Abstract
A member of the Iranian clergy at the 28th Tehran International Book fair in May 2015
Credit: EPA
Iranian satirist
Instead, I have to turn to a subject that no one should have to write about in the 21st century: censorship.
A political muzzle for stifling creativity and suppressing truth, censorship, as George Bernard Shaw put it, is “When nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads”.
That is certainly the case in the Islamic Republic, despite the tireless ingenuity of our censor-skirting, death-dodging poets, writers, filmmakers, journalists and social media commentators.
As I write, the popular humorist Mohammad Reza Ali Payam, affectionately called Haloo, is being transferred from prison to hospital following a hunger strike in response to his mistreatment in jail.
His crime? Light-hearted and mildly critical takes on the unreason of Iran’s rulers.
He was imprisoned and released in 2012. In April this year, he was jailed once again on the same trumped-up charges of issuing propaganda and insulting various government officials.
In a YouTube post after the sentencing he said he asked the judge, “For one poem, how many times must I go to jail?” The judge replied: “That’s the way it is.”
Many believe the real reason for purging secular artists and writers in Iran is the fear of unintended consequences, should those with differing world views operate freely.
Such a policy, one mullah has claimed recently, “would be like assisting the West in destroying our sense of right and wrong from within”.
That is why anyone who begins to capture the public imagination, as Ali Payam did with his poetry performances on YouTube, will end up behind bars.
In the past, most authors and artists were more or less familiar with the rules of engagement, and the likes and dislikes of censors. Nowadays censorship in Iran is no longer based on rules. A censor now can decide at whim, what to authorise or refuse.
The only books freely available are those that have to be read by students and scholars. This canon, like all other texts, has been subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny by the shadowy goons of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
And if a book, song, play or film is already out there in the public domain, that’s no guarantee for reprints or continued distribution – permissions are revoked arbitrarily.
Writing in The Spectator in 1948, the humorist Paul Jennings jokingly coined the term “resistentialism” – a reference to the struggle between humans and inanimate objects, which, he observed, have a certain power over us.
In the Iranian context the Islamic Republic is that inanimate object – railing against it is like arguing with a shower that only gives you cold water, or willing your iPhone to forgive you after you accidentally pour tea over it.
Conversely, if the Republic sets you in its sights, it can be ruthless in its methods.
In 1995, a bus carrying some two dozen Iranian poets and novelists, who were on their way to a writers’ conference in Armenia, veered off-road and into a ravine. It emerged that the driver had deliberately crashed the vehicle, jumping out at the last minute. The “accident” was an assassination attempt. Had it succeeded – the writers survived to tell the tale – practically the entire active literary resistance in Iran would have been wiped out.
In 2012 FATA, a cyber police unit, which enforces the Khomeinist policy of liquidating dissent online, targeted a 35-year-old blogger, Sattar Beheshti. He had used Facebook to describe Iran’s justice system as a “slaughterhouse”. Beheshti suffered torture before being killed.
Although Beheshti’s death caused an international outcry, he was relatively unknown in Iran. So easily threatened is the Khomeinist regime that it nips any sign of dissent in the bud, without mercy, regardless of repercussions at home or abroad.
My friend Ebrahim Harandi, an Iranian writer and psychiatrist based in London, makes a distinction between censorship in a police state and one that is ideologically driven.
“A police state wants a single vision of the universe and silences challengers,” he wrote to me in an email.
“Once this is achieved, others can go about their lives with relative freedom as long as they stay out of politics. States driven by ideology or a creed usually go one step further and wish to police people’s thought and their innermost feelings.”
Iran’s writers and artists are expected to be quiet in public, he said, yet also to explain privately to the authorities what they would like to discuss publicly if they were able to.
Harandi identifies an extensive campaign by Iran’s thought police to obtain a “mental map” of each author, with a view to reconfiguring their perspectives and thoughts by whatever means possible.
Authors must avoid positive references to previous regimes while offering a flattering image of the current regime. And every text – even films – must be prefaced by the words: “In the name of God”. Those who fail to comply can expect their career to be terminated before long.
Jail, torture and death: these are the Khomeinist regime’s prizes for literature.
Thanks to the Board of Censorship under the Ministry of Islamic Guidance in Iran, no one is allowed to write any books, except the books that no one wants to read.
© Hadi Khorsandi
Case Study
Writing between the lines
Young Iranian writers are not allowed to pry into many spaces; there are many red lines that must not be crossed. Religion, politics, public beliefs and even certain social relations are forbidden themes.
Some of the most talented writers I know have migrated to the West, hoping to turn their dreams into another language, become global, and run away from the restrictions. For many, this will lead to disappointment and frustration. Few books by Iranian writers are published in translation.
Those who stay home have the arduous task of trying to get a licence for their books. And a young writer here will struggle to sell 500 copies if they are not backed by propaganda and marketing.
My novel, which I wrote five years ago when I was 21, is about the lifestyle of my generation in Iran today. Its themes include drugs and love. It is banned in Iran, but it can be read on Nogaam.com, which is a Persian-language, self-publishing platform, based in the UK.
Given the predictable threats from institutions of power, not everyone is prepared to take the risk to self-publish. But, in my experience, if you publish your book online, it is better received. People think an unofficial publication is more reliable, as censorship has not stuck its claws in it. The first casualty of censorship is often the reader’s trust.
Here in Iran, there is no scarcity of information or knowledge. There are literary NGOs that are hard at work. There are talented writers who can rival their counterparts anywhere in the world. But publishing all that we have achieved is still something we can only wish for; the realisation remains beyond our reach.
© Danial Haghighi
Translated by Daryoush Mohammad Poor