Censoring an Iranian Love Story
Page 33
In the house, Dara takes Sara to his room. He has carpeted Sara’s path from the front door all the way to the middle of his room with flower petals … Sara, looking pale, leans against the wall. Dara, from the corner of the drawn curtain, inspects the houses across the street to see if anyone, from the corner of a drawn curtain, is inspecting their house. Both their hearts are beating wildly and are about to explode.
Sara wants to ask, Are you sure no one comes to your house unannounced? But she doesn’t, because if I write this sentence, Mr. Petrovich will ask, What do they want to do that they are scared of someone showing up unexpectedly? Even if he doesn’t ask this question, he will become more acutely sensitive toward my story’s characters.
Dara offers Sara something to drink.
Of course a real drink, not the kind he has gulped down two glasses of since this morning.
Sara is still gasping for air. She takes the handwritten book of Khosrow and Shirin out of her handbag and throws it down in front of Dara.
“I used to leaf through it every day. I really liked it. But it is of no use to me anymore.”
“How come?”
“Look at it!”
Dara opens the book. All the bright and vibrant colors of the miniatures and illuminations have faded. A dark shadow has spread over the unveiled and exposed hair, arms, and legs of the women, and it seems a coarse eraser has scraped and smudged certain words and sentences. The book’s pages reek of mold. Dara throws it aside. He wants to speak that sentence which most Iranian men are accustomed to telling their wife, lover, sister, or mother, I told you so. But he keeps his silence. He doesn’t smirk either. He only says:
“Thank you for coming.”
Sara moans:
“What have I done? I shouldn’t have come.”
Now Sara’s eyes are brimming with tears. Dara, without asking, knows why his beloved is in tears.
Ask me what Mr. Petrovich thinks of this scene, and I will say:
He has now fully engaged all his faculties and his sixth sense as well.
I will therefore write:
There is no strength left in their knees. Sara in this corner of the room, and Dara in that corner of the room, cower down …
In a trembling voice Sara asks:
“Why?”
This “why” that Sara has asked is a historic “why” that reveals itself not only in our literature, which is fraught with longing, sorrow, and partings, but even in our folk songs. My favorite folk song, awash with sadness and desire, is:
The breeze that comes from your tresses,
is to me more pleasing than the scent of hyacinth.
When at night I hold the image of you in my arms,
at dawn the scent of flowers rises from my bed …
We Iranians seem never to tire of these poems and songs.
The “why” that Sara has asked is the “why” that forlorn lovers in the land of Iran have for centuries asked the land of Iran. And none of the great Iranian thinkers and intellectuals—who the world has yet to discover— has ever taken the trouble to find an answer to this question.
An old song is playing on Dara’s dilapidated stereo. The singer laments, “When at night I hold the image of you in my arms … At dawn …” And Sara and Dara, each in a corner of the room, sit staring into each other’s tearful eyes.
You may have noticed that since Sara’s entrance into the room, I have not written that she has removed her headscarf, and I will not write that from fear she is wet with perspiration and that she has unbuttoned her coverall, and I will not write what a sheer and low-cut camisole she is wearing under it. The Iranian reader knows very well what some Iranian girls wear under their coveralls. Sara runs her fingers through the hair that has fallen loose on her forehead and combs it back. Dara sees her underarm and the pale shadow of its shaven hair. The musky scent of her underarm floats in the room.
But to inform the reader of how Dara has panicked at the sight of all that beauty within his reach, and how with his eyes he is devouring the abundance of Sara’s long black hair, I will write a few sentences in a stream of consciousness with images of a cold and dark winter night when wind and thunder, like evil ghosts, knock on doors and windows and a marble statue trembles in the house.
Then I will write:
Dara and Sara’s hearts beat like the hearts of two caged sparrows in a magnificent tale. Not only from the fear of being discovered and disgraced, but also from the flight of their sparrowlike fancies to those acts that can be performed in private …
I hate likening a rapidly beating heart to the heart of a sparrow, because I think it is an old cliché. But at this point in my story, other than such a simile, I cannot think of a more creative sentence, and both you and Mr. Petrovich know why. Truth be told, in this scene my heart too is beating like the heart of a caged sparrow, because I want Sara and Dara, after a thirty-minute silent conversation with their eyes, to exchange a smile. Then I want Dara to get up, walk over, sit next to Sara, and I want them to kiss. The very first kiss of their lives—clumsy scared, drenched with saliva, and yet unforgettable for the rest of their lives. But in their souls a force stronger than the desire for a kiss has awakened. A force that numbs and weakens them, that through all the nightmares they have had, threatens them and brings them tidings of terrifying punishment.
Sara, hating her own and her lover’s fears, with a quick kick throws her sandals to the other side of the room. One of the sandals lands in front of Dara. Dara picks it up. He touches it and … smells it, kisses it.
I am sure the kissing of the sandals will not receive a publishing permit, and I am forced to resort to ancient metaphors of Iranian literature and to seek the assistance of Omar Khayyám. Although Khayyám was the greatest mathematician of his time, he preferred to sit beside the stream in his garden and, with one eye on life flowing by and the other on his jug of wine, compose quatrains about the death of lovers and beauties and the transformation of their bodies into dust, about jug makers who make jugs from that dust, and about lovers and beauties who sit beside the stream and drink wine from those jugs. Thus, Khayyám’s dusty ecosystem comes to my aid and I write:
Dust from the sole of that sandal on Dara’s hands … He rubs that dust, which heralds divine unity, between his fingers … The chill that dawns in the body of the dead creeps onto his hands. The lustful words ready in his mind to be spoken to Sara become words etched on gravestones. He tastes the dust. It tastes sharp, it tastes of Shiraz wine. All the paths and places on which Sara has walked, and all the gardens and riverbanks of life, all are within this dust and all will someday return to this dust and unite with the dust of Khayyám’s sandals, and a stream will flow over that dust and from it plants will grow and a lover ignorant of the glaring eyes of death will sit beside that stream and write an ode to the eternal beauties of his beloved.
Mr. Petrovich will quite likely appreciate this piece because it will make the readers think of death and hell. But this segment could also be written like this:
Dara kisses the sole of Sara’s sandal. The dust has the sharp taste of the old wines of Shiraz in earthen decanters that the shahnehs have broken and offered to the parched earth.
Two veins on Sara’s ankles, the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, that have taught the agony of man’s separation from man to the silver flamingos … Two violet veins that on the peak of the ankles come together and flow to that place where all the torments and joys of man are born …
Sara does not hear Dara’s stream of consciousness, but having seen his caress and passionate kiss on her sandal, she sighs, a sigh that I am afraid Mr. Petrovich will hear from the white between the lines of my story.
Sara says:
“Well, why are you sitting so far away, come closer.”
Dara, who is in an unnatural state from having tasted the dust of the broken earthen decanters of wine and the plants along the riverbank, like a tame and harmless sheep moves toward Sara on all fours. This is the first time in
Sara’s life that a man with fire in his eyes, with a breath scented with wine and a tongue tainted with death, moves toward her like this—like a sheep that can quickly transform into a wolf. Stronger and saltier still, sweat seeps from her pores. As he approaches his prey, the sheeplike wolf glares at the fresh and succulent flesh on Sara’s shoulders in which virgin blood flows.
In the depths of Sara’s ears, the voices of mothers, grandmothers, and aunts rise like the dead on the day of resurrection—a day that lasts three hundred thousand days—all the words of wisdom and words of warning that from childhood until a few days ago have been spoken in her ears.
“My girl, don’t you ever let the boys touch your flower! If one of them says let me see your flower, quickly come and tell me so that I can cut off his ear.”
“My girl, you are ten years old now, you shouldn’t be playing with the neighbor’s boys.”
“Sara, if God forbid one of the boys in the neighborhood ever asks you to go to some quiet corner with him, don’t you be fooled. You will be ruined for the rest of your life, and on Judgment Day, God will punish you. In hell guilty women and girls are hung by their breasts from hooks and roasted on fire.”
“Sara, you are all grown up now, you shouldn’t go to the door in short sleeves.”
“Sara, your uncle Javad is a letch, don’t wear skirts when he comes over to our house.”
“My girl, now that you will be going to the university on your own, you have to be very careful. Don’t forget that men only want one thing from women. No matter how many nice things they say, the minute they get what they came for, they will throw you away like a used tissue. No matter how many promises they make, they will never marry you, because they think a girl who gives herself to them before marriage does not deserve to be their wife.”
“You see these men! They’re all wolves. Some of them in sheep’s skin, some of them in dog’s skin, some even in mouse’s skin, they know a thousand different ploys and poems. The moment they learn what type of man you like, they will become that man. You will end up in a whorehouse.”
“Sara, don’t be duped by the lewd boys and girls at the university who fool you and say let’s go to the movies, let’s go for some ice cream. One ice cream and you’ll be disgraced in this town. My girl, be very careful. Don’t bring shame to yourself and to your family.”
But that wolf that was once called Dara, guised in mouse’s skin, has now moved close to Sara. She can hear the mouse’s uneven breaths and senses the heat of his body against her own. She sees a drop of sweat fall onto the floor from Dara’s temple.
Dust wails, wine froths in one-thousand-year-old earthen decanters… Sara’s heart grows heavier from one moment to the next. Its beating slows …
Mr. Petrovich will say:
“Wait! What is going on? There seem to be things happening in your story that I can’t see. There seem to be unseemly things going on in between these three dots. Why has Sara’s heart slowed down?”
“Sir! Your instincts don’t always tell you the truth. There is nothing going on. Dara is still rubbing the dust from the sole of Sara’s sandal between his fingers. And Sara’s heart, like everyone else’s, sometimes beats fast, sometimes beats slow. You yourself have read in stories that when some sexual encounter is about to take place the characters’ hearts beat faster … Read the next sentence and see how Sara fouls things up for Dara.”
Sara says:
“You look like a wolf.”
Dara, a few feet away from Sara, freezes in his place and in a trembling voice says:
“I think I look like a miserable dog.”
“No, I prefer you to look like a wolf … Come! …”
Dara at last crosses The Longest Yard and sitting next to Sara leans against the wall. Now their bare forearms touch. Sara strokes Dara’s cheek with her fingertip.
“You’ve cut your face. Was your hand shaking while you shaved this morning?”
“Yes. But you prefer a bearded man.”
“Leave your jealousy for some other time.”
That morning’s trembling has again started in Dara’s body. Its cause is nothing but the first amorous touch of a woman’s delicate hand against his face. With a courage that he had not known he possessed, Dara takes Sara’s hand. The sweat on their palms combine. They look at their hands resting one in the other.
And Sara sees the stain of turquoise paint on the edge of Dara’s nail.
Behind the curtains covering the window of that room, a turquoise sky with no winged horse and no flying carpet stretches toward Tehran’s eastern horizon, toward Khayyám’s city of Neyshabur where beautiful Iranian turquoise beneath the earth dreams of becoming a gem on the beautiful fingers of an Iranian girl, fingers that now ache from the pressure of a lover’s hand. Sara returns the pressure of Dara’s hand in kind and says:
“Gentle!”
Mr. Petrovich will say:
“What happened? What did Sara say? What is Dara doing? What if this cunning guy has gone after Sara?”
I will say:
“I don’t think so. Perhaps to release his emotional stress he is squeezing Sara’s sandal in his fist and Sara is afraid that her sandal will break in two.”
Sara raises Dara’s hand to her lips and kisses the finger that bears the turquoise stain. A kiss so silent that neither Mr. Petrovich nor even I can hear. From the touch of Sara’s lips against his skin, a hellish roar echoes in Dara’s ears. He is tongue-tied, and no word or action comes to his mind. Sara, with eyes closed and lips half opened, rests her head against the wall. Dara is still dwelling on the scorch of that kiss on his finger. All the turquoise mines of Neyshabur seem to have caved in under his nail and the injured miners are screaming for help …
I nudge him. “Stupid boy! What are you waiting for? This poor girl has come as far as she can. It’s your turn to make a move. See how her lips are ready and waiting? Do something, you dimwit. Hurry! Women’s patience doesn’t last as long as a shot of vodka.”
Dara turns to Sara. He sees her proportionately plump arms waiting for the pressure of his arms and the empty place of his broad hands on the curves of her shoulders. He looks at the black stain on Sara’s misty rose-colored lower lip, the fruit of biting her lips in fear, and at the white skin beneath her freshly plucked eyebrows. And at last, staring at her closed eyes, he opens his lips.
“Death to freedom, death to captivity … that you had written on your sign … It was very strange. What did you mean by it?”
Sara lifts her head from its resting place against the wall. She opens her eyes that had been closed to the fantasy of a kiss. She grins.
“I was inspired …”
This is the wisest and most ironic response that can come from the lips of an Iranian woman. From the days when the most magnificent Iranian women were carried to harems of seven hundred in covered palanquins mounted on camels, until today when a lady defender of human rights in Iran receives the Nobel Peace Prize after having endured years of persecution and threats, and unlike her an Iranian woman amasses such wealth in the United States that she buys a ticket on the Russian spacecraft taxi and becomes the first woman tourist in outer space, no such inspiration has ever come to an Iranian woman.
Sara, continuing her mysterious comment, says:
“I am tired. I am very, very tired.”
It is now that the spark of love is ignited. Right at this very moment when that mystifying look awakens in Sara’s eyes. A look that has gleamed in the eyes of wine bearers in forbidden taverns of seven hundred years ago, that has gleamed in the eyes of freedom-loving women burning under the hot-iron torture of the secret police, that has gleamed in the eyes of a mother who has received the bones of a son martyred at war, that will gleam in the eyes of the young girl who will someday write the most beautiful Iranian love story.
Tell me:
You seem to be an absentminded writer! Didn’t you write earlier that this spark of love had already ignited?
And I will say
:
Why don’t you pay attention? I am not talking about Dara’s spark of love. I am talking about Mr. Petrovich’s spark of love. He is now staring into those noble Oriental eyes that my prose fails to describe. His heart is beating like the heart of a sparrow held captive in a fist. But you are right when you say I am an absentminded writer. I was not at all aware that, throughout this unimaginative story, Mr. Petrovich’s imagination of Sara has been extremely active. And now, with every ounce of his emotions, he feels he has fallen in love with this girl. This girl who is neither lewd nor saintly.
Mr. Petrovich says:
“Please take Sara out of this womanizer’s house. Send her home! I myself will send Sinbad to China to buy pencils.”
“But sir, that won’t do! What about my story’s plot?”
“Then I forbid you to allow Dara’s hand to touch her.”
“Sir, even if I wanted to, this Dara is so clumsy and confused that he is not capable of doing anything. I am sure he now wants to go on and on about a few days ago when he painted a house turquoise.”
“That is very good. In my opinion, you have written a successful and refined love story that may receive a publishing permit … Except … except, I have one problem.”
“What problem?”
“Well, if I wanted to somehow meet Sara, I don’t know what I would have to do … Ever since I read segments of your story, she has attracted my attention. Don’t think I have wicked intentions. I want to ask for her hand in marriage. Rest assured that I can make her happy … Can you think of a way for us to meet somewhere?”