Censoring an Iranian Love Story (17 page)

The expert on matters offensive to morality responds:

“This too has a solution. In dubbing the film we can have one of the Indians say that this is an old Indian tradition whereby brothers and sisters who lost each other years ago and who have now found each other are made brother and sister again.”

Mr. X says:

“Cut this scene.”

With these pauses, plays, rewinds, and arguments, seven hours have now passed, and time continues to pass until in the middle of one scene the expert on matters offensive to morality suddenly shouts:

“Cut! Cut! They kissed. They kissed each other.”

Arguments ensue on what should be done with the scene. The expert on matters offensive to morality says:

“I wish they had kissed like a brother and sister. In that case, if we portray them as siblings, the audience will find it completely acceptable.”

Mr. X says:

“In that case, if the director were to see our dubbed version he would surely approve, because if they are siblings, and if they have found each other after many years, the film becomes far more dramatic.”

Shaking with rage, Dara growls:

“Then his film would become just like Bollywood films, or Iranian films.”

Frustrated, Mr. X says:

“Fine … Cut this out, too, but don’t cut the previous scene where they are bringing their heads together. This way the audience will think they want to whisper an important secret about the wolves or the Indians to each other.”

The screening continues without any further problems, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief that no other censor-worthy scenes have been discovered.

It was around the same time that while watching a movie on television we would suddenly see that contrary to the tenets of filmmaking, and contrary to the most basic principles of cinematography, a midrange shot would abruptly change to a close-up. A hazy, staticky, faded, close-up. It took a while for us to realize that this only happens when the actress enters the scene. After much research, we learned that to avoid having to cut films by some forty-five minutes, and because eliminating certain scenes would render a film completely meaningless, those in charge of censoring television programs had, with the use of state-of-the-art technology, found an artistic-cinematic solution. If in an important scene the actress was dressed in a sleeveless shirt or a short skirt, they would refilm shots of her face in close-up and insert these images into the film. If you ever have occasion to see one of these remodeled or overhauled versions, on my behalf please tell the director whose eyes are most certainly wide with surprise:

“What did you expect? Stop kicking and screaming and go thank God. Isn’t this better than having the arms, legs, and breasts of your film cut out with a pair of scissors?”

It is under such circumstances that the Olympian inspiration for that creative scene of the couple caressing a sparrow came to the makers of that film. Another interesting point about that film is that the sparrow is its best actor, because it made no attempt at escaping the clutches of that man and woman and it never complained about its torturous circumstances. Just imagine yourself as a helpless sparrow in the hands of a couple who desperately desire each other but who have never even touched. And now, perforce, fully dressed and in a public place, they are sitting across from each other, and they take turns caressing you. Time drags on, hidden hormones begin to secrete, and they keep caressing you; and the director, who probably likes his inspiration for this artistic scene very much, calls for multiple takes. If any of us were in that sparrow’s position, in the clutches of a highly provoked couple, I doubt we would be left with a single bone intact…

Sara and Dara, still in the movie theater, are sitting with their arms close together.
With no sparrow to caress, they have little else to do but watch that artistic Iranian film.
The film is about a young girl and boy in love. The boy has asked for the girl’s hand in marriage, and the girl’s father has told him that because he does not have a house of his own, he will not consent. Now there has been an earthquake, and all the houses have been destroyed, and the boy is again hopeful that, because everyone is now homeless, perhaps the girl’s father will agree to their marriage. Sara and Dara are so captivated by the scenes of Abbas Kiarostami’s film and the sadness and suffering of the young couple that they forget this is the first time they are sitting so close to one another. During the final scenes of the movie, they even have tears in their eyes.

After leaving the movie theater, they walk together in silence for a long time. Then Sara notices that Dara is deliberately walking in step with her, as though they are marching together.

Sara smiles and points to Dara’s feet and asks:

“Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know. Ask my feet.”

“Why is your voice trembling?”

“Ask my heart.”

With this sentence, Sara’s heart begins to beat rapidly.

Dara asks:

“What should we do now?”

“I don’t know, ask our fate.”

“Where is our fate?”

“I don’t know, ask our destiny.”

Dara thinks, I pray our destiny is not in the hands of a gutless, miserable, censored writer … Unconsciously, and unlike lovers throughout the world, they avoid strolling along quiet streets and beautiful tree-lined alleys. Walking down a crowded sidewalk, sheltered by pedestrians, lessens the danger of being seen and arrested. But not for one moment during this innocent stroll can Sara forget the fear of arrest. Last year, when one of her classmates returned to the university after a monthlong absence and in an awful emotional state, she told Sara that a month earlier she and her boyfriend were arrested while watching sparrows in a quiet park. On the very first night of her arrest, they had taken her to the medical examiner to see whether she was still a virgin or not. Then they had called her parents. After her release, before which she had to pledge in writing never to commit such misdeeds again, she was faced with her mother’s incessant tears and her fanatical father’s and brothers’ relentless reprimands. Everyone, even relatives, would scold her for having brought shame to the family. Sara’s friend, with tearful eyes, had confided in her that she had not been allowed to come to the university or even to leave the house. However, her broken emotional state and humiliation were so profound that she didn’t want anyone to see her anyway. During that one month, her father and brothers had put such pressure on her that she was eventually forced to reveal her boyfriend’s address. When the boy was released after twenty days of detention, together with her roughneck uncle, they had cornered him in an alley and beaten him up. Sara’s friend had learned such a lesson from her romantic tryst that from then on she was even afraid of inadvertently coming close to a boy on the sidewalk. Of course, time helped her forget the torment and humiliation of the incident, especially after she bought a nightingale in a cage from a pet shop without knowing why and passed the dreary afternoon hours watching it, listening to it, and trying to caress it.

Sara, like all people who in the first days of their friendship share sweet memories of their past, begins to share with Dara memories of her friend from her elementary and high school years.

“We became friends on the very first day of first grade. When we turned nine, they told us they wanted to have a celebration for us. On the day they celebrated our puberty, we wouldn’t have been able to go up on that stage if we didn’t have each other. A month earlier they had told us when the celebration would be held. Our mothers had bought white dresses and white headscarves for us. At school they had given us a pair of wings that we would pin to our backs and look like angels. Everything was beautiful. We were two nine-year-old girls who were suddenly told they were like angels. But on the morning before the event, our teacher started telling us things we couldn’t understand. She told us that after the celebration of our puberty we would become women and that we should start living like women. She told us that we must now start saying our daily prayers properly and in full. Up to that point, everything was fine; I always liked to pray and at the end of my prayers to ask God for an A-plus on my exams. But the lady teacher started telling us things about our bodies and womanhood that scared us. She talked about our bodies bleeding. But she didn’t say from where. She said we would find out later. Every morning when we woke up, my friend and I would check our arms and legs to see if we had bled … It was a daily nightmare. She even told us that after the celebration we would be old enough and woman enough to have husbands … It was not a pretty day. I thought that after we finished singing and flapping our wings like angels on the school stage, they would grab me outside the school and take me to the house of an ugly burly man for me to marry him … I was so scared.”

Sara was right to be scared, because although educated Iranians realized years ago that we should talk to our children and teach them about sex and sexuality, in our schools and our homes we still censor this critical subject. We postpone it month after month and year after year until a time when if a boy asks his father, How did you come to have me, and his father, influenced by Western cartoons, says, Well one night Mr. Stork brought you in a bundle and left you at the door, his son will immediately say, You poor slob, you mean to tell me that you never got it on with Mom? Not even once?

I myself had this problem. My son was growing older month by month and getting closer to the age of puberty. Although I had raised him and treated him like a friend, every time I came to teach him about sex I would suffer some sort of ineptness and even embarrassment. I was constantly looking for an excuse to open up the conversation with him, but as long as my innocent son waited for me to teach him about the stork and the night and the like, I didn’t. Until, as luck would have it, in the heart of Berlin, nature and wildlife literally initiated my son’s sex education, perhaps in the fiercest manner and perhaps in the most natural way.

How? The heart of Berlin and wildlife … ?!

Yes; and it was of course not in the days of the Nazis. In fact, it was the year 2000. I had been invited to Berlin for a literary event and had taken my son with me. In those days, in addition to Spielberg’s dinosaurs, my son was also fascinated with wildlife. He constantly drew pictures of sharks and black panthers. I don’t know whether these two animals have any connection or relevance to a twelve-year-old boy approaching puberty or not. In any case, one day we headed out and went to the spectacular Berlin zoo. It was a beautiful and memorable day for both of us. We were having a wonderful time looking at the different animals. We would make up jokes about them, and my son would film them so that he could show the movie to his classmates. Then we heard the lions roar. We were drawn in their direction. The lioness was behaving rather strangely. She was rolling around on the ground and moaning in an odd way. We thought she was suffering from a stomachache and concluded that the zookeepers must not be taking good care of the poor animals.

My son asked:

“What’s wrong with the lion?”

Like an experienced vet I said:

“The poor thing clearly has gas.”

But suddenly, before the stunned eyes of father and son, the lion with all its majesty meandered over, climbed up on the lioness’s back, and got busy humping and humping.

My son asked:

“What is he doing?”

I peeked at my son from the corner of my eyes. His eyes had grown exceptionally round. I mumbled:

“For now, just watch. I will tell you later.”

My son wanted to film the scene, but fortunately the camera’s battery was completely drained after the long filming of the black leopard. I say “fortunately” for two reasons. First, because similar to Japanese tourists who become so involved in filming and taking photographs that they in fact do not see anything, my son would have missed the real scene. Second, taking a tape of the utterly unveiled mating of two lions back to Iran was definitely not a wise thing to do. If as usual the film was inspected in customs, we could be arrested for importing a pornographic film, a rare one at that, and sent to where Dara used to be.

It was after watching this scene that I finally lost my inhibitions and put aside the twenty-five-hundred-year-old self-censorship and delivered a completely scientific lecture about sex to my son. He kept nodding pensively, and once in a while he would say:

“Hmm …”

Now that years have passed since that day and I have with great joy bought an electric razor for him, I sometimes wonder, What if this boy who learned his first lesson in sex by watching a lion in action wants to undertake all such endeavors like a lion?

Far away from the lions, in sharing her memories, Sara has reached her early high school years.

“During my first year in high school it became fashionable for girls to wear shoes in colors other than black. It was a nice fashion. They went well with our black coveralls and headscarves. One after the other, girls started wearing colorful shoes, until one day the physical education teacher announced on the loudspeaker that wearing colorful shoes to school was forbidden because it was a very vulgar thing to do. As usual, the next morning she was standing at the school entrance with the principal. They used to search our bags every day to make sure we didn’t have pictures of actors. That day, they not only didn’t allow girls wearing a little makeup to enter the school, but they were making the girls wearing colorful shoes go back home and change their shoes.

“Some time passed, and my friend and I suddenly came to think that, although we may not be allowed to wear colorful shoes, colorful shoelaces were not forbidden; and one day we both went to school with red and green shoelaces. Our classmates kept pointing our shoes out to one another in surprise. During the last period, one of them went and told the physical education teacher, and she came and took us to the principal’s office. First she gave us a long lecture about how we were provoking the wolves that sit outside the school and prey on naïve girls like us, and then she told us that we must not wear colored shoelaces anymore. We said, ‘But, ma’am, you never said they were banned.’ She said, ‘Well I’m saying it now …’ What was interesting was that as of the next day we saw girls on the street wearing black shoes with green or yellow shoelaces. It was as if we were all inspired at the same time … You know! That in itself was some sort of a protest. It was some sort of a struggle to make ourselves look pretty.”