Censoring an Iranian Love Story Read Online Free PDF

they now allow you to wear colorful shoes? Sometimes when I follow you down the sidewalk, I try to step in your footsteps.
    “I wish I had the powers of Count Dracula. Not so that I could come up to your bedroom at night and suck your blood, but so that I could protect you for the rest of your life without you ever knowing.
    “The supervisor at the public library has grown suspicious of me. He threatened that if I don’t watch myself he will have the patrols from the Campaign Against Social Corruption arrest me. I didn’t react to any of his insults. I was so angry my blood was boiling, but I even managed to apologize to him. If I were a Dracula I would have drunk his blood. So now when you leave the library, I wait awhile, and then I run to catch up with you somewhere near your home. I wish I could come to your class at the university and just sit in a corner and watch you. But at the university they consider people like me to be vulgar and filthy monsters. In Francis Ford Coppola’s film version of Dracula, which you can easily find on the black market, there is a scene in which Dracula, in love, turns Mina’s teardrops into emeralds in the palm of his hand. Even if I was once a hateful beast, even if I was once a Dracula, I have changed since I got to know you. I found a strand of your hair in the pages of The Little Prince. I don’t believe it was there on purpose, but it is now my treasure … This single strand of black hair means the world to me. You are my Shirin. I only wish I were your Farhad. I wish I had a mountain to carve into a castle for you with nothing but a pickax. Borrow Khosrow and Shirin.”
    In many Iranian mystical poems, some of which date back almost a thousand years, the Sufi poet—most classical Iranian poets were Sufis— speaks of an earthly heavenly beloved, a beloved who can be a woman and yet is a representation of God. He uses many words to liken his beloved’s beauties to nature, fruits, and flowers; of course not directly, but by using familiar similes. It starts with her figure, which is often likened to a cypress tree. To understand this Iranian simile, do not bring to mind the extreme tallness of a cypress tree; instead look at the wideness of its bottom and the narrowness of its top. Then our poet will compare his beloved’s eyes to narcissus flowers or to the eyes of a gazelle, and if they are Oriental eyes, he will compare them to almonds. Her eyebrows, he will compare to bows that let fly the arrows of her eyelashes toward her lover’s heart. Her lips, if they are thin, he will compare to a narrow wisp often woven of silk, and if they are plump, he will compare them to rubies that of course are as sweet as sugar. Then the poet will liken his beloved’s breasts to pomegranates. The Iranian Sufi poet does not normally travel any farther down and self-censors the rest of his similes, allowing the reader’s imagination to travel south on its own. The few who have dared travel below their beloved’s breasts have again used the language of nature and erotic foods. Evidently, in those days Iranians were not familiar with the banana, or with the orchid, or for that matter with the flower in the film The Wall. About nine centuries ago, Nizami, a great Iranian poet, created two beautiful yet strange scenes in a famous romantic poem called Khosrow and Shirin. This narrative in verse is the love story of Khosrow, one of the greatest kings of Persia, and an Armenian princess named Shirin. Shirin has undressed and is bathing in a pond. Khosrow is out hunting and by chance arrives at the pond and starts ogling Shirin from behind the bushes:
A bride he saw as ripe as the full moon…
…
In cerulean water like a flower she sat,
in cerulean silk up to her navel wrapped
….
From that flower’s substance the entire pond,
an almond blossom an almond at its heart
….
To each side her tresses she combed,
violets crowning a blossom she combed
….
She a treasure chest its