Censoring an Iranian Love Story (40 page)

From the subtle movement of Sara’s breasts the silver strands of her dress sparkle, and Dara discovers that a woman’s waist is narrowed halfway between the width of her shoulders and the breadth of her hips for a man’s hands to embrace and to complete it.
Sara suddenly swings her head around halfway,
the bounty of her hair swells, moves away from her face,
and her eyes find Dara sitting in the corner. She secretly smiles at him and glides toward her mother.

Now you know very well that there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop the scissors of censorship from cutting off Sara’s breasts, calves, and waist. I therefore have to write the self-censored sentences in the following manner.

Dara sees his beautiful Sara. He sees the projection of her two crystalline collarbones that curve and end as handles of two crystal goblets. Sara’s arms are like icicles against which the moonlight shines as they dangle beside two curved impressions …

No, even I get the chills from this icy illustration. I am tempted to liken the surfacing of Sara’s beauties to the clichéd surfacing of a bikiniclad Ursula Andress from the sea in
Dr. No,
but Mr. Petrovich has most likely seen this film. On the other hand, I really don’t want to turn my story into a still life by a gluttonous painter and write about two trembling pomegranates and compare Sara’s fair skin to peeled almonds and describe the sudden protrusion of her behind as an apple. Perhaps I can write:

The trees are jolted from their winter sleep and unleash a neigh of desire. Sculpted flesh moves among them.

No. I don’t like these butcheresque metaphors either. I will write:

In seasonless paradise, a silver snake coils around two slender columns carved in marble and slithers up. It steals over a spring of honey and arrives at two concave curves. It moves higher still and chafes its icy scales against two white flames with crimson tips, and then, with its heat-seeking tongue, it moves the single pearl of a necklace aside and licks that soft small hollow beneath.

No, I don’t like this either.

Sara saunters over to the stream to be more clearly in Dara’s view. The reflection of the multicolored lights shimmers on the water. In that mercurial mirror, from the blending of the greens, azures, and indigos, a new color has emerged in the world.
It reflects on the paleness of Sara’s arms and shoulders, and an even fresher color is composed …

Unlike me, who wants to reveal Sara’s beauties to my readers,
Dara does not want other men to see
the bareness of
Sara
’s body
. In fact, he is even angry at her for wearing this dress.

A girl walks by and obstinately smiles at him. Embarrassed, Dara looks down. The old man shouts:

“Did you see? Did you see how that tramp was flirting with you? Damn these young girls who lead our innocent young men astray.”

Dara has gotten tired of secretly watching Sara. He gets up to move to the spot closest to her. Sara sees him approaching. She bites her lower lip, signaling
no.
Dara is only a few steps away. Sara turns her back to him and starts talking to a man standing alone by the stream and watching the water flow by. Dara feels as though one of those idle tent heaters has been turned on in his body and is burning at full flame. He recognizes the man with the tired face and sagging shoulders. Dr. Farhad, his head hanging down, every so often raises his eyes and glances into Sara’s bright eyes, and then, feeling uneasy, he turns away.

He asks:

“Where have I seen you before?”

“At the hospital. Do you remember when you operated on Shirin and stitched her up? I was standing next to her.”

“Yes, yes. Now I remember. It was so shocking.”

Standing close by, Dara pretends to be busy watching the water flow by in the stream.

Now you probably want to ask why all the characters in this story stare at that stream.

First of all, in a desert country such as Iran, a stream is one of the most beautiful sights to behold. Second, in a country where office workers’ productivity is all of twenty minutes in an eight-hour workday, listening to the murmur of water and watching it flow by is a much-needed form of mental and physical rest and relaxation, especially since all of us know by heart, and persistently remind each other of, that famous half couplet by one of our greatest poets from seven hundred years ago:

Sit beside the stream and watch life flow by.

Therefore, in my realistic story, it is natural and must be plausible for my characters not to move from beside that stream.

Sara says:

“Doctor, I am surprised to see you here.”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t like wedding parties all that much. But the bride’s father is my mother’s maternal cousin, and I was duty bound to come. You must be here with your family or your husband.”

“I don’t have a husband.”

Dara coughs. Sara glances at his angry eyes
and twirls a lock of her hair around her finger
.

“Doctor, today girls in Iran are not like they were in the past, they don’t marry the first man who asks for their hand. They are very selective. Until they have weighed all their options, until they are sure that the man declaring his love truly wants their happiness and not his own, they don’t fall into the marriage trap. How about you? You must be here with your girlfriend or your wife.”

The doctor blushes.

“No. I’m alone. I haven’t had time for girlfriends, and I don’t have time to spend with a fiancée.”

All he has courage for is to look into Sara’s eyes for five seconds.

“One of these days you will find a girl of your liking, a girl who will value your noble and selfless character, and you will live a happy life.”

The doctor seems to be frantically searching his mind for an appropriate sentence to speak, his mouth has remained open, and he cannot find one. Sara smiles at his innocence and timidity.

The doctor whimpers:

“I hope so … Loneliness is very … Loneliness is really … These days I have come to realize how very lonely I am …”

And he turns his deprived Iranian eyes away from the sight of Sara’s cleavage.

“A lot of girls in this town can only dream of becoming your wife … By the way, in case I ever get sick, where is your office?”

The doctor nervously digs into his pocket, twice he drops his briefcase, until at last he produces a business card and offers it to Sara. Then, unglued and confused, he walks out of the tent… Dara returns to his seat. He takes an orange and squeezes it in his fist. The juice spews out from between his fingers.

The old man says:

“That is exactly how you are squeezing my heart.”

The garden singer starts belting out an Iranian rap song, product of Los Angeles.

“I said, wiggle your hips and shake your boobs. You said, I’ll wiggle my hips and shake the world …”

The women start to dance. A short distance away, young girls and boys make up their own group. Two guys, with their heads and necks on the ground and their legs up in the air, start spinning like break-dancers.

Mr. Petrovich will ask:

“Can you hear the racket of vulgar music and dancing and snapping fingers coming from somewhere?”

I will answer:

“No. Rest easy. The people in town are all asleep. The houses are quiet; the windows are shut; the curtains are drawn. Innocence, like a spring breeze, is blowing through the streets and alleys, and the angels are yawning.”

A girl grabs Sara by the hand and drags her into the crowd of dancing boys and girls. Sara reluctantly moves her hands and hips and then slowly backs away from the group and settles for watching their harmless merriment. Given that they rarely have such opportunities, the girls and boys are dancing so feverishly that it seems they have entered a contest to release tormenting energy.

The old man points to Sara.

“Check out that cute missy. Don’t buy into the way she stands there looking so timid. It’s obvious she wants to dance, but she’s playing coy so that they take her hand and pull her to the center of the crowd. Once there, she’ll turn into one ball of fire. I know these women like the back of my hand. Don’t ever trust their appearance or the words that come out of their mouths. Reverse them.”

Dara sees Sara’s profile, and in that profile he sees no sign of joy. It seems that this Sara, contrary to a few minutes ago when she was flirting with Dr. Farhad, is now the same Sara who had stood in front of Tehran University with
DEATH TO FREEDOM, DEATH TO CAPTIVITY.
The old man points to Sara’s legs.

“See how slender her ankles are. My late father taught me that women with slender ankles have really tight holes, and those who have thick ankles have really ample goods, thick lipped and puffy. This big.”

He holds the palms of his hands together in front of Dara’s eyes.

Again Dara drags himself one seat away from him. His heart aches. Watching other people dance and be merry has always made him sad. It reminds him of the happiness he has not had and the fact that he doesn’t know, and has not learned, how and in what he will find his happiness. With every year that goes by, he grows more certain that we Iranians are a nation of grief and sorrow. We don’t know happiness at all, and at times when we do exhibit happiness, we are in fact only pretending.

Watching the girls and boys dance reminds Dara of his neighbor’s two daughters. They were identical twins. After the revolution, one of them joined the Party of God, and the other became a Communist. When the police raided their house to arrest the Communist sister, the Party of God sister pretended to be her. In prison, they had put her in a closed coffin for three months so that she would give up her Marxist Communist denial of God and repent. Five years later when she was released, she no longer resembled her twin, and her sister had broken ties with that leftist faction and had spent these years praying and asking God to return her sister to the family alive. Years later, the twins disappeared. For the longest time no one had any news of them, until we heard that in Istanbul, in front of the UN refugee agency, in protest against Europe’s hypocritical policies toward Iran, hand in hand the two had set themselves on fire …

Dara scolds himself for not leaving, but he doesn’t have the will to go, nor does he have the will not to look at Sara, and his eyes continue to invite her to his side.

Sara, holding two small plates filled with pastries, walks toward him. She offers the first plate to the old man. The old man says:

“I adore you, my darling girl, no one gave me a thought except you who are like a daughter to me.”

Sara bends down and holds the second plate in front of Dara. As soon as he reaches out to take the plate from her, Sara whispers:

“The minute you see me talking to a man the ugliest doubts come to your mind.”

And a single teardrop falls on the pastries.

Dara gives his plate to the old man and follows the stream to the darkness at the end of the garden.
He sees the shadow of a young girl and boy kissing. Hearing his footsteps, they separate and turn their backs to him.
Some distance away, Dara leans against a tree and lights a cigarette. Surprised at how Sara has seen the serpents of jealousy in his eyes, he dwells on the uncertain future of his relationship with her. He feels their love is traveling a course over which he has no control. Lighting his second cigarette, in the glow of the flame he sees Sara standing in front of him; he reaches his hand out toward her shoulder. Sara pulls back. Dara, still leaning against the tree, slides himself down to the ground. The scratches the tree bark leaves on his back are soothing to him.

He says:

“I am only now realizing that I don’t really know you. You are not the Sara I knew. I am so confused.”

“Because, selfishly, you have always wanted me to be the way you have imagined me in your mind. The only person who ever saw me as I really am was that poet who peddled books. Go back to the party; I want to dance for you.”

And she starts to walk against the current of the stream. A few minutes later, Dara lights his third cigarette. The coquettish giggle of a girl emanates from somewhere in the darkness of the garden. Dara thinks that if Sara truly loves him, she will give him that handwritten book. He throws the half-smoked cigarette in the stream. In the dark, he doesn’t see that on the water, every so often, a damask rose floats by. That same flower that our grandmothers would tell us fables about: A beast falls in love with a beautiful girl, kidnaps her, and takes her to his garden. Whenever he needs to leave the garden, to make sure the girl does not escape, he cuts off her head and hangs it on a tree. The girl’s blood drips into a stream, and each drop turns into a damask rose, until the young man who is to kill the beast and save the girl sees the flowers and traces them back to the garden. Dara returns to the party and sits where he had sat before. The bride and the groom are mingling with the guests and exchanging pleasantries with them. Dara imagines Sara in the wedding dress she had tried on in that store and sees himself in that groom’s place holding her hand. In their winter sleep, the trees convey their
One Thousand and One Nights–ish
fantasies to one another on a cool breeze.

Suddenly, they hear the sound of china plates breaking.

The singer has thrown the microphone aside, and leaping toward one of the tent exits he has knocked over the table laden with trays of pastries. The female drummer too has thrown down her sticks and following the singer leaps toward the darkness of the garden. The poor guitarist, who has an electric guitar slung around his neck, cannot rid himself of the wires and falls down. It is only then that everyone notices the green-uniformed patrols from the Campaign Against Social Corruption who have suddenly appeared at the entrance to the tent. One of them grabs the guitarist by the back of his neck and pushes him facedown onto the ground. The three others chase after the two fugitive musicians. Screaming, the women and girls run toward the villa in the garden.