LITERARY INFELICITY

Gina Gershon and the Persian Subway Plot

or,
There Are No Wheat Thins in Tehran
by
Jason Kucharsky

The following transcript of a hotel-room conversation by two Iranian diplomats has been translated from the Farsi by some Persian kid who works the coffee stand outside the N.Y. headquarters of the F.B.I.

mo: Well, what the fuck do we do now?

aziz: I don’t know, I told you we shouldn’t have gone down there!

mo: I know, but come on I was tired of filming the same bullshit, day in day out. Who gives a fuck about Lady Liberty, or the U.N.? From what I gather, the people of this city would probably want us to blow the fuck out of both of them.

aziz: What the hell are you talking about, Mohamed?

mo: I’m serious; you think they want our foreign-diplomat asses wasting all that good real estate, and taking all of their parking spots? I’m sure Trump would be A-O.K. with us taking that entire fucking building down, making way for some pretty choice condos. Not to mention the fact that most of these people despise the fucking French, and would love to shove that bitch statue up Chirac’s frog ass.

aziz: Watch what the fuck your saying! I don’t know if that Ashcroft cat cares if we’re diplomats or not.

mo: What, you think they’re taping us?

aziz: I don’t know, they did find us filming most of their tourist spots, and we are brown.

mo: Even if they are taping us, how many of these fools can actually speak Arabic? But if it makes you feel any better, we can switch it up to Farsi.

aziz: Agreed. How long you think there gonna hold us?

mo: I’m not quite sure. I mean, all we were really doing was “making home movies, for the folks back home, of all these weird creatures who lock up their spirits, drill holes in themselves, and live for the secrets.”

aziz: You and that Radiohead—come on, this is serious. These people are at war with us. What if they send us to Cuba?

mo: They’re not sending us to Cuba, we’re diplomats.

aziz: Yeah, from one of the Axis of Evil though.

mo: Relax; the U.S. is not at war with Iran. Not yet anyway.

aziz: So, how long are they gonna keep us? I feel like these walls are closing in on us.

mo: What the fuck are you talking about? They have us in a hotel suite—relax and have a drink from the minibar.

aziz: Might as well, I guess. They got any Jack?

mo: Try the Jameson, it’s smoother.

aziz: Thanks. Ah, that’s the stuff. You know it does kind of suck we have to go back so soon. There was still a lot of shit I wanted to do. Never been to Fenway, or the Grand Canyon. Come to think of it they probably won’t ever let us back in again.

mo: Well, we are trying to destroy their civilization.

aziz: So we are going to Cuba then, fuck!

mo: We are not going to Cuba, that’s for enemy combatants and traitors I think.

aziz: What if they’re still pissed about that hostage stuff back in ’79?

mo: Calm the fuck down, we have immunity!

aziz: I mean how long did we have those guys for anyway?

mo: I don’t know, we were like four years old.

aziz: Right, and like we still don’t blame these fuckers for the Crusades, and—are there any chips in there?

mo: Yeah, Wheat Thins or Pringles?

aziz: Pringles. I’m just saying we have pretty long memories.

mo: What and we shouldn’t?

aziz: I’m just saying.

mo: What are you saying?

aziz: I’m just . . . well, it’s been pretty good over here.

mo: I knew it! You don’t wanna go back do you?

aziz: Of course I do! It’s just I don’t know. What are we going back to? I’m certainly not up for overthrowing the Mullahs. Look how the last Revolution went down.

mo: Maybe they should send us to Gitmo, it might just toughen you up a little.

aziz: What are you saying, you wanna go back to Iran and overthrow our own government? If I’m gonna be doing any killing it’s certainly not gonna be my own people, that’s for sure. I love when that prick O’Reilly says stupid shit like “When are these people gonna learn America can’t fight all their battles for them, they have to rise up, blah, blah , blah.” As if he were Patrick fucking Henry, or Benedict Arnold.

mo: I’m pretty sure Arnold was a traitor.

aziz: I’m just saying. It’s as if he’s unaware that his governments have been propping up our autocrats for the last fifty years or so. Like it’s so easy for us to rise up against the fuckhead rulers, while G.I. Joe is protecting them, and more importantly our oil. Allah put all that oil under our people for a reason; it should be all of ours.

mo: Here we go again with the socialism.

aziz: I’m not talking communists; I’m just saying why the fuck are most of our people hungry and illiterate?

mo: I always like to blame it on the Jews.

aziz: Me too. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stomach the Jews.

mo: I kinda like that Gina Gershon though.

aziz: I thought she was Greek.