When a common pain is shouted out Hajmohammadi: Given the global success of the book The Buddha was not demolished in Afghanistan; it collapsed out of shame, we would like to put some questions to you to assist foreign and domestic publishers in hitting upon more successful techniques in developing Iranian publications for foreign markets. We think your views can be very useful for them. Why did you decide to translate this work and how did the book Buddha enter the international market? What was your primary intent in writing it? Mohsen Makhmalbaf: A year before the 9/11 incident I made a secret trip to Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban. On the outskirts of the city Herat, I saw about 20,000 Afghans dying from hunger. When I returned to Tehran I witnessed the government desperate to dispatch Afghans from Iran. When I traveled to other countries I understood that the people of the world had no information about the circumstances of the Afghans so I decided to make the movie Kandahar as a vehicle to inform the international community about this country. During the period when I was making the film along the border of Iran and Afghanistan, I witnessed the swarming masses of hungry, refugee Afghans seeking shelter in Iran from hunger and insecurity. Approximately half of each group managed to reach Iran while the other half died enroute due to disease and war. Land mines were particularly menacing on the journey. Those that reached Iran where all vomiting and generally sick because of drinking polluted water and widespread malnourishment during their passage. The border guards had orders to arrest the refugees and send them back to Afghanistan. As a result, all those who had come to Iran were widely scattered across the desert like cats and dogs. Our film crew had to stop working to help these people. One day an Afghan girl who was the same age as my youngest daughter died in my arms before I could do anything for her. Ultimately the crew was banned from working and we started off for another region. All that I had seen in the border areas and the general ignorance of the world motivated me to reveal the pains of a forgotten nation in the book titled Buddha was not demolished in Afghanistan; it collapsed out of shame. I remember that everyone complained about the destruction of the Buddha’s statue but no one spoke about the death of 2.5 million Afghans that had taken place during the last 20 years. At first I suggested the Iranian print media publish this book as an article. The text was given from one well known publisher to another but none cared to print it. One of them said that it’s too long, it has to be summarized. The other said, “Don’t you have anything about the 2nd of Khordad?” Another said that the government has decided to repatriate the Afghans, the article would increase the Iranians sympathy for Afghans and thus was considered effectively banned. Finally the article was published in one of the newspapers through the mediation of one of my friends. Of course, it was buried in the inside pages. The same newspaper published its readers’ replies to my story. They questioned: don’t we have any problems of our own that you are mentioning the pains of another nation? Some even honored me be by spreading the rumor that my ancestors are Afghan. I sent the work for translation in Iran. It turned out as a small English booklet of which I took about 100 copies with me to the Cannes Film Festival. Over there I did some 300 interviews about the movie Kandahar, during 10 days. But each interview took an average time of 15 minutes. I didn’t have the time to say all I wanted to say or what the reporters wanted to hear. Thus after each interview I gave one booklet to each reporter and asked them to refer to it for any further information. After the Cannes festival and before 9/11, the French newspaper L’Humanite which has a daily circulation of 100,000, serialized the booklet in 10 consecutive parts. After that the entire work was printed once again in full in L’Humanite’s weekly magazine in another run of 100,000 copies. After that The Guardian printed parts of it and in Iran Tarh-e-No Publications offered it to the market as a Farsi book. Nashr-e-Ney (of Iran) published 1,000 copies in French. Then the 9/11 incident took place. All of a sudden forgotten Afghanistan became the world’s number one center of attention. As Shamloo says: “I am common pain, shout me out”. But I had shouted out the common pain of 9/11 before that and thus the booklet became an item of immediate media interest. In France a publishing house printed 10,000 copies of it as an individual volume. The Japanese printed it in four editions. The text, which can be downloaded in English at the Makhmalbaf Film House site (www.makhmalbaf.com) was translated and published as a book in in Brazil, Korea and Greece. In addition the book was printed in Italy, Bosnia and America. A German magazine published the full text and it was printed in Switzerland as well. After that we lost count but kept receiving e-mails from different countries asking permission to print the text. Do you have any other translated books? Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Except for the book Buddha was not destroyed in Afghanistan; it collapsed out of shame, my book The Sultan’s lake was translated and published in Turkey and the book Crystal garden was translated into English and 1,000 copies were printed in Iran by Nashr-e-Ney Publications. This year the same work has been translated in France and (in the coming week) will be published in a run of 1,000 copies. A complete list of all my books and articles that have been translated in Iran and in foreign countries can be found on the Makhmalbaf Film House website. What should we do to globalize Iranian books? Mohsen Makhmalbaf: Despite the fact that Iranian cinema has become international, Iranian literature has essentially remained limited to a national audience. Iranian books don’t even have a presence in countries that speak our language such as Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Farsi is the tongue of only 100 million people out of the six billion around the globe despite its beauty, antiquity and richness. Then too, we have censorship and the nationalist viewpoint of Iranian writers that hold no attraction whatsoever for a global audience. It is common worldwide that literature finds its audience when it speaks about common pains. Another problem is the range of our translators. Most of them are skillful in translating other languages into Farsi but not vice versa. I spoke before about Shamloo’s theme of common pain. And I have to add that Shamloo was a whale who swam in the lake of the Farsi language. Thus his enormous imaginary and artistic feelings have remained unknown for hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Yet we can see poets of far less stature than Shamloo, that are recognized worldwide due to the vast audience their language affords them. For developing Iranian publications among other nations we have to establish a qasi-governmental qasi-private sector organization. This body could coordinate the translation of Farsi books into other languages. This could be done with the cooperation of universities that teach foreign languages. Foreign authors and translators who have learnt Farsi have to be identified and utilized for translating the masterpieces of Iranian literature. At present nothing is being done for expanding translations from Farsi to other languages. First a semi-governmental organization has to provide a preliminary structure through paying subsides and providing facilities and then the private sector could carry on with the rest of the work. The Iranian international cinema went through the same process. At first the international division of the Farabi Cinema Foundation started the work but now the private sector is managing the whole of the work on its own.