Shahriar Mandanipour: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

….

From the gatekeeper’s hand has fallen the gardengate key,

her pomegranate breasts in the garden revealed

….

Unaware of the king’s gaze that jasmine lingered,

for the view of her narcissus the hyacinth hindered.

…

When the moon from the dark cloud emerged,

Shirin’s eyes the king discerned.

…

But this that pool of sugar saw no means,

than her hair like the night to spread upon the mist.

…

In this romance, as in all romances, there are many incidents and events that impede Shirin and Khosrow from meeting each other and from being alone together away from the eyes of the fiercely devout who behaved much like modern-day censors.

Finally, however, Shirin arrives in Madayen, her beloved’s capital city …

In those days, Madayen was the wealthiest and the most splendid capital city in the world. Remnants of the massive arched roof of its royal palace can still be found in Iraq — I mean that country that was once part of the Persian Empire and that today, because of the unrelenting war there, those Americans whose knowledge of geography is not very good no longer mistake for Iran.

A long time has passed since Shirin and Khosrow met and fell in love, but they still haven’t done anything. On their long-awaited wedding night, Shirin lectures Khosrow: After all the wine you have drunk in your life, on this one night do not drink. However, by early afternoon, from the intense excitement of consummating their marriage, Khosrow starts to drink. By nightfall, completely drunk, he waits for Shirin to walk through the doors of the nuptial chamber bathed, made up, perfumed, and wearing a negligee that the fashion-setting Victoria’s Secret has yet to dream up … Imagine the nuptial chamber, not with your own strong and scientific imagination, but with the unscientific and idiotic imagination of a film such as Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Imagine the chamber with an Egyptian-Arabic-Indian-Iranian-Chinese decor, with a bed that has so much gold or emeralds or diamonds strewn on it that there is no room to lie down. In one corner there is an Indian Shiva, somewhere else there is the figure of Ra, the Egyptian deity, and in yet another corner smoke rises from a Chinese incense burner. And there, in the middle of the bed, lies Khosrow, the emperor of Persia, all sprawled out. I cannot find an Iranian imagery for Khosrow; therefore, like those Hollywood movies that jumble everything together, I will compare him to Ganesha, the Hindu patron of arts and sciences and the god of intellect and wisdom whom I like very much. Ganesha has an elephant’s head and a human body. He loves sweets, and in Farsi the name Shirin means “sweet.” But I have chosen this simile because Ganesha’s trunk is likely to bear similarities to Khosrow’s manly trunk.

Regardless of the elephant’s trunk, when Shirin realizes that Khosrow is drunk on this historic night, out of mischief, she sends her stepmother into the nuptial chamber instead of going in herself. The description of the old woman is thus:

Like a wolf, not a young wolf but an old one, with a pair of sagging breasts that resemble two sheepskin sacs, an old hump on her back, her face as wrinkled as an Indian walnut, her mouth as wide as a grave and with only a couple of yellow teeth in it, and no eyelashes on her eyes … The old woman enters the room. Khosrow, drunk, is taken aback. What is this? How did pretty Shirin suddenly turn into this? He concludes that it is because of his inebriated state that he sees Shirin like this, and he gets his hooks into her. The old woman screams out in pain, Shirin save me! Shirin enters the room and Khosrow realizes his mistake.

Here, the poet again offers a lengthy description of Shirin’s beauties. He compares her body to all sorts of flowers and all sorts of rare sweets and foods. Of course, from the standpoint of literary ingenuity and poetic creativity, the descriptions are truly rich and beautiful.

The poet writes that Shirin’s lips and teeth are of the same essence as love. Her lips have never seen teeth, nor have her teeth ever seen lips. This half couplet offers one example of the ambiguities of Iranian literature, because one can derive various interpretations from it. Perhaps Shirin’s lips are so plump and protruding that they do not touch her teeth. Or perhaps they are, as we say in Farsi, like a finely tapered braid and so thin that no teeth could bite into them. In other words, this half couplet could imply that no man has ever bitten Shirin’s lips, or that her lips have never touched a man’s teeth, or even that her teeth have never bitten a man’s lips. Do you think there is any better way to describe a woman’s virginity than to suggest that she has never experienced a stolen kiss?

In olden days and current times, when Iranian men search for a spouse, they search for a woman whose lips have never touched teeth and whose teeth have never touched lips. And when they seek a lover, they want someone with extensive experience in biting. Unfortunately, oftentimes either they don’t find her or they end up with her opposite …

In subsequent verses Shirin’s body is progressively thus described:

Her face resembling flowers … The front and back of her body akin to soft white ermine, and her fingers reminiscent of ten elongated ermine tails … Her body milk and honey, her eyebrows arches stretching as far as her earlobes, and the curve of her double chin draped down to her shoulders.

Given the information the poet offers, we know that Shirin is from Armenia, and given that Iranian men generally prefer fair-skinned blonds, women from Armenia — which at times was and at times was not part of Iran — were and remain symbols of beauty. However, given the similes I have described, this Shirin is definitely not this century’s fashion.

In any case, the old woman escapes from the room and Shirin appears before Khosrow. Now, Khosrow’s eyes widen at the sight of all that beauty and sex appeal. This, in fact, is the story’s climax. Khosrow and Shirin is made up of sixty-five hundred verses. Approximately four-fifths of it recounts how Khosrow heard praise of Shirin’s beauty and desired her, how Shirin traveled to Iran from Armenia, how they met, how they fell in love, and how eager they were to fall into each other’s arms. The verses also relate how an innocent man named Farhad, ill treated and poor, who did not possess the position, power, or sexual where withal of the emperor Khosrow, falls in love with Shirin, how the romantic affair turns into a love triangle, how Farhad in demonstrating the magnitude of his love for Shirin — or perhaps to exhibit his manly prowess — begins to carve a passageway in a massive mountain with only a pickax. Which one of her two lovers do you think Shirin should have picked: the sleeping drunk or the mountain-carver?

Throughout these verses, numerous obstacles and incidents and even separations bar Khosrow and Shirin from lying in each other’s arms. But after all is said and done, like all lovers across the world, be they in Mogadishu or Sarajevo, in Tehran or Baghdad or Paris, at last Khosrow and Shirin come together on that long-awaited night and they start planting flowers and drinking milk sweetened with honey … In other words, the poet has composed fifty-two hundred verses and developed scores of incidents before Khosrow and Shirin finally join in the nuptial chamber and make love.

Can you guess what happens on this night?

In a half couplet, the poet suggests that when Khosrow perceives Shirin’s sensuality, he turns into a beast that has seen the new moon — or, were we to find metaphors consistent with Anglo-Saxon culture, he turns into a werewolf who has seen the full moon.