Multiple Personality Disorder

Synopsis:

Simin wants to make Zereshk Polo with chicken for her husband, Nader, and her daughter, Tarmeh.  All arrangements have been made, except for the chicken meat. Nader does not want to disappoint her, especially since they have not had chicken meat for days, and also since his father is suffering from meat deficiency diseases, but because of the expensive chicken meat he is forced to tell Simin to make Zereshk Polo without chicken, and just to buy a piece of chicken wing to give to his father so he would not die as the result of lack of protein. Simin is not convinced and tells him to bring the money that’s put away so we can buy chicken meat for everyone. Isn’t it so that the money is been saved for a rainy day, since chicken meat is so expensive what better rainy day than this?! Nader is not convinced and says there will be worse days than this. A day will come when we must even eat polo without zereshk, or zereshk without polo. This dispute among them forces Simin to go to the local poultry shop and ask to but the chicken meat on a loan, but the poultry shop denies her request, and she is shamed and goes to her father’s house. Tarmeh decides to stay with her father and foregoes eating chicken, and hopes that her mother would return to them also, and they would all become vegetarians. Nader's father’s lack of high-protein meat diet is making him more and more frail, day after day, and he no longer is able to take care of him, so he is forced to hire a servant, Razia, under this condition that she would bring him to full health with feeding him one piece of chicken wing per day. Razia, who is pregnant, accepts this impossible job without informing her husband, Hojat.

One day Nader returns home unannounced and finds his father, who is tied to the bed and had fallen to the ground, left alone by himself, and finds Razia in the kitchen cleaning her lips, and no sign of the chicken wing. A big fight ensues between the two. Razia had contacted her Source of Emulation by phone and asked him, under famine conditions which is more of a sin and which one is more prudent to do, the death of an old man to save a fetus, or the death of a fetus in return for keeping an old man alive. The Source of Emulation told her, if one eats something and one has doubts whether one has eaten that thing, even though eating it would have caused an old man to die, or a fetus to survive, then eating that thing is not prohibited, but it is prudent that nothing remains of the eaten thing. The fight between Nader and Razia got bigger, meanwhile the fetus is aborted and Razia gets transferred to the hospital. Hojat blames the loss of the fetus on Nader’s accusations of Razia’s eating the chicken wing without showing any proof, and he take him to the court. This tragedy effects every member of the family and ...

The moral of the story:

As the consequence of the chicken meat being so expensive, Nader’s life and his family fell apart, but it also overloaded the court, getting them behind on sentencing people charged with Enmity with God …