Censoring an Iranian Love Story (20 page)

“What is it?”

Sara is about to cry.

“You men! Did you see how delicate she was? That savage groom has …”

She covers her face with her hands.

“Well, what happened? Will she recover?”

“They can’t stop the bleeding. They’re calling a specialist—Dr. Farhad.”

Dara is very sensitive to hearing Sara speak the name of another man.

“Who’s Dr. Farhad?”

“Don’t you know him? Many people in Tehran know him. He is one of the best specialists and surgeons. Some of the students who are beaten up and are afraid of being arrested at the hospital go to his office, and he treats their wounds for free and gives them medicine.”

Sara goes back to the room. Half an hour later, a tall, slim, tiredlooking man rushes into the emergency room. The admitting nurse shows him the room.
It is the first time Dara, and we, see Dr. Farhad, but I don’t think it will be our last encounter with him.
Medicine man Jafar ibn-Jafri points to the closed door.

“Did you see him? It was physician Farhad.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. We are in some ways professional rivals. He takes business away from me. He has opened up a clinic in a run-down neighborhood, and three days a week he sees poor patients for free. These days, dimwits like him are hard to find. But although he hates me, I don’t hate him. I even like him. There will come a day when he, too, will be my customer … No matter how many diseases he can cure, there is one that he cannot. He will come to me to buy antilove medicine.”

Suddenly, Sara walks out of the room frowning and, ignoring the talisman seller, says:

“Let’s go.”

Outside it has started drizzling. The four commanders are still warily standing in a corner waiting. Sara walks over to them.

“Are you here with that bride?”

All four nod.

“Are you related to the bride or the groom?”

Confused and embarrassed they look at one another.

“Don’t tell me you are just the guard officers on duty!”

They nod.

“Tell Khosrow for me that he is more savage than a wild beast.”

Sara’s face has darkened with hatred and rage, and her lower lip is cut from the bites of her teeth. She walks away … Burning with curiosity, Dara cannot hold his tongue, and a few steps away he asks:

“Khosrow? How do you know the groom?”

“Their wedding was last night. The girl told me … Her name is Shirin. You disgusting men. It’s between you and me now!”

Sara starts walking faster toward her home. A shocked Dara can barely keep up.

To tell you the truth, I too am shocked. I am thinking, What if King Khosrow’s lovemaking with his bride Shirin was not as our great poet Nizami has described, ever so romantic, ever so soft, as soft as flower petals and stamens … I am shocked and terrified to think that Nizami too may have been afraid of censorship and has offered an account contrary to reality.

The raindrops over Tehran bring with them the dust of nearby deserts and the soot of dilapidated cars; with them they bring to earth the drifting dust of flying carpets and the dust of the bodies of emperors; and with them the dust of Adam and Eve and grapes that were never picked from vines pours onto the asphalt… Dara, still in disbelief, is thinking of timeless and placeless names and events when for the second time that day he is caught off guard. Sara, still with anger in her voice, says:

“I’m very late. I should have been home by now. Mr. Sinbad is coming to our house.”

“Mr. Sinbad? Who in the world is Mr. Sinbad?”

“My suitor. He insists that we get married while it is still spring and go to Spain for our honeymoon.”

Dara stops. Sara walks away.

THE BEARD

A
t eight in the evening, in front of Sara’s house, Sinbad climbs out of his latest-model BMW. He has been relentlessly pursuing Sara’s hand in marriage for some time now. Sara’s parents are very much in favor of the marriage because Sinbad is a self-made man. Unlike most crude yet wealthy bazaar merchants, he is a handsome thirty-seven-year-old. And unlike most crude yet wealthy bazaar merchants, he can speak a foreign language, and Chinese at that.
How it is that without any university education Sinbad can speak Chinese is a story unto itself that I may tell you later. But, in the vein of classic novels, allow me at the first appearance of this character in our story to introduce him to the greatest extent possible.

As a schoolboy, Sinbad dreamed of becoming a doctor or an engineer so that he could selflessly serve his country. However, tides did not turn in his favor. His father died when he was still in first grade and reading lessons on Sara and Dara. He grew up in poverty and finished high school with great difficulty. At the time of the revolution, Sinbad was a clerk issuing birth certificates at a General Register Office in Shiraz. However, just as the revolution changed many things in the land of Iran, it very quickly changed Sinbad’s life, too. The first change occurred on his face. Ask me what I mean, for me to say:

In the year following the revolution’s victory, Sinbad still did not have a positive outlook on the reformations that were taking place. His father’s death and a life with no resources and no support had made him conservative and apathetic. He had not taken part in any of the anti-Shah demonstrations in which the majority of the people of Iran had participated. He used to say, “Who cares if the secret police arrest political activists and torture them? Who cares if oppositionists say there is no freedom of speech in the country or that there is censorship? I know I can say whatever comes to my mind. Now if what comes to their mind is forbidden, then it’s their own fault. Let us live our lives. I am content. I know that I will receive my salary at the start of the month, and I know that until the end of the month my mother and I will not go hungry and the landlord will not evict us. Of course, my salary isn’t as high as I would like it to be, but my boss has promised that in a few years I will earn enough money to even save some for a trip. Let us live our lives …” And thus he had lived. He was always afraid that someone would become upset with him. He was afraid that people would think he didn’t have a good opinion of them or that he disliked them, and he was afraid of being asked his opinion on even the most mundane issues. He believed that whatever there was in the world was meant to be, and that people who fell on hard times were people who had ignorantly tried to change all that was well entrenched in the world.

Even after the revolution, when day by day Western values were coming under greater attack, Sinbad would go to work with a closely shaven face and a well-pressed suit. In those days, there were two different fashions at work. The young leftists who belonged to various guerrilla factions wore Chinese-collared shirts and green military overcoats made in Korea (the ones made in the United States were better, but they were expensive), and among the revolutionary Muslims, the women wore black chadors or headscarves and long black coveralls, and the men sported some sort of a pieced-together Islamic look.

Unlike his colleagues, Sinbad, who made every effort to perform his duties as diligently as he had in the past, did not give up wearing a necktie, that is until the day he heard it being referred to as “the noose of civilization” on a radio show. Then he thought this piece of fabric did not have enough value for him to tie it around his neck and in an evolving society to portray himself as having been lassoed. By now some of his colleagues, especially those who had religious leanings from before the revolution, no longer tucked their shirts in and instead let them casually hang over their pants. (The same fashion that years later would become all the rage in the West.) These colleagues no longer shaved because beards had become the symbol of a revolutionary Muslim. Some of them had grown full beards while others only had stubble. (The same fashion that years later would become all the rage in the West.) The darker the pants and the more grease-stained the shirt, the more revolutionary. Consequently, bright and gay colors were rapidly fading from the streets of Iran.

Sinbad’s colleagues, the truly devout who had actively participated in the dangerous days of the revolution, as well as those who only after the revolution’s success had turned into revolutionaries, often participated in the daily street demonstrations against the revolution’s present and future enemies. But Sinbad, although he no longer wore neckties and had after some time conceded to letting his wrinkled shirt hang loose over his pants, didn’t like to participate in these events. He thought he should instead focus on performing his daily duties. But, day by day the harder he worked, the more he fell behind in his work. The first problem was that the responsibilities of his colleagues, who together with the new directors and vice presidents participated in the daily street demonstrations, had fallen on his shoulders. The second problem was that the number of newborns was strangely and mysteriously on the rise, and consequently, so was the number of applications for birth certificates. It was during this time that on radio and television programs certain revolutionary individuals would announce that, after extensive research, they had concluded that advertisements sponsored by the previous regime claiming that families with only two or three children live better lives were an imperialist conspiracy. These revolutionary individuals would pound their fists on the table and say, “By advertising conjectures such as Malthus’s theory, imperialists were conspiring to reduce the Muslim population of the world.”

In any case, the situation got so bad that Sinbad was at the office working until eight o’clock at night, and when he would finally feel faint with hunger, he would take the remainder of his colleagues’ work home and attempt to finish it all by two or three in the morning. Still, he did not complain. That is until the day when one of the vice presidents summoned him to his office and warned that if he continued to fall behind in his duties, it would become obvious that he was opposed to the revolution, and he would be purged. Sinbad wanted to shout in protest, but he realized that speaking his mind would only make matters worse. That day, for the very first time in many years, Sinbad took a few hours off during the workday and went out. Alone, he went to a neighborhood where the old gardens of Shiraz still stood. Oblivious to the drizzling rain, he walked along the winding alleys between the walled gardens. He was so drowned in his thoughts that he did not see the ghost of the poet who had died seven hundred years ago. The poet was holding his face up to the sky with his mouth wide open to drink the rain. When he saw Sinbad he waved to him, but Sinbad did not notice. The poet offered him the ghost of a goblet of wine. Sinbad did not notice this either and walked past him. The dreary rain was still falling on the ghosts of rains that had fallen seven hundred years ago, and the poet watched with compassion as Sinbad walked away. And that is why the poet did not see the other ghosts approaching him. In one startling moment they attacked him, the goblet fell from his hand, and with no resistance he surrendered to the
shahnehs.
The
shahnehs
were constables under the command of a heartless and bigoted ruler who in the early thirteenth century had occupied Shiraz, the city of poetry, roses, wine, and heavenly consumption. He had beheaded the previous ruler and had transformed Shiraz into a spiritless and somber city. The task of these
shahnehs
was seemingly that of lawmen, but after a while their occupation changed to patrolling the city streets, arresting people who did not adhere to Islamic dress, locating secret taverns, breaking wine casks, and taking the wine drinkers to be flogged. One of the
shahnehs
smelled the poet’s breath and triumphantly yelled:

“He’s been drinking … He’s been drinking wine.”

A second one shouted:

“So we finally have him.”

The third one, who obviously had it in for the poet, grabbed him by the collar, dragged him to himself, and roared:

“I’ve been after you for two years, but you kept evading my trap. Tomorrow I will treat you to eighty whiplashes in the town square.”

The poet, a sly smile on his lips, said:

“Of course I’ve been drinking. But only sacred wine.”

And at this very moment, inspiration for one of his most beautiful and most famous
ghazals—
the one that captivated Goethe—came to him.

They have closed the tavern door O God do not approve,
for they open the door to deceit and hypocrisy …

The poet glanced at his goblet that lay on the ground. One of the
shahnehs
noticed the direction of his gaze and picked up the goblet as evidence. He smelled it. His expression changed. Surprised, he smelled the goblet again. He groaned:

“It smells of rose water.”

One by one they smelled the goblet. There was no mistake. It smelled of the Shiraz rose.

The most resentful among them said:

“That’s not a problem. We’ll pour some wine in it ourselves and we’ll throw in a full decanter, too. Let’s take him.”

And they dragged the poet’s ghost away.

Sinbad did not see this either.

The next day his colleagues saw him fresh from a good night’s sleep, with a neatly shaven face and wearing a suit, walking beside them in the street demonstration. He was raising his fist in the air more enthusiastically and shouting more passionately than them. Death to America, Death to Britain, Death to France, Death to Russia, Death to Israel, Death to Communists, Death to Hypocrites, Death to Liberals …

However, as the demonstrators blocked traffic and advanced street by street, Sinbad grew more and more convinced that certain people were giving him angry looks. He reasoned that it was because they were a really angry crowd, but he could not understand why some of them kept knocking into him as if to force him onto the sidewalk and into the crowd of onlookers … Finally, he was driven out from among the demonstrators with a big and disturbing “why” on his mind.

The next day he joined a demonstration against improper Islamic dress, but he was forced out in the same manner as the day before.

Two days later, in the afternoon, a disciple of the poet who died seven hundred years ago, with a handwritten copy of the poet’s
latest ghazal
hidden in his Sufi’s robe, saw Sinbad again strolling along the same winding alleys between the old walled gardens. He was deep in thought and kept asking himself a question. The disciple, who, intoxicated by the beauty of that
ghazal,
was rushing to deliver it to another disciple, looked around cautiously and then held the piece of leather on which the
ghazal
was written in front of Sinbad’s eyes. Sinbad did not see him and went on his way. When the sun was setting behind the smog and the screams and laughter of the yet-unborn children of the city Sinbad, tired and depressed, had still not found an answer to his big “why.” On the way back to his house in a poor neighborhood of the city, in a long and narrow alley, he saw a peddler selling talismans, spells, and magic powders. It had been years since Sinbad had seen such street peddlers. The man was wearing clothes that were a mix of Arab, Afghani, and Indian, and as though he had been expecting Sinbad, with his large luminous eyes he watched him approach. When Sinbad was close enough, the peddler bellowed:

“Talismans for good fortune … Potions for compassion … Incantations for wishes …”

Sinbad knelt down in front of the peddler’s wooden box. But just as he came to speak and to ask what he should do, from the man’s unmoving lips he heard:

“I know who you are … With a whip made of your own skin you flog yourself.”

“Help me … A talisman, a spell … Something … No matter what the cost. I will beg and borrow to pay for it… Help me.”

The magic seller raised the glass lid of his box and began rummaging through the talismans, the small vials of colorful powders, and the scraps of paper with spells written on them. All the while, he was mumbling:

“I have a talisman that will stir your love in the heart of the one you love, I have padlock powder for women who have horny husbands, mix it in their tea and make them drink it, the man will be locked and he will no longer think of taking a second wife … I have an incantation that, if you repeat it one thousand times, any incurable patient will be cured. But…”

He took his hand out of the box.

“But what?”

“Now I am sure, I have nothing for you.”

“Search! Search some more. You must have something.”

“I don’t need to search, because the spell that would grant you your wish is just what I told you.”

“How could that be? My problem is not more complicated than the ones you mentioned.”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“You are lying. You are obviously one of those phony swindling prayer peddlers.”

A sly smile appeared on the magic seller’s lips.

“I am and I am not.”

“For the love of God help me. I don’t know what to do. Give me a talisman with problem-solving powers.”

“You already have your problem-solving talisman … It’s on your face. I have nothing else to give you.”

Sinbad got up angrily.

“Mad miserable wretch! Gather your stuff and get out of this neighborhood.”

The magic seller sighed:

“Go where? I have always been here.”

“If I see you around here one more time, you’ll be sorry.”

Sinbad kicked the old man’s box and walked away. This was the first time in his cautious and conservative life that he had had the courage to express his anger toward someone.

All that night he had nightmares of events that were taking place centuries ago … He dreams that he is a Sufi eight hundred years back, shouting in Baghdad’s bazaar,
“An al-hagh,
I am God.” Fanatic Muslims seize him and accuse him of being an apostate for claiming to be God and throw him in prison. And he, in his cryptlike cell, continues to shout
“Anal-hagh.”
From a dark corner of the prison a prisoner asks him, “What is love?” and he replies, “Today you behold and tomorrow you behold and the day after you behold,” and he knows that today they will stone him and tomorrow they will hang him and the day after they will burn his corpse and spread his ashes on the Tigris River. He dreams that in the massacre of the city of Kerman, his head, with eyes wide open, is sitting at the peak of a pyramid of heads and he is looking on as the invading soldiers rape the women. He dreams that in the city of Neyshabur, a short Mongol officiously commands, “You are going to stand right there, and you are not going to think of running away, until I bring my sword to kill you.” He does think of running away, but he doesn’t have the nerve to go through with it. And he sees the Mongol walking toward him … He dreams that his face is among the faces of the sentries on the stone reliefs at Persepolis, all of whom have stood in formation holding their spears for two thousand five hundred years. From the corner of his eye he sees the Indian soldiers who serve the British Empire aim their rifles at his eye, and at the eyes of the other sentries, for target practice. He sees the smoke from the nozzles, he hears the sound of the bullets being fired, and he is jolted awake.