Iran ban for Garcia Marquez novel

[Rasputin]

The latest novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been banned in Iran - but only after censors noticed its title had been sanitised.
The book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, was published in Farsi as Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts.

The first edition of 5,000 had sold out before the authorities realised.

The novel tells the story of a man who wants to mark his 90th birthday by sleeping with a 14-year-old virgin in a brothel and ends up falling in love.

Iran's culture ministry said a "bureaucratic error" had led to permission being granted for the book's publication, the Fars news agency reported. The official responsible had been sacked, Fars said.

The book sold out within three weeks of arriving in Iranian bookshops.

But the book angered religious conservatives who drew the authorities' attention to its original title and content.

The ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, which must approve all publications in Iran, then refused to issue a permit to allow the book to be reprinted.

Iran has tightened censorship of books since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005.

Sleeping

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1982, is popular in Iran, which has published many of his books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores relates the life of an aged man who had always slept with prostitutes but who wants on the night he turns 90 to give himself a night of "wild love" with an adolescent virgin.

A brothel madam finds a girl for him, but when he arrives at the brothel the girl is asleep.

From then on, he spends every night watching the girl sleep, finding love at the end of his life.

[Rasputin]

At least, his whores are melancholy. Ours are beaten, underpaid, overworked, anguished, and subjected to all forms of torture on a daily basis. Ours passed the melancholy state long ago. I’m referring to a book by the Colombian novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, entitled “Memories of My Melancholy Whores.” It was banned in Iran, after selling out, because the censors discovered that the title was sanitized. The word “whores” was replaced with “sweethearts.” The prostitute in the book is a fourteen year old girl who is the object of a ninety year old mans lust, and then love. Iranians will not be offended by either the title or the 76 year age difference. We know of far worse. We have known far younger whores being the object of madness, for the lack of a better term, not just lust and love.

Even the government’s own data shows that prostitution is rampant. Girls as young as nine start in the world’s oldest profession. Sometimes, they are sold into it. There is a Chinese expression to point out the futility of an act. They call it ‘playing piano in front of a cow.’ I know that when it comes to IRI, I’m playing piano in front of a herd. As obvious as it may be, someone needs to hammer the chords.

Let’s take the story of Leyla M, who was sold into prostitution by her mother at the age of eight. She was raped repeatedly and gave birth to her first child at the age of nine. Yes, we still have years to go to get to Marquez’ whores, and we already shot past the melancholy state. The regimes response was to give her 100 lashes. She was sold again under the guise of temporary marriage (sigheh), to be pimped by her temporary mother in law!

At 14, yes now we’re in the Marquez territory, she gave birth to twins, but only after her pregnant body endured another 100 lashes. She was then sold as a temporary wife for a second time to a 55 year old, married man with children, who also became her new pimp. She was condemned to be executed at the age of nineteen. An international campaign spared her life, although not before the sadists levied another 99 lashes on what was left of her body. Did I mention that repeated examinations showed that at nineteen she had the mental age of an eight year old? No wonder, you would have to crawl into some nook and cranny of your psyche and lock yourself away, if you were to endure her life. I read her story from several sources. After all the physical, emotional, and psychological abuse that she had endured, all she cared for in the end was some ‘Pofak,’ cheese puffs.

Lucky for Iranians, they’re protected from stories of sad whores and old men by the vigilant censors. Let’s beat them, stone them, and sell them over and over, but never ever speak or hear of what they do. As the old maxim goes, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”