Censoring an Iranian Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

letter contained in the book. That letter read:
    “Hello Sara,
    “Why have you started to suddenly turn around and look behind you ever since you read my letter? You will never recognize me among the people on the sidewalk. I have studied makeup. The day you bought the book from me I had really changed my face.
    “I am always very far from you. But following you, even at a distance, gives me the pleasure of knowing that I breathe the air you have exhaled. Sometimes, of course not often, I walk toward you from the opposite side of the street so that I can catch a glimpse of your face, to see whether you are happy or sad. I know all the expressions of your face. I can even tell by the way your long beautiful fingers hold your books whether you are tired or full of energy. Nights when I wander the streets, I sometimes pass by your big house. Don’t worry, I don’t stop. Not even for a second. I just walk by and look up at your window. I don’t like its heavy curtains. Why do you keep them drawn most of the time? Open them. Let the moon shine into your room. The ultramarine moonlight will create a beautiful new color on the walls. At night, when the light is turned on in your room and I know you are there, your room becomes my star. But this one star is different from all the other stars in the sky for me, because there I have a red rose that is different from all the other red roses in the world for me, and with all my heart I wish it happiness. I learned this from The Little Prince. Now that I have someone in my life for whom I wish happiness with all my being, even if I am never to be a part of that happiness, my life has found a beautiful new meaning. Now I can at last cope with people. I have even grown to like them, because I think among them there are people whom you like and who make you happy … It doesn’t matter who I am and what my name is. I used to be a student at Tehran University, too. I studied filmmaking. But I was expelled. As for my name, just pretend it is Dara. It is an alias that the writer who will one day write about my life will conjure up without giving it much thought. They will not hire me at any company or factory. I cover my expenses with the little money I earn painting houses. Whenever I paint a wall, I first write your name on it in ultramarine blue, and then I cover it with the color the wall is supposed to be. Just last month, I was painting a newly built house and the contractor showed up unexpectedly. He saw how all the walls had SARA written on them … We had a fight. He fired me … I will write the next letter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The people who decide which books belong in libraries sometimes miss a few, or maybe they don’t understand these types of books. If you would like to write back, mark the letters in this book in blue ink. If not, in the Dracula letter I will let you know which book will have my next letter …”
    Sara had to wait two weeks to borrow Dracula because someone had already checked it out of the library. She read the third letter, but she didn’t write back. Whoever was writing these letters really meant what he said and moved so ghostlike on the fringes of Sara’s life that despite her curiosity she couldn’t guess his identity. Sometimes, after walking home along her regular route from the university or the library, she would run up to her room and from the narrow opening in the heavy curtains she would look out to see who was following her. Pedestrians, young and old, walked by, but none of them showed any interest in her window … For seven consecutive nights Sara sat by the window and peered out at the sidewalk. But to no avail.
    Sara liked the story of Dracula.
    “Hello Sara,
    “I really like your sneakers, the ones with the blue stripes. Your beautiful stride has a wonderful weightlessness to it when you wear them. I have named them Shirin Walking on Water, and sometimes I call them Ophelia. Has anything changed at the university that