NOVEL

Manoucher Parvin's Alethophobia (IBEX Publishers, 2007) revolves around the life of the Iranian-born Professor Pirooz who lives
mostly in his own imagination; he is everywhere and yet he is nowhere.
He dissimulates and dissimulates, yet loses control of himself and
speaks his mind - in spite of his efforts - at all costs.

EXCERPT

A·leth·o·pho·bi·a ( a˘ -leth- o' - fo´be- a˘) n. 1. A crippling fear of truth. 2. The inability to accept unflattering facts about your nation, religion, culture, ethnic group, or yourself. [Greek aletho, truth + phobia Late Latin, from Greek, from phobos, fear.] a·leth·o·pho´bi·ac´ (-ak) n. A·leth·o´pho´bic (-fo´bik, fob´ik) adj. & n. Alethphobically

Chapter One / PandaHeat
Stepping out of the shower and drying, I stare at my nakedness in the steamy mirror and admit with a shy but satisfied smile: Pirooz, you were a dirty old man when you were born, and you will be a naughty boy when you die.

I have always been a victim of my passions, not only the passion of my loins, mind you, but also the passion of my mind. From my untimely pre-pubescent erection in the women's bathhouse in my native Tehran, when I was just five years old -- I will tell you about that later --to my current basketful of predicaments here at Ohio Eastern, where I have landed as a Professor of Political Economy.

As I rush from room to room looking for my shoes, the radio reminds me that the New Hampshire primary is just one month away. The radio does not have to remind me that my Christmas break is over, and in just forty minutes, shoes or no shoes, I must be planted in the well of a lecture hall twenty-two miles away.

I find my shoes, a small but comforting victory. Tugging at the strings, I wish that life were a long Christmas break, with meaningful good wishes and no evil thoughts. Now, dammit, where is my belt?

The radio now tells me that it will be virtually impossible for any of the eight Democrats slogging around up there in the snowstorms to defeat Ronald Reagan in the fall. The recession is over and the successful invasion of Grenada has erased the shame of the Vietnam defeat from the collective consciousness of the right-wingers. Taxes have been slashed, the unions have been punished, and the poor have become poorer according to the Department of Labor Statistics. It is "Morning in America"once again, President Reagan says.

It is also morning again in Ohio, and just like New Hampshire, it is hellishly cold.

My car rolls from my driveway as if by itself. My house, surrounded by huge oaks, is in the hills at the western edge of the city. The early morning ice storm has sculpted a surreal scene: glistening crystals embellish everything in sight; miniature rainbows burst into space; dazzling colors make love. Snow-veiled pines march in couples, accompanied by Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"oozing from my car stereo. Despite the morning's brightness, the sun is strangely anemic, as if just released from a Milky Way's hospital.

A series of winding side roads deposit me on the highway, which is covered with ice, turning my routine drive to the university into a treacherous expedition. I drive cautiously and fight my fear of losing control. Then, as usual, my mind switches and I worry about my son, Bobby. What would he do without me -- his only parent -- if I were killed in an automobile accident?

I must confess, however, that I am worried about more than my death this morning. I am also worried about my life. As a professor, my business ought to be the production and distribution of knowledge. But, like my colleagues, I surf the surface of the subject matter and teach half-truths. It is unprofessional to raise inadmissible questions. For instance, what makes us cherish our system or way of life without knowing the alternatives? How do we fall for fads, and fashions, and tolerate crime like Londoners tolerate rain, and hate a new nation, like a new monster every other year? Who has the answers to those questions in America the beautiful? Is it possible we share a national paranoia, perhaps? I wonder who I would be without fear -- who I am with fear?

In the past, heads were stuffed with less information and less misinformation because less of both was available. Maybe that was a good thing. In the modern era, depending on our birthplace and family circumstance, different cultural ideologies, religions, and opposing scientific theories or historical accounts are flashed on screens or blasted from speakers and are. packed into our brains like stuffing and portrayed as the truth. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not. And most times it's a mix of the two. So, maybe for us all, consciousness is not what it used to be, and won't be what it ought to be. I scream. "Freud, wake up! We need you."

The icy highway leads to the city limits and passes over the great flat valley where once most of the world's ball bearings were manufactured. The city retains its motto: "Keeping the World Rolling". Of course, the factories have been rolling abroad all along. The empty brown factories, roofs covered with snow, and walls dripping elephant tusks of ice, look like enormous gingerbread houses.

My mind wanders again. I look ahead to class. What is this Political Economy I teach? I describe the course as the study of how the political and economic forces interact to determine individual and group behaviors. For instance, how people like you and me get screwed when politicians and businessmen sleep together. There are many forms of getting screwed. I am ashamed to admit it, but like other professors at the university, I teach my students what to think, rather than how to think. So they puke my lectures back to me on multiple-choice tests and do whatever is necessary -- even cheat I suppose -- to get the grades they need to get ahead. Most suffer no shame.

And I am no better as I plod along the slippery road. I pretend to be dedicated, to what I pretend to be doing, and I pretend to appreciate my students' pretended dedication. This is a lot of pretension, you and I might agree. When I think of the classroom, I feel like an old priest who has become a closet atheist preaching to parishioners who pretend to be awake. I can hear the guilt gurgling through the chambers of my heart. So, my frustrations pile up as the semesters pile up. I want to confess, expose, and demand real academic freedom as I once did as a radical student in the Sixties. Today, I am just a cowardly professor. I hate my muted voice. I am waiting for the right moment to rebel -- but it seems forever. Meanwhile, as you'll see, sex and poetry sublimate for my instinctual drive to be myself! "Freud, interpret this!"

Administrators want efficiency without intellectual headaches. So, it follows that conformity must rule instead of ideas. It is worse, perhaps, on this conservative campus in a city that used to be run by a KKK front. The problem for a professor begins at the beginning when the thrill of teaching is dulled by the dread of being denied tenure -- censored from the profession for which you have spent a lifetime preparing. This dread keeps even the young academic lions on a tight leash. Little by little, the system either tames you or releases you into the jungle.

My brain makes another switch. "When complacency wins, the soul suffers," J.J. said last week as I faced the urinal, trying to enjoy one of my few pleasures left at Ohio Eastern. My mind easily wanders to my friend.

J.J. is one of the university's janitors. He is an old man, decorated for his service in World War II, during a time when far too many black men were only allowed to cook food and carry supplies for the white soldiers.

He was born Jerome Jackson, but on the silver anniversary of his employment, he had his name legally changed to Just Janitor. But the changed name didn't reflect what was under his skin. He received a BA in philosophy at the age of sixty-three, and I like him very much.

I laugh under my breath as I recall a few days before, when I ran into J.J. in the bathroom near my office. With my zipper still open and my right hand busy holding me, I replied, "Amen. Wake up the professors, J.J.! We are all sleepwalking! Sleeptalking! Sleepthinking! Sleepfighting each other for nothing! We are prisoners, J.J., serving concurrent life sentences for what amounts to our expertise, and our pettiness! Prisoners!"

J.J. just shook his head. "You really made my day with that bit of wisdom, Pirooz. After forty years of cleaning toilets, the last thing I want to be is a prisoner in a men's room."

"Your voice shouldn't be trapped in the men's room. You have the heart of a poet, J.J."

I leap from my driving daze when I hear a horn blowing and realize I am driving on thin ice at the moment, and professionally for some time. I slow down and try to maintain a safe distance from the other cars. An overturned car in the opposite lane frightens me and traffic momentarily slides to a halt. I ask the dog I see sitting on the distant overpass why Dr. S. Patterson "Pete"Wright, the Alabama-born president of the university, didn't cancel today's classes? The dog just wags its tail, as dogs do when they are happy.

Finally, the traffic moves again, and I can see the ice-encased university tower twinkling its greeting to me. I relax and congratulate myself: "You have made it, Pirooz!" The giant centipede of cars in which I'm trapped inches forward, following the curving exit ramp. Suddenly, the pickup truck in front of me veers left then right and hits his brakes. I panic and slam my brakes as the driver behind me sounds his horn and slams his. The driver behind him follows suit and I cringe awaiting the inevitable crunch of metal. Only the driver at the ass-end of the centipede fails to brake, and instead, slams into the car in front of him, which of course, starts an icy, sliding chain reaction. The slamming works its way to me with a loud crash, and my vehicle bashes into the pickup that started the whole thing.

Stunned by the jolt of crumbling metal, I stay put. I hear many anxious voices, but the voice of one woman rises above the others. "Get the man in the Beetle,"she commands. "I'll get this one."

Flashing lights and people in uniform appear as though rising out of the chaos itself, seeing as how they were just down the road with the other accident. I am shocked and feel a throbbing on my forehead. Arms reach in and gently pull me out of the car. I find myself in the arms of a policewoman. Her golden hair sneaks from under her hat and onto her uniform like rays of sun on the blue dome of a mosque. Her turquoise eyes sparkle with confidence. "Professor Pirooz? There is a bit of blood on your forehead,"she says.

Still not quite myself, I try to place this policewoman. I have no clues. But she isn't a stranger either, this much I know. Her enigmatic smile holds me tight as she shuts the ambulance doors. I find myself in motion again. My mind continues to cling to her satin skin. The taste of her touch transforms me from a bleeding Homo Sapient into a jubilant peacock! For a moment, I feel I'm in heaven, and not in an ambulance.

Siren. Emergency room. More disorders within disorder. I wait and wait until a physician with an Indian accent places a bandage on my forehead. "Wear a seat belt from now on,"I am advised. After signing forms, I am finally released into the wild as I was years ago from the immigration office after my swearing-in ceremony -- my American birthday.

That evening, the news dramatizes the pileup. I groan as I watch myself in the arms of that voluptuous policewoman. She is beauty, authority, and compassion, the stuff of the ancient goddesses, all in one mortal bundle. I wish I had passed out in her arms! Helpless, I write this silly poem to pass time and to help myself smile at the human condition, summed up in my feeble condition and complaint:

She seduced me to imagine the taste of her carrot cake,

To awake my appetite for her juicy sweet carrot cake.

This wasn't for my sake, her sake, or even for God's sake --

Just the commands of DNA to awake my duck for a dunk in her cake.

Time will fiddle with poison, earth will become hell, and so in history's wake

The last duck breathing the last foul breath will quack:

Who is awake to dunk into a carrot cake!

Quack, Quack.

This poem may sound sexist to you. This is the sad rationale: It has been discovered that ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a specific part of the brain, holds unconscious pseudo social knowledge such as sexism -- as in the notion that man is superior to woman. Apparently my unconscious sexism has not yet caught up with my conscious feminism.

A few weeks later, I find myself in traffic court, charged with "Failure to control the vehicle, and/or maintain, a sure, clear distance."