Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  On that street, neither he nor Sara see the return of the Mongol army from their capture and razing of the splendid city of Rey. They take with them thousands of captives to shoulder the loot and the spoils. The jingling of gold echoes in the streets of Tehran. A snowflake sits on Dara’s lips. He licks it away. It tastes sweet. Without turning his eyes away from that window, he opens his hand to catch a few snowflakes. He tastes them. No, it was not a fantasy. The snowflakes are as sweet as ice cream. Sara reaches her hand out of the window, and the snowflakes rush toward it. Dara is utterly drained. To stop himself from falling he leans his hand against the wall of Sara’s house. A tall wall, like all walls around Iranian houses, that to stop thieves from entering is crowned with a steel grate and arrowheads that make this house, like most Iranian houses, look like a cage. Staring up at the window, Dara feels that the bricks of Sara’s house are soft and delicate to the touch. He starts caressing them. The bricks transmit a pleasant sensation to his hand. No, you are mistaken; he is so decent that it has not occurred to him to climb the wall and to get himself into Sara’s room. He looks at the bricks he has caressed and feels he wants to embrace that wall with all the strength in his arms. He stands with his body pressing against the wall and lifts his head up to somehow convey this feeling to Sara. But Sara has disappeared from the window and the light in her room is turned off. Dara thinks:

  You little devil!

  And he jumps at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. Happy, he turns around to find Sara there, but instead he sees a police officer brandishing a gun.

  In fact, Sara had seen the police car approaching from down the street and had turned out the light just in time. The police officer brusquely asks:

  “What are you doing?”

  Dara, stammering, tells the truth:

  “I was caressing the wall.”

  The officer laughs and turns to his partner who is sitting behind the wheel of the police car.

  “Did you hear that? The gentleman was caressing the wall.”

  Dara starts to laugh, too. The police officer, whose large stomach is bouncing up and down from laughter, says:

  “You must have held it in your arms, too.”

  Dara laughs and nods. The officer tells his partner:

  “Did you hear that? He hugged his wall.”

  The officer in the police car pounds his fist on the steering wheel and chortles. Now all three are laughing. To add to the camaraderie, Dara runs his hand over the wall, but a stiff slap lands on his ear. The snow flies off his hair. The officer has quickly turned serious.

  “You scoundrel, you wanted to climb up the wall and rob the house.”

  Dara, his hand on his burning cheek, shakes his head. With a quick kick the officer throws Dara to the ground and cuffs his hands behind him. Sara, from the darkness of her room, sees the officer throw Dara, headfirst, into the police car. Then the revolving lights disappear at the end of the street.

  Sara knows that tonight at the police station Dara will be slapped many times so that he will confess to having intended to break into their home, and she knows that tomorrow too he is likely to be slapped even more so that he will confess to previous thefts. She slumps down next to the window and weeps.

  Not much time remains until the sun dawns on the high and low rooftops of Tehran. The tawny dust of shattered earthen casks of wine pours down from the sky.

  “CANARIES ROASTED ON A FIRE

  OF LILIES AND JASMINES …”

  (Ahmad Shamlu)

  Sinbad is standing in front of the mirror in his house, trimming his beard, when he hears the telephone ring. Sara’s troubled and trembling voice frightens him. This is the first time Sara has called his home.

  She says:

  “I need your help. Please come.”

  “What’s wrong, Sara? But… Certainly … I will leave right away … Where should I come?”

  At fifteen minutes past nine Tehran time Sinbad enters the same Internet café where Sara and Dara had taken refuge on the first day they met. Sara, the only customer in the café, is sitting in a corner. Her face is pale, and her eyes are red from crying. She seems to have lost a lot ofweight in only a few hours. Sinbad, with a lover’s concern, sits across from her.

  “I was so scared when I heard your voice. I thought something must have happened to your mother or father … You know I will help you in any way I can. Tell me what has happened.”

  Sara, worn-out and choking back her tears, asks:

  “Are you willing to help me without asking any questions?”

  Sinbad stares at her sunken eyes. He is an intelligent and experienced man. Sara, noticing his hesitation, pleads:

  “Please help me … But don’t ask any questions.”

  Sinbad looks around. It is the first time he has stepped into such a café.

  “Do you come here often?”

  Tears roll down Sara’s face. She knows that if the police find out that Dara has served time as a political prisoner, the poor boy will face the greatest ordeal of his life.

  She sobs:

  “Don’t ask anything … Just help me … and I will marry you with no conditions.”

  Sinbad orders a tea.

  Two women police officers clad in black chadors and armed with batons wander around the café. They are seasoned enough to tell from Sinbad’s appearance that he is one of them and do not bother this brother.

  At five o’clock that afternoon Dara is dragged out of the temporary holding cell at the police station. To protect Sara, he has confessed to having intended to rob her family’s house, and, under all methods of coercion, he has repeated that it was the first time in his life he had attempted theft.

  He is taken to the police captain’s office, and there, for the first time, Dara sees Sinbad, and Sinbad sees Dara. The police captain explains that Mr. Sinbad, a very influential and highly respected gentleman, has vouched for him and offered explanations that have convinced him that Dara had not intended to rob that house. The captain adds that although the police sometimes treat suspects harshly, which at times is necessary, they are generally kindhearted men and know when to forgive, because they can tell when a criminal deeply regrets his actions and will not repeat his offense … The captain puts a pledge form in front of Dara for him to sign. In this letter of repentance no mention is made of Dara’s offense; it is only stated that he regrets his unlawful actions and swears to never again commit a crime. Dara signs the form. Then, in a fatherly tone, the police captain says:

  “Young man, you are free. Go home and don’t ever think of committing a crime.”

  Dara leaves the station. Out on the street there is no sign of last night’s snow. Numb, exhausted, and humiliated, he repeats Lorca’s famous poem in his mind, “At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon … The rest was death, and death alone at five in the afternoon,” and a few steps away from the police station he runs out of the energy that was keeping him on his feet. His knees buckle. He sits down on the sidewalk and leans against the wall. His eyes see the world in a blur and the passersby as dark shadows … A few minutes later, he senses a man standing over him. Then the man, who like himself seems to lack the energy to go on, sits down next to him.

  “Thank you.”

  He hears no answer.

  He remembers Sinbad’s face from the police station. A man with a handsome beard who looked sad and defeated and avoided looking at him.

  “You saved me. Thank you.”

  “You should thank Sara. She saved you.”

  Sinbad too sounds tired and humiliated.

  Dara says out loud:

  “At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon …”

  “How long have you known Sara?”

  “A long time. But she only got to know me recently.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “I don’t know … but I am in love with her.”

  Sinbad snaps:
/>
  “What kind of a man in love are you that you don’t know whether your beloved loves you or not… Are you stupid?”

  “I guess I am. I’m really stupid. But this is the first time I’ve fallen in love.”

  “Every person falls in love only once. Do you so-called intellectuals fall in love as often as you go to the toilet?”

  Sinbad sounds like he has a lump in his throat. Dara feels he shares a pain with this man and can therefore be sincere and take that Iranian mask off his face. He asks:

  “Are you in love with Sara, too?”

  “I was, until this morning.”

  “I see! When a person falls in love, being freed from that love is not in his control. Do you fall in love as often as you go to the toilet?”

  “You’re right. But today I saw how much Sara loves you … When I promised her that I would help you, I made a deal with myself that this will be the last time I ever trust a woman … Sara promised she would marry me if I saved you.”

  At this point in my love story, Dara speaks the wisest sentence he will ever utter in his life.

  Enraged, Dara pounds his head against the wall and says:

  “Sir! When you fall in love with a woman, you have to say screw everything, forget about everything you have ever trusted, had faith in, and were certain of.”

  After these words were spoken on some sidewalk in this world, the two men turn to each other; both see the world in a blur.

  “You sent someone to kill me.”

  “To kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  On Sinbad’s face sorrow gives way to the power of ridicule.

  “It looks like the police punched you really hard in the head!”

  “Yes. But I’m not crazy.”

  “You are. First of all, you are not someone I would want dead. Second, until today dear Miss Sara had kept it a secret from me that she has a lover like you hanging around.”

  Just now Dara hears the voice of a second man sitting next to him:

  “I also have a talisman for hatred and freedom from love.”

  Powerless, Dara rests his head on his knees so that no one will see his tears. And he hears Sinbad’s dejected voice:

  “How much do you want for your talisman?”

  “For you, one hundred and one gold coins.”

  “That’s a lot of money … What guarantee do I have that it will work?”

  “As soon as I hand it to you, you will be free from all the love there is. You can pay me then.”

  “Will you accept my check?”

  “Everyone will accept your check, Mr. Sinbad, even American companies that sell Internet filters.”

  “Then get the talisman while I write the check.”

  The world remains a blur before Dara’s eyes. He wants to sleep, right there where he sits, for one thousand and one years and to wake up again in his childhood. His heavy eyelids close … Sometime later, he wakes up from the pressure of Sinbad’s hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m leaving. Sara will never see me again … Don’t think I’m into making grand sacrifices and playing such loony lovers’ games. No. I just don’t want to have a woman at home whose thoughts are with another man. Do you get it, kid?”

  “Yes.”

  The fingers resting on Dara’s shoulder press down gently.

  “Take care of that girl.”

  And Sinbad, for the time being, exits this love story without knowing that at this moment of exit he is perhaps forever freed from the torture of having to constantly trim his beard.

  Dara is struggling to stand up and to return home so that he can free his parents from worry. He hears the magic seller’s voice:

  “A talisman to be free from love and hate, for you for only one cigarette … Do you have a cigarette?”

  Dara stands up.

  “I don’t. Even if I did, I wouldn’t give one to you.”

  “Do you want me to give one to you?”

  “Do you have one?”

  A hand puts a lit cigarette between his index and middle fingers.

  Mr. Petrovich will say:

  “I didn’t like this scene at all. You are saying that a man like Sinbad has left the field wide open for a good-for-nothing former Communist and film peddler. It is not believable at all. You breach those same principles of realism that you preach. Sinbad is far stronger than this.”

  I will say:

  “Well, I too am saying that Sinbad is very strong.”

  “You are a weak writer because you haven’t grasped the psychology of your story’s characters. In my opinion, Sinbad should fight to the death.”

  “Well, he is fighting.”

  “With whom?”

  “With himself.”

  “Why are you talking nonsense? As if it’s the civil war in Iraq? As if he has nothing better to do than to fight with himself?”

  “Is it because the Iraqis have nothing better to do that they are fighting among themselves?”

  “You were not supposed to talk politics.”

  “…”

  “And if you ever do talk about a civil war, it better be about the American Civil War.”

  “Anyway, I can’t change this segment of my story.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my story’s character made his decision all by himself. Sinbad’s action was really not part of the plot. He made the decision independently and acted on it.”

  “If you are right, then why does your story’s Dara not make a sensible decision and do something right for a change?”

  “For example?”

  “For example, a bum like him who has repeatedly made mistakes in life, has goofed plenty, and has even troubled the police should finally wise up to life.”

  “You mean personal evolution?”

  “No … I mean suicide.”

  ASSASSIN’S ALLEY

  Cautiously, Dara pokes his head out of the front door of his house and checks the alley to see if anyone is lying in ambush for him. There appears to be no sign of the Hashashin phantom. He walks out. But the most dangerous spot is the entrance to the dead-end alley where the assassin could be hiding around the left or the right corner so that he can slash through Dara’s jugular the instant he steps onto the street. To avoid being caught off guard from either the left or the right, Dara chooses the center of the alley as his path. At the head of the alley he quickly glances in each direction, and when he has made sure that no dagger is waiting for him there, with hasty steps he heads down the street.

  Dara would not have left the house if he didn’t have to. But today he has to pick up the down payment for painting a store so that he can buy the paint. The sidewalk doesn’t have its usual character. People are rushing toward the west end of the street. Dara asks the neighborhood bird seller, who is pulling down the blinds in his shop, what is going on. He learns that a young man accused of drinking is going to be whipped in the square. For fifty years the bird seller has been selling lovebirds, canaries, and doves to the locals. Dara asks him whether he too is going to the square to watch. The old man looks down the street with disgust and says:

  “No. I’m going home to stop my wife in case she is tempted to go.” And he sets out in the opposite direction from the rest of the people. Dara follows him with his eyes and suddenly sees the assassin. Still with steely determination, possessed, he is walking toward him. Dara starts to run. He turns into the first alley, then into the next. The alleys in this old neighborhood, all lined with small two-hundred-year-old houses whose bricks have blackened with soot, lead into one another like a labyrinth. Each time Dara is forced to slow down to catch his breath, he looks back and sees the assassin, showing no sign of fatigue or shortness of breath, still chasing after him. Dara is familiar with this neighborhood, but in one of his rearward glances he mistakenly runs into a dead-end alley, and by the time he realizes his mistake, it is too late. He doesn’t see the assassin’s dark face, but he suspects that from the satisfaction of having trapped his prey, there is n
ow a smile on his lips. The alley is the haunt of hashish and opium dealers. Five men, three of whom are clearly addicts and the other two roughnecks, are standing and squatting here and there.

  At the dead end, Dara desperately looks around for a means of escape, and the only thing that comes to his mind is to go and stand next to the burliest drug dealer. The assassin, perforce, stops a few steps away.

  Dara’s heart is beating like the heart of a sparrow captive in the hands of a horny man. The alley is rife with the smell of opium percolating from the houses. The drug dealer, who has a few scars on his face and neck and whose attitude clearly indicates he is the local ringleader, asks Dara:

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you have?”

  “You’re a rookie?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have opium and hashish.”

  “I want hashish. How much is it?”

  The man points to one of his underlings squatting next to the wall and says:

  “I’ll give you five grams for five thousand tumans.”

  It is right now that a shrewd inspiration must come to innocent, naïve Dara.

  Dara points to the assassin and says:

  “But he’s selling at three thousand tumans.”

  This is the most cunning comment one can make in the drug dealer’s alley. In other words, there is new competition on your turf cutting in on your market. The roughneck whistles, and immediately one of the addicts who appeared to be napping gets up and at a gesture from his boss, with his hand in his pocket—meaning with his knife at the ready—he walks toward the assassin. But before he can utter the first word of a threat, the assassin’s knee jabs him in the chest, and the instant he keels over in pain, the powerful blow of the assassin’s elbow pins his scrawny neck to the assassin’s knee. The man falls. But a few moments later, the assassin finds himself surrounded by four knife-wielding men. The roughnecks of Tehran are far better skilled than Borges’s roughnecks. With his dagger, the assassin slashes the face and chest of two of them, but the man who had fallen to the ground, with a stab of his knife, renders the Achilles tendon in the assassin’s right foot useless. Blood gushes out of the assassin’s ankle, he leans against the wall to hold himself up, but he can’t. Besieged by four knives, he falls down on his knees. Dara finds the most opportune moment to escape. And he can rest assured that this assassin can no longer pursue him.