Socially peripheral, symbolically central: Sima in Behrouz Afkhami’s Shokaran

Behrouz Afkhami’s Shokaran (Hemlock) (2000), produced by Howzeh Honari, set in 1995, depicts Mahmoud, a happily married man who finds himself stuck on the junction of religiosity and modernity. Mahmoud, who is religious-minded, becomes attracted to Sima, a widowed head nurse, and suggests that they contract sigheh. Mahmoud keeps his sigheh marriage a secret, and soon decides to end it, but Sima is pregnant. Sima threatens to ruin Mahmoud’s life, but realizes that she cannot do it. At the end of the film, Mahmoud is driving home with his wife when he realizes the road is blocked because of an accident. In Shokaran, Afkhami exposes a number of social problems, including sigheh marriage, and how religious regulations are used as a facade to justify social injustice. He sheds light on the double standards dominant in sigheh marriages. He dramatizes how the political becomes personal as individuals strive for morality. Through the character of Sima, Afkhami’s Shokaran reflects how the social and moral corruption of the time is mapped onto a woman’s body and how in order to eradicate social and moral corruption, a woman’s body has to be eradicated. Sima, who was desired and lusted after at the beginning, suddenly becomes despised and stigmatized. In this way, the socially peripheral Sima becomes symbolically central for she poses a serious threat to Mahmoud’s nekah marriage. Afkhami portrays a realistic treatment of love, sexuality and women through Sima’s body, which becomes the catalyst for a symbolic struggle between the social, religious and sexual forces.