Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour Page A

Letter, with passion and literary conjecture, actually legal conjecture, in defense of every single word of that story, said:
    “My esteemed sir, you have read the story. There is a drought. There is a shortage of water in this southern village. Misery and death have befallen the people. One night the villagers all have the same nightmare, a nightmare as black as tar; and it happens on the night when the American coup d’état succeeds in Tehran, and Mossadeq is arrested for the crime of nationalizing oil, and the Shah is supposed to return to the country. What’s more, the woman in the story is at least sixty years old …”
    I apologize to all the beautiful sixty-year-old ladies. In those days, there were no Internet sites to post photographs of the ten sexiest Hollywood stars over fifty.
    Tirelessly I argued:
    “Sir, imagine the wrinkles on dehydrated skin, the white lines underneath withered skin, the filth and grime of not having bathed for months … Greasy, gross … What is so sexy about all this? The only beautiful woman in the story, as you have read, has been compared to a flower with absolutely no description of her face or figure.”
    Unconvinced, Mr. Petrovich said:
    “I just don’t understand why you writers insist on depicting such filthy scenes and presenting them to the reader’s imagination.”
    “Sir! It is not about insisting. It is life. Believe me, to make a story believable, its characters have to be portrayed, otherwise the reader will not find them credible … You yourself have read how the location of the village is described in detail. Its surrounding deserts have been illustrated in many sentences, even the animals and the men.”
    “Well, I never said we are against descriptions. What we say is that you should describe the beauties of nature, the glory of the sky and the galaxy, meaning all the beauties that God has created. Writing of such images you will be blessed in the hereafter as well, because if your readers are intelligent, from your writings they will discover the greatness of God and their faith will be strengthened.”
    I blurted out:
    “Sir, it isn’t the writer’s fault if there are also ugly things and unbathed women in the world … By the way, aren’t they also God’s creations?”
    Mr. Petrovich glared at me. His knotted eyebrows were saying, You’re getting too big for your boots. His angry eyes were saying, You’re running off at the mouth.
    But perhaps because I was a young writer and he didn’t want to drive me toward the antirevolution camp, he masked his anger and continued.
    “Well, in this section, if you had not described the woman’s body your story would not have suffered at all.”
    “It certainly would have suffered. I think the scene where the water drips onto the dirt is good literary imaging. I think stories are written so that such images can be created.”
    “As a matter of fact, these lengthy illustrations make the story dull and boring. In a story, events have to take place one after the other. For example, you should have just written, ‘She empties the ewer over her head.’ ”
    “That’s not possible, sir. Then the reader will wonder whether the woman has gone mad.”
    “Well, in your story you want to show that the woman has in fact gone mad.”
    “Sir, these two madnesses are completely different. In a weak story, characters go mad without logic and literary sense, in which case, it will seem as if all the bones in the story are broken. To write a good story, we have to try and make sure that even characters who go mad have a rational reason for it…”
    Mr. Petrovich walked out of the room and returned with a glass of water filled with ice. To quell the flames of his rage, he drank it all in one gulp. Mr. Petrovich is not alone; many of us Iranians are terribly angered when someone teaches us something we don’t know. But my excitement and passion in defending my stories were so great that I didn’t realize I was being