The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines (11 page)
Read The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines Online
Authors: Shohreh Aghdashloo
I had gotten to know them at the workshop. They had come to see one of my plays and waited to see me when it was over. Soon I found out that Behnam was the critic who, after seeing my first work, suggested: “A star is born.” I invited them to our place, and it was the beginning of what seemed like an eternal friendship. Dokhi and I became friends immediately and were inseparable. Although Aydin was more than ten years older than Behnam, they had a lot in common. Aydin had a tremendous respect for both of them and for what they had achieved at such young ages. We became the four musketeers and traveled together.
W
hen we got home, Behnam had decided to put together a play and form a private-sector theater that had no affiliation with the government. He started raising the money from his father, as well as a couple of his father’s friends.
He then chose the director, Iraj Anvar, a prominent and renowned Iranian stage director. Anvar suggested that we should stage a popular and meaningful light comedy like
Ma non è una cosa seria
, meaning “the concept is not serious,” by Luigi Pirandello, the Italian dramatist and novelist, who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1934. The play revolved around a Casanova, his entourage, and an unattractive innkeeper. The success of
Broken Hearts
had convinced Behnam to ask Behrooz Vossoughi to portray Casanova to my unattractive innkeeper.
We first asked the City Theatre, the hub of avant-garde playwrights and directors, to let us launch the play there. But we were told after a couple of days of rehearsals that the theater’s artistic committee had decided that they would not accommodate us because our play was more commercially driven than artistically motivated, the movie stars in the play made it even more commercial, and the ticket price suggested by Behnam was going to exceed that of the other plays staged there.
Part of the play’s purpose was to create a new generation of theatergoers by attracting passersby, young adults, and movie buffs who’d like to see their movie stars on the stage at the City Theatre, conveniently located at a beautiful park at the heart of Tehran. Our next and best choice was the Iran-America Society. We did eighty consecutive performances at the Iran-America Society. One included a private performance for the charity organization of the Shah’s sister, Princess Ashraf. Those Iranians who believed that dictatorship was the only way to keep the country under control also believed that Princess Ashraf would have been a stronger candidate to run the country than her brother.
Princess Ashraf came to see the play with an army of generals and their wives. During intermission, we found out that she had decided to dine at the theater, and her cook had sent a couple of trays of rice and cherries with saffron chicken from the palace. A huge dining table was erected in the middle of the Iran-America Society’s inner courtyard, and we had to wait for an hour and a half for her and her guests to finish their dinner. Finally, when we were about to go onstage to start the second half, we received another request from the generals: they were wondering if we could make the second half shorter, so they could make it home in time to watch the Iranian and Israeli soccer match.
I was angry and offended. I went to the director and told him, “We cannot do this.” We finished our entire production—and they loved it. The princess came backstage and greeted us, saying, “This is the best play I’ve ever seen.”
I
was going through the final stages of what would be my last film in Iran,
The Mirage of Sultanieh
, when the turmoil began. Politics had been shifting toward a more conservative viewpoint on how Iran should be run. The Shah had lost control of the majority of the country. The irony of the film was in its excruciating resemblance to the country’s affairs at the time. The film was a contemporary portrayal of an architect and his nightmares of an attack on Iran’s soil by the Mughal Empire while restoring a medieval mosque on the outskirts of an old city. In his dreams he sees himself back in medieval times facing hundreds of Mughal soldiers on horseback who attack Iran and slaughter innocent Iranians, with their swords shining in the air.
I still vividly remember the last time I saw Parvin Ansari, the director of the film, at the dubbing session. We were both shaken by the chilly winter and the chaos that was now arising on the streets, where young people were setting tires on fire.
Neither one of us knew that we would never see each other again, or that we’d never see the finished film, which we hoped would be released outside the country—my first for Iranians living abroad. Ideally, it would have been dubbed for English-speaking audiences as well. My last Iranian film was simply lost in the anarchy that brought the Islamic Republic to power.
I still remember watching the BBC newsreel a little after Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power. Excited mobs had taken over the House of Cinema, the archive of classic and contemporary Iranian films. They were violently emptying the shelves, the vaults, the silver cans, throwing their contents out the windows, holding on to the tips of the films and rolling them down the building.
Just like in any other underdeveloped country, when a leader is deposed, killed, or sent into exile, all the elements of his rule are banished from the face of the earth according to those now in charge, regardless of their historic or sentimental value.
In all likelihood, our film had shared the same fate while mobs wreaked havoc in the fall of 1978.
PARVIN CALLED ME
a couple of years later when I was in London, and asked me if I could help her find the film. I called my friends in Iran and told them that Parvin was willing to pay up to $50,000 for a copy of the film. My sources did their best to find one, exhausting every avenue, but it was nowhere to be found. I still remember the night my friend called from Iran and told me the film must have been destroyed. What had happened to my country? What injustices had these people faced to make them so ignorant and so angry? Why did they have to act like barbarians, destroying art? Who are these people? They certainly do not look like Iranians to me.
T
ehran is in chaos. The city’s traffic is paralyzed by daily demonstrations. Painted signs read
DOWN WITH THE SHAH.
The Ayatollah Khomeini’s audiotape is playing on every cassette player in Tehran. His voice is firm and demanding, even though he is in exile in France. He is blaming the Pahlavi dynasty for all the Western influence and corruption in Iran. Religious fanatics are getting behind him.
“Look closely at the map of Iran. Look at all the yellow, red, blue, and other colorful dots on it. Look closely. They are not just dots on the map. They are the colors of Iran’s great resources: oil, uranium, copper, turquoise, and many more. All these belong to you, the people of Iran, not to Pahlavi’s dynasty. Demand your rights,” says the Ayatollah.
Overwhelmed by Ayatollah Khomeini’s accusations and promises from exile, the whole country is now shifting from left to right by the hour.
Iran is suffering from an exhilarating prerevolutionary mood. First there were the demonstrations, then massive rallies followed by rounds of strikes. The fear of a general strike lurks.
Angry crowds chanting slogans have now turned into rioters demanding the Shah’s abdication. Tehran is shrouded in tear gas and smoke. The Shah’s picture, once mandatory in government offices, is flying out of every office building in Tehran into the abyss.
There is fire everywhere. Our city is painted the color of orange and red. Mobs are burning more and more stolen tires, and the Shah’s pictures are discarded in piles on the streets.
I hear the news on the radio that Pahlavi Boulevard, where my best friend lives, is aflame and I jump into action.
Getting close to her apartment building via car is impossible, so I ask Saeed, my driver, to circle around and meet me on the other side of the alley. People are running and shouting in the thick black smoke. When I get to Shahla’s apartment, I find her standing in the middle of the hallway, next to her scared Indonesian maid. Her four-year-old son, Ali, tries to shove as many miniature toy cars into his pockets as possible.
I ask Shahla to go with me. But she is worried. She cannot let go of her home. “Take Ali and the maid with you. I can’t leave,” she says to me.
The police come to tell us that we have to evacuate the building. We all get out, and I leave with Ali in my arms and the maid running behind me, looking for my driver. I’ll never forget Shahla’s worried face as she stood on the opposite side of the main street looking at her apartment, waiting for it to burn down.
OUR THURSDAY-NIGHT GET-TOGETHERS
had now turned into every other night. Friends came over, and we met in our tearoom, facing the front yard and its tall walls. The turmoil had gotten worse. We were all worried, not knowing what the future had in store for us.
One of our regular guests was “Mr. S.,” a clever guy in his late twenties, a critic and a writer. Another was Mahdi, my family friend and one of Aydin’s best friends. Mahdi was suspicious of Mr. S. He believed that Mr. S. was visiting a powerful religious leader named Talaghani before he joined us. Talaghani was said to have had some connections with the Communists. Mahdi believed that the Communist Party was helping the clerics get rid of the Shah, in hopes of eventually turning Iran into a Communist country.
Another friend of ours was Ali, whom we called Professor Ali for his endless knowledge in every field, especially in philosophy. Professor Ali believed the collusion between the clerics and the leftists may have been true, but it would be the clerics who would get rid of the leftists.
The rest of our friends joined us one by one during those revolutionary nights in Tehran. Among them was another of my closest friends, Margan. She was a petite beauty with a short, shiny black bob, and emerald green eyes. She and I checked after friends in different neighborhoods even after the curfew was passed. Margan had a Mini Minor, a British car, which we could drive through even the tiniest alleys in Tehran.
By the imposed martial law, everyone had to go home before nine o’clock in the evening, except for emergencies. But our gatherings started at nine o’clock, and we made up stories to tell the authorities if we ever got busted, such as “I’m visiting my father on his deathbed.”
Wherever we went, or whomever we visited, we could smell the fear, the fear of the unknown, the fear of losing one another and our country. The uncertainty filled the air, and nobody could trust anybody. The lights on the streets were turned off after nine o’clock, and power shortages added to the creepiness of the dark nights.
We kept having meetings and discussing politics in the candlelight, behind closed curtains, listening fearfully to the most popular slogan of the time, “Allah Akbar”—meaning “God is great”—from nearly every rooftop night after night.