When a story comes to an Iranian writer’s mind, he or she is doomed to think of two different versions: the story as it is, and a bowdlerised version that might avoid the scissors of official censorship. The latter is the one that will be submitted to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which vets all books before publication; but this is just the beginning of the odyssey for the poor writer.

In his first novel to be translated into English, Shahriar Mandanipour, who moved to the US in 2006 but had previously published dozens of stories in Iran, puts both versions in one book. In this playful tale, both writer and censor appear as fictional characters; while for his lovers Mandanipour has chosen Sara and Dara, jaunty figures familiar from first-grade textbooks that were pulped after the Islamic Revolution.

Dara first sees Sara in a public library, where she is looking for a copy of The Blind Owl, a banned novel by the acclaimed Iranian writer Sadeq Hedayat. He falls in love with her, and poses as a street pedlar to sell her the book. When she reads Hedayat’s novel, Sara notices a collection of purple dots – Dara has left her a message in code. The lovers use the technique to exchange letters, as first Dara and then Sara borrow from the library The Little Prince, Dracula, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and more, until they meet up for the first time on a street protest in front of Tehran University.

As their love story progresses, Mandanipour elucidates the history of censorship in Iran, dating back hundreds of years to the intricate metaphors and complicated allegories employed by such poets as Rumi, Hafez and Khayam. However, it was only with the Islamic Revolution that censorship became official. Under this regime it could take the ministry weeks, months or sometimes years to respond to a manuscript; and this response would range from a simple yes or no to a detailed list of contested chapters, dialogues, sentences or even individual words.

In Mandanipour’s novel, the ministry censor, Mr Petrovich – named after the detective in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment – argues with the author about words and phrases he wants removed from the story on the grounds that they might sexually arouse readers, harm Islamic values, endanger national security or ignite revolution. “He underlines every word, every sentence, every paragraph, or even every page that is indecent and that endangers public morality and the time-honoured values of the society.” In a further complication, Mr Petrovich has gradually fallen in love with Sara while censoring her story, and is now trying to persuade the author to kill Dara off and leave the field open for himself.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story is a brilliant novel about the complexities of writing and publishing in Iran. It will help to further understanding of the frustrating and sometimes perilous situation of the book industry in a country where copyright is not respected, where writers struggle desperately to publish and can be jailed simply for exercising their imaginations.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story |  Saeed Kamali Dehghan | The Guardian | August 2009

For me, and for many other Iranians, nothing is more representative of London than the lord of the calabash pipe, the deerstalker cap and the magnifying glass. Not only because Conan Doyle’s 221b Baker Street was the only address I knew before coming here for the first time but also because of my everlasting nostalgia for the magnificent TV series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which is extremely popular in Iran.

Holmes’s series has been shown at least 10 times on the Islamic republic’s state-run TV and DVD versions dubbed into Persian are available everywhere in Iran. Sherlock Holmes’s stories are also translated and rank among Iranians’ favourite books.

Iranians are enthusiastic about Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Poirot and many other western detectives such as Georges Simenon’s Maigret partly because for Iranians these stories evoke popular images of the west but also because Iran – despite having a huge amount of poetry in its literature – has virtually no history of detective fiction.

I don’t remember any Iranian writer of detective stories, though Esmail Fasih’s fictional character, Jalal Arian, always had a great sense of deduction. Hasan Hedayat’s Persian TV series called Detective is the only real Iranian detective TV series I have seen in Iran.

The state broadcaster loves western detective stories because they don’t – on the whole – raise politically or morally controversial issues requiring censorship. The picture of life in Holmes’s Victorian London is broadly compatible with the “Islamic values” of modern Iran. Mr Holmes is a gentleman and not into women very much. The women themselves wear long dresses and mostly cover their heads.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are dubbed into Persian perfectly, with Bahram Zand’s memorable voice replacing that of Jeremy Brett. We have a nice film-dubbing tradition in Iran, started with the unforgettable musical film, Tears and Smiless, before the Islamic revolution. I have heard that in the Netherlands they never dub films and use subtitles instead and I remember my brother telling that he saw Titanic with a Russian guy dubbing simultaneously for Jack and Rose.

It’s good to have Sherlock Holmes in Iran as an antidote to historical images of Britain as a schemer meddling in Iranian affairs. Britons themselves are generally considered mysterious, intelligent, politically aware, prestigious and mean (this latter characteristic being one that they reputedly share with Iranians from Isfahan).

A decade has passed since I read most of Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories or watched them as TV adaptations, but the clip-clop of horses on London’s cobblestones still resonates in my ears. I think of Holmes giving money to street boys for information, Holmes scrutinising the footprints at a crime scene, Holmes’s compendious knowledge ranging from literature to chemistry, his hasty way of going up the 17 steps to his flat to be greeted by Mrs Hudson, his rather bohemian lifestyle and – of most interest to me as an Iranian – the Persian slipper for Holmes’s tobacco.

So when I arrived in London for the first time I headed to 221b Baker Street, even before visiting the British Museum, the National Gallery or the fabulous Tate Modern. I went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum in search of my “real” London but it’s always distracting to confront the real place or the real person after many years of imagination. What I found was a tiny privately-run and artificial setup with a fake police office standing outside the front door.

This reminds me of a wonderful phrase in the last volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: “Time changes people but keeps their image constant in our mind. Nothing in the world is as painful as this contradiction between consistency of memory and change in people.”

Maybe I was expecting to see more Londoners tapping on the ground with their umbrellas or walking in the manner of Holmes, but not much of today’s British capital resembles Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s London.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan | The Guardian | March 2009

Saeed Kamali Dehghan | The Guardian | March 2009

Last night, millions of Iranians lit bonfires at sunset and jumped over them till midnight to celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri, the most prominent ancient Persian outdoor festival to prelude the New Year, Norouz, which is coming next Saturday.

Chaharshanbe Suri (Red Wednesday in English), is an ancient Persian fire festivity from the Zoroastrian era which marks the euphoria of nature on the eve of spring, a Persian version of Guy Fawkes night with a difference.

Despite all the crackdowns over the past 30 years by the Islamic Republic, the ritual is still observed by an increasing number of people who go on to the streets to sing the traditional song: “Give me your fiery red colour and take back my wintry sallowness.”

Fire, which has always been a sacred item for ancient Persians and Zoroastrians, is supposed to give people its warmth and energy and take away their sickness, paleness and problems in return by the coming of the New Year.

The tradition is held on the night before the last Wednesday of the year when families and friends gather by a fire and keep it lit till dawn.

Unlike Norouz, which is mostly a private and indoor festival where people visit their relatives over a period of 13 days, Chaharshanbe Suri needs to be held in public, where people can eat, sing, dance and talk together.

But after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the government began to crack down on ancient Persian festivals and traditions, including Chaharshanbe Suri. The government was worried that people might worship the sun as an idol during the festival instead of Allah.

For most of the first and second decade of the Islamic revolution, people couldn’t celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri in public as dancing, boys and girls meeting, and any such so-called “deviant” behaviour was prohibited in the Islamic Republic.

The situation changed when reformist president Mohammad Khatami took office 12 years ago and relaxed social and cultural restrictions, giving people the chance to revive Persian culture.

Since then, participating in Chaharshanbe Suri has also become a sign of protest and dissent against the Islamic Republic’s restrictions of Persian culture, as it’s the only time of the year when people can go out en masse and show their presence without any excuse and the government can hardly stop it.

The gag released by Khatami has been tightened now under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, and the huge presence of riot police and army all over Iran last night showed their willingness to do that.

Chaharshanbe Suri is now a nightmare for Iranian officials. The festival has been given a new definition and a new function as a gigantic annual anti-government demonstration. Fire is now a symbol of Iranian anger over the Islamic Republic’s restrictions.

Last night, hundreds of thousands of Iranians threw Molotov cocktails and firecrackers in the streets to show the government their wrath, instead of lighting bonfires and jumping over fire and celebrating a traditional festival.

Chaharshanbe Suri has become the country’s most controversial cultural event, where many people suffer terrible injuries in conflicts with the riot police or while making Molotov cocktails or firecrackers in their homes.

Last night a new record was achieved according to Fars news agency, with around 100 Iranians injured and taken to hospital by ambulance.

It’s believed that Ahmadinejad’s huge crackdowns in Iran over the past four years, the terrible current economic situation in the country and the coming presidential election led to this new record of Chaharshanbe Suri casualties. The injuries have also brought officials to hospitals to visit the victims, including the Iranian health minister, Kamran Bagheri Lankarani.

For years, nobody had talked about Chaharshanbe Suri on state-run TV or any other official programme – the government just ignored it. People believe that if the government had accepted the festival as the former Shah did, rather than cracking down on it, many of the injuries would not have occurred.

Yet, there are also lots of Iranians who observe Chaharshanbe Suri the way it used to be, with bush-igniting, spoon-hitting, earthenware jar-shattering, shawl-dropping and eavesdropping on others as part of the traditional fun.

Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran

The Guardian, Tuesday 20 January 2009

Barack Obama took office just hours after the moderate former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, officially announced his candidacy for Iran’s upcoming presidential elections. This gave the thousands of Iranians who were watching the inauguration ceremony via their illegal satellite dishes a glimmer of hope that three decades of Iran-US hostility might be about to end.

Hamed Mohaghegh, 21, an industrial civil engineering student in Tehran, watching the ceremony on BBC, said that the US had given its democracy a boost by electing an black man as president,.

“Before Obama was elected, we had this impression in our country that a black man will never succeed to become the president of the States, a candidate who had an Arabic middle name, Hussein.”

“Ahmadinejad has also doubted – saying that he thinks that [American voters would] not let a black man become the president of the US,” said Reza Ahmadi, 40, an Iranian math teacher at high school.

Yet, others were disappointed that Obama has not responded to the letter of congratulation sent by Ahmadinejad to Obama.

“It seems that the whole world has a share of Obama’s Change That Can Happen except Iranian people”, he added.

Ali Mohammadi, 37, an Iranian businessman thinks that bringing Obama on the US political stage was the only choice Americans had.

“America is not popular and powerful as before, the US is rather notorious for its background in Iraq and Afghanistan right now and is facing an economical crisis, so Obama was the only one to stabilise the States not only economically but also to gets back the US ex-reputation in the world,” he said.

Media Kashigar, 52, a well-known Iranian intellectual and critic believes that the US foreign policy has not changed at least in the past 30 years toward Iran.

“Iran-US conflict is not a governmental or administrational problem. It is a mutual state problem, so I think neither Obama nor anyone else in Iran can ease the debate easily in next future”, he said.

“I don’t think the US president has much influence to change American foreign policy. We’ve experienced JF Kennedy, we’ve seen Clinton and Bush, but has there been any foreign policy apparent change in past 60 years in the US?”, said Amirmehdi Rezaee, 60, an Iranian retired-employee of the Iranian government.

 

Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran

The Observer, Sunday September 7 2008

Nobel laureate JM Coetzee is not the first writer to discover that his work has been published without consent in Iran – a country that regularly incurs wrath by not abiding by international copyright law – but he might well be the angriest. ‘It’s not solely for the sake of money that authors are concerned to maintain copyright over their works,’ he stormed to the Browser. ‘But it does upset writers, justifiably, when their books are taken over without permission, translated by amateurs and sold without their knowledge.’ Quite right, Coetzee, it’s a disgrace!

—

Also related, but not published:

The 2003 Nobel Laureate JM Coetzee objected his works in Iran after being informed that almost all his works, including Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K have been translated into Persian and published in the country without his consent, during last ten year.

Coetzee, in an official statement addressing Iranian publishers said: “It is not solely for the sake of money and sometimes not for the sake of money at all, that authors are concerned to assert and maintain copyright over their works.”

Iran does not obey copyright law. Many classics and internationally bestselling titles are translated and published in the country without its author’s permission.

“I know of many writers – myself included – who ask only for nominal payment from altruistic publishers who are struggling to sell books in difficult markets. But it does upset writers, justifiably, when their books are taken over without permission, translated by amateurs, and sold without their knowledge”, states Coetzee.

At the same time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government is cracking down on Iranian writers through huge censorship and not giving them permission for the publication. Iranian writers face immense challenges in getting their works read.

More links: The gag is tightened, The Guardian

The Guardian, Friday July 18, 2008

For nearly 30 years, it has loomed like a ghost over the carcass of US-Iranian relations – a reminder of how Islamic revolutionaries rendered Washington impotent by holding 52 of its diplomats hostage.

To the US, its former embassy in Tehran conjures humiliating images of classified documents being desperately shredded and captured staff being paraded blindfold before angry jeering crowds after a takeover organised by pro-Khomeini militants.

For Iran’s Islamic government, it is the “den of spies” from where the US supposedly tried to sabotage the 1979 revolution that toppled Washington’s staunch ally, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s last shah.

But yesterday the former embassy – now a museum run by revolutionary guards – was an unlikely focal point of hope after news that the Bush administration plans to establish the first US diplomatic presence in Iran since the 1979-81 siege of the embassy, which lasted 444 days.

Most Iranians passing the property in Talaghani Street were unaware of the Guardian’s disclosure of the plans to open a US-staffed diplomatic interest section, a halfway step to full ties.

Conditioned by decades of Iranian government hostility and sabre-rattling over the country’s nuclear programme, many shied away from commenting on an issue still seen as sensitive in a society where anti-Americanism is paramount. But others were prepared to cautiously welcome back the nation officially reviled since the revolution as “the Great Satan”.

“This would be helpful to our people,” Muhammad Hosseinzadegan, an 18-year-old student, said. “The sanctions will go away and the mutual difficulties between the two countries might decrease. I really hope that this quarrel with America ends one day.”

Cyrus Mohebbat, the owner of a car accessories shop, said: “I’d be really happy if America opens this office. I think there are only a small number of people in Iran who are opposed to beginning new mutual relationships. Most Iranians will be happy with this.”

Yet such euphoria was tempered by an awareness that renewed relations face a wall of mistrust as the US seeks to pressure Tehran into abandoning a uranium enrichment programme that might be used as the initial step towards building a nuclear bomb.

“I think this will ease the negotiation process, but the question is how America is going to open such an office while people close to the government still chant ‘Down with the USA’,” said one man, who declined to be named. “Iran’s nuclear issue is now in a complicated and critical phase. Some think finding a way out is impossible. Rumours of war are widespread and people are asking whether the US will attack or not. It is so oppressive.”

Marjan Khajavi, 22, echoed the fear often voiced by the government and its supporters: that renewed ties would revive the servile policy they believe the shah followed towards the US. “I hope one day that these two countries can treat each other as friends and opening a diplomatic interest office would help this. But I’m absolutely against letting America control this country, as they did before the Islamic revolution,” she said.

Adel Karimi, 22, a civil engineering student, said the US was no worse than Britain – seen by many Iranians as a traditional enemy. “I think Britain exploits countries as much as the US, so why do we have a British embassy in Tehran and not an American one?”

But Muhammad Ali Benghani, 32, a state employee, voiced the fears that have long steered Iran away from ties with America. “I’m against letting America open such an office,” he said. “The US has never been our friend. It always thinks of its own interests, so I don’t think they would help Iranians.”

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Powell’s Books, Tuesday May 27^th, 2008 

A Persian translation of John Barth’s The Floating Opera won the Iranian literary prize Roozi Rozegari, announced on May 17^th in a ceremony held in Tehran. Roozi Rozegari will award ‘the best foreign work translation’ annually, a category added to an Iranian literary prize for the first time this year. The Floating Opera, which was published last year in Iran by Qoqnoos publications, was among Umberto Eco’s Baudolino and Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day in the prize short list.

John Barth wrote in his statement, read by me at the prize ceremony in Tehran. “It is always a pleasure and an honor to have one’s work translated into other languages and published in other countries.  And for me it is a particular pleasure to have my earliest novel — first published more than half a century ago — newly translated into a language akin to that of one of my longtime literary navigation-stars: the Scheherazade of Kitab Alf Laylah Wah Laylah, the Book of 1001 Nights”.

At the same time, Barth denounced no-copyright situation in Iran. “However, I must deplore the publication of any copyrighted material without its author’s consent.  I urge the government of Iran to join the international community in signing the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty, and Iranian publishers to secure proper permission before publishing copyrighted material”, added him consequently.

Iran does not obey copyright law and many classics and internationally bestselling titles are translated and published in the country without its author’s permission. Subsequently, in case of interviewing the author or announcing any prize, the news would be a shock to the work’s writer and its publisher. But, regarding problems the Iranian literary society has, many of them not only would not complain but also would give the copyright honorary to the Iranian publisher.

Iranian literary society faces immense challenges in publishing books. For translators or publishers there is almost no money in book industry, so what remains would be just a matter of interest. At the same time, government is cracking down on writers by cens.orship or not giving them permission for the publication. Iran’s Ministry of culture and Islamic guidance vets all books to insure they conform to Islamic principles. It takes the ministry some months or even more than a year before granting permission to a novel or a short story collection, and there is always the possibility that they will not give it at all, as the control procedure and the censorship is arbitrary.

“International authors do not trust Iranian publishing companies, and this is one of the consequences of the violation of copyright laws in Iran”, stated Amir Hosseinzadegan, the manager of Qoqnoos Publications who was interviewed by Mehrnews Agency regarding John Barth’s statement.

“As an Iranian publisher, I call for Iran’s government to join WIPO Copyright Treaty. Foreign publishers expect us to obtain permission for publishing their books,” he said to the agency, hoping that Barth’s statement would be a catalyst for a new movement to uphold copyright.

He also added that John Barth is not the first writer who objected the unauthorized publication of his book in Iran. “Many foreign publishers do not sign agreements with Iranian publishing companies and many of them who sign agreements are not satisfied with their royalties since book prices are much lower in Iran compared to Western countries”, explained Hosseinzadegan, who has already made agreements with some foreign publishers such as Routledge or Gallimard. For example, 1650 copies of The Floating Opera were printed in the first run, and each priced at about five dollars.

Published in 1957, The Floating Opera, Barth’s first novel, is the story of a lawyer Todd Andrews, who changed his mind on 21 June 1937 and decided not to commit suicide. The book, considered one of the pioneers in American postmodern literature, deals with ‘50’s nihilism and s.e.x revolution in the US. Barth himself remarked once that the book reflects the influence of French existentialist thought in post-World War II America.

“It is always a pleasure and an honor to have one’s work translated into other languages and published in other countries.  And for me it is a particular pleasure to have my earliest novel — first published more than half a century ago — newly translated into a language akin to that of one of my longtime literary navigation-stars: the Scheherazade of Kitab Alf Laylah Wah Laylah, the Book of 1001 Nights.

At the same time, however, I must deplore the publication of any copyrighted material without its author’s consent.  I urge the government of Iran to join the international community in signing the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty, and Iranian publishers to secure proper permission before publishing copyrighted material. Thank you.”

John Barth

May 17 2008