contacts in the judicial system. From fear, his heart at times pounds like mad, and at times, nearing a complete freeze, it slows down. As if one of his patients has suffered a heart attack on the operating table, his brain frantically considers hundreds of probabilities and possibilities hoping to find a suitable place to dispose of the corpse that has been bestowed upon him. At this very instant, a brilliant idea sparks in his mind. He remembers one of his close friends, Dr. D….

  I will tell you in secret that Dr. Farhad does not want to leave the hunchback at the front door of a dedicated doctor like himself and run away. He remembers that last year Dr. D., who has a subspecialty in surgery, wanted to publish a book on prostate surgery—the fruit of his years of experience—but a man called Mr. Petrovich did not issue a publishing permit for the book because of one fundamental problem: the image of a pair of surgical scissors on the cover.

  As you can see, our story is at a crossroads. One road leads to Dr. D.’s house and the other to Mr. Petrovich’s office. In the censor-approved text, we have ignited a spark in Dr. Farhad’s mind, and we have sent him in the direction of Dr. D.’s house, but in our confidential pretend text, Dr. Farhad decides instead to drive his old car to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Unfortunately, our story’s events do not unfold as easily as this.

  Dr. Farhad is driving along the dimly lit Bahar Street. Suddenly, he sees the taillights of two cars standing in the middle of the road some two hundred feet ahead, and he sees the shadows of checkpoint officers. He stops breathing. With eyes half blinded by fear, he looks at both sides of the street hoping to find a road or an alley he can turn onto. But the checkpoint police have been wisely handpicked. For a moment he considers turning the steering wheel and going back, but that would be a grave mistake. If he is lucky and the police don’t riddle his car tires with bullets, they will immediately pursue him, and his car is not a red Ferrari for him to have any hopes of escaping.

  It is too late for any thought or action. He reaches the checkpoint and stops. On the poorly lit sidewalk, two officers armed with machine guns are standing on the lookout. Three other officers have taken the driver of the car up front out of his car, two of them are searching under the car seats, and the third one is carefully inspecting the trunk. Dr. Farhad desperately whispers:

  “It’s over … I have reached the end point of my life … It’s all over.”

  And he sees himself: On one side of destiny, like many Iranian specialists he has migrated to the United States and is now driving his red Ferrari from a large and expensive hospital in Los Angeles, in which he is a major shareholder, to his villa on Mulholland Drive … On the other side of destiny, he sees himself in a prison uniform, sitting in a small cement cell with ten murderers, smugglers, and addicts, who in general do not look kindly upon doctors and who are now sneering at him with toothless mouths and waiting for the prison lights to go out.

  Dr. Farhad feels the glaring eyes of one of the machine-gun-toting officers on him and smiles bitterly at his fate.

  But come, let us help him. This selfless doctor, even at this daunting moment of peripeteia, is worried about the critical condition of one of his poor patients whom he is scheduled to operate on tomorrow. A patient named P., who spent seven years of his life as a volunteer on the front lines of the war with Iraq, who still has a piece of shrapnel from an Iraqi mortar shell lodged near his spinal cord, and who will become paralyzed if he is not operated on.

  What do you think we can do to help Dr. Farhad? Give me the time it takes for the next three dots to think of something.

  …

  No, even after these three dots I still cannot think of a way out. Help me. I need the spark of an inspiration, a blow to shake the dust of time from my numbed mind …

  Something hits me on the back of my head. I stifle a cry behind my tightly pursed lips for fear that it will attract the attention of the checkpoint officers. I run my hand against the back of my head. A bit of snow comes into my hand, and the rest of it streams down under my collar. I look up at the sky. It is not snowing.

  Please don’t ask. We don’t have time. Just push your hand down on the horn of Dr. Farhad’s car. Just that. Do it.

  A hideous and congested honk echoes in the street. The machinegun-toting officer who from the sidewalk has been observing the doctor’s nervous behavior walks up to his car. Suspicious, he snidely says:

  “You seem to be in a big hurry.”

  The doctor wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and says:

  “Yes … I’m in a hurry.”

  Just then, a spark flashes in Dr. Farhad’s mind. He takes out his medical identity card and shows it to the officer.

  “I’m a surgeon. I have an accident victim at the hospital emergency room. If I don’t get there quickly, he will die.”

  In the beam of the headlights, the officer carefully examines the identity card, then he walks over to his commanding officer who is searching the trunk of the car ahead. They exchange a few words. He returns and gives the identity card back to the doctor.

  Still suspicious, he asks:

  “You don’t have any illegal stuff in the car, do you?”

  “Only my medical bag … Please let me go, my patient will die.”

  “You’re not lying to me, are you?”

  “What lie?”

  “The patient you say is dying, where is he hurt?”

 
“They have only told me that he has been in a bad accident. I suspect his ribs have broken and punctured his lungs …”

  He is short of breath; he feels the sharpness of his own ribs against his lungs. With great effort he moans:

  “May I?”

  “Go.”

  Dr. Farhad puts the car in gear, but the commanding officer has just walked over and is scrutinizing his face.

  He says:

  “Hold it right there.”

  Dr. Farhad gives up.

  “Aren’t you Dr. Farhad?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did you have a patient named Bibi Attri?”

  “Yes. I operated on her myself. It was one of my more difficult surgeries.”

  The commanding officer turns to his colleague:

  “Don’t let the doctor leave until I come back.”

  The doctor feels the sharp blades of all his scalpels on his body. In the rearview mirror he sees the rotating emergency lights of a patrol car go on. “It’s all over. They’re taking me to jail.” The patrol car pulls up next to his car. The commanding officer yells from the car window:

  “Bibi Attri is my aunt. You operated on her for free. Thank God she feels better than I do. Which hospital are you going to?”

  With what’s left of his energy, Dr. Farhad blurts out the name of a hospital.

  “I will escort you. Follow me.”

  At the commanding officer’s gesture, the other officers quickly pull aside the street barricades. Dr. Farhad puts his foot on the gas and at high speed follows the siren and the revolving red lights which to him are as beautiful as arctic twilight.

  A few minutes later he pulls up in front of a hospital. He waves to the commanding officer and rushes in. When he has made sure that the patrol car has left, he will come out and head for his destination.

  Mr. Petrovich will skeptically ask:

  “Let’s see, is Dr. Farhad driving along Bahar Street? But Bahar Street is not on the way to Dr. D.’s house.”

  I will say:

  “He has been so terrified and shaken that he has probably taken a wrong turn somewhere. He will realize it himself and find his way.”

  “But I don’t like this part of your story. You are teaching people how to con the checkpoint officers … By the way, you can rest assured that the commanding officer who escorted Dr. Farhad will be arrested tomorrow and tried for collaborating with the counterrevolution.”

  And Dr. Farhad, at the end of Bahar Street, is still wondering how and why the horn of his car, which is more than twenty years old, had miraculously honked.

  On the tenth night after their fight, Dara concludes that he has perhaps gotten angry at Sara for no good reason, that he has really insulted her and has spoken to her as though he were interrogating her, or as though he owns her.

  Sara too has concluded that Dara had not really insulted her, that he had simply asked a few questions, and that these sorts of questions are normal when you love someone, and they are not at all meant as an interrogation or a claim of ownership.

  Until tonight, Dara had preferred to spend very little time with Sara on the telephone. Because of his past political activities and imprisonment, he thought it possible that his telephone would occasionally be tapped, and he therefore considered e-mail and computer chats to be safer. But on this night, instead of reading lifeless written words, with his entire being he wants to hear Sara’s voice. Therefore, heroically, at seven o’clock he dials Sara’s telephone number. The line is busy. He thinks:

  It’s obvious. She is talking to Sinbad about their trip to Spain. It’s really over. I will not call her again.

  But at that very moment Sara had been dialing Dara’s number. She thinks:

  It didn’t take him long to find himself some other plaything. It’s really over. I will not call him again.

  Exactly thirty minutes later, they concurrently dial each other’s telephone numbers again. The lines are busy. Sara thinks:

  See! I was right.

  Dara has the same thought.

  Of course, these concurrences rarely happen in the so-called real world, but in the world of fiction, where censorship peeks at every high and low, they can easily occur.

  Here I come face-to-face with another one of my story’s problems. No, it is not Mr. Petrovich who complains; instead, certain intellectuals and critics from my favorite country will grab me by the collar.

  Ask, Why? For me to answer:

  Well, if I write that Sara dials Dara’s number first, there is a chance that some hard-line Iranian feminists, who bear no resemblance to Iran’s true activist feminists and who scare me very much, will pull their headscarves down over their uncombed hair that they have not washed in a week, and they will say:

  “See! Despite all your cunning, you finally revealed your male chauvinism, Mr. Writer. By forcing Sara to call Dara first, you are suggesting that women are weaker than men and that they belittle themselves. Hurry up and delete this sentence from your story.”

  Yet, if I write that Dara calls Sara first, it is possible that some seemingly hard-line political activists will criticize me and say:

  “In other words, you are saying that a political activist and a former political prisoner who has survived the torture of solitary confinement is so helpless before a woman that he cannot resist her for even ten days. You have been paid off by the government to write that political activists are weak and to tarnish the legend of their resistance. Hurry up and delete this sentence from your story.”

  As you may have guessed, I am introducing you to another world of censorship, one that is even more powerful than Mr. Petrovich and all the employees and bureaus of his ministry.

  Now, in your opinion, should Sara call Dara first, or should Dara call Sara first?

  We Iranian writers know how to get out of such binds. For example:

  A third person who is sitting in a reputable government office and is assigned to monitoring and recording Sara and Dara’s telephone conversations can connect the two lines at the same time. Perhaps he feels sorry for them, perhaps he wants them to have their talk so that his work will be done and he can go home, or perhaps he likes the blushing conversations of these young lovers.

  They both press the earpiece against their ear and the mouthpiece against their mouth … They hear each other breathe. At this moment, all words seem absurd. With hearts in which the revolving red lights of an ambulance or a police car pulsate, each waits for the other to find and to utter the first word.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  Then, again, a long silence … The sound of breaths … Breaths converse … The excitement of the breaths heightens … They seem to hear the sound of sweat seeping from the pores of each other’s skin … From the perforations in the receivers, the clicking sound of thousands of conversations connecting and disconnecting … A long sigh … Its response, a longer sigh … Unsteady breaths … A climaxing moan …

  Drenched in sweat, they concurrently hang up the telephone.

  Don’t ask.

  Years ago, in one of my dark stories with a sad ending, to depict the intense and maddening love of a man and a woman, I needed to write a literary, creative, and fresh description of their lovemaking. Because of Mr. Petrovich’s exactitude, I could not write of their actual lovemaking. And for how long can writers continue to write words such as:

  The man said:

  “Shall we go?”

  The woman replied:

  “Let’s go.”

  And for how long can we write, “The man and the woman walked into the room and closed the door …,” with no further explanation. Another problem was that I absolutely did not want to describe a lovemaking scene in a way that would make my story verge on the pornographic and perhaps become a best seller. I believe that any artificial or even trendy element that is added to the tragedy of a story is a betrayal of literature. For this reason, I wanted with all my love of words and my love of their explicit and implicit
connotations to create sentences in which the words too would make love. I worked for hours on this scene, but whatever I wrote screamed of being denied a publishing permit. When I had at last given up hope and was deciding to force the two lovers to part rather than make love, I suddenly remembered a word that I had read in old texts of Farsi literature—khanjeh. That was it. The key to my problem. It was a word that centuries ago had become obsolete. Its meaning: lustful groans during sexual intercourse. From a literary perspective, the aggressive sound of kh, that in continuation of its intonation couples with the mysterious sound of j, was exactly what I wanted. Every writer, even if he has never been some sort of a Don Juan in real life, after years of writing comes to understand that sometimes one word does the work of tens of compliments and hundreds of clever enticements.

  In any case, to set the stage for this word and to protect it from the blade of censorship, I wrote of the man’s stream of consciousness during their lovemaking. Complicated sentences, a labyrinth of associations and recollections of past memories. The man’s eyes on the narrow strip of sun that from the small opening in the curtain is shining in on the carpet and like a blade has divided it in two. The recollection of his hand being slapped by the elementary school principal … The man’s eyes on the naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of his bedroom and his rediscovery of it… Memories of a cold winter morning when breaths turned to steam … The blending of breaths … The protracted sound of a horn blowing as a car sped down the road … And finally I wrote: khanjehs.

  I assumed that Mr. Petrovich would not be patient or proficient enough to find an old and rare dictionary to look up the definition of the word khanjeh. I assumed that even if he does look up the word, because it is now obsolete and lacks any fresh and sexy connotation, he might perhaps have allowed it to live in my story. Sometime later, a critic who was not all that pleased with me wrote and published a review of the story. In it he explained the definition of khanjeh.

  Why give such a complicated example? In one of my stories, of which I will not expose too much lest it be refused a publishing permit in my beloved land, to tell my reader that the story’s husband and wife are making love, I wrote that the woman is sleeping faceup on the bed; her husband enters the room; after the fight they have had the previous week, it is now time to make up. A bright Iranian morning is coursing outside their small house. From the window, the woman can see a small section of the blue sky and a patch of cloud that is floating like a kite and is the same shade of white as the milk she once breast-fed her daughter … Then in the woman’s angle of view, the window frame begins to move. It moves up and down but the sky and the white cloud remain motionless. Then the woman turns her eyes away from the window and sees the hollow of her husband’s ear. I also wrote a description of the ear, its grooves and the darkness in its cavity. Of course very briefly, because I knew that in the throes of excitement, movement, and pleasure, no woman, not even Virginia Woolf, would have the concentration to observe the minute details of an ear …