Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour Page B

dress, like a princess’s dress, and around her beautiful neck a string of pearls glistens like the moon. Sara looks around to make sure no man is hiding behind the bushes ogling her. Then she slowly steps into the pond. When she is waist deep in the water, the folds of her skirt, like the petals of a water lily, float and spread around her. She wades deeper into the pond. It is as if the water is purifying her body. Now the pearls on her necklace are floating around her neck, and their luster has intensified. Their shimmer brightens the water and deepens Sara’s delight. With every step that she takes, she first sees the determined three dimensional darts of her breasts, then the beautiful oval of her knees and her shapely calves … Her pleasure is short-lived. She feels the weight of lecherous eyes on her shoulders. With a deep sense of foreboding she looks back at the dark bushes; fireflies are flickering around them. Suddenly she feels the water directly touching the nakedness of her body , she sees her white dress, like a blossoming water lily, float toward the opposite shore. She reaches out to it. But the dress floats beyond her reach. She takes a step forward. The water reaches her thirsty lips, but her dress has floated even farther away. Panicked, with her hand reaching out toward her dress, she takes a long step forward. Contrary to her expectation, her foot does not reach the pond floor. It is as though a dragon has opened up its jaws underneath her. She is sucked into a bottomless abyss. She looks up. The silvery surface of the pond is moving away from her. Terrified, she realizes that the end of her dream has reached the beginning of her death. She feels the gaping maw and the repulsive stroke of the dragon’s tongue against her calves … She struggles to pull herself up. The surface of the pond has changed to a murky green. As if she has inhaled flames, the cavities of her nostrils burn all the way up into her forehead. She can no longer hold the air caged in her lungs. She hears the sound of the bubbles bursting out. The dragon’s scorching tongue is coiled around her body … Her eyes grow dark.
    In that final moment when she has surrendered to drowning, she feels her head surface the water on the other side of the world. She opens her burning eyes. She sees herself chest deep in the sea. Around her in the water, there are fully dressed women wearing headscarves. Shocked and terrified, they stare at her. A wave strikes against Sara’s back. Seawater flows down her shoulders and onto her hardened breasts that like the noses of two ships want to slice their way through the sea … The wave ebbs and the water sinks below Sara’s breasts. The women point their fingers at her and scream in horror. Sara covers her floating breasts with her hands. Only then does she realize that she is in the women’s section of the sea. Not far away, on either side, the area is closed off by green tarpaulin screens. The sun and salt water have corroded the fabric and it has ripped in several places. The rushing waves pull the torn sections back and forth, and half a mile away she can see fat and hairy bodies in the men’s section of the sea .
    I am pleased with the last sentences of this scene. While writing them, I reached a state of mind that I have named “the first lovemaking of writer and words.” Every writer has met with his words time and again. They have had frequent conversations. They have even flirted with each other. But there are those rare moments when the shadows and the naked bodies of the writer and the words, in one time frame of the story, in one setting of the story, are coupled. They become two lovers who have long known each other and who in their clandestine meetings have frequently concealed their longing for one another. And now, for the first time, the writer and the words begin a strange lovemaking, like two ambisexual creatures that have created a new composition.
    I am certain Mr. Petrovich