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- Herausgeber: Muswell Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
These evocative stories shine a light on the lives of young Iranians who are questioning their sexuality and identity in a culture where queerness is legal but not widely accepted. Set mostly in Iran, but making forays to London, Mecca, Germany, and the transit area of a Ukrainian airport, the stories are brilliantly deft in summoning up the dilemmas of their protagonists, be they characters who are kicking against the confines of the society into which they are born, or characters wanting to embrace those confines.
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THE MINISTRY OF GUIDANCE
and Other Stories
Golnoosh Nour
iii
For all the queers
iv
Contents
The Ministry of Guidance
Sogol entered her mother’s bedroom and asked her if she had a chador.
Her mother closed her book and widened her honey-coloured eyes. ‘Why?’
Sogol smiled, barely concealing her excitement. ‘I’ve been given an appointment for the Ministry of Guidance tomorrow!’
‘I know,’ her mother said, ‘but why do you want to wear a chador?’
‘To fool them,’ Sogol laughed, ‘to look chaste!’
‘Actually, I do have one,’ her mother said, half-laughing, ‘a proper black one I used to wear when I first started teaching.’
‘See, I’m not the only hypocrite. I have to be sure that they’ll grant permission for my poetry collection!’
Her mother opened the wooden door of her closet, stepped into it and rummaged through her sheets and clothes. ‘I’m not sure if I can find it though,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, here it is!’ Stepping out of the closet, she handed a lengthy black cloth to Sogol. ‘Wear it now! You should look 2confident and comfortable in it, otherwise, they’ll know it’s the first and last time you’re wearing it.’
She dropped the chador over Sogol’s head, and they both looked in the enormous wooden-framed mirror on the vanity table beside the bed. After a few seconds of surprise, they both let out a hysterical laugh. ‘Actually, it kind of suits you,’ Sogol’s mother said, still laughing, ‘you look like the actresses in the TV shows shown during Ramadan. Chaste. And fake.’
Sogol guffawed back, ‘I’m not fake! I actually look like a proper Muslim girl. It has transformed my whole character; weird how one piece of clothing can do so much.’
Sogol let go of the chador and it fell to the floor. ‘Thanks, Mum.’ Staring into her mother’s eyes, she thought about their strangely beautiful colour: asali.
Her mother touched her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, your book will be published. We have already censored all the naughty things in your poems. They will pick on a few things, you will change them, and done. That’s how it is with my translations. It’s not difficult, just annoying.’
‘I know. But I really want this, I’ve never wanted anything as much as the publication of this book. I want to become a real poet.’
‘You are a real poet,’ her mother reassured her.
‘You know what I mean.’
When Sogol left her mother’s bedroom at midnight, she realised she was shaking in ecstasy, holding in her hands the black chador, the key to her dreams.
Despite the fact that she had to get up early in the morning in order to make it to the Ministry of Culture and 3Islamic Guidance at nine a.m., she couldn’t fall asleep. She lay awake till three in the morning until she finally fell asleep, dreaming of strolling with her mother in green alleys, watching the sunset, and finally fathoming the colour of her mother’s almond-shaped eyes – not the colour of honey, but sunset. And then she recalled that was an image in one of her poems, called ‘Honey of the Sun’, asal-e-khorshid.
She woke up at seven with The Fugees’ ‘Ready or Not’ blasting out of her mobile, but she could not open her eyes because they were too dry. She got out of bed, eyes half-closed, head throbbing, her room the golden-orange of the sunset in her dream. She looked around her room and saw the chador lying furled on the floor, a dead serpent.
She went to the bathroom, cautious not to make any sound so her mother wouldn’t wake up. While urinating, she imagined herself at the Ministry of Guidance. She was excited about going to that castle, thrilled about wearing a chador, acting chaste, pretending to be a virginal Muslim girl. Then she thought of all the boys and girls she wrote poetry about, and thought about her mother. She hadn’t told her mother that the first page would be a dedication note to her. For everything she had done, for all the encouragement and inspiration. Sogol wanted to weep with a strange joy, despite the fact that it was early in the morning and she felt groggy. she realised she was sitting on the toilet seat for nothing, just thinking about being published and making her hard-working mother proud. She pulled up her pants and looked in the mirror while she brushed her teeth. Her toothbrush moving in and out of her mouth felt like congealed vomit. She wished she could eat something before leaving the house, but she knew she couldn’t eat at such an early hour; she could 4hardly open her mouth. She kept staring at her puffy, sleepy face in the mirror. Sogol knew everybody who considered her pretty did so only because they hadn’t seen her mother. Everybody who saw her mother, only called her naz: cute, never pretty, and they were absolutely right.
She thought of her age, twenty-three, and her mother’s, fifty-five, and thought the impossible thought. Sogol thought of her poem, ‘Age’. ‘Your age is raining on me, like cactus on bare skin’. What did she even mean? She almost hoped her poetry would get rejected because it was bad and publishing it would be a disgrace. But they were still poems. It would make her mother happy.
She went to her room, putting a black scarf on her head, maghna’e. The formal headscarf, something she used to wear at school and then at the university. Something she hated. A black scarf that would just fit the head, sewn under the chin. Covering the breasts and neck also. She then wore a long green manteau to look bad. Bad enough to be chaste. She looked in the mirror and realised she was happy. She avoided using any make-up to look even more chaste and innocent. She knew that, without it, her face looked like the face of a clueless twelve-year-old. She was aware she could look innocent even when she wasn’t. This was all a game and she was going to win. Her mother knew people in the publishing industry, and she could go to the formidable Ministry only because her mother had pulled strings. She was, after all, lucky. Sogol put on a quilted black jacket on top of her manteau to keep warm. And then she threw the chador on her head, almost laughing in the mirror, suffocated by excitement. If this is the price of being published, I will pay it: it will be funny. 5
She left their house in Vanak, and walked to the main square in order to flag down a shared taxi. She didn’t feel like driving through the morning traffic of Tehran. She wanted to snore happily in the taksi behind her enormous sunglasses, cut off from her surroundings; she just couldn’t deal with the morning, the smoke, the people shouting about politics at eight a.m. Her eyes were aching from lack of sleep. She wanted to be home, and to find an excuse to enter her mother’s bedroom and cuddle with her on the bed, under the pretext that it was cold.
She was aware that her friends and classmates were mostly applying to continue their studies abroad: the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, France, and even Malaysia. ‘Anywhere but here. Studying is an excuse to leave,’ her best friend, Yasaman, had said. But Sogol would never do that. She loved her country like a mother loving her mentally-disabled child. She liked Tehran, despite the pollution, religion, corruption, madness, and anger. Despite these things or because of them? She usually wondered. It felt like being inside a piece of postmodern art. She loved Tehran because that was where her father had died and where her mother lived. She would become successful in Tehran, like her mother. She did not mind the compulsory hejab, unlike many of her friends who constantly complained about it. She found it funny, ironic, to wear a hejab, to cover your sins, to exchange numbers with cologne-scented boys while being undercover. It was like being a spy. It was a game, and she knew she would win. Because she was clever, like her dead father and her lively mother.
*
6When she reached the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, her body started trembling. It was not just the enormousness of the building that was unnerving: there was something inexplicably intimidating about it. It was situated inside an organised garden, with security guards looking like soldiers. The building itself was an enormous brown cube.
Two guards pounced in front of her. ‘Ma’am, where are you going?’
‘I have an appointment. At nine.’ Sogol whispered, looking at the grey ground.
‘With whom? And why?
‘Regarding my poetry book, with Mr Mohammadi.’
‘Okay, go.’ They let her pass through the bars into the glossy building. All the newly published books were on display; she stood and looked at them. The life of Imam Ali, The Holy Wars of the Prophet Muhammad, The Different Interpretations of Baghareh Sura, Hazrat-e Fatemeh and Her Holy Life. Sogol was stunned. Where was all the poetry? All the books she always purchased from the bookshops? Sohrab Sepehri, Forough Farrokhzad, Ahmad Shamloo, translations of Plath, Lorca, and Neruda. There was no trace of them, they obviously did not belong in the display of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. She laughed at her own naiveté. She relished the hypocrisy in a strange way, just as she was revelling in wearing a black chador. It was all a game, and unlike her friends, she knew how to play.
She took the lift to the fourth floor to Mr Mohammadi’s office. Sogol was ready to express to a hideous, bearded man how she was an Islam-loving poet. That she was chaste. 7And she was pure. She found the office and saw there were a few other people in the sunny room behind their desks: a few men and one woman. The woman was also wrapped in a black chador – Sogol felt vaguely victorious, terrified, and confident.
‘Salam,’ she smiled at the unfriendly woman. ‘I am looking for Mr Mohammadi,’ Sogol was careful not even to look at the men, that was how chaste she was acting. Not even one look at the namahram. Before the woman opened her mouth, one of the men emerged in front of her, unsmiling.
‘That’s me.’
Sogol was speechless. Mr Mohammadi looked the opposite of what she had in mind. To start with, he was clean-shaven. Milky skin, no trace of a stain, acne or beard on his smooth face. His eyes were light blue, matching his shirt, his brown eyelashes draping his eyes. Sogol looked down. She could stare at the physical beauty of Mr Mohammadi for hours if she let herself, but that was the wrong place and time, and he was the wrong person. She looked down at his shoes, shiny black, like wet nights after snow.
‘I …’
‘What do you want, ma’am?’ Mr Mohammadi was ‘licking her with his eyes’, as her friends would’ve said.
‘Mr Afshar told me to come here, to see whether or not my book has been granted permission for publication.’
‘What is your book called?’
‘Earthquake in Ruins.’
‘Oh yes, let me see,’ Mr Mohammadi sat behind his computer and began scrolling up and down for about fifteen minutes, then he murmured, ‘It’s number 18653279.’ 8
‘Thanks!’ Sogol said.
‘We don’t know yet,’ Mr Mohammadi shot her another blue glance. ‘It is still being processed.’
Sogol wanted to scream. It was more than a year now. She was twenty-two when her mother had found her a publisher who would publish the poems. She fought hard not to say anything and to be polite. ‘All right, thank you very much.’
‘Goodbye.’ Mr Mohammadi didn’t even look at her.
On her way out, Sogol was holding onto her chador so that it wouldn’t fall. She hated the fact that she felt like sobbing. She walked quickly, unable to wait to leave that monstrous building, to get rid of the suffocating chador, and to return to the safety of home.
She was walking out of the garden of the Ministry of Guidance into the empty alley when Mr Mohammadi pounced in front of her. Sogol thought, what a strange coincidence, until Mr Mohammadi told her, ‘Look, I didn’t want to say it in front of my colleagues, but your book has been deemed immoral. Therefore, it has been refused permission.’
Sogol opened her mouth without uttering a word, then closed it. Mr Mohammadi had more to say to her, ‘But I really want to help you’.
Sogol avoided his eyes, not because she wanted to look chaste, but because she realised she could not tolerate his heavy glances at her lips. ‘I will call you on Friday to tell you how to fix the problems if you want.’
‘That is terribly kind of you. Thank you, I will fix everything you say is problematic.’ 9
‘You’re not married, are you? Would it be okay if I called?’ Mr Mohammadi said, stepping closer to Sogol.
‘I’m not married,’ Sogol muttered.
Mr Mohammadi took out his Nokia mobile, ‘What is your number then?’
Sogol recited her mobile number, wanting to escape. Mr Mohammadi repeated the number to her before saving it, slowly stepping closer.
Sogol could not move. A car passed by. To Sogol’s relief, Mr Mohammadi stepped back and said, ‘I’ll call you to discuss this. Bye for now.’ And turned towards the direction of the Ministry.
Sogol ran all the way back to the crowded taksi station.
Kurt Cobain was screaming in her ears and she was staring at the traffic in order to withhold her tears. She loathed them. She detested her weakness. She wished she could be like her mother, if a man had talked to her mother like that, her mother would’ve strangled him. Her mother wouldn’t have been a pushover like her, ready to be abused by a beautiful hypocrite in order to get her books published. Her mother was genuine. Sogol was fake, like her chador, her affectation of innocence and chastity, fake like her poetry. She did not deserve to get published. She was shedding tears, and noticed she couldn’t even hear Kurt Cobain, because the taxi driver was screaming at someone in the traffic, calling another driver a ‘whore’s son’, ‘madar jendeh’. Sogol took off her chador and headphones, pushing them into her black bag, and realised her phone was ringing. It was a new number. Mr Mohammadi’s lustful tone of voice filled her ears like poison, ‘Are you free on Friday?’ 10
‘Yes! I can even come to your office tomorrow,’ Sogol said, trembling.
‘Oh, but the Ministry is closed on Fridays! We have to meet someplace else!’ Mr Mohammadi murmured, ‘How about my flat?’
Sogol did not know how to respond. She felt like holding her phone to the sweary mouth of the taksi driver.
‘Where do you live?’ Sogol asked, not wanting to miss out on this ugly opportunity.
‘East Tehran.’
Sogol had a vivid premonition of herself in Mr Mohammadi’s claustrophobic flat in polluted East Tehran, stripped and shivering, Mr Mohammadi forcing her to kneel on his carpetless floor. Sogol whispered to her phone, ‘Can I call you back?’ and hung up, pushing against the other passengers sitting beside her. The taxi stopped near her house, opposite Mr Bahman’s corner shop. Sogol paid the driver and got out of the car.
Their house was strangely quiet because her mother was out with her friends. Sogol slept for five hours, dreaming of fire, of Mr Mohammadi running after her in empty alleys with his repulsive beauty, and instead of a penis, he had a pen hanging out between his skinny white thighs. and Sogol was running, not wanting to be skewered by that cheap Bic biro. She kept running until she was woken by the sound of her mother, talking on the phone, laughing, and Sogol left her sweaty bed, finding it hard to breathe, galloping to her mother. Her mother hung up, looking worried, ‘What is wrong, my darling?’
Sogol told her everything, everything about Mr Mohammadi, about his long lashes, his devouring blue 11eyes, his ‘offer of help’, the published books on the display of the Ministry, the garden, the taxi driver using swear words when Mr Mohammadi called – she recounted this to make the whole episode sound funny, but her mother was furious. Her mother wasn’t laughing, she was shaking with fury. ‘How dare he?’ her mother exclaimed, ‘Call him, tell him what he is doing is illegal, tell him he has no right to abuse his power, tell him to fuck himself, call him. Now!’
‘Calm down, maman.’
‘Get me some water,’ her mother said.
Sogol brought out the cold bottle of water from the fridge. She poured two glasses, giving one to her mother, slurping the other herself. ‘Don’t even call him. Just completely ignore him. Let him die, filthy piece of shit!’
Sogol laughed. She went to her room, she called him from her mobile, ‘I consulted with my mother. She says this is supposed to be a formal process. This is not how it should be.’ After a few seconds of stony silence his informal, aggressively flirtatious tone changed into a formal one. ‘Okay, ma’am. Whatever suits you. Ensha’allah the answer will be positive.’ As if this were a pregnancy test. He hung up without saying goodbye. Sogol knew her book would not be published. But she was not sad.
Then the sound of the kettle filled her room; this was the music she loved the most; her mother was making tea. 12
An Evening of Martyrdom
They were playing cards, and Mina was losing. Attempting to console herself, she thought, this isn’t about losing or winning, only playing.
She then tried to distract herself, concentrating more on the music and less on her losing and bad luck. But the music was no good – something loud and happy – which only intensified her ennui.
She downed her glass of whisky and coke, thinking the whisky was definitely fake, because it tasted like acetone, but still better than nothing. Tonight was the night of mourning for Imam Hossein, for whom the whole nation was supposed to wear black, weeping over his historic martyrdom in mosques reeking of rotten socks. So, drinking acetone-tasting whisky and losing at cards while listening to pop music was perhaps something to feel grateful about and to thank God for – except that she did not believe in God, so she carried on being annoyed and bored.
Mina looked up from her cards to glance at her Hokm teammate, a woman she’d just met. The woman caught Mina’s attention and looked back at her with worried eyes 14which seemed to her as though they’d been drawn by Modigliani: they were mysterious, slanted. Mina was wondering how much her masterfully-drawn eyeliner played a role in creating this effect. She then noticed that the woman’s face was also as long as the kind of face that Modigliani would paint. She desired to draw the woman, to see her naked. Her skin, Mina concluded, was the smoothest.
Upon her arrival, Mina had decided the boy sitting beside her had the most aesthetically pleasing features in the group, but he had stubble that Mina knew would feel anything but smooth. She also noticed that his hands were large and very hairy.
Sipping her whisky, Mina carried on losing, not caring about the game anymore. Suddenly, the music changed to one of her favourite songs – Not Gonna Get Us by t.A.T.u – so she nodded her head and looked at the woman, smiling, flashing her set of straight teeth. The woman smiled back and narrowed her eyes.
There were around fifteen people, eight of whom were playing cards and the rest were talking and smoking weed. Mina could hear their stoned laughter. For a moment, she felt insecure and scared, remembering Omid’s neighbours preparing their place for a fine night of mourning. She had seen the black flags hanging from their windows and door – like corpses of infants. She had also seen something else that had moved her, even though she was reluctant to admit it.
Just as she was ringing Omid’s doorbell, she saw two figures in black chador, standing on the doorstep of Omid’s neighbour. They looked at her just as she was looking at them, one of them, an elderly woman, horribly solemn and the other, a teenage girl, probably a bit younger than Mina. 15Their eyes met; Mina immediately wanted to antagonise her and the likes of her and everything she stood for, but she couldn’t as the girl had the most innocent eyes she’d ever seen. And as her hair and body were fully covered with the long chador, Mina could only see her small face with light brown eyes and pale skin. The contrast of her complexion and her chador moved her like a Frida Kahlo’s painting, it was so gloomy. The fact that she did not seem hostile at all disturbed Mina even more. For one insane moment, she was going to ask her to join the party; to dance and flirt and drink with them, to celebrate the enthralling nothingness of life with her and her friends, to embrace her youth and beauty, instead of praying in Arabic and forcing herself to weep for a man who had died centuries ago in some war that did not matter anymore.
Mina could not decipher what was in the girl’s eyes. It was nothing like hostility or arrogance, more like innocence and confusion.
‘What are you staring at?’ the older woman barked.
‘Nothing.’ The girl said under her breath, averting her eyes from Mina and turning her back on her.
‘Ah! Her terrible hejab?’
What struck Mina was that the woman didn’t even lower her voice while trashing her. ‘People like her end up in hell! And on such a sacred night … they can’t even behave themselves for one night!’
‘I know.’ The girl mumbled.
Mina wanted to trash the woman back, to defend her beliefs, to discuss hell and heaven on earth with her, and eventually rescue the girl, but they disappeared into the neighbours’ enormous house. 16
This was two hours ago and now Mina was losing the game like she lost the girl.
Then she remembered how her father had warned her to be extremely cautious. Mina knew her father would’ve asked her to stay home had he been a strict parent. She looked at her watch, it was half past nine; too early to get bored or annoyed or to miss her father’s face.
Omid brought some fresh cookies from the kitchen with a new bottle of whisky. Mina took one cookie, and thanked him. She looked at the guests, their physicality and style, weighing up which one would be the most interesting to draw. The woman with Modigliani eyes in the fiery red dress was still at the top of her list. She was now lying on the floor, smoking a cigarette. Mina noticed the butt of her cigarette had a golden stain: the residue of her golden lips. She wished she had been a smoker, so she could ask for a cigarette or a lighter. Nevertheless, she sauntered over to her, unsure of how to start a conversation.
The woman sat up and gave Mina a shiny smile. Mina wondered if her golden lip gloss tasted sweet and chemical, or salty and sticky.
‘No luck tonight, right?’ the woman said, gracing Mina with her gilded smile.
They sat side by side on the carpeted floor.
‘Right,’ Mina replied, wondering what else she should say to maintain the conversation, when Omid interrupted them like a saviour.
‘I’m such an idiot! My god. I should’ve introduced you to each other much sooner.’
‘Why?’ the woman asked, raising an eyebrow. Mina found this remark a little blunt, but laughed anyway. 17
‘Well, it’s so interesting. Mina studies art … painting … and you study architecture. And, well, you’re both gorgeous!’ Omid chuckled.
‘Oh, that is an interesting way of reasoning.’ She said, maintaining eye contact with Mina the whole time. She stretched out her dainty hand. ‘I’m Hasti. Delighted to meet you.’
‘Told you so, a perfect match!’ Omid giggled, as a tall boy with green hair dragged him away to dance with him.
Mina realised she was still holding Hasti’s cool hand. She dropped it awkwardly and asked her which university she was studying at, and if she was also from Shiraz.
‘I’m also from Shiraz. But I’ve been living in Vienna for the past few years,’ Hasti informed her. ‘Now I’m here for a visit.’
‘So, how are you finding Vienna?’
‘Nice, can’t really complain; although I miss Shiraz so much.’
‘Why? I’m sure it’s way better than here!’
‘Yes, that’s what you’re supposed to say, I guess,’ Hasti said, staring into space. ‘I find most Austrians a bit like robots, even the good ones. The bad ones are just old-fashioned fascists.’
Mina was uncertain what Hasti was ranting about. Was she just being a bored, rich bitch? Wasn’t Austria supposed to be the beating heart of the arts? ‘I heard they are very disciplined?’ Mina said.
‘Good for them,’ Hasti puffed her cigarette. ‘But I like a bit of chaos, passion – oh, and dark eyes!’ She gazed into Mina’s eyes through the smoke and Mina felt weak, realising she was unable to disagree with her.
*
18It was about eleven when they resumed playing cards. This time, Mina felt fortunate and energetic. Omid refilled their glasses with whisky, and emptied the ashtray cluttered with Hasti’s golden cigarette butts. Mina and Hasti won a round.
Mina almost shouted with joy, and Hasti beamed. Mina and Hasti won the second round with a bit of cheating as well, which excited Mina even more. Hasti sneakily peeked at the other players’ cards, and Mina signalled to her which one to play first. Everybody else seemed too intoxicated to understand or even care about what was going on. Omid lay on the carpet, his head resting on Mina’s lap. She was now trembling with exhilaration, the whisky not working on her. She was waiting to win the entire set, so she could smoke weed with Hasti, and probably talk to her about Zaha Hadid or music flirtatiously, or about how Austria sucks and Iran rocks, therefore Hasti should stay in Iran, or maybe just look at her wordlessly, absorbing her beauty.
The album finished, and there was no more loud music; the living room was filled with the vague sound of the neighbours mourning Imam Hossein. Nobody said anything; the people who were talking and laughing on the other side of the room suddenly went silent.
The voice of the mullah singing in a miserable tone about the martyrdom of Imam Hossein filled the room. And his little son … they didn’t let him have any water … oh God, oh God, oh God … he was only three … Oh God, oh God, oh God …’ followed by the sound of the weeping of the people in the neighbourhood.
Mina wondered if the girl was weeping along with the crowd or not. Was she bored to tears or moved by those melodramatic fables sold to her as historical facts? Mina 19wondered if they were purely fabricated, or if there was a grain of truth in them. But she was too tired to question her own beliefs, too respectful towards life to appreciate something hellish. She felt agitated, dizzy and nauseated; as thirsty as Imam Hossein’s son. Fearing the fake whisky might blind or poison her, she presumed if God wasn’t dead after all, he would definitely punish her, would definitely put her in hell, like that woman had said. She thought about how her poor father would feel about her death or disease due to bad whisky. After all, hadn’t he had enough?
Finally one of the guests addressed Omid: ‘Honey, are you sure this is okay? I’m thinking maybe this wasn’t the right night to party.’
