Censoring an Iranian Love Story

by Shahriar Mandanipour; Sara Khalili

  “At the hospital. Do you remember when you operated on Shirin and stitched her up? I was standing next to her.”

  “Yes, yes. Now I remember. It was so shocking.”

  Standing close by, Dara pretends to be busy watching the water flow by in the stream.

  Now you probably want to ask why all the characters in this story stare at that stream.

  First of all, in a desert country such as Iran, a stream is one of the most beautiful sights to behold. Second, in a country where office workers’ productivity is all of twenty minutes in an eight-hour workday, listening to the murmur of water and watching it flow by is a much-needed form of mental and physical rest and relaxation, especially since all of us know by heart, and persistently remind each other of, that famous half couplet by one of our greatest poets from seven hundred years ago:

  Sit beside the stream and watch life flow by.

  Therefore, in my realistic story, it is natural and must be plausible for my characters not to move from beside that stream.

  Sara says:

  “Doctor, I am surprised to see you here.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t like wedding parties all that much. But the bride’s father is my mother’s maternal cousin, and I was duty bound to come. You must be here with your family or your husband.”

  “I don’t have a husband.”

  Dara coughs. Sara glances at his angry eyes and twirls a lock of her hair around her finger.

  “Doctor, today girls in Iran are not like they were in the past, they don’t marry the first man who asks for their hand. They are very selective. Until they have weighed all their options, until they are sure that the man declaring his love truly wants their happiness and not his own, they don’t fall into the marriage trap. How about you? You must be here with your girlfriend or your wife.”

  The doctor blushes.

  “No. I’m alone. I haven’t had time for girlfriends, and I don’t have time to spend with a fiancée.”

  All he has courage for is to look into Sara’s eyes for five seconds.

  “One of these days you will find a girl of your liking, a girl who will value your noble and selfless character, and you will live a happy life.”

  The doctor seems to be frantically searching his mind for an appropriate sentence to speak, his mouth has remained open, and he cannot find one. Sara smiles at his innocence and timidity.

  The doctor whimpers:

  “I hope so … Loneliness is very … Loneliness is really … These days I have come to realize how very lonely I am …”

  And he turns his deprived Iranian eyes away from the sight of Sara’s cleavage.

  “A lot of girls in this town can only dream of becoming your wife … By the way, in case I ever get sick, where is your office?”

  The doctor nervously digs into his pocket, twice he drops his briefcase, until at last he produces a business card and offers it to Sara. Then, unglued and confused, he walks out of the tent… Dara returns to his seat. He takes an orange and squeezes it in his fist. The juice spews out from between his fingers.

  The old man says:

  “That is exactly how you are squeezing my heart.”

  The garden singer starts belting out an Iranian rap song, product of Los Angeles.

  “I said, wiggle your hips and shake your boobs. You said, I’ll wiggle my hips and shake the world …”

  The women start to dance. A short distance away, young girls and boys make up their own group. Two guys, with their heads and necks on the ground and their legs up in the air, start spinning like break-dancers.

  Mr. Petrovich will ask:

  “Can you hear the racket of vulgar music and dancing and snapping fingers coming from somewhere?”

  I will answer:

  “No. Rest easy. The people in town are all asleep. The houses are quiet; the windows are shut; the curtains are drawn. Innocence, like a spring breeze, is blowing through the streets and alleys, and the angels are yawning.”

  A girl grabs Sara by the hand and drags her into the crowd of dancing boys and girls. Sara reluctantly moves her hands and hips and then slowly backs away from the group and settles for watching their harmless merriment. Given that they rarely have such opportunities, the girls and boys are dancing so feverishly that it seems they have entered a contest to release tormenting energy.

  The old man points to Sara.

  “Check out that cute missy. Don’t buy into the way she stands there looking so timid. It’s obvious she wants to dance, but she’s playing coy so that they take her hand and pull her to the center of the crowd. Once there, she’ll turn into one ball of fire. I know these women like the back of my hand. Don’t ever trust their appearance or the words that come out of their mouths. Reverse them.”

  Dara sees Sara’s profile, and in that profile he sees no sign of joy. It seems that this Sara, contrary to a few minutes ago when she was flirting with Dr. Farhad, is now the same Sara who had stood in front of Tehran University with DEATH TO FREEDOM, DEATH TO CAPTIVITY. The old man points to Sara’s legs.

  “See how slender her ankles are. My late father taught me that women with slender ankles have really tight holes, and those who have thick ankles have really ample goods, thick lipped and puffy. This big.”

  He holds the palms of his hands together in front of Dara’s eyes.

  Again Dara drags himself one seat away from him. His heart aches. Watching other people dance and be merry has always made him sad. It reminds him of the happiness he has not had and the fact that he doesn’t know, and has not learned, how and in what he will find his happiness. With every year that goes by, he grows more certain that we Iranians are a nation of grief and sorrow. We don’t know happiness at all, and at times when we do exhibit happiness, we are in fact only pretending.

  Watching the girls and boys dance reminds Dara of his neighbor’s two daughters. They were identical twins. After the revolution, one of them joined the Party of God, and the other became a Communist. When the police raided their house to arrest the Communist sister, the Party of God sister pretended to be her. In prison, they had put her in a closed coffin for three months so that she would give up her Marxist Communist denial of God and repent. Five years later when she was released, she no longer resembled her twin, and her sister had broken ties with that leftist faction and had spent these years praying and asking God to return her sister to the family alive. Years later, the twins disappeared. For the longest time no one had any news of them, until we heard that in Istanbul, in front of the UN refugee agency, in protest against Europe’s hypocritical policies toward Iran, hand in hand the two had set themselves on fire …

  Dara scolds himself for not leaving, but he doesn’t have the will to go, nor does he have the will not to look at Sara, and his eyes continue to invite her to his side.

  Sara, holding two small plates filled with pastries, walks toward him. She offers the first plate to the old man. The old man says:

  “I adore you, my darling girl, no one gave me a thought except you who are like a daughter to me.”

  Sara bends down and holds the second plate in front of Dara. As soon as he reaches out to take the plate from her, Sara whispers:

  “The minute you see me talking to a man the ugliest doubts come to your mind.”

  And a single teardrop falls on the pastries.

  Dara gives his plate to the old man and follows the stream to the darkness at the end of the garden. He sees the shadow of a young girl and boy kissing. Hearing his footsteps, they separate and turn their backs to him. Some distance away, Dara leans against a tree and lights a cigarette. Surprised at how Sara has seen the serpents of jealousy in his eyes, he dwells on the uncertain future of his relationship with her. He feels their love is traveling a course over which he has no control. Lighting his second cigarette, in the glow of the flame he sees Sara standing in front of him; he reaches his hand out toward her shoulder. Sara pulls back. Dara, still leaning against the tree, slides himself down to the grou
nd. The scratches the tree bark leaves on his back are soothing to him.

  He says:

  “I am only now realizing that I don’t really know you. You are not the Sara I knew. I am so confused.”

  “Because, selfishly, you have always wanted me to be the way you have imagined me in your mind. The only person who ever saw me as I really am was that poet who peddled books. Go back to the party; I want to dance for you.”

  And she starts to walk against the current of the stream. A few minutes later, Dara lights his third cigarette. The coquettish giggle of a girl emanates from somewhere in the darkness of the garden. Dara thinks that if Sara truly loves him, she will give him that handwritten book. He throws the half-smoked cigarette in the stream. In the dark, he doesn’t see that on the water, every so often, a damask rose floats by. That same flower that our grandmothers would tell us fables about: A beast falls in love with a beautiful girl, kidnaps her, and takes her to his garden. Whenever he needs to leave the garden, to make sure the girl does not escape, he cuts off her head and hangs it on a tree. The girl’s blood drips into a stream, and each drop turns into a damask rose, until the young man who is to kill the beast and save the girl sees the flowers and traces them back to the garden. Dara returns to the party and sits where he had sat before. The bride and the groom are mingling with the guests and exchanging pleasantries with them. Dara imagines Sara in the wedding dress she had tried on in that store and sees himself in that groom’s place holding her hand. In their winter sleep, the trees convey their One Thousand and One Nights–ish fantasies to one another on a cool breeze.

  Suddenly, they hear the sound of china plates breaking.

  The singer has thrown the microphone aside, and leaping toward one of the tent exits he has knocked over the table laden with trays of pastries. The female drummer too has thrown down her sticks and following the singer leaps toward the darkness of the garden. The poor guitarist, who has an electric guitar slung around his neck, cannot rid himself of the wires and falls down. It is only then that everyone notices the green-uniformed patrols from the Campaign Against Social Corruption who have suddenly appeared at the entrance to the tent. One of them grabs the guitarist by the back of his neck and pushes him facedown onto the ground. The three others chase after the two fugitive musicians. Screaming, the women and girls run toward the villa in the garden.

  The old man laments:

  “Oh dear! This is bad. The bastards are …”

  The agent who has arrested the guitarist is now smashing the man’s guitar with his feet. The three other agents return empty-handed. Men who have been drinking, looking pale, hide in the corners. Others, including the groom, his parents, and other relatives, gather around two of the agents. One by one they plead for them to turn a blind eye to the party and not to spoil that joyous occasion. The old man takes a cucumber from the fruit tray and, thinking that it will get rid of the smell of alcohol on his breath, nervously bites into it. Then he rubs his hands together and says:

  “The way the groom is begging, he’s only going to make matters worse. This is a job for me. You, young man, don’t go anywhere until I go negotiate with them and come back.”

  He stands up and immediately starts to stagger. He straightens his back, takes a deep breath, swallows the cucumber butt, and bravely heads toward the agents. By the time he reaches them, he is walking perfectly straight. He shouts:

  “Well! Well! I smell the scent of rose water from the battlegrounds of truth against the unrighteous.”

  He breaks through the crowd gathered around the agents, opens his arms, embraces the ranking officer, and lays a few sopping kisses on the man’s cheeks.

  “Welcome! You honor us. Mr. Kaaji, bring some pastries for our brothers … Gentlemen! Gentlemen! These brothers are only doing their job. We must not argue with them … Someone go after those dandy musicians and bring them back. They should pledge to our brother right here that they will never repeat such abomination … Mr. Kaaji, did you bring the pastries?”

  The ranking officer is looking at the old man with suspicion. The old man kisses another officer on both shoulders.

  “Excellent! I feel alive again. Brothers, don’t you recognize me?”

  The officers look at each other and shake their heads.

  “Huh! Really! It’s obvious you brothers are new on the job. All the guys at the Campaign Against Social Corruption, from the lowest ranking all the way up to the commanders, know yours truly and know all about my revolutionary deeds before the revolution. Everyone present here knows that I have donated all my wealth to buy homes for the brothers of the revolution. If you don’t believe me, ask your base commander, Colonel Salman. Every Friday, he and I walk barefoot to Friday prayers. I am devoted to all the brothers of the revolution. I am Haji Karim … Who went after that damned singer and his musician?”

  With the air of a commander he points to a few young men.

  “You, you, and you, go find those two and bring them back here.”

  There is such authority in his voice that the three young men obediently run toward the garden. The others, wide-eyed and openmouthed at the old man’s performance, stand around staring. He just about forces each one of the agents to take a plate of pastries and sits them down on chairs. Little by little he has quelled their anger at seeing that decadent party. All of a sudden, the old man kicks the drum, and while trying to extract his foot from its middle, he slyly goes on to say that he himself will take command of the party, he will not allow the women to come out of the villa without their heads covered, he will get rid of the musical paraphernalia, and even if they don’t find the singer and his friend tonight, tomorrow he will himself deliver them hands tied to the revolutionary brothers. In old Iranian tradition, he plucks a strand of his beard and puts it in the palm of the commander’s hand as guarantee of his promise. Half an hour later, the agents have lost their harsh and brusque expressions. They amicably explain that they do not like disrupting such joyous gatherings, but that some families really carry things too far.

  The incident is coming to a happy end and the old man is walking the agents to the garden gates when the ranking officer’s two-way radio goes on. He reports that Haji Karim has pledged and attested for everyone at the party and that they are returning to the base … The shout of the base commander blasts out:

  “Who the hell is Haji Karim?”

  “Colonel! Haji Karim, your friend. He says all the brothers know him … The guy you walk barefoot to Friday prayers with.”

  And only he grasps the implication of his commanding officer’s shouts. And only the old man grasps the implication of the ranking officer’s furious glare.

  The officers arrest the phony Haji Karim, the guitarist, the father of the bride, the bride, and the groom and take them all away.

  The guests, dumbstruck, flop down on the chairs. No one has the energy to talk, and no one knows what to do. Now the gentle one-thousand-and-one-year-old rippling of the stream can be clearly heard. Dara chooses his path so as to walk past Sara. He inhales her scent and whispers:

  “Good-bye.”

  Sara mumbles:

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dara walks toward the garden gates. Suddenly, like a miracle in Tehran, high above the brokenhearted and graveyardlike silence of the people, high above the glow of the colorful lamps that now seem unsightly, and high above a broken guitar, the familiar song of a night-singing nightingale rises from somewhere in the garden. A nightingale that in this season of cold should not be in the garden, a nightingale that in a thousand verses of Iranian poetry, in the hours of darkness, for the love of a red rose and in sorrow of its separation from it, has forever sung and will forever sing.

  “AT DAWN THE SCENT OF FLOWERS

  FROM MY BED …”

  The next scene of our story begins in Dara’s house.

  Dara’s parents have gone on a three-day trip. In Iran, this is a golden opportunity. Therefore, after much mumbling, stage setting, and pangs of consci
ence and shame, Dara has invited Sara to his house. And Sara, after much mumbling and pangs of conscience and shame, has accepted his invitation. But she has repeatedly insisted:

  “Only for half an hour. Just to sit and have a cup of tea together, and then I will leave. Only half an hour.”

  In fact, after the incident on that snowy night, they have become more cautious and conservative. In other words, more intelligent. Mr. Petrovich will like my last sentence. Of course, to get to know each other better and to protect their pure and chaste love, they would have preferred to go for a walk in a beautiful park in northern Tehran.

  Our story’s two lovers have extensively discussed and planned the method by which Sara would approach the front door and the manner in which she would quickly enter. Like two urban guerrillas hunted by the secret police, they have tried to foresee all the unforeseeable incidents and problems that could arise. In truth, their greatest fear is of nosy neighbors who know Dara’s parents are traveling, and if they see a girl entering the house, they will immediately conclude that soon none other than the sin of fornication will be committed in that house. It is likely that Brother Atta will call one of the many bureaus of the Campaign Against Social Corruption and request that their agents come as quickly as possible, before a sin is committed under that city’s sky. If the agents are delayed or are negligent, Atta, who believes himself responsible for all of Iran’s sexual organs, will bombard them with telephone calls until they finally raid that house and arrest the two guilty parties.

  As planned, Dara has left the front door ajar since five minutes before the designated time. At nine in the morning, Sara, looking petrified, enters Dara’s house. She dashes past the jasmine bush in the front yard and throws herself into the building.

  Mr. Petrovich tolerates this scene, hoping that at the end of my novel the guilty characters will suffer such remorse, misery, and ruin that my story will at least take on a morally educational aspect and that it becomes a lesson to boys and girls who, according to an old Iranian proverb, are like cotton and fire, and if left alone they will destroy not only themselves but their house and home as well. Perhaps I too, as a writer who for years has written under government censorship and cultural censorship of the people of my land, will subconsciously arrange a dark ending full of repentance and shame for my protagonist and antagonist so that my story receives a publishing permit. Anyway, as far as I can remember, with the exception of a few old stories, for centuries all Iranian love stories, in verse or prose, have ended with the parting of the two lovers, the laughter of death, and the sneer of Satan.