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

composure, she turned and looked at the young man’s face again. She recognized him. He was one of the pestering admirers who used to stand in front of her house. He would hold his thumb and pinky up against his ear mimicking a telephone and then he would point to the wall behind him where in red paint he had written his cell phone number and drawn a broken heart next to it. Sara was shocked and disappointed. She worried that this ugly, vulgar, and undignified man was the Dara of her dreams. The pestering admirer saw Sara, too. But he quickly turned around and with long and rapid strides walked in the opposite direction. In effect, he ran away. Sara breathed a sigh of relief. She was now certain that the man was not Dara. In that last moment before he turned around, Sara noticed the young man’s right eye. It too had a bruise under it.
    “Hello Sara,
    “Thank you for writing that two-sentence letter. I am truly honored. But it really did me in. By the time I searched every single page of War and Peace to find the fifty-nine letters you marked, my eyes were all swollen. Even Natasha wasn’t as mischievous as you. To make sure no one discovers your letter, even though it is very unlikely, I erased the dots and returned the book to the library; just the way all the dots from the letters I have sent to you have been erased. Life isn’t so pleasant these days. I may not be able to write to you or to even see you anymore. I used to be in prison. I was released on the condition that I would not leave the cit y . Once a week I have to go show myself and sign. These days, the more I swear that I am no longer involved in political activities, the more they suspect me. I have even confessed that I have fallen in love and now detest any and all ideologies, but … As always, I wish you happiness …”
    This was the last letter Sara decoded from the pages of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. This book too had been carefully hidden for her behind a stack of dusty books. Sara no longer saw a sign or a dot from Dara …
    Dara disappeared.
    Something was lost in Sara’s life. She felt lonelier than ever before. She read more novels and stories than ever before. She told herself that Dara had read them, too, or was reading them now. Unlike in the past, she looked at the faces of the people on the street; she felt she liked them because one of them may have spoken to Dara or perhaps knew him. She especially looked at the faces of the street peddlers, but she saw no sign of familiarity in their eyes. Sometimes she thought Dara may have had some sort of a physical handicap. Sometimes she thought Dara had tricked her, anyone else would have shown himself to her at least once … Until at last, on that spring day, in front of the main entrance of Tehran University, on the fringes of the impassioned student demonstrations, Dara introduced himself to her and their adventure began …
    Years before Sara and Dara’s first meeting, I had the honor of meeting Mr. Petrovich. In those days I was a young writer who in his solitude had spent years carefully reading novels and stories. I had even extracted the styles and techniques of all sorts of classical and modern writers from their books and had noted them on index cards. I had then concluded that every writer must have his own particular worldview and philosophy. I therefore read as many books on philosophy as I could. To successfully analyze my characters, I read the equivalent of a university degree in psychology. I had Freud and Jung and their followers in one hand, and Pavlov and his followers in the other, until I arrived at American psychology. Next, I told myself that a great writer will never become a great writer if he is not well versed in world history and politics. Therefore, as a social and literary responsibility, and despite my family’s trepidations, I chose political science as my field of study at the university. Before I left Shiraz for Tehran and Tehran University, my