Censoring an Iranian Love Story (9 page)

He scoffed:

“My good man, who in their right mind names an innocent child B
r
n? In a few years, when your daughter goes to school, she will stand out, her classmates have never heard of anyone named B
r
n, they will make fun of her. They will tease her and say your father must have been a cloud … Do you get it, Papa Cloud?”

“Sir! B
r
n has a romantic and beautiful nuance. In our desert country rain is a divine gift. Allow me to name my daughter B
r
n. I am sure that from now on many people will name their daughters B
r
n.”

By now he was angry. He roared:

“No! I will not … We have prepared a list of beautiful, meaningful Islamic names. Look through the list and find a proper name for the poor child.”

He put a list of hundreds of names in front of me. Most of them were Arab names. Feeling obstinate, and of course not daring to express my anger, I blurted out:

“Sir, can I name her Roja?”

He knotted his eyebrows that were thicker than his beard.

I said:

“The name is popular in northern Iran. Roja means the ‘morning star.’ ”

He agreed.

In those days, Communist parties were still active in Iran, and they often named their artistic groups and the bands that played their revolutionary anthems Roja or the Red Star … It seems the world’s Communists have taken full ownership of stars, similar to Muslims and the crescent moon … Still, my daughter’s name did not become Roja as easily as that. A month later when I went back to pick up her birth certificate, I saw that instead of “Roja” they had mistakenly, or intentionally, written “Raja,” which is not only an Arab name but a man’s name. The law in Iran requires that to change a name one must petition the court. We were forced to hire an attorney, and a year later, when the court agreed to the correction of my daughter’s name, she finally became Roja. I have never in my life been a Communist, not only because I was born to a bourgeois family, but also because I have read books such as
Animal Farm …

Likewise, I have never been Jewish. Years later, when once again I went to the General Register Office for my son’s birth certificate, the administrator in charge snidely said:

“You shouldn’t have rushed! You might as well have waited for your golden-weewee’d boy to turn one before you came for his birth certificate.”

He was right. My wife and I had spent three months debating, researching, and even fighting to come up with a beautiful, unique, and literary name for our son. At home we called our daughter B
r
n, so it would have been nice for our son’s name to rhyme with B
r
n. At last, like an inspiration, the name M
h
n had come to me. And I told the administrator that I wanted to name my son M
h
n … He knotted his eyebrows that were thicker than his beard … and said that he would not allow it. I asked why. He said: