“No … If you wanted, for example, to meet Anna Karenina, I could perhaps find a way but…”
“Who is Anna Karenina? Is she like Sara?”
“She’s better than Sara. I can’t say she is very beautiful, but she has a certain charm that would bring any man to his knees. Perhaps you can censor the segment where she falls in love and stop her from committing suicide.”
“No … And you call yourself a writer? Don’t you know that when a man like me falls in love he has eyes for no other woman?”
“I wish you had told me sooner. I think I should write a novel about you and your love story.”
“By the time you write that novel, delinquent boys like Dara will have ruined Sara … But I have an idea. Tell me what you think about it. Write that Sara drops the handkerchief Dara has given to her someplace near the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, maybe even in front of my office so that no one else will see it. I will pick it up and run after her. I will say Miss, is this your handkerchief? … She sees me. She thanks me. Then I will say, Miss, you deserve much more than such a handkerchief. You should have a handkerchief woven of gold with pearls along its edges. This way I open up a conversation with her.”
It is here that I remember Dara’s notorious handkerchief. In traditional Iranian weddings it was customary at the end of the evening, while festivities were still under way in the house, to send the bride and groom hand in hand to a room known as the hejleh, or the nuptial chamber. There, an old woman would stand waiting behind the door. After the groom had conquered the bastion of the bride, he would deliver a handkerchief stained with her blood of virginity to the old woman. She would in turn display the handkerchief before the guests, and joyous screams and shouts would rise because the test of the bride’s purity had been proudly and successfully performed. Of course, a bride whose hymen was for example circumferential or vertical and produced no blood, would on this night be either murdered or disgraced before one and all and dispatched to her parents’ house. Now you have discovered the hidden significance of the complicated symbol of my story, and now you understand why Mr. Petrovich is so sensitive about this handkerchief.
And the word “blood” reminds me of that assassin who wanted to release Dara’s blood from his jugular. I shout:
“Then it was you who sent that assassin to kill Dara!”
Mr. Petrovich raises his index finger to his nose, suggesting that I lower my voice.
“You are accusing an official of the holy government of the Islamic Republic of assassinating his opponents. I will pretend I did not hear what you said.”
Then with an air of authority he says:
“The longer Sara and Dara stay together, the greater the danger threatening your story. Find a solution quickly; otherwise, get the fancy of publishing a love story out of your head.”
I say:
“You call this a love story? Or a … ? Look at what has become of my hopes and dreams. Every single bone in this story is broken. Every single one of its chapters has gone to a wasteland around Tehran, those same places where they burn garbage. Perhaps I should have just strangled Sara like Desdemona at the very start and put us all out of our misery.”
He says:
“I think it has turned out to be a nice educational story! Now put your creativity to work so that Sara ends up loathing Dara.”
His eyes have regained their frightening glint of shrewdness.
“Don’t force me to take action myself. Get Sara out of that house of sin.”
I no longer have any energy or passion to write. I have to take to my grave the dream of putting that enchanting period at the end of a good love story.
I say:
“Sir, don’t kid yourself! It’s too late. In the process of writing this story, I have again come to the conclusion that writing a love story with a happy ending is not in the destiny of writers of my generation … and my work on this story is done. I no longer have any control over it or its characters.”
“What do you mean? Why are you talking nonsense? Start writing.”
“Your Excellency, I can’t! I have been completely scissored out of this story. I’m done …”
Ask me:
How?
So that to you and to Mr. Petrovich I say:
“Listen! Sara wants to speak for herself.”
Sara tells Dara:
“In that flower patch in your front yard … That jasmine bush …”
“Yes, I have been meaning to prune it, but I haven’t had the time.”
“No, don’t… To allow a plant the freedom to spread throughout the garden is beautiful.”
Dara and I, and Mr. Petrovich, look at Sara’s beautiful sentence in awe. Sara stares at the two violet veins on her ankle. She strokes them with her fingertip and rubs her tired ankle.
Then, as though she has suddenly remembered something, her eyes widen; she freezes.
“What’s wrong, Sara? What happened?”
“When I walked into the yard, the first thing I saw was that jasmine bush … To be honest, it frightened me. Now I realize that it seemed as if a pair of terrifying eyes were looking at me from inside the bush.”
“That’s impossible … There is no one in the house except you and me.”
“But I am sure I saw it. Maybe when you left the front door open someone came in and hid in the bush.”
Dara, with his heart beating out of his chest, from the corner of his bedroom curtain looks at the jasmine bush. His eyes are wide with fear. It seems there is something in its branches.
Later, when terrified he runs to the yard, there he will see the corpse of a hunchback midget staring at the front door of the house …
And all I know is that before it is too late, as fast as possible, even if with a flying carpet, I must get to my house and lock the door from the inside …
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shahriar Mandanipour has won numerous awards for his novels, short
stories, and nonfiction in Iran, although he was unable to publish his fiction
from 1992 until 1997 as a result of censorship. A noted film critic, from 1999
until early 2008 he was editor in chief of Asr-e Panjshanbeh (Thursday
Evening), a monthly literary journal published in Shiraz. He came to the
United States in 2006 as the third International Writers Project Fellow at
Brown University. He is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University
and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in PEN
America and The Literary Review and is forthcoming in The Kenyon
Review. This is his first full-length work to appear in English.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Translation copyright © 2009 by Sara Khalili
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This translation is based on an unpublished Farsi work by Shahriar Mandanipour.
Copyright © 2008 by Shahriar Mandanipour
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mandani’pur, Shahriyar.
Censoring an Iranian love story: a novel / Shahriar Mandanipour; translated from the Farsi
by Sara Khalili.
p. cm.
Translation of previously unpublished Persian novel.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27196-9
I. Khalili, Sara. II. Title.
pk6561.m236c46 2009
891.55’33—dc22 2008041270
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely c
oincidental.
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Death to Dictatorship, Death to Freedom
Chapter 2 - Bārān and Daniel
Chapter 3 - Censored Testicles
Chapter 4 - The Bottomless Well
Chapter 5 - I’d Rather be a Sparrow than a Snake
Chapter 6 - I Love You but I Never Want to See You Again
Chapter 7 - The Beard
Chapter 8 - Bitter Water
Chapter 9 - The Bronze Man
Chapter 10 - The Arabs are Coming
Chapter 11 - Damask Rose’s Stamen
Chapter 12 - A Man with Three Wives
Chapter 13 - Mirdamad Avenue
Chapter 14 - A Cobra at the Window
Chapter 15 - The Hashashin in Tehran
Chapter 16 - Like a Fly
Chapter 17 - Davālpā
Chapter 18 - The Freedom of Insanity
Chapter 19 - Crime and Punishment
Chapter 20 - The Snow Queen of Tehran
Chapter 21 - “Canaries Roasted on a Fire of Lilies and Jasmines …”: (Ahmad Shamlu)
Chapter 22 - Assassin’s Alley
Chapter 23 - The Wedding
Chapter 24 - “At Dawn the Scent of Flowers From my Bed …”
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Censoring an Iranian Love Story Page 34