(Extract: Chronicles from Iran, abridged and adapted)
Iranians, men and women, are undoubtedly potty on football. It is difficult to beat an Iranian fan on the subject of the transfers of international players, their clubs and the number of goals or corners in a match.
The Islamic Republic has, for more than thirty years, carefully tried to separate men and women in public, not always successfully but more often than not at the expense of becoming the laughing stock of people. On the presence of women in stadiums, the Islamic Republic stubbornly holds his ground.
No is no! No women, virgin or married, in the stadiums. According to the ayatollahs the question is of paramount importance for the survival of the country. The foundations of an Islamic society will certainly be shattered if a woman whistles, cheers and shouts Olé! in a stadium.
By contrast, the ayatollahs are not worried about the kids who rummage through the rubbish of exclusive neighbourhoods to feed themselves. For them, these kids are just cockroaches, unworthy of applying the Sharia. To sum up the country is in ruin but it is a matter of great urgency to keep away women from stadiums.
The obsession of the ayatollahs on women’s issues is totally surrealist in the triangle of: Sex Football Tartuffe.
For them, wenches have to stay home, wipe baby’s bottom, prepare food and hose down. Outside the house, women are the cause of lewdness in men. The shamelessness of the public statements of ayatollahs result in more than spicy jests among drunkards. Some ayatollahs, learned doctors of the Sharia, comment: “Even if women have no sexual pleasure in seeing the hairy bare legs of men, still, it cannot be endorsed by the Islamic morality.” … “The gathering of men and women in stadiums is forbidden since it leads to debauchery.”
Molière’s Tartuffe said:
Cover your bosom. The flesh is weak.
Souls are forever hurt by such sights,
When sinful thoughts begin their evil flights.
The woman (Dorine) replied:
It seems temptation makes a meal of you,
To turn you on, a glimpse of flesh will do.
Inside your heart, a furnace must be housed.
For me, I’m not easily aroused.
I could see you naked, head to toe –
Never be tempted once, and this I know.
Remember, Offside, the movie of the Iranian director, Jafar Panahi, in 2006. The story was that of an Iranian girl disguised as a boy who went to see a match and was arrested by the guardians of the Islamic morality.
In Iran’s today, women, in company of their men and a large bowl of adjil, stay in front of the TV to watch the games live as it pleases dictatorship, with thirty to forty seconds pre-recorded to allow the possible intervention of censorship (no women, un-scarfed, with low neckline, and bosom lines must be shown). Brazilian cartoonists would have a field day, if they knew what’s worrying the ayatollahs in Tehran.
