Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  Stunned, I look at this Dara who is walking out of the dead-end alley, and I feel the blade of a knife against my Achilles tendon.

  THE WEDDING

  A month has passed since the incident of Dara’s arrest. During this time he has refused to see Sara. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he felt humiliated. All his male pride and all the dignity that he had constructed word by word in the eyes of his beloved were destroyed on that snowy night when right in front of Sara’s eyes the police had thrown him in the car headfirst and, worse, when his rival had come to his rescue. However, during this month, in the course of their few computer chats and telephone conversations, Sara with her female wisdom has tried to heal the wounds of humiliation and to help Dara put them behind him. In the past week, she has discovered the best cure: irony.

  “Man! You were so strong and intelligent. You told the truth and the police didn’t believe you. The poor policemen hear so many lies from offenders that even when someone tells them the truth they don’t believe him. Think about it. If you had said anything else, the police would have grown suspicious of our house and arrested me, too … Oh, it could have been so much worse … You humiliated yourself to save my reputation. And when you humiliated yourself you realized you really love me … We should thank God the police arrested you, otherwise you would have gotten drunk watching me. The way your wild eyes were staring at me like the devil, when you wanted to break a hole in the wall… Well, more than a hole. You could have brought the wall down like Superman, broken the door, and entered the house. Imagine, my poor father, my fainthearted mother, they would have woken up to see an overheated Superman in their house. Who knows, on that dark night, in the condition you were in, you could have gone after my mother by mistake, just like Khosrow.”

  One of women’s many talents is that they know how to correct or erase a man’s memory. Therefore, by the end of his monthlong seclusion, Dara too can laugh at that night’s escapades. But this is not the subject of this chapter.

  Then ask me, What is supposed to happen in this chapter?

  For me to write:

  Sara and Dara attend a wedding celebration in one of those Iranian gardens that are world renowned for their beauty. The One Thousand and One Nights beauty of some of them is because they have been planted and fashioned with much labor, and just like a mirage, suddenly in a valley or in between mountain walls or on barren desert terrain, a green haven has thrived from the miracle of a spring. The regular cohabitants of these gardens are oftentimes opium-addicted gardeners, a couple of night-singing nightingales, and rosebushes along a narrow stream, the overflow of which quenches the earth.

  In Tehran, in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains, there used to be thousands of these gardens. However, during the past few decades many were deliberately left to dry, and in their place all manner of high-rises have sprouted from the earth.

  Sara’s cousin’s wedding is being held in one of the remaining gardens. Sara has managed to give Dara an invitation. They are both happy that they will be in a beautiful garden together.

  However, they will not be able to talk or to sit next to each other.

  You will doubtless ask why.

  First of all, in a place where a horde of her uncles, aunts, and relatives are gathered, Sara cannot casually sit with her boyfriend. The moment they see her with that boy they will start making up rumors which will circulate from mouth to mouth, and week after week and month after month they will become more exaggerated until Sara gains fame among one and all as a ruined girl. The other reason is that at postrevolution Iranian weddings, the men’s and women’s sections are separate, and the two groups cannot under any circumstances commingle. In cities, weddings are normally held in catering halls that have separate men’s and women’s sections. Couples say good-bye to each other at the door and go to their own special section. Ever since traditional Iranian music has been to some extent allowed, there is music in these halls, but not very lively music with pop rhythm and a beat that would drive Iranians to involuntarily gyrate their hips. Now and then, in between pieces of traditional music, inadvertently or intentionally, epic anthems that are relics of the years of war are also played—anthems with themes of picking up arms and heading for the battlefields and spilling blood or shedding one’s own blood on the earth. Men, somber and typically surly, sit on chairs lined up in rows and eat pastry and fruit and talk about politics, the daily increase in the price of goods, the value of the dollar, the billion-dollar embezzlements in government departments, an imminent attack by the United States, and the horrifying increase in the number of drug addicts, and their discussions are often spiced with jokes about government leaders and the revolution.

  “Sir! You are clueless. Given the country’s present situation, by next year bread too will become scarce, just like the days of World War Two when the British occupied Iran.”

  “Who cares if we don’t have bread to eat. Sir, our honor has been lost! Poor Iranian girls are being exported to Dubai by the hundreds to become prostitutes for the Arabs.”

  “They say America is going to attack Iran in the next two or three months; we’ll be saved.”

  “Sir, you are being naïve! This regime is itself American.”

  “No, sir! The British brought this regime to power.”

  Women, in their own section, are by far more energetic and cheerful. They have taken off their coveralls and chadors or headscarves; and dressed in brightly colored, sleeveless, and open-neck dresses, they fly like a flock of restless sparrows from one side to the other. They laugh, they chitchat, sometimes they gossip, and some of the frisky ones finally find a way, even if for a few seconds, to be seen from the men’s section. Yet almost eighty percent of the attendees, for lack of any other activity or entertainment, constantly glance at their watches waiting for the dinner hour. On enormous tables, large trays of colorful Iranian food are laid out, and with the announcement of “Dinner is served,” guests storm the tables, which in a matter of minutes look like wheat fields after a locust attack.

  But the story of weddings in private gardens is an entirely different one. If the bride’s or the groom’s family own one of these gardens, they will hold the wedding ceremony there on a beautiful night—of course, in a semiclandestine manner, away from the eyes of the patrols from the Campaign Against Social Corruption. Although the gardens of Iran still do not have separate men’s and women’s sections, Iranian families have grown so accustomed to the separation of sexes that men automatically move to one side and women to the other. If the garden is distant enough from the city, usually one of the underground bands will be invited to liven up the event with wistful songs from the past.

  By the time Dara enters the garden, almost all the guests have arrived. He is nervous because he doesn’t know what to say if someone asks him whether he is related to the groom or the bride. He can’t very well say, I am the bride’s cousin’s boyfriend, because it is quite possible that instead of rice and kebab he would feast on a good beating. Given that it is wintertime, a large tarpaulin tent has been set up in the treeless section of the garden, and here and there gas heaters are ready to heat the space. Inside the tent, a crystal-clear stream with Iranian murmurings ripples between the rows of chairs, and the various entries and exits are decorated with lights and flowers. The weather is not cold, and the guests are flowing back and forth between the garden and the tent. Dara has found a secluded corner and is sitting there alone. Every so often, hoping to see Sara, he steals a peek at the section where the women are gathered. Sara told him she would be wearing one of the most beautiful dresses in her life just for him. But no matter how often he peeks across the stream, he sees no sign of her. He is so preoccupied with thoughts of Sara that he seldom thinks of that assassin. Only once in a while, in his mind, he sees the moment when the assassin tried to remain standing on his good leg, and yet he fell to the ground. Dara no longer thinks of his own instant of shrewd wisdom, which rose from somewhere deep in his subconscio
us—and led him to accuse the Hashashin assassin of selling hashish—because love has the power to bring forgetfulness to one’s conscience.

  An old man whose face and frailty scream of years of opium abuse, tottering in a way that screams of him having downed one or two glasses of vodka in a secret spot in the garden, passes in front of him. A few steps away, he stops, turns around, and stares at Dara. Dara nervously smiles and pretends to be busy watching the airs and antics of the male singer who has plucked his eyebrows and is wearing a sequined shirt. Staggering, the old man sits down next to him. With a sly smile on his lips, in a delirious and drunken voice he says:

  “Well, well, what a polite and respectable young man. Are you from the bride’s family?”

  Dara politely says no. The old man continues to stare at him.

  “I like you. With this fine-looking face, if you were any other guy, girls would be romping and rollicking all around you, but I see that you, refined young man, have come to sit in this corner all by yourself, polite and timid, and you’re not making mischief. Oh, what can I say of our youth today? My heart bleeds. Case in point, my own son. The guy singing. Look at the jackass. He’s made himself up like a woman, all dressed in tight clothes. Watch how he wriggles his ass … But you, polite young man … I really like you.What is your name?”

  “Dara.”

  Dara is sweating under the vulgar gawk of the old man. There is a cut under his throat that has not healed. Dara feels he has seen the old man before, but hard as he tries he cannot remember where.

  “Would you like a glass of homemade arrack?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The old man lays his hand intimately on Dara’s thigh.

  “Don’t ever stand on ceremony with me. See there, behind the trees, they’ve made a cozy nook for drinkers like us. If you like, we can go whet our palate.”

  “You’ve had enough for both of us. Thank you.”

  “But it just doesn’t taste right without you.”

  Dara ignores the old man’s comment. He looks around desperately hoping to see Sara and to silently plead for help.

  On the other side of the stream, women and girls have started dancing to the singer’s new song.The old man hiccups and says:

  “You polite and clean-cut young man, are you from the groom’s family?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you related?”

  “I’m a friend.”

  “I wish my son had friends like you. The louse. All his friends are just like him; those pretty boys, they won’t sit with me for even a minute to chat so that I stop feeling so lonely.”

  And he hiccups. Dara politely lifts the old man’s hand off his thigh. The old man smiles drunkenly.

  “You devil! Don’t be cruel.”

  Dara shifts one seat away from him, but the old man slides over to the seat next to him.

  “You’re shy, too! Oh, how I love shy young men.”

  A man with his mouth stuffed with pastry walks by. The old man, in the Iranian custom of expressing friendship and respect, puts his hand on his chest and half rises from his seat.

  “Yours truly, Mr. Kaaji.”

  Mr. Kaaji, with bits and pieces of pastry flying out of his mouth, warmly greets the old man.

  “My dear Mr. Kaaji, you know how fond I am of you and how much I respect you and your revered family.”

  Kaaji too puts his hand on his chest and as a gesture of respect slightly bows.

  “I will most definitely come to visit you and to pay my respect.”

  He walks away. The old man whispers:

  “You see this guy Kaaji? He is a vile son of a bitch, a scoundrel. Until just ten years ago, he and his wife lived in a rented room. Then, I don’t know how, he managed to push his way into some government office, and now he steals by the billions. He has sent his wife and kids to Canada, has two temporary wives in two separate houses, and he’s living it up. I can’t stand him, I really can’t stand him. I don’t want to look at his evil face for even a second.”

  Witnessing this sort of Iranian hypocrisy always makes Dara angry. The blade of the assassin’s dagger flashes in his mind. In moments of sorrow he misses that Hashashin phantom and perhaps is sorry that he failed in his mission.

  There is still no sign of Sara. Dara is thinking of leaving. In fact, at the bride’s request, Sara has ended up being a bridesmaid and has gone to the hair salon with the bride. There, the bride and her entourage are subjected to the world’s most extreme makeup. At a designated hour, the groom, in a car decked with flowers, followed by a few other cars packed with friends and relatives, appears in front of the salon. The bride, covered with a white chador so that no one on the street sees her sleeveless dress and bare shoulders, is deposited in the groom’s car, and the caravan, horns blowing, travels through the streets and heads for the wedding venue.

  From the sound of the women’s cheers and ululations, Dara learns of the bride and groom’s arrival. The band plays the old wedding song. An old joyous melody rises from the leafless branches of trees. And Dara sees his beautiful Sara. She is wearing a body-fitting white dress with silver threads running through the fabric. Her inviting round shoulders and slightly plump arms shine mercilessly. Her skirt comes up to her knees, and Dara catches sight of Sara’s calves. Their elongated muscles are just wide enough for a man’s hands to partially wrap around them as they gently move over their curve, and then they gradually taper down to the tops of her ankles, just enough for a man’s thumb and middle finger to circle around their fragile slenderness. For an instant, Dara sees the image of Sara’s thighs circled around his body and the gentle gliding of those cool calves along the back of his scorching legs. He shakes his head to throw that shameless image out.

  From the subtle movement of Sara’s breasts the silver strands of her dress sparkle, and Dara discovers that a woman’s waist is narrowed halfway between the width of her shoulders and the breadth of her hips for a man’s hands to embrace and to complete it. Sara suddenly swings her head around halfway, the bounty of her hair swells, moves away from her face, and her eyes find Dara sitting in the corner. She secretly smiles at him and glides toward her mother.

  Now you know very well that there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop the scissors of censorship from cutting off Sara’s breasts, calves, and waist. I therefore have to write the self-censored sentences in the following manner.

  Dara sees his beautiful Sara. He sees the projection of her two crystalline collarbones that curve and end as handles of two crystal goblets. Sara’s arms are like icicles against which the moonlight shines as they dangle beside two curved impressions …

  No, even I get the chills from this icy illustration. I am tempted to liken the surfacing of Sara’s beauties to the clichéd surfacing of a bikiniclad Ursula Andress from the sea in Dr. No, but Mr. Petrovich has most likely seen this film. On the other hand, I really don’t want to turn my story into a still life by a gluttonous painter and write about two trembling pomegranates and compare Sara’s fair skin to peeled almonds and describe the sudden protrusion of her behind as an apple. Perhaps I can write:

  The trees are jolted from their winter sleep and unleash a neigh of desire. Sculpted flesh moves among them.

  No. I don’t like these butcheresque metaphors either. I will write:

  In seasonless paradise, a silver snake coils around two slender columns carved in marble and slithers up. It steals over a spring of honey and arrives at two concave curves. It moves higher still and chafes its icy scales against two white flames with crimson tips, and then, with its heat-seeking tongue, it moves the single pearl of a necklace aside and licks that soft small hollow beneath.

  No, I don’t like this either.

  Sara saunters over to the stream to be more clearly in Dara’s view. The reflection of the multicolored lights shimmers on the water. In that mercurial mirror, from the blending of the greens, azures, and indigos, a new color has emerged in the world. It reflects on the paleness of Sara’s
arms and shoulders, and an even fresher color is composed …

  Unlike me, who wants to reveal Sara’s beauties to my readers, Dara does not want other men to see the bareness of Sara’s body. In fact, he is even angry at her for wearing this dress.

  A girl walks by and obstinately smiles at him. Embarrassed, Dara looks down. The old man shouts:

  “Did you see? Did you see how that tramp was flirting with you? Damn these young girls who lead our innocent young men astray.”

  Dara has gotten tired of secretly watching Sara. He gets up to move to the spot closest to her. Sara sees him approaching. She bites her lower lip, signaling no. Dara is only a few steps away. Sara turns her back to him and starts talking to a man standing alone by the stream and watching the water flow by. Dara feels as though one of those idle tent heaters has been turned on in his body and is burning at full flame. He recognizes the man with the tired face and sagging shoulders. Dr. Farhad, his head hanging down, every so often raises his eyes and glances into Sara’s bright eyes, and then, feeling uneasy, he turns away.

  He asks:

  “Where have I seen you before?”