‘Well done.’
‘Yes, but the thing is, now there’s this stamp in the middle of my birth certificate saying “This driver’s licence is hereby endorsed for six months”.’
With Mina still furiously exploring her satchel, I nervously shuffle back to the house in the dark, towards the grandiloquent sounds of Portishead in Roseland. I can make out Zsa Zsa’s voice at the other end of the garden, launching into the story of getting arrested for espionage by Column 2, because of her dirty pimp bastard scumbag boss, such a dirty pimp bastard scumbag that guy was.
I find myself watching San, once again, as she stands in a far corner of the room, two feet taller than the students crowding around her politely insisting that she relate absolutely everything she knows about the European reception of Hafez.
‘Which translations do they use?’
‘I have no fucking idea.’
‘Does anyone read the originals?’
‘Most probably not.’
Most of Zsa Zsa’s guests have gathered around the Chinese cultural attaché, who is casually leaning against a wall. ‘So I do this article on Iranian economic policy, saying, well, it’s basically very simple. Big difference between China and Iran is Iran thinks it can do political reform without economic reform. How can you have political reform without economic reform? In China, first we do economic reform, then do political reform, then we check. Was this political reform good or bad for economic reform? Anyway my article is, well, you know, diplomatically written, or at least that’s what I thought.’ He shrugs, takes a swig from his Carlsberg. ‘But then this friend calls me up. He says, congratulations Salman! I say what do you mean? My name isn’t Salman. Who the fuck is Salman? So he says, well, Keyhan newspaper quoted you in the little blue box on the first page, and that blue box on the first page of Keyhan, well, what it amounts to actually is a kind of hit list. That’s where they put people they don’t like. In the little blue box. So I go, so what? Fuck them, you know? Who the fuck cares?’
‘Guy speaks amazing Farsi,’ someone mutters. ‘Incredible. Where did you learn Farsi?’
I was once in the blue Keyhan box myself, after writing an article on a food orgy here at Zsa Zsa’s. I wait for a cue, a chance to bring this up, but the conversation is moving too quickly. ‘I didn’t think a Chinese would ever bother to learn Farsi.’
‘Actually’, the diplomat continues, ‘China and Iran have lots in common, you know. In modern times, China and Iran have had more revolutions than any other country worldwide. Simultaneous mass rebellions in different urban centers.’
‘Accent is perfect.’
‘Yes, but he doesn’t pronounce the “q”s, did you notice, he pronounces them like a “k” almost.’
‘And this is because Iran had a sense of belonging way back, before modern times, just like China. And neither China nor Iran had much Western influence. Much less than Arab countries. And much less than, you know, India or whatever.’
Cyrus is standing next to me, one hand firmly gripping my shoulder, trying to spark a casual conversation on the women attending the party, see the one with the lip-job and the enormous ass, in the black jeans, she reminds me of the first woman I ever slept with vallah beh khoda, but bonding with Cyrus does not come naturally with Mina in the background, and I’m overjoyed to see San from the corner of my eye, walking up to us as she lights a cigarette. Without bothering to comment on the ass and the lip-job, I take a tiny step sideways, so as to encourage San to step up, though not obviously enough for Cyrus to notice.
‘The Iranian student intelligentsia. Our pride and joy. Amazing. A-ma-zing. How can you lead a country to cultural enlightenment if you don’t know how to eat a fucking pastry without meat crumbs sticking to your face? How can you do that without knowing how to match the fucking colors of your fucking suit? Amazing.’ San is oblivious to Cyrus’s irritated glare. She finishes lighting the cigarette with her left hand, pocketing a wallet and holding a meat pastry in the other, and in her characteristic mumble she starts describing a press conference she attended that day, just hours before, at the Tehran Museum of Modern Art.
‘So there’s a press conference at the Museum. OK. We’re this select group of international correspondents, the usual suspects, actually. None of us knows exactly why we’ve been convoked. But OK. Then what happens? This guy gets on stage and presents us with – get this – with a collection of Adolf Hitler’s watercolors. I’m serious. The Führer’s watercolors. In: Tehran. Talk about an Aryan connection. And those Ministry officials make no fucking attempt to explain why these particular pieces of artwork just happen to be lying in the fucking cellar all these years. I mean really. They simply shuffle around the fucking podium,’ she imitates the officials, stooping over and wagging her head as if imitating some demented primate, ‘scratching their stubble, looking slightly embarrassed and carry the damn things back down into the cellar again. I swear.’
Cyrus has started walking away, towards the Beijing diplomat, who is now fiddling with a turquoise chain of tasbi prayer beads. Scrutinizing San as she absent-mindedly watches the guests in the middle of the room, most of them dancing to some prerevolutionary Googoosh track with a Cha-Cha-Cha rhythm, I still cannot quite decide whether to find her attractive or not. Cheekbones perfectly molded, the eyes an exotic green, but unfortunately a touch too tall and too slender, and her mouth, I find, is simply enormous, and her breasts by far too small.
‘You know, San, my dear,’ I lower my voice to a conspiring and intimate murmur, ‘that Adolf retrospective may have been the best local show in a long, long time.’ San shrugs and raises her eyebrows in a ‘Truth Hurts What Can I Say?’ demeanor.
‘Yes, truth hurts, what can I say? But something else. You know what?’ San leans over, her voice now equally conspiring. ‘I heard that bastard Tarofi is now involved in something dicey. And I don’t mean his good-goody reformism and all that. Something big. Something about armed opposition outside and inside the country and espionage and counter-espionage and counter-fucking-counter-espionage and so-called terrorist fucking networks and God knows what the fuck else. To me, the whole thing seems to be a mess. A complete and utter mess. Which is of course typical. Just fucking typical. How can you run a country if you can’t even run a fucking secret service properly?’
‘You’re so right.’ I light a cigarette and take a sip from my drink. ‘Sounds like utter chaos. Tell me how on earth did you find out?’
‘This guy from the Cultural Ministry. Badback or something, his name is. But now I’ve been trying to reach him, and I don’t know where the fuck he is. And I wanted to ask you whether you might know? I mean I’m sure you’ve been to the Ministry before? Badback or something? This new radical Mani Pulite guy they’re all worried about?’
‘Of course I know him, I mean I’ve heard of him before. Let me see what I can do.’ I finish my drink and immediately start mixing another one. ‘I’ll ask around for you.’
‘Anyway, usually, the Ministry of Information, it’s always one step behind, even if it’s always pretending it knows what’s going on, just blindly hoping and praying someone will fill them in at some point, so I don’t know how viable all of this is, but anyway, apparently, you have this Tarofi guy, who’s completely broke, can’t even buy a fucking precision spray pump for his fucking fruit trees, and who will work with anyone for anyone against anyone under anyone as long as the pay is OK. So he hooks up with these weirdo internationals, these networkers who, well, God knows what they’re about, seem to run on sheer force of habit, on sheer downhill momentum, like the free-market economy, or the ecosystem or something, I mean they’re filthy rich so it can’t be the money, right? And they’re not really leftist, and not really religious and not really this and not really that, maybe they’re mercenaries after all, but there seems to be more, you know, some latest design in terms of wacko schmacko ideologues, something different, stuff for future headlines to come – or maybe they’ve been pulling strings all along, yo
u know? Don’t you think?’
I noisily finish a second drink, put an arm around San’s waist and burp, emitting a strong smell of olives, vinegar and fennel. She looks at me with concern, as if I were an excretion of a particular, worrying hue she’d never expect to discover in her stool, then carefully rearranges her knee-length grey dress as she walks to the dance floor.
By 2 AM, I’m feeling light-headed due to the homemade raisin liquor and Parsi Cola, and have shared several lines of coke with Cyrus, which have had no effect whatsoever, and am now stumbling across the Qashqai carpet looking for more olives and fennel in grape vinegar. My fingers are sticky and reek of garlic yogurt, so I wipe them off on various tablecloths, where they leave greasy pink traces. Someone has finally replaced the Googoosh album with an early Enrique Iglesias, and Cyrus is dancing with a group of women I’ve never seen before. Don’t know why why but I love to see you cry, says Iglesias. Don’t know why why it just makes me feel alive. The Chinese cultural attaché is still standing precisely where he was two hours ago but is now talking to Mina. I walk towards them, reaching for more olives, pistachios and fennel as I make my way across the room and try very hard to understand what they’re saying, but the music is simply too loud. When the track finally ends I lean over and mutter into the diplomat’s ear.
‘So Mr Ching Chong Hong Kong, looking a little uptight, you know. Just don’t be afraid to use adjectives when you talk to women.’ The cultural attaché nods a curt goodbye and walks off, leaving me standing alone with Mina, who smiles politely before following the diplomat to the far end of the room. I reach over and swab off my fingers on her back.
After mixing another drink of vodka with fresh lime, I stumble across the room until I’m standing in the middle of the dancers, then use my forefingers to pull my eyes into little slits, screaming ‘Spwing Woll, Stuh Fwy’ at the top of my lungs, until most guests make their way to the outside veranda, for a breath of fresh air.
Hearsay
Our hotel is near Chinatown. You know they say the Chinese in London have the same lifestyles as the Chinese in China. They hang glistening orange ducks in their shop windows and what goes on in those shops I do not know. Do not want to know. I just know it stinks. When you pass by those shops in hot weather it stinks so bad I feel like throwing up. It smells of sweet, rotting fish. Each and every time I pass by in front of a Chinese shop I feel like throwing up on the sidewalk. But I still want to go and check out Chinatown every day, even if it makes me want to throw up. As for the Promessa, I talked to my Ideal Standard associate whom you know, he was the one telling you all that crap about the Kabbalists back at the gay bar in Hamburg (His name’s Türgüt, and he keeps saying I have ‘a love/hate relationship’ with the Chinese …!) We were happy to meet you, by the way. It would have been a boring evening otherwise, and we worked out something pretty good. But we were wondering if you could reconsider the title. Because we’re considering using Jordi Grotesk as a font. On a yellow and red, combat color background. But Promessa ends with an A. And has precisely eight letters. So it doesn’t work out, graphically speaking, even a word with nine letters would be better. How about ‘Promesses’ in French? Which is promises, the plural. Or in English? Cyrus tells me promise in Farsi is ‘koskesh’, which is cool, too. Why not call it that? And why is it in Italian anyway? And so yes I actually met Cyrus Rahati at a party last week. He said you kept trying to fuck his girlfriend but she didn’t want you. Isn’t that funny – such a small world. Thanks and email us back as soon as you can. Yours, Fatih.
PS: You know what happened: I was looking through dv film material I shot in Hamburg and suddenly found that I shot you somewhere in the streets there. Funny, don’t you think? I did not expect to see anyone that I knew in Hamburg.
I also have an email from the office assistant at the I-CON, saying they’ve decided to fund the project, after all, on condition that I present it at a conference on ‘Spaces of Global Art’ next June. I’d need to package the Promessa as ‘an exercise in artistic cartography, an interdisciplinary project for mapping a transfer of contemporary forms of knowledge across theoretical-practical and ethno-geographic boundaries’. Considering that the opening is only weeks away, I should drop by in Zurich as soon as possible.
Stella’s email, finally, is unusually brief, stating only that, according to the international press, a Newsweek correspondent had fallen off the roof of an office building near Karaj last night, but that it wasn’t considered a suicide by the authorities. She had not left a note of any kind, and the multiple fractures in each of the fingers of her right hand had apparently occurred before her hapless fall from the rooftop.
I feel a peculiar tension in my lower abdomen. Pulling the air deep into my gut, I switch off the computer and the portable TV, then pour myself a whiskey and walk over to the window, where I watch the rush-hour traffic on the freeway. The cars are barely moving, bumper to bumper in a seamless succession of tinny metal roofs reflecting the beam of the streetlights, a blinding white glare with just a hue of dark orange along the rim.
The next morning I wake with a splitting headache, and decide to grab some air before breakfast. In the courtyard downstairs, I notice some new graffiti in English, CAN I FUCK YOU IN THE NIGHT, sprayed in extravagant capital letters across the entrance patio of block 30B. I spend an hour in the glaring afternoon sunshine by the soccer pitch, where a group of teenagers are kicking a football back and forth across the field, peacefully and amicably, and agreeably boring to watch. On the far side of a dusty expanse of unused land, framed by the fumy, gray-white skies above, and the eight-lane freeway at their feet, I count sixteen slabs of Korean make, each of them twenty stories high and six apartments wide. Halfway across the unused field, nestled into a small slope by the freeway, is the bassiji bungalow simmering in the early summer heat. I decide to inquire about the DV camera within the next two days.
I spend the rest of the day at home, seeing as I cannot think any more clearly than before my walk. Today’s hangover is patently much worse than anything I can remember, even the splitting headache following the housewarming party a month ago, during which, as I now rather painfully remember, I made several drunken passes at San, who tactfully ignored me each and every time. At one point, I now recall, I even made a comment on the size of San’s mouth and its potential advantages in terms of group sex and male anatomies and such, which is when she and most of the other guests started thanking me for the party and taking off for a late birthday dinner somewhere else.
I’m about to take another shower when, from my bathroom window, I notice a sudden change in the apartment opposite. Sitting on the Louis XV sofas and armchairs in the usually deserted living room is a family of six having afternoon chaii. I can barely distinguish their outlines through the tinted windows, but I can make out a small girl of four or five years of age, taking pictures of her relatives with a flashing Polaroid. She shows each snapshot to an elderly woman by the window, who never fails to applaud enthusiastically.
So we’ve received your description of the Promessa project, thank you very much. It would be wise to get on with things as soon as possible. Please book a flight to Zurich, see to it that you coordinate things with the assistant. Just one thing. It seems to me that in your Promessa statement, you’re implying ‘art’ doesn’t really play the role it should in Iran, or anywhere else in the Middle East. Well, for one thing, to pretend it should exist in the same form it does anywhere else – now that is truly colonialist. The ‘hybrid’ or ‘postcolonial’ horse hockey you see in European museums has precious little to do with typical living conditions in the Third World. People in places like Black Africa find the act of staring at pictures on a wall extremely boring, just as they find staring at lines on a page, alone in some corner of the room, very odd. Why should it be incorrect or insulting to point these things out? I look forward to a frank and genuine debate on such matters, which are, indeed, of great importance to me. Sincerely, Dr T. Christenhuber.
&
nbsp; I turn on the TV, switching to CNN, light a cigarette and mix a date vodka with generous amounts of lime and Zam Zam Cola.
Dearest Tan, my old friend. Millions of Tehran households have Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Dali or Miro posters, or Persian miniatures, or Islamic knick-knacks on their kitchen walls. So much for a lack of art. Then again, who cares? If art touches on grassroots, terrific. But to be frank and genuine, for that we have World Music Festivals and Terre des hommes.
Roughly half an hour later, there’s a brief glitch in the power supply, and the text is lost. Furious, I start pounding my hand-crafted Afghan milking stool against the wall, then throw it out the living-room window, watching it land in the courtyard, very near the spot where my notebook must have landed two weeks ago. I take the elevator down to the ground floor, pick up the stool, which is still intact, and return to the apartment for another drink.
Several months ago I had a black-and-white portrait of Zsa Zsa blown up to life-size for the new Promessa. Zsa Zsa with her hair in a beehive, wearing a thick woolen jacket with swirling sixties motifs, her expression stern and deadpan, arms folded, an unlit cigarette in one hand. I had it framed and hung by the entrance, at the beginning of the winding hallway, where the zebra stripes are being painted over by one of the Afghanis, who have now been dressed in matching mauve uniforms.
Recently Zsa Zsa announced that she did have the intention of attending the vernissage, even though it would be hard on her. ‘So many memories, my dear.’ Memories aside, I know Zsa Zsa would disapprove of seeing her picture suspended in a public corridor, like some political portrait or Parsi Cola poster board, and very much hope she’ll change her mind. I think it will be quite an experience, for more reasons than one.
Since the catering, the soft drinks, the espresso machines, the chandeliers, the ashtrays, the Ecusson chairs, the lounge chairs and the terrarium are all in place, the opening has been set for precisely two weeks from now. I’m considering the option of inviting the young man with the ‘Sleep of a Thousand Destinies’ piece from the Conceptual Art Festival and placing him, equipped with his bedspread and his mirror, at the symmetric center of the gallery space. At a well-chosen moment during the evening, I would put an arm around him in a tender gesture of affection, upon which, perhaps without even lifting the sheet, I could introduce him to the crowd. The perfect posture for a welcome speech, an inaugural talk, expressing my thoughts and impressions, hopes and doubts regarding the Promessa, the artworld, and of course my own, deeply problematic, Westernized mindset. On how naive it had been to try and find in Tehran what I’d come to see as quality over in the West.
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