Non fiction

Harold Pinter and Dr M.

Despite her solemn and majestic behaviour, Dr. M. had a great sense of humour and loved to recreate Pinteresque dialogues that she encountered in her everyday confrontation with absurd situations. While visiting our university she was also in the middle of directing an adapted play for Iran’s national TV.  She told us how she was stopped the first time she wanted to enter the TV station. At that time, most Iranian establishments had separate entrances for men and women. Women were normally checked for their appearances and they were not given access if they wore make-up or inappropriate veils. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting IRIB (Seda & Sima) was one of those organisations which had made it obligatory for women to wear not only a proper veil but a chador.[1] Dr M. found it absurd to wear the chador as she had already veiled her hair. After a long argument she only agreed to keep the chador on her shoulder as a shawl. As the whole team was waiting for her and watching her anxiously from the windows, the security guards unwillingly allowed her to enter. Walking proudly with her dark sunglasses which she always wore even in cloudy weather and her black chador waving in the wind, she was welcomed by her team. She told us that the security guards had ‘cruelly’ retaliated by calling her Zorro.

Dr M.  was a former student (and disciple) of Harold Pinter and, in fact, a pioneer in bringing Pinter’s work to Iran. Pinter had become a controversial figure in post-revolutionary Iran because of his defence of Salman Rushdie  in the aftermath of the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989.  Dr M. always carried Silence with her wherever she went as if it were a very private and special possession. She made it a ritual to start the class with one of her stories in her nonconformist style, smoking a cigarette. Each session she dedicated the last fourteen minutes of the class to read Silence (loudly) to us, in a beautiful British accent while changing her tone as she switched between different characters. She read it with all her cells. Silence was our weekly treat which ended with the last session of the term. We all had fallen in love not only with the play but with our professor-performer who caressed our ears every week with her passionate reading. Silence even formed part of our goodbye photos with her. It was nearly the end of the term when we realized that she, along with a dedicated group of postgraduate drama students, had been stopped from staging Silence at the City’s Theatre after a considerable time of practice and commitment. She told us that Silence had turned to an unfulfilled desire and dream which had kept haunting all of them.  A few months later she died of cancer.

[1] Chador is an Islamic traditional Iranian veil; a full-length black semi-circle fabric which covers from head to toe.

Shirin Teifouri