Read Online Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour - Free Book Online

stared at, and severed. I said to my publisher:
    “Mr. Petrovich forgave us three breasts and two thighs.”
    He did not answer, and to escape the traffic he turned onto a side street. Perhaps he was wondering why, instead of publishing troublesome books by young writers, he didn’t publish instructive books on religion or books on the writs and principles of Islam in laymen’s language that millions of people seeking government jobs and admission to universities would buy to prepare for the multiple-choice questions of the Islamic selection process …
    If that is indeed what he was thinking, then I would have had to be thinking: In addition to the millions of job seekers and university applicants, thousands of Communist Tudeh Party followers purchase these books and memorize them far more scrupulously than any non-Communist, so that they can infiltrate government offices and universities.
    We rode past a beautiful modern high-rise with elements of ancient Greek and seventeenth-century Iranian architecture. The motorcycle’s groans suddenly stopped. The startled publisher cursed at the raindrops. We climbed down. He started fiddling with the spark plugs.
    Next to the front stairs of the high-rise with its postmodern façade, a street peddler wearing clothes reminiscent of eight hundred years ago was sitting on the sidewalk with a box in front of him. We Iranians are used to such characters. In their boxes they have magic for sale. Talismans for rendering the enemy mute … Potions to pour in front of a foe’s door so that the sound of laughter will never again emanate from it … Snake’s eggs to make someone fall in love … Hyena’s pussy to be mixed with the bones of a hundred-year-old cadaver and fed to a husband so that he does not fancy taking another wife … Scraps of paper with spells written on them in strange script to be steeped in water as a cure for the ailing … Rings for becoming rich … The peddler raised his head. Our eyes met. I thought, One day I will write your story, too. And I heard his voice somewhere deep in my ear, Write! I also have Indian elephant’s testicle powder dissolved in syrupy Ganesha potion. Any writer who drinks it will win the Nobel Prize … If you win it, write in your story that the potions, talismans, and spells of medicine man Jafar ibn-Jafri are more potent than those of all other medicine men …
    Miraculously, the motorcycle engine started. We climbed back on. We were moving away from the witchcraft-selling medicine man. I turned around and stared at the path of his dark gaze and said to my publisher, “It didn’t turn out too badly … Three breasts and two thighs …”
    My publisher still didn’t express any joy. We passed in front of a hospital affiliated with Tehran University. Above its main entrance, on a huge thirty-foot-by-six-foot banner, in large beautiful calligraphy, was written:
    MEDICAL SEMINAR ON THE CAUSES AND PREVENTIONS
OF BREAST CANCER
    Let us return to Tehran University …
    The students are still being beaten up …
    No, this sentence will not appeal to Mr. Petrovich at all. What’s more, from the standpoint of Iranian literature, it is not at all exciting, because in my country, since the founding of the first university, getting beaten up and thrown in jail have always been among the required credits for students … Therefore, this is how I will transition back to my story: Let us together return to that beautiful spring day on Liberty Street …
    The efforts of the antiriot police to disperse the students continue. There are exactly three minutes and three seconds left until the moment when Sara will be thrown to the ground and her head will hit against a cement edge. To escape the terrifying face of that timeless hunchback, she moves a few steps closer to the conflict, not knowing that she has moved a few steps closer to the location of her death. Sara, with eyes still brimming with tears, raises her sign with its strange slogan even