Censoring an Iranian Love Story (10 page)

“First of all, M
h
n is an obsolete name. Second, his classmates will make fun of him in school.”

Then he faked a scholarly mien and added:

“Third, M
h
n is plural.”

By then I was a known writer, and to develop a pure and unique prose I had practiced thousands of pages of story writing and I had read thousands of pages of old Farsi texts and tens of books on Farsi grammar and linguistics. Still, with modesty I said:

“My dear brother! First of all, M
h
n is the name of a green and lush place in the desert in eastern Iran.”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Years from now, kids in school will make fun of this poor innocent child, taunting him that his father was probably Papa Desert.”

“Second, in the Farsi language
n does not imply a plural form. M
h
n means ‘like the moon.’ ”

He suddenly grew angry and growled:

“Don’t give me all this hot air. Go get a permission slip from the director of the General Register Office for me to name your kid M
h
n.”

This time, I was determined to insist on my rights as a father and had no intention of giving up that easily. I got in my car, drove past the tomb of our world-renowned poet who died seven hundred years ago, and headed for the other side of town and the Central Office of the General Register. I waited for three hours until I was finally given permission to see the director general. Angry and determined to reclaim my rights, I stepped into his office. But the second I saw him sitting behind his large desk, and before he had even raised his head to see my non-Islamic appearance, I quickly turned around and walked out. I drove back to the opposite side of town and back to the administrator in charge of issuing birth certificates. This time, obstinately, yet with censored anger, I asked:

“Brother, can I name him Daniel?”

To my surprise I heard:

“Why not. Daniel is the name of a prophet.”

I think despite his exceptionally Islamic appearance—long beard and collarless shirt—the administrator did not participate in Friday prayers and street demonstrations, because he should have known that at all Friday prayers and in all street demonstrations, after the slogans of Death to America, Death to the Soviet Union, Death to England, and Death to France, in a much louder voice participants shouted, Death to Israel … It had slipped his mind that we are strong supporters of the Palestinian people and that our country has been in some sort of an undeclared war against Israel… And that is how one of my children ended up with a Communist name and the other one with a Jewish name. I am glad I did not have a third child, because I don’t know which one of the names favored by our enemies he or she would have ended up with.

Ask me:

Does this chapter have anything to do with your love story and censorship?

It most certainly does. In fact, for you to fully discern the symbols and metaphors of my story, I am forced to introduce you to yet another form of censorship—sociocultural censorship—which in Iran has a history of more than two thousand years … It is a phenomenon in comparison to which the scissor blades of Moharram Ali Khan seem like delicate jasmine petals.

Now you must want to ask, Who in the world is Moharram Ali Khan?

That’s strange! You are familiar with the likes of Damocles and his sword; King Arthur’s master swordsman Sir Lancelot; Josef Ignace Guillotin; Josef Mengele, the doctor at Auschwitz who with his scalpel conducted medical experiments on the prisoners; and even with murderers such as the one in
The Silence of the Lambs
who skinned people and sewed their skin into clothes, but you don’t know who Moharram Ali Khan is?