Censoring an Iranian Love Story (14 page)

“Then you agree that these documents are not forgeries.”

“Don’t insist that I agree. If I do, I will have to call university security to come and arrest you.”

“On what charge?”

“Theft. Do you know how long the prison sentence is for stealing government documents?”

“You mean to suggest that I stole my transcripts from the university archives?”

“Yes. Precisely.”

“Well, if I stole these transcripts from the university archives, then I must have been a student here.”

“No, you were not, because we only trust the documents that we ourselves have.”

“If I accept that I stole my transcripts from the university, then you must accept that I was a student here.”

“Who do you think you are to tell me what I should or should not accept?”

“First of all, I’m not telling, I’m truly asking. Second, I am a nobody, I’m not even a human being, I am these scraps of paper that prove I was a student here.”

The clerk pounds his fist on his desk.

“No, you were not. According to our documents you were not.”

“Then put it in writing and give it to me.”

“I can’t do that. If I do, starting tomorrow there will be a thousand crazies like you lined up here asking for affidavits that they were not students here.”

Dara finally loses his temper and yells:

“I will file a complaint. I will go to the university president and file a complaint.”

“Go see any idiot you want.”

Their quarrel escalates. Now Dara is yelling like a madman and flailing his arms. Two other newly employed clerks come to their colleague’s aid and, not so politely and not so impolitely, they throw Dara out of the building. Confused, shaking with anger, with eyes ready to cry out of despair, Dara sits next to the box trees of Tehran University. He is sitting exactly where years later a hunchback midget will fall and hit his head against a cement edge … Dara watches the students walking out of the old college buildings of Tehran University with envy. He doesn’t know Mr. Petrovich, otherwise he would have recognized him among the doctoral students of literature, who, with his Chinese-made Samsonite briefcase, wearing telltale facial stubble and a white untucked shirt, haughtily distances himself from the undergraduate students.

And Dara sees Jafar ibn-Jafri, hefty tomes in hand, heading toward the College of Physics. A smile of recognition appears on the man’s lips, but he quickly regrets this and turns away from Dara. Dara sighs:

“What should I do? What should I do?”

He is starting to think that perhaps he never was a university student and that all the sweet memories he has are fantasies from his prison days. But just as he begins to doubt even his own name and wants to head home to see whether he has only imagined their house, too, someone calls his name from the other side of the box trees. Dara peeks behind the trees and sees one of the old college employees sitting there. Trying to keep his voice down, and without looking at Dara, the old employee hurriedly says:

“Don’t look at me, boy. Sit right there with your back turned to me and just listen.”

Dara sits back down and listens to the old employee whisper.

“You dimwit! What did you come here for? You’ve been expelled from the university. Don’t make unnecessary trouble for yourself. Go home and think of something else to do with your future.”

Dara bursts into tears.

“But I studied here for six years. All my grades were excellent.”

“Whatever … I took a risk out of sympathy and came here to give you some advice … Don’t cry, you’re a man. Men don’t cry. Get up and go home; and don’t tell anyone I talked to you. Many of the old employees were purged. My file is on the purging committee’s desk, too. Go and be strong, boy … Good-bye.”

Dara followed the old employee’s advice and decided to be strong and to not be a burden to his family. He set out to look for work. But month after month as he grew stronger, he realized more and more that finding a job was impossible. Hoping to find work in his favorite field of study, he naïvely applied to the television stations, but as soon as they found out that he used to be a political prisoner they politely showed him the door. Dara applied to the filmmaking studios hoping that perhaps they would give him a job on one of their productions, those very films that he considered mundane and moronic. (In those days, the creative directors of Iranian cinema were restricted to their homes and barred from working.) After the film production companies, Dara headed for the advertising agencies, those very agencies that he had in the past deemed to be the makeup artists for the vulgar face of the bourgeoisie. By now he was no longer a Communist, nor was he a socialist or a liberal. In other words, he had successfully become a man with no political convictions. Even at home, when his mother would complain about the rising cost of life’s necessities, Dara would say:

“Mother! You too? This is all a rumor spread by the antirevolutionaries. According to government statistics, inflation in Iran is only five percent, which is quite normal.”

Of course, without his mother noticing, he would try to eat less bread and rice.

In any case, when Dara gave up hope of ever finding a proper job, he thought of turning to the illegal occupation of selling and renting movies. At the time, movie theaters that had survived the torchings of the early days of the revolution were facing bankruptcy because screening Western films was banned, and the state-operated television stations, other than a few mind-numbing series and talk shows on morality and ethics, kept rerunning a handful of old movies. Even if they wanted to broadcast new films, they couldn’t. The station managers, as well as we, the Iranian population, had newly discovered that there are very few films in the world that do not feature women, and fewer yet in which women adhere to the Islamic dress code.

As a result, while VCRs and videotapes were banned, a significant number of Iranians owned a decrepit Sony T
₇
or a newer VCR model. From Dara’s point of view, his work was neither illegal nor immoral, because unlike the underground networks that dealt in American action movies, porno films, and trashy films made in India and Hong Kong, he only sold and rented copies of the world’s cinematic masterpieces. The problem, however, was that he had very few clients interested in his films, and their numbers were dwindling by the day. Apparently, tastes were changing, and some Iranians were growing particularly fond of a certain genre of shoddy Iranian movies made before the revolution. During the Shah’s regime, these films were often made in only a week and featured characters that were by and large thugs, lowlifes, and prostitutes, and they generally featured scenes of the thugs drinking in cheap cabarets with half-naked fat women singing and dancing, followed by a brawl between the drunken thugs. Oftentimes, a dancing girl or prostitute would fall in love with the knife-wielding thug and would regret her profession. Then the chivalrous thug would beat the mean thugs to a pulp and he would take the dancer or prostitute to a holy place and pour the water of repentance over her head and they would get married and live happily ever after.

It was under such circumstances that Dara believed his work to be a truly valuable cultural endeavor, and he was sure that if he were ever arrested, as soon as the officers saw his inventory of films, they would actually commend him. But one night as he was leaving a client’s home on foot, a patrol car from the Campaign Against Social Corruption pulled up next to him. The officers searched his bag and discovered seven video tapes.
The Trial, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Z, Blowup,
the uncensored version of Tarkovsky’s
The Mirror,
Bahram Beizai’s
Downpour,
and the animated
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

If Dara, during his interrogation at the bureau of the Campaign Against Social Corruption, had cooperated, expressed regret, and written down the names and addresses of all his clients on the investigation report, he would have been sentenced to only a few months in prison, or sixty or seventy whiplashes, or just a monetary fine. Contrary to his assumptions, the interrogator was not a harsh man. He was a young man, about the same age as Dara, who wore prescription glasses with very thick lenses. In a dark and dank room, he sat behind a rusty metal desk covered with dents. Dara stood in front of the desk. The interrogator looked into his innocent eyes with kindness and curiosity and in a gentle voice said:

“I don’t believe you are a corrupt person.”

Dara equally gently replied:

“Brother, in this world everyone claims to be the best human being. But only God knows who is good, who is bad … I have studied a little.”

Even more gently the interrogator said:

“In my line of work I come across all sorts of people. From illiterates and louts to university graduates and professors. Once they even arrested someone who had two doctorate degrees, economics and—I don’t know— management of something or other.”

“Well, brother, there are no jobs out there.”

“I think if an illiterate person who grew up on the streets and who cannot tell right from wrong gets into distributing vile films, he is less guilty than the educated person who does it.”

“You are absolutely right. I completely agree with you.”

Dara saw the young interrogator’s eyes fill with sorrow, and he heard a telltale voice of deep-rooted pain:

“Everyone says the same thing. When you are arrested, you are all immediately sorry and ask for forgiveness.”

“But I was being sincere.”

“I don’t want to insult you and others like you. But I just don’t understand why you get involved in such filthy rackets. When you all walk out of here, you simply serve your sentence and go on with your lives. But what about the likes of me? I cannot stop thinking of why people commit such crimes and sins. I feel sorry for you. This very night I will see your innocent face in my dreams, and I will have to get up and pray for you.”

The young interrogator’s face now resembled that of a tortured saint.

Dara said:

“Thank you for your sympathy.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“No … Not at all.”

“I sensed it in your voice. You were being sarcastic.”

“I swear I wasn’t. I am truly grateful. But I find it very strange that someone like you, here …”

“It is exactly people like me who should be here. Here, this department, organizations similar to ours, have the most sensitive responsibility. If we can eradicate social corruption, we can claim that the revolution has successfully turned its final corner. We can then show our revolution to the entire world and invite the people of the world, especially the corrupt Westerners, to follow our lead.”

The young interrogator’s eyes were brimming with tears, and he was pressing his hands against his temples. In the same sad and suffering voice he asked:

“Then why? Why do you do such things? How can you swallow food that was bought with ill-gotten gains … How does your conscience allow you to sleep at night when you know that with your vile tapes you have corrupted the pure and innocent souls of hundreds of youth?”

“But, brother, my conscience is clear, at least as far as what I have done. I don’t corrupt anyone’s soul. Quite the opposite, I allow my clients to see excellence. I teach them that there is still beauty in this world. The beauty of art, creativity …”

Wide-eyed, the young interrogator stared at Dara:

“What do you mean? You just said that you agreed with me.”

“I say it again. I too believe that people who rent out worthless films are doing a bad thing. But I rent out films by Altman, Forman, Kubrick, and Welles.”

“These people, where are they from?”

“They’re Americans … Have you ever seen Orson Welles’s
The Trial
?”

“No.”

“You have to see it, brother. You have to see it… The film is based on Kafka’s novel
The Trial.”

“Where is Kafka from?”

“He was from Czechoslovakia.”

“You mean he was a Communist?”

“No … He was Jewish.”

“So he was a Zionist?”

“No, he was just a Jew.”

“Well, Marx was Jewish, too.”

“No, Kafka was an artist. His novel is a literary masterpiece. In most cases when cinema has wanted to adapt a literary masterpiece to film it has failed, except…”

Dara, who had a tendency of becoming quite excited whenever there was talk of film and cinema, had forgotten where and in what situation he was. He passionately continued the discussion:

“In rare cases … I consider Orson Welles’s
The Trial
to be one of the masterpieces of cinema that has gone unappreciated. It is even better than
Citizen Kane. The Trial
is very rich in semiology. Whenever there is a discussion of this film, to prove that the codes of cinematic language are different from those of literary language, I use the example of the American version of
War and Peace.
The film has completely failed. I will never forget, the minute I laid eyes on Mel Ferrer as Prince Andrei, I burst out laughing. The guy doesn’t have the dignity and majesty of Prince Andrei at all.”

“Are you a monarchist?”

“Not at all. Allow me to finish.”

“Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“I mean the art of cinema can be even more powerful and more beautiful than literature.”

“We believe this, too. Our enemies know very well how effective and destructive cinema can be. The Americans have tested this, and they have learned that they cannot bring our revolution to its knees with coups d’état and wars, so they have resorted to exporting filthy films to weaken the will and faith of our youth.”

“I agree with you. I completely agree. But… Am I giving you a headache?”

“No, not at all. Speak. Your comments are new to me. I have never come across anyone like you in this place.”

“Don’t you realize that some people are starting to like those trashy films that were made before the revolution? Well, why do you think that is … ?”

The young interrogator was avidly listening to Dara. He said: