An Island in the Heart of the Greater Tehran

The title of this story is “The Island”. However, the island here is not like other islands. It is not a piece of land in the middle of a sea, an ocean, or a gulf. It is a poor neighborhood in the city of Tehran. I found it in a book called A Survey in the Social Pathology of Iran. The book had already inspired me to write another story: The Bodyseller. I was reading the introduction of the survey book when I saw the word ‘body-seller’. I had written my story six months before. I wrote my story after I had come back from Makhsoos Pharmacy at Karimkhan-Zand Bridge where I heard a weird story about homosexuals in the neighbourhood. I had written my story but did not have a title for it until I found the word ‘body seller’.

On the day that the author of the survey book gave me a copy of his book as a gift, he told me that I would find thousands of stories in it.

The Island is a neighborhood in the middle of the city. It is in the Whiteland District of Tehran-Pars far from any water or sea. It is purified in the year 2000! It is not, however, fully purified, as per what the General Director of the Anti-Drug Campaign Organisation said to the Election Today magazine’s reporter on 15 May 2001. So, the story that you will read below might have happened in Tehranpars Island. Or, it may happen there in the future. But of what importance is the place anyway? We have the title, we have the subject, and we even have the location. It is totally real. It is not a lie. No story is a lie, anyway. No story is a truth either. Besides, to write a story, we do not necessarily have to have a real location in the outside world. I read somewhere that Marguerite Duras would use names of real places for her stories. For instance, she would take the name of an area in Indochina and tell a French story!

Why has the writer of this story chosen the Whiteland District among all the neighborhoods mentioned in the survey book? It is very simple. One of her close relatives lives on
Parvin Boulevard in Tehranpars, an area very close to the Island. Therefore, it is natural that she reads this part of the book with added care and interest. She then realizes that she has a pen in hand, writing.

In the Island, people live in hovels. It is like other similar areas such as Tin City, Mat City, Force City, Peace City, Free City, and other poverty-stricken neighbourhoods which are growing by hour around this megacity of Tehran. The book says that the Island was formed in 1952 and initially consisted of some sub-areas such as Pit of the Arabs, Pit of the Falconets, and the Cave Gate.

This rundown area grew rapidly between the years 1963 and 1978. After the revolution, it experienced both growth and change. Now that the historical side has been covered, it can be assumed that our family in the story has a 50-year old father. The Whiteland District was actually formed in 1969 and enjoyed growth until 1973.

Well, the story of the Island has in it a 50-year old father. He looks 20 years older! So, let’s say we have a 70-year old father. We have a broken family as well. Due to poverty, members of this family are all appalling, horrible and dirty. They are wicked.  They are victims. They have no shame. The least shameful thing in the family is to sell their bodies to earn some black money.

At this point, I should add that you will not find all the details of this story in the social pathology book. I have taken bits and pieces of this story from various parts of our daily lifes; TV, gossip, newspapers, and my own creativity, plus observation of the lives of children and young girls who sell their fortune in the streets, and- I don’t know- lots of other things. Then, I put all these next to one another, just as filmmakers montage a film. The result is what you are reading now. Of course, there were other things involved as well, like hours, days and years of experience, reflection, revision, emotions, loneliness and? The end result is these few pages. And yet, it is not clear what end or fate is waiting for them. On the one hand, it is the story itself. And on the other hand, it is the friends, the scholars, the strangers, and those who are in the know and those who know how to write. They may read and find faults. They may say, ‘What a flat story! What a style of prose! It has technical problems! It needs editing! The writer was after seeking the attention of her relatives!’ Or other things of this sort!

Dear reader, you see, a writer has to go through a lot to become sturdy. It is nothing less than pottery! It requires its own skills. Yet, I am among the lucky ones. There are other poor colleagues who surrender to drugs. They do so to escape from these bitter and unfortunate real parts of life. They find shelter in the world of hallucination which, they think, will strengthen their power of imagination. They are eager to create extraordinary works to impress their readers, leaving mouths open in astonishment. They keep on using drugs to an excessive amount until they forget that the world may sometimes go the other way around. From some point onwards, they are not the ones using the drugs; they become the ones being used by the drugs. This exceptional substance is the most jealous lover the world has ever seen. It can’t stand seeing anyone or anything. Anyway, let’s get back to our story.

We have a “gypsy” family who lives at the edge of the city. They live in the Island in the Whiteland District. They have a 70-year-old father who in reality is hardly 50. The house, I mean the hovel, has no kitchen or bathroom. It is located on a narrow dirt path with 15,455 neighbors who live in similar hovels. On both sides of these hovels, there are two filthy streams with stagnant water whose stench fills the air. Their hovel is a basement. It is hideous!

Now, my fellow story writers and critics must be saying, ‘The writer is now going astray. She mustn’t say ‘hideous’ or ‘beautiful’, or ‘poor’, or anything like that. She should try to portray the scene and then leave it to the reader to feel the atmosphere.’ Isn’t it the case that Henry James says, ‘Show, don’t tell!’ So, a writer must not use specific adjectives. A writer must create an atmosphere. You must, you mustn’t. You must, you mustn’t…

Dear reader, you see, to be a writer is a headache. You need to be careful, or you will end up with too much drivel.

The hovel is a basement on the Island. It accommodates a “gypsy” family of 16. Its area is 50 square meters. All their neighbors have come from rural areas. They are all settlers. The best job among them is laboring. Their most educated ones have high school diplomas. They come from all ethnicities. Each of them has migrated for a reason. Each comes from a different culture. However, all together they have formed a particular kind of culture in this rundown

area of town. {We should expect lots of problems in the future. It is not just the policies of the imperialist Americans that create terrorists and criminals like the Taliban!} These neighbors, these “gypsies”, all share the same fate. They all sell fortune. If we tell the story of one of them, we have told the LIFE story of all 15,455 of them.

We have a “gypsy” family of 16 who lives in a 50-square-meter basement. They are vagrants. As documented in the book, the parents of this family along with other “gypsies” came to Tehran from other towns like Babol, Amol, Sari, Gonbad, and Gorgan in the early years of the revolution. They fitted themselves in next to other laborers and other wanderers and formed the Island.

The Island is at the end of Street 196, at the eastern side of the cistern. Local people are afraid of the islanders who are all supportive of each other. Local people are weak and powerless. The Island is safe. Safe for doing wrong.

We have a hovel in which 16 people live permanently. There are other people who travel to and from the hovel as well, but they do not stay. The hovel is surrounded by rubbish, flies, and filthy brooks. The basement is stuffy with no air. This family of 16 has a good income from selling drugs and renting their daughters. Inevitably, the use of drugs is high in the family. Everyone is affected. The youngest member of this shameless family is a 14-year-old girl, called Rigna. Every evening, following their father’s instructions, Rigna’s elder sisters dress her up frivolously and put heavy and expensive makeup on her. Then, they all join other groups in the street. The father looks after them from a distance so that his daughters do not go on cheap deals.

Rigna is the most beautiful, the most favorable, and the most expensive daughter. The writer once accidentally saw her in Berlin Alley, not in Tehranpars. She was burning wild rue on charcoal. She had stretched and shiny skin with big, pink cheeks and lips. Of course, the narrator is not certain if the girl she saw was our Rigna. But, what is the difference? What is the significance? Rigna can be an example of thousands of homeless Rignas in the city.

Rigna’s sisters train her how to use flirting and provocative words when she is at work in the street. Rigna is a beautiful tall girl who has just reached puberty. When she was a year old and was freely having milk in her pushchair, her mother was bargaining with a shopkeeper over a china teapot. The “Gypsy” father put her in a sack and since then, Rigna never slept in her pushchair. Now, Rigna has many clients. To distract attention, she sometimes burns wild rue on charcoal- while she is selling drugs. Or, maybe she burns wild rue to send signals. She has even learned how to hide drugs in the holes in her body.

One night, when all the lights were off but everyone was still awake, Rigna’s elder brother took her to the storage space they had in the back of their place. When Rigna was 9, her brother did the same thing to Foroozan, the daughter of her father’s second wife. The incestuous behavior and lack of remorse are not hallucinations of the narrator or the writer here. These are quite real and documented in the book. The book says, ‘People of the Island do not care for the prohibition of incestuous relationships’. The book has had 1,500 copies printed. The population of Tehran is 12 million. It is the result of years of research, effort, and pain of writing, contemplating, learning, teaching, and campaigning, as well as growing grey hairs and deep wrinkles on the forehead and face. What a life it is which has been spent in service of the home country, and the result is a book with 1500 copies printed! Thousands of thousands of Rignas with thousands of thousands of families! All horrific! Is terror something other than this?

When would a book by an Iranian writer get printed in 15,000 copies? The difference is just a zero. Dear reader, you might now say, ‘Well now that you are praying, why do you pray for only one zero? Pray for ten zeros! Could you ever imagine that someone would pray for a zero? Have a number like 15 with ten or fifteen zeros behind it. Then, you will have mass production of culture and, of course, clearly mass consumption of culture. Maybe in this way, we can lower the number of Rignas.

Dear critic, yes, I know that these are not common stories. I know that these do not have the style and shape of a contemporary story. But it is not Voltaire’s time. My teacher would say, ‘A story is made by giving details’. Anyway, we are currently walking on a path that Edgar Alan Poe, the father of modern short stories, believed in. He says, ‘We should avoid writing in infinite length.’ Well, we will try not to make the story too long, but let me tell you the last word: we should not be that certain about these scientific-literary theories. It is too dangerous to assert a wrong idea. Of course, needless to say, the wrong trains of thought are also too dangerous for people like me as well. I want to continue the story.

We were talking about Rigna’s brother, a merciless and wicked man. But, it is not fair to call him just wicked. He was not born wicked, was he? We must throw away these clichés. When he was a young beautiful boy, his “gypsy” father put him to work at a shop. He was just six when he was put in the motorway of life. In a few hours, the impossibility of life showed its face to him. When it got dark, the lead worker took him to the back room and drew his pants down. Evil comes out of evilness. It is too naïve if we think that goodness comes out of darkness and evilness.

He was in pain and could not sleep that night. He was intimidated. He had become the breadwinner of the household.

Now, Rigna’s brother has become a young man. He is tall, still handsome and attractive. He wears leather gloves and rides a scooter. With his well-built manly body, the girls can’t help falling for him when they see him driving around on his scooter. He is wicked though. He is the devil himself. But the fact is that he is handsome. Although he is violent, girls like him and are ready to do anything for him.

The brother has made one of these girls sell herself and pay him the money. The girl would do it in the hope that she might make this handsome wild gigolo man happy with her.

Dear reader, do you see how filthy love can go when two senses are not cultivated in a human being? Pride and shame!

The brother asked another girl to get in his car and pretend to be a passenger. Both worked together and picked up another woman and took her to a secluded area of the town. They raped her. They took her belongings and abandoned her half-naked. The brother does this once a month.

He is a child of nowhere. Nowhere is an area which has been ravaged of all things good. Now, he wants to take revenge. Mercy is not a word in his vocabulary.

Dear reader, do you remember the Nightly Bat, the man who would rape women and butcher them into pieces afterward? A man is not born a Nightly Bat or a Bin Laden. How come that the child of a real human being turns into a Godzilla, a vampire, or a bat, or whatever? Now, the police are after him. He says, ‘I like this adventurous and difficult life. You make the government angry.’ He has dealings with dangerous and influential people. He knows how to use drugs. No one can compete with him. On his scooter, he can comfortably escape the Police in the streets or on the roofs. Without any guilty feelings, he can push his knife up to its handle into the belly of any person and cut their tummy savagely. For money, he does anything. It is the same money that made him this piece of scum when he was only 6 years old.

Well, dear reader, what do you think happened to this brother? Like unreal cheap TV shows, a nice man appeared in his life and made him aware of his mistakes, and guided him to the right path. Or, like the Nightly Bat, the Cinderella Gang, or other gangs, which made a fuss in the newspapers, he was arrested by the police, tried at court, and duly punished for his actions? I wish when he was just a child, that good person would have turned up in his life and taken him under his wing. Alas! While the grass grows, the cow starves. None of these happened. He did not waver from the path that he was already on, nor did the police arrest him. He turned into a powerful and intimidating criminal who was known all around the world. He believed, ‘To earn a crime, you need to be everywhere; otherwise, you would lose it!’ It was true. He was everywhere. It was not possible for a robbery, murder, rape, or a crime to happen in this town without him being involved in it. He worked hard and with real perseverance; this was why he earned the reputation he had. People in other countries sought him too; for example, the Taleban, ‘the seekers’. The brother went even to New York. He became one of the gangsters in that city and was never caught. Even if he were caught, he or the mafia had so much money that they could buy the judge and the judiciary. Gangsters pay money to the law. As a matter of fact, the police, the government, and the politicians are all paid by the mafia. I sneaked this last sentence from Billy Bathgate, a book by Doctorow. He has told the truth. I couldn’t help bringing it here. Well, the tale of Rigna’s brother ended happily! All was true! I swear to God. Isn’t it true?

But what happened to Rigna? After that incident, she wanted to escape, and so she did. She wanted to get rid of the pressure, the exasperating limits. However, the brother and his gang found her, though she had returned before they could force her back. Out of all the places on earth, that place, that land, that burial ground was her destined place. When at that night the brother invaded her privacy, he told Rigna, ‘From what are you intending to escape? Everything is temporary. Our life is like this. Wherever we go and whatever we wear, it will be like this.’

Unlike what we see in films, no husband was found for Rigna. No husband was found to help her repent or settle. Nor was she caught at work in the street. She did not become a rich old man’s wife so that her family would have one person less to feed. Unlike what we see throughout history, she did not burn herself alive or commit suicide to escape from her bad fortune and misery. That night when the brother talked to her, he said, ‘Our business is this. When you are doing business, you should not let fear overcome you. You should not let the thought of a disaster make you panic.’ The brothers set up a good business in Dubai. It was in Dubai where Rigna flourished and beat all competitors. She was successful there because she was pretty and clever. She learned Arabic in a month. She was doing great! Everyone knew she was a relative of the brother. No one dared to bad-mouth her. Being a woman, pretty, and a relative of the brother was all you needed among the Iranian-loving Arabs. Rigna’s life grew fast. She employed all types of women from any ethnicity in that business, her women ranged from Russians to Iranians. This was one of the cute things that the girl in our story could do, the other was to flirt with customs officers at any border and trick them alluringly. She followed the brother’s orders obediently. Her work and life were changing in a few directions. She was no longer a normal street girl, selling herself for a penny. She was now selling her fortune in full. Of course, we don’t know. There is not a clear formula in life. Did the brother’s fortune turn? In this era, money and wealth are with the terrorists, charlatans, and thieves. Of course, we need to add footballers and movie stars to this list as well. The time is well gone when money and wealth belonged to the princes, aristocrats, dukes, and khans. Well, what have those khans and princes done for us? Maybe if it was not for their politics, the world would not have been in this chaotic state now. Our Rigna accumulated money. Long live money! Isn’t it so, Rigna? You have power; power by means of money. You earn fame, and even if no one is aware of your secrets, you might be able to become a benevolent do-gooder and finally get popularity among people. Happiness, is it not?

Rigna, you are MY daughter. I have created you. It is true that you have become rich, but I know that your life is constantly full of hardship, pain, chase, and escape. I have written this fate for you. I did not want it to be like this. I am really sorry. Well, you know, I did not intend to deceive you or myself. God knows how much I would have liked to find a husband for you, a nice and kind husband. I wish you could have children. I wish you could have a pretty girl and a gorgeous boy. But it is not possible. As your brother says, ‘It is your life!’ I know you are a sophisticated woman. I know you do not need anybody’s praise, approval, or surprise. You are young and beautiful. You have your life under control. Although I did not kill you or your brother in this story and you will continue to exist at all times, it does not mean that it is the whole reality. You are always in danger. Danger from rivals, governments, ordinary people, love stories, jealousy, or else. Kill to survive.