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The Boron Sheikh @dasfuller.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Currently reading Shahriar Mandanipour’s “Censoring an Iranian Love Story.” It’s been incredible so far.

long assignment and headed for materialist China, whose relationship with Muslim countries was improving day by day. Well, where do you think the best place is in China to scientifically research techniques for deleting counterrevolutionary symbols and methods of population increase? Obviously in Chinese pencil factories.
Ask me what I mean, and, by the way, also ask me how all these labyrinthine tales relate to a simple love story. And I will say:
As a matter of fact, the tales are very much related to our love story.
Just as a pencil can freely write the words of a nauseating love story replete with veiled sexual undertones as a service to a corrupt counter-revolutionary culture, it can also be the instrument with which the sentences of that same story are crossed out. The same way that a pencil in the hands of a corrupt-minded writer or spy or traitor can transfer words that, consciously or subconsciously, carry the viruses of a decadent Western culture, it can also, with the sharpness of its tip, like the needle of a syringe, inject the vaccine against the same antirevolution microbes in the population's veins. On the other hand, think about it, what a highly consumed commodity pencils must be in a country where thousands of writers and poets write to become the greatest writer or poet in the world, and facing them, thousands of people read what they have written to cross out instances of their immorality.

When Sinbad returned to Iran from his fact-finding mission, in his pocket he had a small contract to import high-quality Chinese pencils to offset the presence of illicit Western pencils. In two years and seven months, through his government position and the friends he had made in the customs department and the marketplace, Sinbad became the largest importer of handsome Chinese pencils. He resigned from his government job to make room for other creative young people to rise. He relocated his import-export business to Tehran and spent all his energy, ingenuity, and experience on importing pencils that did not write at all, and therefore did not burden anyone with the inconvenience of having to cross out and delete any words.
In the process of this revolutionary service, Sinbad amassed a large for-tune. His annual income was far more than the seventy-five million dollars that Mr. Bush's political machine had once earmarked for changing Iran's political regime. Sometimes, in the company of his merchant