Censoring an Iranian Love Story (31 page)

“… I miss you terribly, but I know that you are with your brothers and that you are happy together. I too am happy now that you are all in heaven. Now you have a stream of honey flowing on one side and a stream of milk on the other, and you are lying under a tree of whatever fruit you like, and whenever you want a piece of fruit a branch will bend down to you, it will come to you so that you won’t have to reach up and pick the fruit. Now you each have seven thousand nymphs waiting for you in your castle in heaven …”

On the last step of the staircase Dara hears his parents crying. What’s strange is that they sound so alike.

Dara, like all lovers in the world, sits beside the window in his room. His secondhand computer, next to the bedding spread on the floor, is turned off. He looks at the lit windows across the street and sighs. He wants to think not of the seven thousand nymphs who could be waiting for him in heaven but of his one nymph here on earth. The fight between his parents has once again brought home the dark reality of his life. They need his occasional income. Given their circumstances, can he bring another mouth to feed to the house? In the past few days he has created sentimental scenes of his marriage to Sara in his mind. In this very room, he has seen her as his wife who says, If you want me to be a real wife to you, tonight you must kiss me a thousand and one times. He has seen himself offering Sara a single damask rose, which he then takes from her, plucks its petals, and spreads them on the bed, and with the stamen of the rose he caresses her neck. But tonight, with the slap in the face he has received from his parents’ screams and sobs, he has realized that reality is far from his dreams and fantasies. He therefore starts to think of an invention or innovation that would make him rich, that would allow him to buy a large house in the most beautiful part of Tehran for his parents, so that when he is no longer worried about them, he can build a house for himself in one of the remaining walled gardens of the city and invite his Sara there.

But for now, the view he has of the world is that of a narrow dead-end alley in a poor neighborhood where the houses are so tightly crammed that their walls seem to be pushing against each other to perhaps gain a few inches from the neighbor’s property.

And in the alley, a one-horse cart rolls toward the street. Its load, hundreds of roses with their petals plucked and their yellow stamens shining like spears in the moonlight. The cart’s wooden wheels roll over a half-singed wing.

A MAN WITH THREE WIVES

D
ara has invited Sara to the nightfall of their home. The occasion coincides with when I have published two chapters of this story in a literary magazine which has not yet been suspended. Because I am not experienced in writing such love stories, my intention was, before all else, to observe Mr. Petrovich and the censorship department’s reaction, and then to seek the opinion of my readers who are accustomed to the darkness and horror of my stories. The result was that the magazine received a warning from the Media Supervisory Committee at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for having insulted the blessed territory of Tehran University, for having insulted the brothers of the Party of God, for having insulted the sacred slogan of freedom, for having insulted the image of the blessed Iranian woman, and for having indecently portrayed the revolution’s second-generation young girls and future mothers of martyrs. With this warning, the number of the magazine’s warnings reached the holy number of seven. In other words, the borderline beyond which the holy order of suspension will reach the hands of its editor in chief.

And the result of seeking readers’ opinions was that some of them determined and spread the rumor that I, at the sacred age of fifty, have fallen in love and am creating a crude and vulgar scandal.

However, Dara’s intentions for inviting Sara to his house have no apparent connection to any blessed affair. And I am so worried about my love story and my weaknesses in it that I cannot fathom why he has done such a thing.

Three days after the night of the fight between Dara’s parents over his going to a wedding, again while watching a television series, Dara has told his mother:

“One of my old classmates wants to come over so that I can help her with her thesis. Is that all right?”

His mother, with the glint of instinctive wisdom in her eyes, has stared at her son and her expression has soured.

“May the devil’s ear be deaf, don’t you ever do such a thing. The neighbors will see a strange girl coming and going in our house and they will start a thousand rumors.
Especially Mr. Atta, who is in the Baseej volunteer militia. He will definitely report it and the agents will raid the house. With your political background, we’ll get into a world of trouble.
”

Dara’s father has yelled out from his fortress:

“Leave him alone! Let him invite his girlfriend over. The boy is thirty-something years old and he still hasn’t held a girl’s hand. They torched the brothels’ district, they executed the madams, and they produced a hundred times more prostitutes for themselves. How long can a penniless boy whose piss has frothed jerk off? Dara! Can you hear me? Definitely invite her over. Tell me when she’s coming and I’ll send your mother to the mosque so she won’t be home.”

Dara’s mother has been shocked and horrified by the crude words that had never before echoed off the ceiling of her house. The Iranian television series has reached the point when each of the three wives of a wealthy Muslim man has discovered that their husband has two other wives and they are trying to find one another. The climax of the series will come when the three women meet. Will they beat each other up? Will they sit together and weep? Or will they rip the louse’s shorts off his butt and wrap them around his miserable head?

The interesting point about this series is that without the director and the censors at the state television station realizing, it alludes to one of God’s wraths against a holy man. No, by “holy man” I don’t mean one of the priests who have sexually abused children in church. In fact, I am referring to the case of the melting holy weewee of a venerable cleric who in one of the parliamentary elections in the Islamic Republic received the greatest number of votes from the province of Tehran.

Are you curious? Well, ask and I will tell you the story:

We first saw His Excellency on television in an educational program on religion. Unlike many revered Iranian clerics, this gentleman had a kind face and smiling lips. He did not talk about the stoning of adulterers and the execution of apostates. The title of his program was
Ethics at Home.
In his program the gentleman would speak of spouses being kind to one another. He would advise women to try and understand their husbands and to be aware that when they come home from work they are tired, and because of difficulties at the workplace they may be in a foul mood. He would suggest that a woman can, by being pleasant and catering to her husband, let him know that he is not alone in this world and that he has her support and sympathy. On the other hand, he would advise a husband not to forget that his wife is his best friend and companion. “She is a flower in your house. Do not allow this precious flower to wilt. Be faithful to her and show her that she is the best woman you could find in this world. Do not look at her as a cook. Offer her presents, and if you cannot afford something expensive, one single flower is the best gift. Show her that in your eyes her beauty is eternal and that you pray for her well-being in your daily prayers.”

Thus, in television-watching households the gentleman became one of the best-loved and most famous faces. This popularity resulted in his election into the Islamic Parliament as the member with the greatest number of votes. And so it was, until suddenly, with no explanation, the esteemed gentleman’s television program was canceled, and we no longer had any news of him at all. In other words, the gentleman disappeared. We Iranians were terribly eager to find out what had become of our kind cleric. Then, rumor about the
ft
beh
spread throughout the country.

Now the Western reader will ask me what
ft
beh
means.

ft
beh
is the Farsi word for one of the world’s most indispensable objects. This instrument is very similar to the watering can Western ladies use to water their gardens, and we Muslims use it to wash the flowers of our body after relieving ourselves—which in my opinion is a more sanitary process than the tissuey Western method.

In any case, long after the disappearance of the kind cleric, rumor spread from mouth to mouth and reached me, too, that the gentleman, unbeknownst to his good wife, had taken partial advantage of his Islamic right to have four wives and had perpetrated the taking of a second wife. When his first wife found out, to exact revenge, she filled his
ft
beh
with sulfuric acid.