Censoring an Iranian Love Story (29 page)

It means I want to kiss you.

Have you ever kissed?

No.

I haven’t either … It doesn’t matter, we’ll practice with each other.

Definitely … And then I want to smell you. I will start with your hair and go all the way down to your toes. I will smell you and kiss you.

And then?

And then I could just fall right there and die at your feet.

No. You’re not allowed. You can die anytime you want except then … Then what will you do?

What will you do?

I will sigh.

Then sigh and I will devour your sigh.

Have you ever drunk alcohol?

Yes. It helps me be bold enough to do whatever I want with you.

No. Don’t. You’re not allowed to drink, because you won’t be able to see me clearly and then you’ll fall asleep.

I will drink.

Then I will send an old woman to you in my place.

An old woman?

You are so stupid … ! Haven’t you read
Khosrow and Shirin
?

I forgot.

Anyway … You are not allowed to get drunk.

I will get drunk so that I will see two of you. I will lay one Sara down on her back and one Sara down on her stomach.

Then?

Then with one hand I will caress the front of your calf and with the other the back of your calf, and I will move my hands up.

Sara sighs.

I will keep sliding my hands up.

From deep within her soul Sara breathes the sigh of a one-thousand and-one-year-old want.

Then what will you do?

Sara, I’m scared.

I will give you milk from my breasts so that you will grow up and stop being scared.

I will grow on your body. At that final moment of pleasure your thighs will press against my sides, and you will break me in two.

Then hurry up and do something.

Here?

No, stupid … Find someplace.

But I’m not rich. I don’t have a hideaway for my flings and escapades.

Find someplace where we can be alone without being afraid.

Yes, I did say that eye dialogue develops rapidly, but not this rapidly. To communicate all these sentences, I would suspect that approximately five minutes will be required, with no blinking to punctuate the stream of glances with commas.

The now-bored shop owner interrupts the two streams of ones and zeros flowing from their eyes with a cough and says:

“Miss Bride! Mr. Groom! … Have you decided? Do you want the dress?”

Sara
winks at Dara and
laughs.

“I like it, but from what I see in the gentleman’s eyes, he doesn’t really like this dress.
He seems to prefer that I take it off.
”

Dara ignorantly says:

“No, I like it. It’s very nice.”

And bashfully he tries to memorize every detail of the image of Sara in that dress.

The shop owner says:

“The dress looks like it was made for you. It really suits you, my girl.”

“How much is it?”

Hearing the price of the dress, Dara is flabbergasted. He could live comfortably on that money for three years.

Sara asks:

“Why so expensive?”

“It’s from Paris.”

“The price doesn’t matter. The gentleman will be paying for it … But …”

Sara searches for an excuse to end the game. No help comes from Dara.

“But what… ?”

“I want to think about it tonight… Is that a problem?”

The shop owner, now suspicious, sulkily says:

“What problem could there be, miss?”

“If I decide to take it, will you give me a discount?”

“If you’re a buyer, I’ll give you a discount.”

Outside the shop Sara says:

“You were about to have a heart attack! You so-called cineast, with all the movies you have seen, can’t you act even a little?”

THE ARABS ARE COMING

I
will make the tea tonight,” Sara tells her mother as she puts the kettle on the stove in the kitchen. Like all the other ten o’clocks of all the other nights, her father, a retired employee of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, with his mouth wide open, has fallen asleep in front of the television in the living room. For this nocturnal tea, mother and daughter have their own ritual. They spoon the tea leaves into the teapot, they add a few petals of dried bitter orange blossoms from Shiraz to make it more fragrant, and after adding hot water from the kettle, they remove the kettle’s lid and stack the teapot on top of it for the tea to gently brew with the steam from the kettle. The perfume of tea and bitter orange blossoms permeates a house whose man is asleep. The two women sit at the kitchen table to drink their tea from small narrow-waisted tea glasses and for Sara to listen to her mother gossip and chatter. Sara, like many Iranian youth, talks very little about her private thoughts with her mother, but tonight she is looking for an excuse to ask an important question about her future. This afternoon, after stammering and agonizing for half an hour on the telephone, Dara has finally asked:

“I wanted to ask whether you think … If it is possible … I know that Sinbad—well-to-do Sinbad—has asked for your hand, but … I mean … would you someday agree to marry me?”

And Sara, instead of giving him a serious answer, has joked, “So you want to fall into that trap?” Sara’s brainless father grunts in his sleep. Her mother, while gossiping about the neighbor’s wife, who seems to have again received a severe beating from her husband because she had engaged in small talk with the gentleman next door, smirks and says:

“Your poor father is so very tired today. He left home this morning pretending to go sort out some problem with his pension. But I am sure he went to see his friend Haji Karim
and smoked opium. His breath reeked of it
. I didn’t have the heart to spoil his good mood tonight, but I’m going to really chew him out tomorrow.”

“Leave him alone. What other pleasure does poor Dad have in his life? Let him have his fun once every few months.”

“
With all our financial troubles, the last thing we need is for your father to end up an opium addict.
Don’t you pay any attention, girl? Day after day everything is becoming more expensive, and your father’s pittance of a pension stays the same.”

The conversation is moving in a direction that Sara does not want. Right about now, her mother will start talking about her daily domestic toils and will again repeat how she works miracles and with great skill, sacrifice, and frugality runs the household on Father’s small pension. But as soon as she starts, a cricket that has long been hiding in the house comes to Sara’s aid.

Both women turn to Sara’s father. The cricket’s sound seems to be coming from his open mouth. Mother takes off one of her slippers. Armed with her weapon, in a voice thick with belligerence and bloodlust she says:

“I finally found it!”

And she quietly inches toward Sara’s father.

But Sara knows the cricket is not there. During the days and nights of the past week, every time the cricket’s chirping has exasperated them, they have traced its sound from room to room, and every time they have reached the spot where they thought it was hiding, they have heard it sing in another part of the house.

Slipper in hand and disappointed, Sara’s mother returns.

“Were you really going to hit Father on the mouth with your slipper?”

“The number of
opium-addicted
snorers is rising in this country; I wouldn’t be surprised if the crickets have gotten into it, too.”

“But I think you are in love with Father, aren’t you?”

Her mother is taken aback.

“In love? Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Were you in love with Father when you married him?”

“No. Your father was the second man who asked for my hand in marriage. I was twenty-three and an old maid, that’s why I quickly accepted.”

Sara imagines the ceremony during which her father asked for her mother’s hand. She sees her father, young, shy, sitting on a Polish chair in the living room of an old house. Next to him, his parents. Facing them, more somber, her mother’s parents state, one by one, the terms of marriage to their daughter. And Father’s parents, one by one, haggle over the stipulations, hoping to reduce the amounts that would have to be paid to the parents as the bride price and to the bride as the marriage portion. At a precise time, which Mother’s mother determines, Mother enters the room carrying a tray of small tea glasses. Her eyes cast down and more timid than Father, her hands tremble and cause the tea to spill. The trembling becomes more pronounced as she holds the tray in front of the future bridegroom and with nervous coquetry says, “Please have some tea.” And the groom, with unsteady hands, takes a tea glass and saucer and sneaks a peek at the face of the bride his mother has chosen for him. From the very few photographs that her mother has of her youth, Sara knows that even in those days she did not possess any particular beauty. But she says:

“You were only twenty-three and very pretty, why do you say you were an old maid?”

“Yes, I was very pretty. But in those days, if a girl was not married by the time she turned twenty, she was considered an old maid and everyone thought something must be wrong with her if no one had asked for her hand.”

“But tell me the truth, were you ever in love?”

Mother looks at Sara with surprise, and then, as if a stale and distant sorrow has reawakened in her heart, she looks over at her husband.

“Please don’t be shy, Mother. Tell me. I’m your daughter. Tell me … You must have fallen in love at one time.”

Mother, nervous that her husband may have woken up and can hear them, does not take her eyes off of him and reluctantly nods.

“Who was he? A relative?”

Mother shakes her head.

“Was he a neighbor’s son?”

She nods.

“Was he in love with you?”

Mother lowers her voice and dolefully says:

“He had no idea. He used to sneak out of their house at night and smoke out on the street so that his parents wouldn’t see. I would see him from the window. The poor thing always had to put out his cigarette after the third or fourth puff because some neighbor would invariably show up in the alley.”

“Well, why didn’t you ever try to send him a message or something for him to know you were in love with him?”

“It was no use. Their financial situation was … Well, it was very bad. His father used to dig wells. He had to drop out of school after ninth grade and start helping his father.”

“Don’t you regret not having married him just because he was poor?”

The wrinkles of sorrow, which Sara had only then discovered, multiply on her mother’s face.

“No. Your father was a government employee. In those days, unlike now, being a government employee was a great privilege—a good and steady income, social status … A few years after my marriage, I heard that the poor thing drowned in the pit of a well he was digging.”

“What will you say if I fall in love with someone like that and want to marry him?”

The cricket’s chirping can now be heard from every corner of the house. Mother, stunned, stares at Sara. The wrinkles on her face scream out
No … !

“Tell me the truth, girl! Have you made such a mistake?”

To calm her down, Sara laughs and says:

“No, Mother. I just said it. But tell me what you really feel from the bottom of your heart. What will you do if I fall in love with a penniless man?”

“I will never forgive you. You have a rich, handsome and distinguished suitor who many girls pine for. Don’t trash your luck. Don’t ruin yourself and us.
Your suitor has promised your father a comfortable job with a good salary. You know if the situation in this country continues like this, by next year your father and I will have to go begging on the street.
I will never forgive you. On the day of judgment I will stand in your way and I will tell God that this girl—you—ruined herself and us.
”

Tears begin to flow from Mother’s eyes. For the first time in many years, Sara kisses her mother on the forehead and says:

“But, Mother, you have never tasted happiness. Perhaps if you had married that boy … I don’t know … perhaps … Your story is one of those old tales of poverty and, I guess, love … But I was only joking. Please don’t worry.”

Mother is still looking at Sara with suspicion and concern. The tea glass shakes in her hand, but there is no tea left in it to spill. Father wakes up with a start. As always, he quickly changes the television channel and before finding out what program is on he falls asleep again and begins to snore, as if a cricket is stuck in his throat.

On this television program, as on most television programs in Iran, a clergyman is lecturing about the tenets of Islam.

“Doctors at the Medical Examiner’s Office have sought the opinion of the head of the judiciary branch with respect to occasions when a judge rules for the hand of a person who has committed theft three times to be amputated. Can they, at the time of executing the judgment, inject the condemned with anesthetics so that he does not suffer? The honorable head of the judiciary branch has responded no, because Islam decrees that the condemned must suffer for the crime he has committed. Therefore, sir, madam, know that if you commit theft for a third time, your hand will be cut off. If in the course of an argument you blind someone’s eye, your punishment will be for your eye to be plucked out. If, God forbid, you come to blows with someone and injure his right testicle, you will have to compensate him with forty camels; and if you injure his left testicle, you will have to compensate him with fifty camels. Why? Why is the recompense for the left testicle more than that of the right testicle? Because according to sacred stories a child is produced from man’s left testicle …”

Sara abandons her anxious mother with no anesthetics and goes to her room on the second floor. She pulls the curtains aside and stares up at the full moon that shines for all merry lovers and tearful lovers alike. She is now certain that the cricket is hiding somewhere in her room. She whispers:

“Dara, you rascal! You let this cricket into our house.”

And the moon, generously, eternally, shines for all lovers, for all crickets,
camels, severed testicles, stolen kisses, amputated arms and legs
and eyes, without prejudice.

Sara, looking out from the window beside which she has spent many hours waiting for Dara to appear, with that same old view of the street and the sidewalk on its far side, dwells on her future. She knows with all her being that she is not willing to repeat her mother’s life, to let her youth and dreams fritter away in the kitchen for the ideal and ambition of how best to feed the family, with only hardship on the kitcheny horizon.
This strong impulse for change and for attaining happiness and beauty is perhaps because of the headscarf that has been forcibly nailed to her head.

Still, Sara has not been able to make up her mind. Each time she thinks about marrying Dara, all the financial and political difficulties that await her flash before her eyes, and consequently, she thinks of Sinbad, of all the help this wealthy man can offer her family, and what’s more, she sees in herself a power as great as that of an Iranian nuclear bomb to change this man, to re-create him to her own liking. She sees herself with him in the capital cities of Europe, drunk on the beauties and joys that await her there, with all the things that she knows can only be attained with money and Western freedom. She sees herself dressed in the most stylish Parisian dresses, in cafés and restaurants that she has only seen in contraband films and has yearned for. She sees her unchained Eastern beauty being admired by men with a flair for women and she sees how it lures their longing looks in the wake of its splendor. And she sees herself in a sexy bikini—something she has never experienced—lying on the golden sand of a non-Islamic beach; in her spine the pleasing sensation of the grains of sand surrendering to the weight of her round buttocks, and in her chest the pleasant wonder of the sun shining in between her breasts. And all the while, from the corner of her eye, she sees the tanned tomcats showing off their six solid abdominal muscles, and she delights in ignoring them … But suddenly she sees Dara’s pleasant face. She imagines herself with him in a modest rented room filled with the pleasures and desires that only true lovers can discover and abounding with the novelties that only love can inspire at night and on the mornings after.

Sara shrugs and whispers:

“How can I know what to do? Which one? I don’t know. I have to find out which one wants me more for myself. I will think about it tomorrow … tomorrow …”

Whether she sees or does not see from the window of her room, an army of Arabs is advancing down the street. They set out one thousand four hundred years ago, and having conquered the capital city of the Sassanid Empire, they are on their way to occupy the wealthy land of Khorasan, the last province of Iran. Their white dishdashas and unsheathed curve-bladed sabers shine with a neonlike glow in the silver light of this night’s moon.