"Can't we save the world next week?"

From Persian Pilgrimages by Afshin Molavi. Page 92.

A "Blasphemous" Play

While I was in Mashhad, a controversy had erupted in Tehran over a student play that allegedly insulted the Hidden Imam, Shi'a Islam's messiah-like figure who had gone into hiding 1,125 years ago and whom the faithful expect, like any messiah, to return and bring jus­tice to the world. Hard-liners in the government attacked the play, blaming the newly liberalized press for creating "a climate of blasphemy". Reformists countered that Iran's hard-liners were recklessly creating a national crisis over a minor student publication. The controversy erupted into the latest row between the two sides, breathlessly reported in the newspapers.

The student's script—it had never made it to the stage—was actually a satire on Iran's tough college entrance examinations. In the play a young man meets the long-awaited Hidden Imam, who informs him that he has been selected to help bring justice and order to the world. The young man balks. He has college entrance exams the next day, he tells the imam. He has studied obsessively, he explains, and cannot afford to miss them. He then turns to the imam and asks: "Can't we save the world next week?"

Iran's yearly college entrance exams overwhelm Iranian teenagers and their families with anxiety. Of the 1,500,000 Iranians who sat for the exams in 2000, only 130,000 were accepted. The exam results not only designate those who gain or lose dear spots in the university but also determine a student's future course of study and therefore his life. The young man in the play, like most young Iranians, could think of nothing else—not even redemption and an opportunity to save the world.