Love and Death in Iran Page #2

A modern Dostoevskyian love story set in Iran.

• Drama

								


"I never thought I'd be discussing the Frankfurt School, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Erich Fromm in Tehran, or the subtle connections between photography and aesthetic philosophy; I 'm not a typical narrow-minded German woman you know," she chuckled once and then wondered if the return of religion in Iran met the definition of "negative dialectic?" I limited my response by citing Hegel: What Enlightenment declares to be an error is the same thing as Enlightenment itself. “Who knows? The signal of a new history may come from Iran, but the revolution is still young and it's too early to tell.” She thought I was sounding “too Hegelian.” She tested me, "Why don't philosophers make good lovers?" I didn't know the answer and she laughingly said "it's because their real orgasm comes from the mind not their bodies." In response I posed the question, "why do women make better kissers than men?" She wondered why and I said, "they have softer lips, of course, but harder tongues." She disagreed on the last part and we kissed tongue to tongue to prove who is right. It was a draw. We also covered a lot of ground talking about each other's background and she asked me what I thought about the United States, where I had spent most of my adulthood. "It's a rich country but poor intellectually, reeking of intellectual poverty. There is almost no genuine intellectual around, just a few dying breed with no replacement, which in turn makes it dreadfully boring and uninteresting. Besides, America is founded on a grand property theft, from the natives, not to mention centuries of slavery and segregation.." She thought that was a sign of my "petulance" and asked if Iran was any better? I was curious over the German word for petulance and she answered, "Greiztheit, although I prefer the French, irritabilite. But I still love your toxic negativity." I said I simply didn't know if Iran was any better or worse, had been in the country only a precious few months and hadn't seen much being bogged down with teaching a full load, nor had I paid much attention to Iranian intellectuals, since I just wanted to get away from the "boring US where you have a million colleges and universities and just a trickle original thinkers." Hannah had visited the US a couple of times, was very fond of New York and San Francisco and disagreed with my negative assessment, prompting me to ask if she preferred US to Europe and of course she didn't, but nevertheless she was keenly interested in the SoHo subculture and the "community of artists in lower Manhattan." What did I know about artists, always saw them as strange creatures roaming around for a perfect place to jump to their death. Laughing in response, she called me a Kantian launisch (man of humors). Didn't Kant find that as the indispensable condition for "perfect man?" I asked.

"Wow, you've read the Critique of Judgement? Je suis vraiment impressionné." She then asked me who was my favorite poet and I simply said, "Hafez, who else?" Hannah was not familiar with Iran's greatest poet and asked me to recite a line from him; I did. "Go sweep out the chambers of your heart/None dies whose heart by love is ever living." To my delightful surprise, she knew another Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, rather well and immediately recited the line that fit a nihilist streak in her.,

“Tis but a day we sojourn here below,
And all the gain we get is grief and woe,
Then, leaving our life's riddles all unsolved,
And burdened with regrets, we have to go.”

She then asked me, "Did you get on well with your father?" I told her that my dad was extremely old-fashioned and, being the only child, was intent on infusing all his values into my head "with little success" until the day he died several years ago. But I always wore the watch that he gave me for my college graduation; we somehow didn't get to talk much about our respective mothers; Hannah's mom was a retired social worker who had remarried and lived far away from her; my mother, a school teacher for years, had passed away less than a year after my dad's passage, perhaps hoping to reunite with him.

Those lengthy chit chats, zigzagging randomly from the philosophical to mundane, to purely banal, simply added to the magical sparks of our moments together, We had made some tentative plans to go to a resort in Caspian Sea after her return from Isfahan, and in her voice message of the day before, she had expressed her great desire to take photos of Iran's green mountains around the Caspian, ending with "Ich Vermisse Dich. Ich kann nicht aufhoren an dich zu denken." (I miss you. I can't stop thinking of you); I had texted her back, "Du bist wirklich etwas Besonderes.Du bist an sonnenschein." (You're really something special, a sunshine). Her response text was "Ich verbringer wirklich gerne Zeit mit dir. Du bist immer so nett." (I really appreciate the time with you, always so nice). Hence, I had not noticed anything out of the ordinary about her, except an occasional vacant stare indicating some anxious thoughts, which I innocently attributed to her presence in a strict Muslim country, if not a tinge of her Camusian character, and, consequently, I was fully convinced that whatever the charges against her were entirely bogus and she would be returning to Tehran with me in a day or so. I was badly mistaken.

Following the address given to me by that police officer, within minutes of arriving in Isfahan around 10 pm I was talking to a plainclothes head detective at a police station; his name was Naseri and by all indications he was equally surprised by Hannah's strange behavior.

"Please tell me. What has she done?"

"Your friend went to a lady's home and tried to kill her but luckily the gun malfunctioned and didn't fire the bullet. She then ran out and was apprehended." I was speechless and my jaw dropped. Detective Naseri asked me how well I knew Hannah and I answered, "We know each other for only a couple of weeks. I am totally shocked. I don't understand. She told me she's coming here to take some pictures, that's all." then I ventured a word about my academic credential, to dispel any suspicion of foul play on my part. "I'm well aware of your background, Professor," Nasseri replied. "She's my responsibility now, at least for a while. So, tell me, how did the two of you meet?"

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