Censoring an Iranian Love Story (42 page)

Dust wails
, wine froths in one-thousand-year-old earthen decanters
… Sara’s heart grows heavier from one moment to the next. Its beating slows …

Mr. Petrovich will say:

“Wait! What is going on? There seem to be things happening in your story that I can’t see. There seem to be unseemly things going on in between these three dots. Why has Sara’s heart slowed down?”

“Sir! Your instincts don’t always tell you the truth. There is nothing going on. Dara is still rubbing the dust from the sole of Sara’s sandal between his fingers. And Sara’s heart, like everyone else’s, sometimes beats fast, sometimes beats slow. You yourself have read in stories that when some sexual encounter is about to take place the characters’ hearts beat faster … Read the next sentence and see how Sara fouls things up for Dara.”

Sara says:

“You look like a wolf.”

Dara
, a few feet away from Sara, freezes in his place and
in a trembling voice says:

“I think I look like a miserable dog.”

“No, I prefer you to look like a wolf … Come! …”

Dara at last crosses
The Longest Yard
and sitting next to Sara leans against the wall. Now their bare forearms touch. Sara strokes Dara’s cheek with her fingertip.

“You’ve cut your face. Was your hand shaking while you shaved this morning?”

“Yes. But you prefer a bearded man.”

“Leave your jealousy for some other time.”

That morning’s trembling has again started in Dara’s body. Its cause is nothing but the first amorous touch of a woman’s delicate hand against his face. With a courage that he had not known he possessed, Dara takes Sara’s hand. The sweat on their palms combine. They look at their hands resting one in the other.

And Sara sees the stain of turquoise paint on the edge of Dara’s nail.

Behind the curtains covering the window of that room, a turquoise sky with no winged horse and no flying carpet stretches toward Tehran’s eastern horizon, toward Khayyám’s city of Neyshabur where beautiful Iranian turquoise beneath the earth dreams of becoming a gem on the beautiful fingers of an Iranian girl
, fingers that now ache from the pressure of a lover’s hand
. Sara
returns the pressure of Dara’s hand in kind and
says:

“Gentle!”

Mr. Petrovich will say:

“What happened? What did Sara say? What is Dara doing? What if this cunning guy has gone after Sara?”

I will say:

“I don’t think so. Perhaps to release his emotional stress he is squeezing Sara’s sandal in his fist and Sara is afraid that her sandal will break in two.”

Sara raises Dara’s hand to her lips and kisses the finger that bears the turquoise stain. A kiss so silent that neither Mr. Petrovich nor even I can hear. From the touch of Sara’s lips against his skin, a hellish roar echoes in Dara’s ears. He is tongue-tied, and no word or action comes to his mind. Sara, with eyes closed and lips half opened, rests her head against the wall. Dara is still dwelling on the scorch of that kiss on his finger. All the turquoise mines of Neyshabur seem to have caved in under his nail and the injured miners are screaming for help …

I nudge him. “Stupid boy! What are you waiting for? This poor girl has come as far as she can. It’s your turn to make a move. See how her lips are ready and waiting? Do something, you dimwit. Hurry! Women’s patience doesn’t last as long as a shot of vodka.”

Dara turns to Sara.
He sees her proportionately plump arms waiting for the pressure of his arms and the empty place of his broad hands on the curves of her shoulders.
He looks at the black stain on Sara’s misty rose-colored lower lip, the fruit of biting her lips in fear
, and at the white skin beneath her freshly plucked eyebrows
. And at last, staring at her closed eyes, he opens his lips.

“Death to freedom, death to captivity … that you had written on your sign … It was very strange. What did you mean by it?”

Sara lifts her head from its resting place against the wall.
She opens her eyes that had been closed to the fantasy of a kiss.
She grins.

“I was inspired …”

This is the wisest and most ironic response that can come from the lips of an Iranian woman. From the days when the most magnificent Iranian women were carried to harems of seven hundred in covered palanquins mounted on camels, until today when a lady defender of human rights in Iran receives the Nobel Peace Prize after having endured years of persecution and threats, and unlike her an Iranian woman amasses such wealth in the United States that she buys a ticket on the Russian spacecraft taxi and becomes the first woman tourist in outer space, no such inspiration has ever come to an Iranian woman.

Sara, continuing her mysterious comment, says:

“I am tired. I am very, very tired.”

It is now that the spark of love is ignited. Right at this very moment when that mystifying look awakens in Sara’s eyes. A look that has gleamed in the eyes of wine bearers in forbidden taverns of seven hundred years ago, that has gleamed in the eyes of freedom-loving women burning under the hot-iron torture of the secret police, that has gleamed in the eyes of a mother who has received the bones of a son martyred at war, that will gleam in the eyes of the young girl who will someday write the most beautiful Iranian love story.

Tell me:

You seem to be an absentminded writer! Didn’t you write earlier that this spark of love had already ignited?

And I will say:

Why don’t you pay attention? I am not talking about Dara’s spark of love. I am talking about Mr. Petrovich’s spark of love. He is now staring into those noble Oriental eyes that my prose fails to describe. His heart is beating like the heart of a sparrow held captive in a fist. But you are right when you say I am an absentminded writer. I was not at all aware that, throughout this unimaginative story, Mr. Petrovich’s imagination of Sara has been extremely active. And now, with every ounce of his emotions, he feels he has fallen in love with this girl. This girl who is neither lewd nor saintly.

Mr. Petrovich says:

“Please take Sara out of this womanizer’s house. Send her home! I myself will send Sinbad to China to buy pencils.”

“But sir, that won’t do! What about my story’s plot?”

“Then I forbid you to allow Dara’s hand to touch her.”

“Sir, even if I wanted to, this Dara is so clumsy and confused that he is not capable of doing anything. I am sure he now wants to go on and on about a few days ago when he painted a house turquoise.”

“That is very good. In my opinion, you have written a successful and refined love story that may receive a publishing permit … Except … except, I have one problem.”

“What problem?”

“Well, if I wanted to somehow meet Sara, I don’t know what I would have to do … Ever since I read segments of your story, she has attracted my attention. Don’t think I have wicked intentions. I want to ask for her hand in marriage. Rest assured that I can make her happy … Can you think of a way for us to meet somewhere?”

“No … If you wanted, for example, to meet Anna Karenina, I could perhaps find a way but…”

“Who is Anna Karenina? Is she like Sara?”

“She’s better than Sara. I can’t say she is very beautiful, but she has a certain charm that would bring any man to his knees. Perhaps you can censor the segment where she falls in love and stop her from committing suicide.”

“No … And you call yourself a writer? Don’t you know that when a man like me falls in love he has eyes for no other woman?”

“I wish you had told me sooner. I think I should write a novel about you and your love story.”

“By the time you write that novel, delinquent boys like Dara will have ruined Sara … But I have an idea. Tell me what you think about it. Write that Sara drops the handkerchief Dara has given to her someplace near the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, maybe even in front of my office so that no one else will see it. I will pick it up and run after her. I will say Miss, is this your handkerchief? … She sees me. She thanks me. Then I will say, Miss, you deserve much more than such a handkerchief. You should have a handkerchief woven of gold with pearls along its edges. This way I open up a conversation with her.”

It is here that I remember Dara’s notorious handkerchief. In traditional Iranian weddings it was customary at the end of the evening, while festivities were still under way in the house, to send the bride and groom hand in hand to a room known as the
hejleh,
or the nuptial chamber. There, an old woman would stand waiting behind the door. After the groom had conquered the bastion of the bride, he would deliver a handkerchief stained with her blood of virginity to the old woman. She would in turn display the handkerchief before the guests, and joyous screams and shouts would rise because the test of the bride’s purity had been proudly and successfully performed. Of course, a bride whose hymen was for example circumferential or vertical and produced no blood, would on this night be either murdered or disgraced before one and all and dispatched to her parents’ house. Now you have discovered the hidden significance of the complicated symbol of my story, and now you understand why Mr. Petrovich is so sensitive about this handkerchief.

And the word “blood” reminds me of that assassin who wanted to release Dara’s blood from his jugular. I shout:

“Then it was you who sent that assassin to kill Dara!”

Mr. Petrovich raises his index finger to his nose, suggesting that I lower my voice.

“You are accusing an official of the holy government of the Islamic Republic of assassinating his opponents. I will pretend I did not hear what you said.”

Then with an air of authority he says:

“The longer Sara and Dara stay together, the greater the danger threatening your story. Find a solution quickly; otherwise, get the fancy of publishing a love story out of your head.”

I say:

“You call this a love story? Or a … ? Look at what has become of my hopes and dreams. Every single bone in this story is broken. Every single one of its chapters has gone to a wasteland around Tehran, those same places where they burn garbage. Perhaps I should have just strangled Sara like Desdemona at the very start and put us all out of our misery.”

He says:

“I think it has turned out to be a nice educational story! Now put your creativity to work so that Sara ends up loathing Dara.”

His eyes have regained their frightening glint of shrewdness.

“Don’t force me to take action myself. Get Sara out of that house of sin.”

I no longer have any energy or passion to write. I have to take to my grave the dream of putting that enchanting period at the end of a good love story.

I say:

“Sir, don’t kid yourself! It’s too late. In the process of writing this story, I have again come to the conclusion that writing a love story with a happy ending is not in the destiny of writers of my generation … and my work on this story is done. I no longer have any control over it or its characters.”

“What do you mean? Why are you talking nonsense? Start writing.”

“Your Excellency, I can’t! I have been completely scissored out of this story. I’m done …”

Ask me:

How?

So that to you and to Mr. Petrovich I say:

“Listen! Sara wants to speak for herself.”

Sara tells Dara:

“In that flower patch in your front yard … That jasmine bush …”

“Yes, I have been meaning to prune it, but I haven’t had the time.”

“No, don’t… To allow a plant the freedom to spread throughout the garden is beautiful.”

Dara and I, and Mr. Petrovich, look at Sara’s beautiful sentence in awe. Sara stares at the two violet veins on her ankle. She strokes them with her fingertip and rubs her tired ankle.

Then, as though she has suddenly remembered something, her eyes widen; she freezes.

“What’s wrong, Sara? What happened?”

“When I walked into the yard, the first thing I saw was that jasmine bush … To be honest, it frightened me. Now I realize that it seemed as if a pair of terrifying eyes were looking at me from inside the bush.”

“That’s impossible … There is no one in the house except you and me.”

“But I am sure I saw it. Maybe when you left the front door open someone came in and hid in the bush.”

Dara, with his heart beating out of his chest, from the corner of his bedroom curtain looks at the jasmine bush. His eyes are wide with fear. It seems there is something in its branches.

Later, when terrified he runs to the yard, there he will see the corpse of a hunchback midget staring at the front door of the house …

And all I know is that before it is too late, as fast as possible, even if with a flying carpet, I must get to my house and lock the door from the inside …

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shahriar Mandanipour has won numerous awards for his novels, short
stories, and nonfiction in Iran, although he was unable to publish his fiction
from 1992 until 1997 as a result of censorship. A noted film critic, from 1999
until early 2008 he was editor in chief of
Asr-e Panjshanbeh (Thursday
Evening),
a monthly literary journal published in Shiraz. He came to the
United States in 2006 as the third International Writers Project Fellow at
Brown University. He is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University
and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in
PEN
America
and
The Literary Review
and is forthcoming in
The Kenyon
Review.
This is his first full-length work to appear in English.