Tyrants don't leave
because they are good.
They leave
because they have no other alternative.
Because they have lost the battle
for the imagination of the future.
Because millions of their compatriots,
deep inside the private walls
of their hearts
and out there on the riskier streets
of their city,
have been able to dream
another sort of world.
From "Exorcising Terror"
by Ariel Dorfman
To pull our teeth...
To pull our teeth
out of each other's flesh...
The boy
was walking through the buildings,
amid the shadows and the sand,
on that morning in the fall.
The concrete structures
resembled ancient statues,
left behind by our forebears
from previous centuries.
As if life had been eradicated
thousands of years ago,
and now, to survive, one had to grasp
at the last remains of the living.
During these meetings
we never interrupt each other.
When sharing we don't mention
the names and words of others.
At this point we celebrate being clean.
Has anyone been clean
for 24 hours to 30 days?
I'm Peyman and I'm an addict.
I've been clean for 24 hours.
The areas of our lives
that we have not surrendered
are expanding and reaching
other levels.
It has nothing to do with distance.
Sometimes I think you don't want to
or aren't able to show your feelings.
Maybe we should work on this problem.
I can show my feelings.
But it's not just your
opinion that matters.
Everyone says I'm too emotional.
What's the point of
emotions you can't show?
Is it the one that was broken?
No, it's another one.
Your teeth take after your father,
bless his memory.
What?
I don't take after my father at all.
Don't curse the dead,
call the dentist instead.
With what money?
Pari knows about the situation here?
- Which situation?
- Money, not having a job, your teeth.
That's my situation, not "the" situation.
When have I ever had money?
What's eating you today?
I've left money for your cigarettes.
The air pollution is worse than ever.
Don't go running!
Night would begin at noon.
The shadows clawed at the buildings
and clenched to form a huge fist.
Behind the silent buildings,
in the sand-filled streets,
night had settled in.
The boy thought:
"This unmoving chaos
resembles the beginning of time.
We are approaching
the genesis of death."
And he lit a cigarette
that tasted like dust.
- How much for Zippo flints?
- 5,000.
- You have the lighter fluid?
- It's embargoed.
- A pack of Winston Lights.
- They're 10,000 now.
- What do you have for 5,000?
- Pall Mall.
Give me a pack.
w*r refugees:
their neighborhood has no teeth...
Meth addicts...
From the deepest bile...
From the deepest bile
of Tehran's outskirts...
So you're a poet?
- Peyman, I'm hungry.
- Shut up, Dad.
I swear I'm hungry.
Give me something to eat, Son.
I haven't eaten a thing since I left.
Wow, nice work!
Do you sell these, or
just use them for heroin?
I'm hungry, hungry, hungry...
A thick, unrelenting layer
of industrial polymers
covered all the waters.
The layer kept the water
from rising up into the atmosphere,
and so the old,
tired earth had not
seen any rain for years.
A graveyard of waste and buried cities.
The population was either dead
or exiled or quarantined away.
The boy and his mother spent
the daylight scavenging
and the night hiding
from quarantine enforcers.
- How is it?
- It's excellent.
Will you publish it?
What's this new obsession
with publishing?
Talk about the story.
What will you get out of being published?
300 censored copies of your poem?
You're a poet, buddy.
I swear you're a poet.
You know what? You're a poet.
But don't give in to this system. Here!
- On an empty stomach?
- It clears the soul.
The Chinese have made
the first artificial human.
- Isn't it horrific?
- It is.
You're not scared?
- You don't want to leave?
- Yes, I do.
Taxi!
Taxi!
It's not about wanting.
You can't break up with Shahrad.
I can. You just have to tell me
why I should do it.
Because he's an assh*le
whose whole being is money.
Look, I love dating assholes.
Give me a better reason.
There isn't one.
My therapist says a man who marries
for a passport so he can emigrate
must be really miserable.
She didn't say
how miserable you must be, then?
She did.
When do you leave the country?
What's it to you?
Yeah. What's it to me?
Pick me up where you dropped me off.
Peyman, don't let this plant die.
Goodbye.
Why are you so pale?
See, I don't have anyone other
than you and Peyman.
Once he's here,
I'll definitely bring you over too.
God willing, my girl.
You're all we have too.
I want everything to be ready
for Peyman.
He deserves much better than this.
But I have to say something:
I need Peyman to prove himself
more than he has so far.
What am I supposed to prove to Pari?
That you deserve that life over there.
Don't you want to leave this sh*thole?
How?
At least show her you love her.
You really wish the syringe
was full of heroin, don't you?
What does a punk like you have
that Khatereh wants?
What do you have other than money?
I have money,
which means I have everything, punk.
How do poor fucks like you actually live?
"I want to go to US.
I love to make a good family there.
My wife is a rich and successful woman.
Before I go, I want make some changes.
I'm not junkie, but I want to stop smoking
and using my old friend
heroin, for my family."
- What is all that nonsense?
- The American Dream.
Why don't you learn English,
Mr. American Dream?
I don't have it in me, Mozhgan.
Have you upped your dose again?
Just a tad.
Goddammit!
The moment you're about to get
somewhere, you have to screw up!
Where am I getting to?
- How's your book going?
- It isn't.
Just let someone publish it.
Let me be proud of you.
I can't do anything these days, Mozhgan.
Pretending to love
is even harder than being in love.
Pari was always annoying, but even she
doesn't deserve to be lied to like this.
Everyone in the building next door
ran away last night.
Mommy, dear, let's go.
Let's go, Mommy.
It had become a daily habit for the boy
to search for photographs left behind
by absent residents.
The photos lay there abandoned,
like everything else in his life.
They were memories
of the life now gone.
That day he was so engrossed
in new photographs
that he found himself surrounded
by the enforcers.
He ran like a crab that had gone crazy,
crawling on all fours
and throwing fistfuls of infected
sand at the masked pursuers.
And the harbingers of the quarantine
held their masks tight
and busied themselves
with belts and canons.
But no one knew these ruins like he did.
They had shielded him
and his mother for years.
He escaped from them
through an underground passage.
Fayeze says
that if you freeze rice for three days,
insects won't infect it anymore.
Retired teachers held
a demonstration today.
- I wish I'd gone.
- Why didn't you?
Next time I will.
"Tehran's on alert for
a fine-particle storm."
Another blackout. Stay where you are.
Anything that's good should
put you under pressure:
writing, wrestling, love, nature.
On the mat, you get to a point
where you think you're about to die.
And that's exactly when
you realize you're alive.
- You're drunk?
- Nope.
Won't you really die?
Foster Wallace says
live so that at 50
you don't have
to put a g*n to your head.
Maestro,
Foster Wallace hung himself
in his garage at 46.
Do you know
what that ring represents?
It represents loyalty, our commitment.
Do you get it, Peyman?
Today was an exception,
I always wear it.
You know what I hate more
than anything?
Lying.
Then why do you lie to me?
I've seen you in
pictures without your ring.
Don't lie to me.
The ferocious daily battle for survival
and his absolute lack of prospects
kept the boy
in a state of constant agitation.
The moment
the search for food and water was over,
he tended to his second preoccupation:
narcotics abandoned in the dead city.
Through them he would reach
an emotional endpoint.
He told himself:
"Even the sun is losing its heat."
- Are you high?
- No.
- He's high.
- He's high.
Don't eat like that.
Give a damn for beauty!
Beauty be damned!
Shut up!
You idiot!
Stop running!
Remember Anahita,
whose dad had the shop on Golha?
She texted me:
"It was a great time. We had fun!"
I later found out she had gone to a party,
danced, gotten drunk, sent the text,
and then jumped from the 11th floor.
They found "Carton Sia"
in an elevator in the Apadana Buildings.
His body was cooked
due to long exposure to heat.
He'd been sleeping rough in
cardboard boxes for quite a while,
but they called him "Carton Sia"
because he drew cartoons.
I met Black Sammy near Golha.
The next time I saw him,
he was still wearing black.
He was wearing black.
That's what he wore.
Sammy d*ed standing.
Farshad offed himself.
He wasn't using anymore,
just couldn't take it.
You're talking about Farshad Blondie.
He didn't k*ll himself, he overdosed.
Overdose is su1c1de,
too. What's the difference?
You mean the good-looking blond boy
from Block 3?
He couldn't take having
to do m*llitary service.
It broke my heart when I heard.
What do you imagine su1c1de is?
The result of years of deliberation?
No...
It's a moment!
You decide.
The end.
And the ones who were ex*cuted?
- Put a lid on it!
- OK! OK!
- We need a change of mood.
- What's this?
- Forget that one.
- Give it to me! Come on, give it!
So she showed up again.
She must have run away
from her piece-of-sh*t father
to be with her down-and-out friends.
She's skipping school too.
Do you know her friends?
You told me you know where they live...
The hell I know... A bunch of dealers
and junkie teenagers like herself.
Want me to talk to her,
bring her here so you can see her?
No one knows how much
I spent to get her to the US.
And then she runs away back to Iran
and says "my mom imprisoned me."
Look, Peyman, you go
nowhere near Sara, OK?
Why do you think you need
to disappear when you're using?
- I don't have your nerve.
- The hell you don't.
How long since you last used?
Maybe a week.
- What's the difference?
- So you're not clean.
Want to go to a meeting together?
It's nearby.
What have all those meetings
done for you?
Nothing.
I don't go anymore either.
You're just looking
for an excuse not to go.
How long have you been clean,
by the way?
24 hours.
I'm in stop-and-go mode.
If I were you, I would be in go-go mode.
How can you stand my
mom with a clear head?
With difficulty.
Poor Pari,
stuck between a bunch of addicts.
Addiction is a disease,
we need to recover.
- You want to be healed?
- Sure.
Will you be my sponsor?
What does a sponsor mean anyway?
Some assh*le
who supports your recovery.
Wanna be my sponsor?
I'm the only one on earth who can't.
Not that I'm not an assh*le.
But I'd need to be clean, which I'm not.
But just this once?
Sing something!
- Will you be my sponsor if I sing?
- OK.
My mom's pretty,
she won't stick around.
She doesn't like me,
I should've tied her down.
OK. I'll be your sponsor. I will.
Shahrad, I envy your
father for having such a son.
Thank you, I was starving.
Enjoy!
But your own son is useless.
My son, of course, is a poet.
He's into handicrafts too.
And has a successful marriage.
So I hear: a rich lady from the US
was fooled into buying your useless son.
I'm a poor soul.
Before my death,
he never took me for a meal.
"Jericho is Damascus! Jericho is Cairo!
Jericho is Tehran!
The violent fall,
for a moment gives us courage."
Poetry, poetry, poetry...
sh*t!
Poetry...
He's been talking
nonsense to himself all night.
He paces his room,
reads poetry out loud.
What's wrong with him, Ramin?
He's destroying himself and me.
Talk to him!
I'll talk to him.
I've spent a lifetime taking
this f*cking poem everywhere with me,
to every publisher,
even the shittiest ones,
the ones that take money to publish.
No one would take it.
How many years? Ten? Fifteen?
My only solace is
that I have a good poem in my room
that I can work on.
How am I supposed
to hand it to a bunch of assholes
who'll tell me to delete this part,
change that part,
sh*t on everything I am?
I've told you for years not to do that.
I have ten screenplays,
none of them have been filmed.
I've spent my life writing
garbage for money.
For years my job was
writing jokes for morning radio.
Why did I do all that?
We all have to work for money.
Should I be ashamed of driving a taxi?
Is it a shortcoming?
No, it's not.
But after all this sh*t work,
don't I have the right to see
my book behind a store window?
What are you talking about?
Did Bijan Elahi write his books so
he could stare at them in a bookstore?
Did Hashemi-nejad, Naji, Shojai?
Is that what we're after?
What's wrong with it?
We're not supposed to publish?
You don't get me.
All those beautiful writers and poets,
that incredible generation,
they had it in them.
They were mystics, man.
And I hate mysticism.
They chose to stay out of it all.
You and I have no choice in this.
Buddy!
Badi'i translated Joyce's Ulysses
40 years ago,
they won't let him publish it.
Sepanlou d*ed under
the pressure of censorship.
This has nothing to do with choice.
God knows how many poets like you
have put their poems
away because of the censor.
Accept the fact:
you shouldn't censor your own poem.
You know my problem?
I want to take a published
copy of my book
with me to the US.
So if someone asks me who and
what I am, I can say this is who I am.
Well, they won't let you.
And what's the point of putting
a castrated poem in your suitcase?
That busted, defaced poem is not you:
it's a busted, defaced version of you.
And you're lusting after being published?
Lust is the last thing I have.
Why this need, Ramin?
Listen to me for once!
You keep saying this
poem is your whole life.
Buddy, I love your poem! Don't ruin it.
You could publish it right here.
When? Where?
I'm tired of it!
I want to publish it any way I can
and be rid of it.
Brother! Buddy!
Right now, not publishing
is a form of resistance.
A castrated, benign version is not!
I've never been about resistance.
I want to publish a book.
What struggle? What resistance?
The problem is, when they att*ck you,
you have no choice but to go to w*r.
"Please observe a moment's silence
for all the tortured who
have now confessed.
I hungered for the fire of her skin,
for the science of her flesh."
Or this one. Listen:
"In the testicles of the oppressor
an emaciated woman is wailing."
What's with all the eroticism?
You know how many
kisses I counted in this?
I swear I want this to be published,
but it won't work this way.
I'll be held responsible, morally even.
It's full of issues.
Here: "Tonight, East of Tehran,
West of Tehran
a horde of young men will die...
Well, Mr. Yadegari, is
this your Tehran or ours?
Look, I truly live in this city, too.
You paint your own poor city black.
What's the point?
Look, there are lots of issues,
but I can speak to my superiors,
if you correct the issues.
You've been working on it for years,
you deserve to see it published.
Some of the issues are pointed out here,
there are others
which you can figure out yourself.
Resolve these issues
and God willing it will be published.
Just listen to this part:
"The boy promises his girlfriend
that he'll quit heroin,
missing the ocean and denying God."
What's with all the heroin?
Do we have gas?
A full t*nk.
Shall we go?
Yes.
"Journey" was a word with no meaning
in the boy's life.
He had spent his life
in the labyrinth of the buildings.
Sometimes he thought of parts of his
past that he had not yet processed.
As if they were thoughts
in a steamed-up mirror.
All he knew of roads and journeys
was a few destroyed streets,
which had no beginning and no
destination except quarantine.
All he knew of roads and journeys
was a few streets sunk in the sand
at the edge of the district.
He became lost in the endless alleys
between the tower blocks.
He had imagined
a destination and a road,
a forest and fields that were unburnt.
- Are you up, Mom?
- Come in, my boy.
Why are you so late?
I've been waiting all evening
for you to come with cigarettes.
I didn't feel like going out.
I'm glad you didn't.
What a storm!
What's new?
Your lighter's working?
Sometimes.
Pari wrote that she couldn't reach you.
She bombarded me with questions,
asked why you'd gone up north.
I'll call her tomorrow.
You took the rice out again?
I was worried about insects.
What else is new?
We're getting poorer every day.
The landlord called and said
he wants to sell the apartment.
- He's lying.
- I know he is.
He wants to double the rent again.
When you leave,
I'll move to a smaller place.
Easy.
This is the beginning.
Things will get worse.
Today people
were so scared of shortages,
they emptied out the supermarket.
They say they won't
import detergent anymore.
I was hoping to buy some.
What's the difference?
The sanctions are for everyone.
To hell with detergent.
What will I do for warfarin?
I had to search the whole area
and beg the pharmacist
to get a handful of pills.
Don't worry, Mozhgan
says she'll find you some.
I saw her mother today.
Without a headscarf, completely dazed.
She didn't even recognize me.
What's happening to all of us?
They say there's going to be a w*r.
It won't be like the Iran-Iraq w*r.
They'll fire a dozen missiles
and it'll be over.
If only I didn't have to worry about you:
I know how to save myself.
What thunder!
If only you could leave sooner.
Even in America, every morning
I'll check for news about Iran.
It doesn't matter where we go.
We carry this hell inside us.
At least one of us would get away.
There's no talking with Pari anyway.
She keeps saying: "Wait!"
It's been a year of waiting now.
You think it's easy
to censor other people's poems?
I've read Ezra Pound, you know.
I've read John Fante, Barahani.
I love Ginsberg's "Howl."
But we can't all just write
whatever we want like you do.
Life is hard.
Life comes with a wife and children.
We have to work for them.
"I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness,
starving, hysterical, naked,
dragging themselves
through the n*gro streets
at dawn, looking for an angry fix..."
- How much for flints?
- 10,000.
- And lighter fluid?
- It's embargoed.
- Give me a pack of Pall Mall.
- They're 10,000 now.
- What do you have for 5,000?
- Bahman.
I'll take a pack.
- You're high.
- No.
I found some warfarin for your mom.
Don't you want to leave?
- And go where?
- Anywhere.
- Why should I?
- I don't know.
Then change how you feel.
New place, new life, new love...
I don't want to go anywhere.
You know Pari declares
lights-out at 10 p.m.?
Wonderful, it'll regulate my sleep.
After lights-out,
you can't even go to the bathroom.
Or she'll lock your door.
Want to read your first step?
Did you write it down?
She has a g*n too.
One of those twin-barrelled ones.
She keeps it loaded.
Sara, no matter what you say,
you're still an idiot
who left the US and came back here.
My mother never loved me.
She says: "I didn't raise you."
Now she wants to have a child
before she's too old.
That's what she wants you for.
For what?
She can't get herself pregnant!
It might be called America,
but really it's just another rehab.
Surrounded by trees,
but you can't take one step outside.
It's a hell like this one, just greener.
Your phone...
I'll call back.
It's Khatereh!
I'm coming to Tehran tomorrow.
Could we go to Ramin's?
It's weird, but I really miss you.
Seriously, you're the ideal father:
you womanize, do dr*gs, write poems...
- It's complicated.
- Pari will waste your talents.
You won't tell anyone?
Me, sell out my dear stepfather?
Here, call Ramin!
We are destroying
our most delicate forest ecosystems.
90% of the trash from northern Iran
is deposited in forests.
6,000 tons
because the sun never
reaches the forest floor.
The rubbish creates a liquid seepage.
Hundred-year-old trees rot and crumble
due to the seepage impacting the roots.
Just an ounce of pragmatism.
Just a bit of hope.
And I don't mean hokey hope.
We don't want a massive intervention.
We just want to make
things a little better.That's all.
We must do the little we can.
Where are you going, sir?
I prefer real hopelessness
to your empty hope.
God bless!
Mom!
Mom?
I'm going to Ramin's,
I might not come home tonight.
Mom?
Mom?
Mom?
And here, the state of Georgia,
which borders North Carolina,
and here, the city of Atlanta...
Super nice!
- The New York of the South.
- Hold on.
And here,
the upscale suburb of Suwanee.
A luxury single-family house.
With a lakefront yard.
That's enough now. It's all very nice.
It's very, very nice.
- But the more I think about it...
- I lost it.
Your departure's canceled.
You're not leaving.
I agree.
- Why?
- Why?
"Sir, come to the US."
They'll call me from the embassy...
Yes, come on. Look at him.
Does he look like someone who
can live like a real person in the US?
With those looks, you won't even get in.
- Why not?
- Only if it all goes to sh*t...
- What would go to sh*t?
- You, the whole thing.
I picture Peyman
running naked in the jungles of Georgia,
and Pari's dogs hounding him!
- She doesn't have a dog.
- Sure does!
- They have sheriffs.
- Right.
And then Pari arrives with her handgun.
- She doesn't have a handgun.
- A shotgun!
She'll whip you all night at gunpoint.
- And Peyman will confess all.
- I've nothing to confess.
- Nothing to confess?
- I'm a simple, humble poet.
- Simple, yeah!
- A boy living with his mom.
But if you do confess,
please mention the bit
where you wet your bed
till you were 16!
- I still wet my bed.
- I don't doubt it.
I grew up in the w*r.
- It was the bombs!
- Bombs?
Were they bombing Tehran last year,
when you shat yourself from withdrawal?
- I had a virus! It was diarrhea.
- He shat in my car!
Just accept it: wherever you run to,
your subconscious was formed here,
in hatred and humiliation.
It will pull you down.
But if we can stay
and change things here...
We'll be better off.
Who is "we," Ramin?
- There is no "we."
- Yes, there is:
At the Save the Earth Foundation
we're trying.
You know why you
insist on saving the earth?
Why?
Because you're certain there's
nothing you can do.
You're just easing
your radical conscience with hypocrisy.
Over there capitalism,
over here dictatorship.
Both are totally f*cking up the earth,
and you want to rescue it all
sitting in a dingy conference room?
So we should all do nothing?
No...
No.
But all this urgency
to react to every
crisis is really shallow.
I only think about rescuing myself.
To hell with the rest.
To hell with the environment.
Your poor mother
used to work three jobs,
as a teacher and an accountant
and whatever else,
to make money for you, assh*le.
And what did you do with it?
You spent it on smack.
My heroin use has no justification.
It's so despicable
I can't hide it behind a reason.
Nice. That's another
pose. Simplify everything
so you can shirk all responsibility.
Your bullshit has gotten so big
you can't hide it
behind anything anymore.
There's something obscene
behind all your pretty ideals.
Shut up, buddy!
I'm a hypocrite. We're
all hypocrites, Ramin.
My marriage is obscene.
My leaving, my trying to
publish, living with Mom,
my relationship with Khatereh, my dr*gs.
Let's look at ourselves: we're ridiculous.
- You're ridiculous.
- Yes.
From your stupid
insistence on not publishing,
to your wrestling, to Mozhgan...
What about her?
She downs a handful of pills every day
so she can take care of her mom.
Your Save the Earth bullshit,
it's your fat, factory-owning friend
who pays for it.
Am I lying?
All these slogans!
What did poor Mozhgan do wrong
that you left her?
- Shut up.
- Why did you leave her?
She didn't love you enough? Why?
Responsibility is hard, no?
You suddenly remembered
your true love was nature.
Don't talk about Mozhgan!
Haven't you tortured her enough?
Didn't she run around and cry after you,
in hospitals, in rehabs?
Anyway you have no right
to talk about our relationship
because you know nothing about it.
I hold no grudges against Ramin.
Or you.
I've accepted you both as you are.
Keep me out of your debates.
Fight over something else,
over bullshit ideas I've never understood.
You're all f*cked.
You're more broken than me.
You don't dare to take out
your inner garbage anymore.
Get the f*ck out of my house!
Mom!
Mom!
Mom?
Mom?
Mom?
The boy was thinking,
beyond his mother,
what reason he could find for survival.
It did not matter that the threats
against them intensified every day.
The harbingers of quarantine
drew ever closer to their hiding place.
The will to survive
was the only thing that counted,
this blind and confused instinct,
a pure instinct that rendered
life as well as death meaningless.
His life was worthless from now on,
so why should he try
to resist the dr*gs?
The boy entered the burnt forest,
the last memento of a green life.
This place remained a
storehouse of narcotics,
once prescribed for madness.
A store of oblivion,
a reminder of the madness of the past,
but now worth less than even madness.
There was nothing better for him to do
than to keep sh**ting up
for the remainder of his time.
Hasn't pain always been
the antipode of pleasure?
Why, then, does a pain against pleasure
become a source of pleasure itself?
Humans always suffer,
bear and consume more
than they can afford to.
And this excess is their pleasure.
We're great! We feel awesome!
We're amazing!
Look at this model mother and son!
Lovely!
We want to applaud them
for a full minute as they
laugh for the camera!
And here we go!
It must be an accident,
it couldn't be missiles...
Orchid dish soap, containing proteins...
I don't expect any better from you.
You're also confused.
So you hold a meeting
on the other side of
the world and thr*aten...
They've got bows and arrows, watch out!
They're attacking! Run, my lady!
I'll guard my mother! It's all a trap!
I'll k*ll them all! Just run away!
He's playing Jumong.
I'll treasure the ring you gave me!
Please run away!
Careful! They're coming from behind!
Careful, Your Majesty!
Guard my mother!
I must prove myself today, my lady.
Who is Jumong anyway?
No, Your Majesty,
these are all traps.
I must fight!
His Majesty Jumong enters the show!
We earn in rial, spend in dollars!
Oh sure, you care about us.
That's why you knocked
my colleague out.
Spray water on her!
I kept begging them to let me call you.
I don't even know where
they took us last night.
Forty of us shivered in
a tiny basement all night.
I was worried they would come after you.
They broke a woman's head
against the curb.
Who are these people?
What are they doing here?
With these prices...
We're just teachers
defending our rights...
Zippo! Zippo!
"We have been led
to an incomplete inferno, Mother.
Why doesn't God complete it?"
"Don't blaspheme, my boy,"
was the mother's response,
which still resounds in her son's ears.
And while the mother looked down
from the seventh floor
at the hangar with scrapped airplanes,
which stood there
like an abandoned herd
and which were sinking
into a heap of dust and sand, he said:
"What's strange is that
you still believe in God."
His mother,
between coughs, answered:
"Is it possible not to fear death?"
While the son passed his mother
a glass of water, she asked:
"I'm talking about your belief.
Don't you see how
much poison is in the air,
how many carcinogenic and radioactive
substances are in the water?
If there is no God, then
how have we survived?"
The boy answered:
"Death, like a virus, adapts itself.
This is the law of nature,
and we are close to the final mutation.
I feel the dead are
closer to us than ever.
We breathe the same air.
The dead and the living alike
are conduits of the life force."
"Maybe we are being
punished," said his mother,
"punished for our sins
against our own kind."
Has anyone been clean
for 24 hours to 30 days?
I'm Peyman and I'm an addict.
I've been clean for 24 hours.
I'm Sara and I'm an addict.
I've been clean for 24 hours.
Can I take a puff?
Ramin. Come on!
Ramin, my lighter! Take my lighter!
- Can you roll me one too?
- Here.
He took my cigarettes.
My lighter!
Did you get my lighter back?
- I did.
- Give it to me!
Why do they call this place Seven Hills?
Because it has seven hills.
Have you thought
about what to do
if going to America doesn't work?
You're our childhood friend.
We remember you more than ourselves.
The day will come that neither
your mother
nor these useless friends will be around.
Just you and yourself.
I fear that day.
Why do you think I'm afraid of people?
Maybe you aren't,
but you distance yourself
with your words and actions.
You show you don't want
to risk anything.
I'm surrounded by risks, Pari.
No, a new risk:
risking coming out of this depression,
maybe going to a therapist,
maybe going on medication.
- How about our immigration file?
- Right now you have to wait.
It will all be OK,
but we need to focus
on making the most of this time.
How?
By going to the gym, for example,
meditation, planning, waking up early,
lots of other things. OK?
Why are the b*mb shelters closed off?
Is he a good man?
He's mad.
Yes, he's mad.
He works on his poem during the day
and goes to sleep early.
OK, my girl. Take care.
He'll call you tomorrow.
Bye, Pari, dear.
You're up to something.
Don't think I don't know.
I'm the one talking to Pari
and calming her down.
She keeps saying:
"Peyman has changed."
Should I tell her that you like misery,
that you don't appreciate anything,
just like your degenerate father?
- I'm tired of it.
- Tired of what?
What would you have done without Pari?
Do you have a real job, money?
Why can't you finish anything you start?
Maestro, do you approve?
- How much are Zippo flints?
- I don't have any.
You do...
We don't. You keep asking, and
I keep informing you like a newscaster.
- Give me a pack of Bahman.
- They're 10,000 now.
- What do you have for 5,000?
- Bistoon.
Give me a pack of those.
- Forget your stories and poems.
- Sure.
I was taken in by your bullshit, too.
Now we're old
and don't have a book to our name.
And that's our problem?
The system is fighting us.
You won't publish a book
without a goal.
I have a goal, and motivation.
- It has nothing to do with publishing.
- So why do you never finish anything?
Kafka destroyed what he wrote.
You think the world
is waiting for our stuff?
We're stuck.
What do we have to do with Kafka?
- The problem is publishing?
- I'm leaving the country with my mom.
She's dying here, the
anxiety is k*lling her.
She has constant nightmares
about the w*r.
She's melting like a
candle before my eyes.
What would I have done if Peyman
hadn't found her the other day?
I tell myself if she goes away from here,
she might feel a little better.
- But where?
- Nowhere far. Georgia.
- For how long?
- I don't know.
Maybe forever.
Maybe just for a little while.
You mean...
I want no bullshit philosophical
comments.
You guys try to take care of each other.
Let me see if you can do this one thing.
And you, moron,
make sure to come say goodbye.
I'll see you tonight.
Ramin, what's she talking about?
Did you know they were leaving?
Ramin!
I am a crowd of gardeners.
I dream my city has not fallen,
my moon has not d*ed,
my throat has not b*rned.
I dream my eyes are full of eyes,
my guests are full of windows,
my path is full of justice.
I am a dream in motion.
I go to wakefulness,
I wake into bitterness, cold.
I hurt.
Heap of cement men, breathe!
Horde of metallic women, sing!
It was a stupid day.
I couldn't stand anything.
I wish we could go somewhere tonight.
Anywhere you want.
Taxi!
Taxi!
assh*le!
If this idiot Peyman
has harmed you in any way,
then I'm sorry.
I hear everything you say.
But I ask that this stays between us.
Peyman is married.
Someone is waiting for him.
You're young, with lots of opportunities.
You f*ck up
and I have to fix things.
What if she walks right out
and contacts Pari?
What then?
Khatereh!
Khatereh!
How's your English coming along?
I study a little.
- How about driving lessons?
- I've had a few sessions.
I figured I'll do the rest over there.
Here? This is no place for that.
You have to get your license over there
and take the written exam here.
It all needs English.
I work all day.
I won't be driving you around.
You'll have to stay home all day.
- Can't I find a job there?
- What job?
You don't have any skills.
And no English. No way.
What should I do, then?
I'm just describing the conditions.
You've had a year
to think about all this,
but you haven't.
Their bodies were the extension
of a crushing power
that had domesticated them.
But they were unknowingly searching
for an act
that would remake them from within.
For they had survived
in order to witness.
I will join the band of
the Broken River, it's you I address.
Give me a single chance,
you, the inheritors of salvation.
This is the call to enter
shouted from the veins.
I see the gates of the garden,
oranges from the sea
and houses that glimmer
on immaculate hills...
Open your eyes! Look at me!
Get out of here!
Look at me!
Look at me!
When you take that sh*t,
wait for it to come down on its own.
Don't go into cold water.
What's wrong with you?
Why do you do that?
You'll have a heart att*ck, idiot!
- Come here.
- What?
Come close.
- Taxi!
- Idiot!
Shut up!
Can't you behave like a human being?
Everything around us
is so broken and stupid
that you feel maybe dr*gs can help.
We're like a cancer patient:
you give him morphine
to bring down his pain.
Who says dr*gs are for pleasure?
My sponsor and me don't use
so we can feel better.
My sponsor is helping me a lot,
even though he can't help himself.
Anyway...
I hope the day will come
that we find a reason
for staying clean, too.
...isn't this one
of the greatest countries?
Aren't the utilities affordably priced?
I ran after you in the
streets for ten years.
I would stand behind the shower door
and pray:
"God, don't let me hear his lighter."
I used to not clean your room
so I wouldn't find anything.
When you got clean,
I said:
"Lord, you gave me back my child."
The three years you were clean,
I forgot all about my misery,
my loneliness, my poverty.
Peyman, I'll die if you start again.
I can't bear it.
I swear, I'll die.
You're not alone.
Listen, these are the voices of time,
and they all bid you farewell.
Imagine yourself in a vaster landscape.
On every particle of you and the world,
the same chaos is in motion.
A w*r for a return
to the point of no life,
where life began.
As if someone whispered in his ear:
"We are approaching
the moment of the creation of death."
A return to the moment
that the forces of nature
att*cked inorganic
matter to establish life,
and the will to ruin and silence
became the greatest desire.
Hello, Foundation friends.
How long are we going to try and save
the earth from inside our dark room?
Let's see what it is we're saving.
The Hyrcanian Forests,
beautiful and ancient.
Let's see what we have here.
Garbage, garbage.
Thank you, environmentalist friends
who try to clear this up.
It's holy work.
Or those of you who
collect your own garbage.
Good for you!
But let's wait.
We're all being played.
What's this sh*t?
This is the garbage dump
I'd told you about.
What do we see if we zoom in a little?
The garbage heap creates seepage.
The liquid goes into the river
where our kids play.
But let's get a little closer.
These are the gates of hell.
Filth. More garbage.
Plastic.
Garbage that's seeped into the forest.
Trees k*lled by the seepage.
I feel in my bones the filthy way
humans have destroyed the earth.
People have become
materialistic and violent.
They value nothing
besides money and themselves.
Money has become the Almighty God.
This makes death not only possible
but even necessary.
The thought of a world that shelters
neither people nor
life nor God nor spirit.
Hey you, who's richer than all of us,
who helps this foundation most...
You're a bigger sinner than all of us.
Everything here just doubles your guilt
and the filth of your dirty factory!
On stormy nights,
the boy always stayed in his room
and entertained himself
with the old photographs he had found.
He'd found these photos
in the cement blocks
that stood there abandoned in the sand.
Every night he would forget
the malaise of the surrounding world
by making up stories
about these images.
I've never understood people traveling
to make themselves feel better.
I'm not leaving so I can feel better.
Why are you leaving, then?
And where are you going?
I don't know.
When do you leave? Tonight?
No, I'm super busy tonight.
Weren't you supposed to get out
of Khatereh's life,
you useless f*cking junkie?
What have you written here?
Hey, calm down, old man!
I'm doing public service here!
Goddammit!
Useless, junkie.
Useless, junkie.
I can't buy a pack of
cigarettes for under 5,000?
No fake junk sh*t?
Just give me some sh*t to smoke!
Don't do that.
I'll put them back in order.
Just give me 5,000 worth of Bistoons.
"DISTRICT TERMINAL" WRITTEN BY
RAMIN H., UNPUBLISHABLE
I loved every day we had together,
even the worst.
You're a better friend to me
than you are to yourself.
My unpublished poet, I love you.
What's happened, Sara?
Nothing.
Some days I just can't stop crying.
Father, dear.
Sara, please don't!
I have the best wishes for you.
I'll buy the ticket myself, Peyman.
Go join Pari
and the eternal punishment...
A HERO'S su1c1de
You're saving us all, my boy.
You're not going anywhere.
You'll stay right here till you drown.
A flood should take us all away.
It should wash all this sh*t away.
Let's go back in time, Father:
to our beginning, to the dark.
This is the difference between us.
Like father, like son!
Injection.
The earth's temperature will rise
two to 11 degrees by the year 2100.
Our job is arresting the people
who spread the virus.
I'm sorry.
Want me to dial Tr*mp for you?
You won't reach the future.
You will all die.
Peyman! Peyman!
Pari messaged, says it's important.
Something must have happened.
Go change and bring your laptop.
Hurry up!
OK.
We're talking about a lifetime together.
Peyman was supposed
to do a few simple things,
like working out,
learning English, learning to drive.
- It's not just about coming to the US.
- What do you mean?
The point was building a life together.
I don't trust Peyman.
I've even doubted Peyman's
love for me.
So you've been lying to me for a year?
I wasn't lying.
I was giving you some motivation
to see what you do with it.
You mean you haven't done anything
for Peyman's immigration?
What about that case number?
No, I haven't.
Peyman has let me down
more and more.
He's not even willing to wear a ring.
I'm not done with this, of course.
I still hope Peyman can try
and prove himself to me.
I admire Peyman, living in that country
and still caring about poetry
and nature and such things.
But he needs to know
that life is hard here.
It needs hard work and persistence.
I've been putting up with your sh*t,
smoking heroin, for a year.
Shut up!
Worthless punk! I had to smoke
to listen to your cheap bullshit.
What are you saying?
Shut up!
- You're nothing without me.
- I hate you, I'm happy it didn't work!
I gave you everything you have.
- f*ck it!
- I'll call you back.
- You deserve to stay there and rot!
- f*ck you...
Say you take your book back,
what'll you do with it?
Publish it underground?
What about distribution, then?
You've thought of that?
I wanted it to be published. Take it.
Let's see what you do without a permit.
Without ministry approval,
let's see who reads it.
What are you doing?
Are you nuts? He's set it on fire!
If mankind does not put an end to
destroying the environment and nature,
nature will determine
the end point of mankind.
But this won't just
affect the Third World,
which no one would care about.
Since this morning,
the virus has been moving inside
a severe sandstorm towards you,
and the government, by constructing
sound and firm quarantines,
has appointed forces
called "quarantine enforcers"
to guide endangered people
to the quarantines...
It's getting colder.
Yeah, winter came early this year.
Another blackout.
Yes.
It might come back tomorrow.
What is that?
I don't know.
It keeps getting bigger.
Maybe there's been an expl*si*n.
Has the w*r started?
It's so beautiful.
Something's happening.
Aren't you scared?
Yes.
I'm scared, too.
District Terminal (2021)
Moderator: Maskath3