Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 7 No. 12, June 2003
F. Parsa
Letter from Tehran [1]
Today is an official
holiday. It is Thursday the 11th of Ordibehesht or the 1st
of May and it is a public holiday here. But this isn't
because it's International Worker's Day, but because of the
anniversary of the death of the prophet Mohammed. But for
those of us who are second-class citizens (or to use the
term that Mesbah Yazdi has coined for us merely 'ambulant
pieces of flesh attached to legs', for those of us who are
of no use to the 'Islamic regime' -- which should in truth
be referred to as 'the greatest human tragedy in the memory
of recent human civilization') it makes no difference what
day it is. I was up all night glued to the computer screen
'to earn my daily bread'. (Here I use the hackneyed
expression 'to earn my bread' to mean precisely that and
nothing more). At about 6:30 or 7:00am I fell sleep and
managed briefly to flee the weight of my troubles, the
totality of which I am now used to, knowing all the while
that they will one day spell my end: exhaustion, back aches,
eye strain, headaches, heart palpitations, and the thousand
other terrible things. I was shattered. What do Mullahs know
about such things? At around 10:30 or 11am
Afshin calls to say that Mahmoud Vakili has been arrested.
My brain is still asleep. I concentrate and try to
understand what he is saying. He says Mahtab, Mahmoud's
sister, called him to say Mahmoud had been arrested on
Tuesday and had been taken away. She had said that we should
not contact their house directly. Afshin says he doesn't
have Ali's number and asks me to call Ali and let him know.
He is lying. He is lying when he says he doesn't have Ali's
number. He is too afraid to call Ali, afraid of getting
himself caught in some kind of trouble. Ali is well known.
Just last week he was telling us that his phone was tapped.
Not that he's a political activist. Oh no! All he is is a
film critic. He writes about the arts. He like us can now be
found guilty of this new crime. This is our lot. We, the
lucky few, in this hell hole. My brain slowly kicks into
gear. I too am afraid, why lie? I am afraid too. We are
those simpler souls, who sought to steer clear of any sort
of political fuss in this accursed corner of the planet. We
eliminated every shred of ambition from our lives and
instead of seeking solace in morphine or heroin, in acid,
joints, gangs, bribes, theft, womanizing or any of a
thousand other afflictions that may have afforded us
comfort, we chose instead to turn to culture and art and
cinema. We chose to step into a dream -- the dream of things
we don't have. But now they have chosen to shatter this
dream with sentences of so many lashes of the whip and jail
time and torture and dishonor and accusations. This makes us
afraid, you see. Can you understand that we are afraid? What
do Mullahs care about such things? Who is Mahmoud Vakili, the
man who has been arrested? Unlike Kambiz Kaheh and Abdi and
Amir Ezzati and Yassamin Sofi and Sina Motallebbi he is not
well known. So there are no protests when he is arrested. No
one even knows. There was a time when his entire heart and
mind was consumed by books and by films. He would not
conform; unlike the rest of those in this society. One day
he finally understood that here you can't live in peace if
you chose to be yourself. You must conform. He became one of
the many hundreds of thousands who came to the conclusion
that in this land of gold and power, of dishonesty and
hypocrisy, and of ignorance in the name of god and of the
crushing of human dignities, here in this land there was no
place for him. This was many years ago. Together with his
sister Mahtab and her young child they set out. For a year
they traipsed around Holland and Austria and Germany and
Italy and Bulgaria and Turkey, hoping that perhaps one of
these well-fed individuals in these 'anti-war' countries
would afford them protection. These people who care enough
to protect the rights of animals and of the environment and
who greet news from America with a 70's tinged nostalgia
redolent of rock and electric guitars, pot-smoking and
memories of the Cold War, the red flag and that sort of
rubbish, and who without understanding much at all set out
to march and chant anti-American slogans -- Mahmoud Vakili
wandered these peoples' lands in the hope that perhaps
someone there would understand or care about what it was he
wished to escape. Perhaps someone would afford him and his
sister their protection. But no one did, no one, no one at
all. And a little more than a year later, sadder, ever more
broken and more crumpled, they returned to the rubbles they
had sought to leave, to Iran. Mahmoud Vakili fits
nowhere in the 'system'. There was no crack or fissure
through which he could gain entry. Finally he became a
'filmi'. A term and an occupation which must not exist
anywhere in this world other than in this wasteland. He
collected films on tape and on DVD, threw them in his
shoulder bag and rented them to people. But there was this
very great difference between him and all those others who
rented films: in his archive you could find films by Ford
and Hawks and Von Sternberg and Griffith, as well as by
Lynch, Jarmusch and Kusturica and Aronofsky and Almodovar
and Von Trier. You could see films by genre, or choose a
historical period to study, watch New Wave films or American
Independent cinema, you could start in Mexico or Brazil and
go all the way to Greece and Giorgia or Kazakistan and
always see good, thought-provoking films. Mahmoud never sold
out. Even after he chose a profession such as this, devoid
as it was of any apparent glory, he remained faithful to
himself and stayed his course. In doing so what he did for
his customers -- that would be us -- was that he created a
moving institute of film and culture. Over the course of
years, the days we were to see Mahmoud 'to get films' were
good and happy days in our sad lives and every time we went
to his house we chatted for a couple of hours about films
and cinema and topical issues of the day. We were able to
distance ourselves a little, albeit for a short while, from
the soiled atmosphere and from all the anxieties that
suffocate us here in this lost land. We were a small society
unlike anything to be found around here these days. We had a
space where we were able to unburden ourselves of our latest
grievances and we knew the others would listen. That was
all. We plotted no conspiracies or revolutions. That's not
our job. But what do the Mullahs care about what we have to
say? On Sunday, that was the
last day we saw Mahmoud, he wasn't feeling well. He said
that Reza Jayeri his partner had been arrested and that he
was worried. He was afraid. Just like Afshin was. Like I am.
Like all those who deal with culture and the arts and who
steer clear of the noisy heroics and pretences of
freedom-fighting are now afraid. We said: 'Should we stop
coming?'; and he said: 'No, keep coming.' We said: 'Get your
films out of the house.' But I don't think he had time. Ali
said he had seen Kambiz (Kaheh) who is free on bail awaiting
his trial. Ali said Kaheh said nothing. Nothing at all. He
said Kaheh was not working, was not watching films and he
was not writing. Of course not. How simplistic to imagine
that he would be capable of doing any of these things. Those
in charge act as they do because they seek this very result.
Theirs is a silent terrorism directed at individuals. It is
a terrorism of minds, of thoughts. It seeks to drive its
victims into solitary isolation. They know exactly what they
are doing. What can a Kambiz Kaheh -- and so many others --
do if he stops watching films and writing and thinking?
Those in charge know full well what they are doing.
Carefully and patiently they have identified the most
complete collections and archives there are and have
proceeded to destroy them: Amir Ezati, Kambiz Kaheh and
Mohammad Abdi's film and book archives were among the
greatest resources available in this barren land. Now they
are gone forever. Another such archive was Mahmoud's. We
worried for it and rightly so. It too has now been
eliminated. Now our Forces of Law and Order (!) will, as
promised, mount an exhibition to proudly demonstrate the
eradication of the roots of corruption. Oh yes . . . all
vestiges of AIDS, of petty thefts and robberies, of
corruption, unemployment and mafia relations have been
eradicated . . . Oh joy! And later, after the exhibition, we
know full well what will become of the films and books.
Certain films, if they contain action scenes or perhaps
titillating scenes, and a few others like _Ben Hur_ or _Gone
With the Wind_ will end up in the homes of this or that
official or some parasite or other who lives off government
hand-outs. The rest will be destroyed. That will be
that. Is it Mahmoud's fate that
I mourn? Or the fate of all the others? Or is it my own
fate? Or maybe that of all those films? I look at the films
I had picked out this week. How pleased I had been to get a
DVD of Lynch's _Lost Highway_ and of John Ford's _How the
West Was Won_. How delighted I had been that a decent
quality copy of Polanski's _The Pianist_ was already
circulating in Iran and that we could watch it. Oh! How I
regret my decision not to take _The Enigma of Kasper Hauser_
and to leave it till next week. What are those parasites
going to do with it now? I look again at the DVD of _The
Pianist_ and my whole being is permeated with bitter
cynicism. Who will tell the story of our Auschwitz? The one
that is as big as Iran? In it the life of your body is left
intact but your heart and your mind are eradicated. Do you
think the Mullahs have seen _Fahrenheit 451_? I feel the few
films I have in hand have been spared the destructive fire.
It is now my responsibility to protect them. Name any porn movie, from
the most banal to those in which humans are atop animals and
vice versa, to films showing private parties and naked women
in pools. Any one of the frustrated and unemployed young men
who populate the country -- themselves the fruit of the
Revolution -- can easily get their hands on these tapes to
take the edge off of their myriad longings. At every public
intersection and every busy square these films are readily
available. And it really makes no difference where you live:
Shahrakeh Gharb, Tajrish, Enqhelaab Square or Dowlat Aabaad;
Tehran or Qom or Mashad now forsaken by God or Ali Aabaad
Katool. [2] Furthermore, the dealer's face is
identical, recognizable, familiar. It's a dirty face. It's
always the same men, wearing the same greasy slightly long
hair and moustaches and ugly leather jackets, handling
prayer beads in one hand. While a stone's throw away a
scumbag in uniform harasses a young woman whose hair may
have slipped out from under her scarf, while some young man
walking along with a young woman friend has to answer to the
scumbag to avoid being sentenced to lashes of the whip, and
while, not far from them an unfortunate prostitute steps
into the 30 or 40 million toman vehicle belonging to this or
that devout Haji to sell herself for 10 or 20 thousand
tomans and not go hungry; at this very same moment one of
those greaseballs murmurs in your ear, 'tapes, CD's films'.
Ah! Do you think he is offering you the latest film by
Alfonso Cuaron or Walter Salles or Zhang Yimou? Do you think
the Mullahs understand such things? You are wrong. They are
stomping on the flames they have lit and are laughing at you
and I. They are laughing out loud. They stand in prayer and
mourn Imam Hossein and take Haj Khanoom, the wife, to Mecca
and to Syria; they take temporary wives and buy stocks in
Free Port trade zone projects. They engage in smuggling,
acquire exclusive dealerships, export girls and at the same
time they attend Friday Prayers and chant Death to America.
But it is we who are dying not the Americans. This is our
death sentence. Neither George Bush, nor
Mohammad Khatami, neither the anti-war Europeans nor the
'innocent' Palestinians nor the Conservatives really give a
damn about us. They all have their own agendas. The
reformists care about their reforms and their so-called
freedom and democracy. Meanwhile our lives are plundered.
Often we quote Osip Mandelstam who said that everything in
this world could be regained but hope. Hope has fled the
weak flicker of our gaze. There will be no miracles. In our
20s and 30s we are already old and will become older still.
Our pale and broken faces will only know serenity in death.
They will bury us and scatter the earth over us and ululate.
But there will not be a soul. Only when this land is
cleansed of the evil countenance and terrible names of this
strange generation of third millennium vampires; then will a
smile graze our lips. Translated by Dorna
Khazeni Footnotes 1. Translator's note: I
receive an email update every day from _The
Iranian_, an
online publication serving the Iranian community abroad. The
editor Jahanshah Javid is eclectic and extremely democratic
in that the articles he publishes reflect the views of
Iranians across the social and political spectrum. On May 6,
2003, I saw this headline in _The Iranian_ email I
received: 'Iran: May Day; 'A Letter
from Tehran', By A Tehrani. This is a letter I got from a
friend of mine in Iran. I felt very sad when I read it. I
found it powerful. I sent him an email and asked him if it
is ok to forward it to others or publish it somewhere on the
net. He said he will be happy if many people read it and
know about his own and his generation's feelings. --
S.' Curious I clicked on the
link and read on. The letter from Iran was one that I found
quite gripping. As an Iranian living in Los Angeles who
marched against the Iraq war, as a vegetarian,
environmentalist, pet-lover, I can safely say that my views
likely diverge from the political point of view of the
author of this letter. And yet I was shaken and moved after
reading it. There was no doubt in my mind that the
sentiments of a cinephile living in hell were as
authentically expressed as I had ever read them anywhere. I
contacted Javid and asked if I could translate and circulate
the article. He said that the author wanted nothing better
than for his experience of life in Iran to be made public in
the West. To contextualize the
story, I must add that in a sweep last February several film
journalists were arrested in Iran. These included Kambiz
Kaheh, Said Mostaghasi, Mohammad Abdi, Amir Ezati and
Yasamin Soufi. Kaheh, a film magazine journalist, and
Mostaghasi, of _Haftenameh_ magazine, were arrested at their
homes on 26 February 2003. Abdi, editor-in-chief of the
monthly _Honar Haftom_, and Ezati, of _Mahnameh Film_, were
arrested on 28 February. On March 1, film music critic
Yasamin Soufi was arrested by officers from the Adareh
Amaken force -- the department that usually deals with
'moral crimes'. Other journalists Abbas Abdi, Hojjatoleslam
Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Akbar Ganji, Hossein Ghaziyan,
Siamak Pourzand, Khalil Rostamkhani, Said Sadr and Nasser
Zarafshan are all serving sentences of between five and
eleven years imprisonment for the non-violent exercise of
their right to freedom of expression. Many thanks to
Jahanshah Javid for help with the translation. (Los Angeles,
June 2003) 2. Shahrak Gharb is in the
West of Tehran and is an upper middle class area. Tajrish is
in the north of Tehran and is a very well-off area. Enghelab
Square in midtown Tehran is middle class. Dowlat Abad in
downtown Tehran is lower middle class Mashad and Qom are
both large extremely religious cities Ali Abad Katool is a
very small provincial town. Copyright © F. Parsa
2003 F. Parsa, 'Letter from
Tehran', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 12, June 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n12parsa>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
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