Iranians Terrorism, anti-American sentiment, military ...
Iranians in the summer of 1998
Terrorism, anti-American sentiment, military threat, religious fanaticism. It was humbling for me to admit my nervousness as I approached the Iranian border station, which seemed almost comical in its disrepair and yet was the only recognizable authority in this isolated desert some thirty kilometers east of the Turkish town of Dogubeyazit. I had mistakenly believed myself to be beyond the fears of Iran with which my American childhood had been partially constructed, and yet when I was called out of the line and led to an office out of view of all other humans, I began to wonder whether going to Iran had been such a good idea after all.
Three weeks later I found myself in a cafe off Tajrish Square in the midst of Tehran’s upscale northern neighborhoods. I was lingering over a chocolate milkshake, reading an article on freedom of the press in the latest issue of “Payam-e Imruz,” while trying to ignore -- and still finding myself drawn to -- the noise of the young people, girls and boys, chatting away, smoking, giggling, enjoying ice-cream together.
The border administrator into whose office I had been quickly led greeted me eagerly and told me how happy he was that I had come to Iran. He sat me down, offered me tea, and told me that he only needed to know why I had come to Iran and where exactly I planned to spend my time. Before sending me on my way, he cautioned me to have my visa updated if I intended to stay longer than the month which the Iranian Embassy in Ankara had allotted me. Before I knew it, I was outside in the bright sun, surrounded by eager money-changers. A chunk of Iranian riyals was placed in my hand in exchange for an American fifty, and I was on my way to Tabriz, the first major Iranian city ahead of me. I guess the influence of my American education was still with me. I just couldn’t believe I was actually in Iran. That night in Tabriz as I walked along with Ferhad, a university student whom I had met at a fruit juice stand near the central park, Bagh-e Gulistan, the conversation turned to America. It seems fear of America had been as much a part of his education as fear of Iran had been of mine. As we parted, he said, “Still, young Iranians, and even not so young ones, have begun to change their ideas about America, are at least willing to consider it differently.” These Iranians to which he referred slowly became a part of my life during the next four weeks.
*****
Another hot and noisy afternoon accompanied me along the crowded streets around Shah-e Cheragh, Shiraz’s major shrine. A beautiful medieval educational structure, Madrase-ye Khan, where religion had been taught to aspiring clerics for centuries, became for me a refuge from the sun that afternoon.
The vacated grounds were a sign of the summer holiday. The handful of workers repairing the northern portico soon left too. One soul remained to greet me and invite me into the shade of the school’s garden. He was quite thin, rather emaciated looking in his white robe. Both his beard and the hair on his head were matted together in clumps, a predictable appearance for a man who had spent the past thirty hours on a bus from the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad to make the pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Shah-e Cheragh.
“Why do Americans hate Iranians?” The candor of his question indicated his comfort with me, and I wanted to respond in kind, but being an American guest in Iran, I did not wish to dwell upon allegations of terrorism, nor did it seem right at that moment to raise American reservations about the presence of an Islamic republic in the modern world. Instead, I mentioned the hostages. Americans, I said, had not forgotten. And the ill-will, I added, was hardly a one-way street. What of those slogans, “Death to America,” “The Great Satan,” and so on? Such words, I informed him, did not leave a favorable impression on the American populace. A genuine look of regret appeared on his face, and he tried to explain.
People in general, he claimed, were now very sorry about the hostages and hoped Americans could leave the event where it was, in the past. The use of the word, “satan,” he explained, was more complex. In Iran, it only signified someone with the qualities of a trickster, who says one thing and does another for the sake of some gain, without any regard for others. He said Iranians used it often enough for one another, even for children trying to get their way.
He then became much more serious. Iranians may have taken a handful of Americans hostage and burnt American flags, but it was done openly, without any ambiguity of purpose. This is nothing in comparison to the suffering America has inflicted upon us, saying one thing and doing another. How many thousands have died in the Iran-Iraq war, in Afghanistan, by American-supplied weapons? And why does America make every effort to distort the image of Islam, especially Islam in Iran? Actually, we are the moderates. Our Afghani neighbors are the extremists, tribal people who have never managed to speak anything but their barbarian Pushto tongue. Yet America, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is financing them, creating a regime which knows neither reason nor civilization in order to convince the world how awful Islam is. Add to that the fact that the Taliban regime, Sunni extremists, are a highly destabilizing element in the region, especially for Iran and its Shi‘ite majority, another plus for American interests. Yes, he concluded, America was the great trickster.
His line of reasoning was sound, and I did not doubt that my government, like any other, was working to promote its interests in the world, but his argument smacked of conspiracy theory, and without saying it, I began to wonder whether American intelligence was as competent as this Mr. Seyyid Hussein believed and actually capable of achieving its goals with the organized manipulation that he claimed for it. Still, I began to see with greater clarity the enormous gap that separated our two visions of the world and the role played by global politics in blocking greater mutual understanding across national boundaries. As we parted with a warm smile and firm handshake, he said to me, “I hope more Americans and Iranians can talk like this.”
*****
Others viewed America less critically. Almost everyone to whom I revealed my country of origin stood before me open-mouthed for at least ten-seconds before regaining some semblance of composure. Nearly all treated me as a personal guest. The fruit juice vendors refused my money, at least for the first glass. One young man whom I met at one of the fruit juice stands awkwardly pressed a pomegranate into my hand, saying it was all he could offer. I awkwardly received it, knowing it was all he could offer. During four weeks, only two Iranians did not welcome me warmly. Both had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war and, I believe, held America partly responsible for its role in arming Iraq. One had received a bullet to his abdominal area; the other had inhaled chemical gas into his respiratory system.
The respect, even adulation, with which I as an American was greeted, puzzled me, and I began to consider reasons to explain why this might be so. A Shirazi hotel manager in business for fifteen years said I was the third American he had come across. Was my warm reception due to rarity, like the exotic bird whose appearance seasoned watchers greet with joy or at least relief in knowing that the species still exists? On the other hand, American power, economic prosperity, and technological achievement command international attention. Perhaps their wonder would have been no different had they seen an IBM computer instead of me. But American technology was a very familiar sight in the stores I passed by, and no one eyed the appliances and technology as they did me. Besides, while I know the world values power, I find it difficult to believe that the vendors were thinking about American weapons systems when they treated me to the first round of cantaloupe juice. I began to despair of an answer to this Iranian-American enigma.
My trip to Shiraz had been motivated by my desire to visit the tombs of two classical Persian poets, Sa‘di, who died near the end of the thirteenth century, and Hafiz, who died near the end of the fourteenth. I had taken two planes to get to Shiraz -- the first from Tabriz to Tehran, where I immediately boarded another flight for Shiraz. It was not unlike a trip from Boston to Chicago with a change at Washington’s Dulles Airport. The only difference was the price. The total cost was fifteen-hundred toman, roughly twenty-six dollars at the time. With gas selling at about twenty-five liters to the dollar, travel couldn’t have been cheaper. The eight-hour bus ride from Shiraz to Isfahan cost about eighty cents.
The two poets, even after centuries, still resonate with the Persian soul, especially Hafiz, whose poetry reminds Iranians that their daily experiences have a mystical echo. Every Iranian family’s coffee table holds a copy of both the Qur’an and the collection of Hafiz’ poems, which are reverently consulted in time of doubt or confusion. Some might call it chance, but every Iranian attentively examines the page he or she first opens for a hint of advice for his or her particular situation, a form of divining the events of one’s life that many claim actually works.
Early the morning after my arrival in Shiraz, I set out by cab to the tomb of Hafiz, sensing myself on pilgrimage and imagining a peaceful morning spent in the tea garden next to the sanctuary where I would meditate and read a few poems in homage to the master. I might as well have hoped for a McDonald’s in Iran. Upon placing my order for tea, the cashier couldn’t keep away from me. Needless to say, this was his first sighting of an American, a moment long dreamed of. His demeanor was the closest thing to fanaticism I found in Iran, only it wasn’t religious fanaticism. His consuming passion was old American films, everything from Clark Gable to Judy Garland. When he realized with some disappointment that I couldn’t keep up with him on the topic, he kindly turned to contemporary film and asked me my thoughts on Titanic and Basic Instinct. He had seen them all. America, he said with a wistful yearning in his eyes, is paradise. I could not bring myself to disagree for fear it would break his heart. Besides, weren’t American films banned here? What had happened to the repressive Iranian regime and its policy of strangulating the life out of its people as reported in the American media? Was the mystical moment for which I had hastened to Shiraz to consist of the highly contestable statement that America is paradise?
The tea garden’s manager, Ja‘far, was much more reasonable. His dream was Tahiti, to live on a deserted island, a tropical rather than cinematic paradise, with no one else. His knowledge of world geography was tremendous for a man whose only trip outside of Iran was to neighboring Turkey. He read a lot, and had long ago settled on Tahiti as the only realistic salvation for an Iranian. In Tahiti, as he saw it, he would do nothing, just eat fruit and forget the frustrations and chaos of Iranian mismanagement. His government, he claimed, was bankrupt – “kharab.”
Ja‘far directed the tea garden’s cook to prepare a pot of stew for me, of course without charge. I began to feel partially compensated for not having been able to accomplish my intended goal. Ja‘far also arranged to have another tourist accompany me for the rest of the day, an Iranian from the Tehran suburb of Karaj. This fellow, Rasuli, like so many others I was to meet, had maneuvered himself into our conversation, first obviously eavesdropping, as only Iranians can do, then adding a comment now and then, as only Iranians can do, and finally joining us at our table, as closely involved in the discussion on American cinema and Tahiti as any of us. Private space is not highly conspicuous in the Iranian social landscape, and Rasuli’s intrusive behavior was expected, even welcome, as if Iranians enjoyed as much company as was physically possible. In any event, this particular intrusion offered me the welcome opportunity to tour with a native for the day.
We visited religious sites, wandered around the bazaar, and trekked up to a park on the city’s northern heights just before sunset for a view of the urban panorama. Rasuli, like Seyyid Hussein, was quite proud to see that I was enjoying my American self in Iran. Entering the inner sanctuary of the Shah-e Cheragh, he took the risk of explaining Islam to me, or at least its Shi‘ite version. He was a bit insistent in his desire that I know the truth of Islam, perhaps in the hope that I might find myself as comfortable with Islam as I did with Iran and its people. It was late afternoon, and I was becoming tired. Also, I was a bit taken aback to find an Iranian so eager to explain his religion, since religion had been completely foreign to my encounters with Iranians up to that point, and my fears from the border station began to return. At that moment, in the holy of holies, I began to wonder who paid Rasuli’s salary. But I suppose Seyyid Hussein, if there, might have thought me a model of paranoia, no less than I had attributed to his theories of American conspiracy in Afghanistan.
*****
There is a teahouse perched above the northern wall of Isfahan’s Emam Square, and I would occasionally play chess there with the proprietor’s son, Muhammad, who never failed to beat me. Other times, I’d go there just before sunset and gaze out at the square below. Thousands of people, families and children, descended upon the square at night, to enjoy the evening breeze, wander around, eat ice-cream, picnic on the green, relax, little boys and girls running after each other, playing soccer, rolling in the grass. It seemed almost idyllic and contrasted with the incessant requests I received for information on ways to get to America -- taxi drivers, soldiers, money-changers, students, everyone. I found it so pleasant to visit the square at night, watch the moon reflect off the domes of the Safavid-era mosques, lie in the cool of night on the benches still warm from the day’s heat. Alternatively, I would wander down the tree-lined Chahar Bagh Avenue, towards the river and its famous bridges where people gathered to look at each other. On the face of things, no evidence suggested itself to support the claim of nearly every Iranian I met that to leave Iran for America would be much better.
My bus from Shiraz had dropped me off at Emam Square before dawn, which was occupied, to my surprise, with people in various forms of exercise. A little down the road, I came upon a beautiful park, the Hesht-e Behesht, which again was a buzz with early morning activity, including a vigorous volleyball match. I wondered whether I had somehow fallen out of the Middle East into California, and my suspicion was nearly confirmed when I observed the occasional person walking by briskly and stopping only to pick up a neglected piece of trash -- a happy combination of fitness and cleanliness. Iranians seemed to be leading a very full life, in exercise, in their cuisine, in their arts and literature. There was an almost hungry pursuit for a life lived fully, and yet, at the same time, they constantly complained about their lives in Iran. I was starting to become a bit skeptical.
Shiraz too had its park, where the activity of choice seemed to be ping-pong more than volleyball. There too, the activity was taken up with great enthusiasm, especially on Friday, the weekly holiday, when no table was left idle during daylight hours. Again, I found this engaging pursuit of life’s activities to contrast squarely with the Iranian self-perception. A cab driver in Tehran told me that anti-American propaganda had little effect on the average Iranian. Nearly everyone has a relative in America, he argued, who sends back stories of the happy life they are leading. Unfortunately, he said, there are not many Americans in Iran who can report to relatives back home the true face of Iranian life. I had to disagree with him. The desire to live in America which so many Iranians voiced to me seemed at odds with my observations of a people trying rather successfully to live a full life. Iranians, I told him, were very much under illusion about American life and, for that matter, their own. They had somehow convinced themselves that America was paradise, Iran the netherworld.
Tehran, as far as my global travels have disclosed, is the city with the greatest concentration of bookstores in the world. You can find all kinds off bookstores, some specializing in religious texts in Arabic, others in school textbooks, but most offering a range of literature. Foreign literature, of all kinds, has been translated into Persian and is readily available, especially philosophical and historical works. At first, I was a little suspicious that there actually was a market for so many bookstores, until I began to talk to people.
The desire for knowledge, the desire to refine one’s life through knowledge, is striking, almost pervasive, in Iran. Upon my arrival in Shiraz, late at night, a young man, about twenty, greeted me at the Sasan Hotel where I had hoped to find lodging. He spoke impeccable English, without an accent. Though the hotel was full, we chatted a bit, and then he asked whether I was curious to know how he had learned English so well, since, as he claimed, he had never left Iran. Without waiting for my response, he proudly revealed that he had sat in his room for three months, listening to the Voice of America from dawn until midnight. I was amazed at this display of focused intensity and endurance, but the more I talked with people, such magnificent bursts of intellectual concentration came to seem an ordinary part of Iranian cultural aspirations. Knowledge for the sake of a refined life, that seemed the message inherent in the nation’s intellectual and artistic exploits. This cultural heritage was, for me an outsider, sullied only by the excessive pride with which one or another Iranian described to me his achievements.
Shiraz, especially, seemed the place where people deftly combined both desire and stamina in the pursuit of knowledge. One night, while enjoying a pizza in a restaurant on a corner of Shiraz’ main avenue, my eye caught a young man standing outside, in his twenties. He was a vendor of books and had spread his wares out on the pavement for people to admire and buy. We looked at each other and smiled. I pointed to the pizza, inviting him to join me, as so many had invited me. He shook his head and waited for me to finish. As I left the restaurant, he pulled me aside in the hope, it turned out, of speaking English with a native speaker. He was a bit taken aback to see that the language insistently spilling off my tongue was the same as his. We sat for a while, sharing a bit about ourselves. His name was Ali, and he belonged to the famous Qashqa‘i tribe. No educational resources had been provided him, and without ever having attended university, he had somehow managed to teach himself English and had read everything in English he could get his hands on. He especially enjoyed existential philosophy and American literature. He had read all of T.S. Eliot and English translations of a few of Nietzsche’s works. I did not even need to guess at his disappointment when he saw that the American before him was not very well schooled in American literature and was having trouble holding up his end of the conversation.
His intellectual endeavor had made an impact on this young man who called home his tribal region around Shiraz. Ali defined himself as a human first, before any religious or ethnic category. His thoughts were very sophisticated for someone the world would label an uneducated man. He was also very sad. Fate is a concept very deep in the Iranian soul, a sense of the ineluctable dictates of the directive course of the world’s events, but Ali’s reading of Nietzsche had given this concept a nihilistic interpretation. He saw no meaning in his life, nothing but the nihilistic hand of a fate determined long ago. There he was, a young, bright, energetic soul confined to the task of peddling books on the streets of Shiraz for a few pennies daily profit. And yet, I wanted to tell him, I had never met anyone who had made so much out of so little, who had in fact defied fate and the limitations of the life into which he had been born. I wondered how many others like him there were back in his tribal homeland. Apparently, he returns to his tribal territory once a week, not because he likes going back, but because there was a girl who, in his words, had taken possession of his heart. As long as she is there, he will go back. Such is love, he explained. Before parting, he took my address and expressed the desire that we would be “cultural” friends. I hope he writes.
*****
Religion seemed to be such a hidden affair in Iran. While it is impossible not to notice the parades in celebration of the revolution and its great martyrs and the daily sermons on television in praise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, religion seemed such a limited element in people’s private life. My travels in the Middle East had accustomed me to the sight of men in prayer, prostrating on a prayer-mat before Allah, at street corners, in parks, at the mosque. Evidence of such piety seemed entirely lacking in Iran.
Only one man, Ihsan, who managed a book store on the main Karim Khan-e Zand Avenue in Shiraz, discussed religion with me in a way that suggested he actually cared for it, and not just as a social phenomenon. His was a moderately enthusiastic piety. I marveled that he, unlike so many I had encountered in other countries of the Middle East, did not demand my immediate conversion to Islam. The central piece in Ihsan’s vision was the need for divine guidance in a legitimately sanctioned earthly form. The Prophet Muhammad, though perfect, was gone, and yet guidance was still necessary. It was, of course, necessary to choose one’s guide with care. Ihsan claimed that his guide, Ayatollah Khomeini, was a voice of moderation and unity for the troubled Islamic world, and was a skilled judge of the signs of the times. For example, Imam Khomeini had permitted Shi‘ites to pray behind a Sunni Muslim. Ihsan said that his father would never accept that, but he can. The real Muslim enemy being Israel, Ihsan concluded, Muslims ought not to bicker divisively among themselves.
I wanted to suggest to Ihsan that he had actually used his own judgment in determining desirable characteristics of leadership to choose his spiritual guide; and that perhaps his own ability to reason ought to be given some legitimacy as a credible guide to life. But time for prayer came, and he invited me to join him in the mosque across the street. I sat quietly in the back of the courtyard, watching Ihsan and others perform their ritual. My happiness in observing this gentle expression of devotion was upset, as was my stomach, at seeing a bearded youth, perhaps twenty, totting a machine-gun as he watched over the congregation. His occasional nervous twitch and general sense of instability unleashed all sorts of wild scenarios in my imagination. Finally, he put the gun away, performed the ritual ablutions, and joined the congregation in prayer. The only other time I had witnessed such an unhappy coincidence of piety and power was in Israel, at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall. Despite the memories, I still wanted to distance myself as quickly as possible from this, to me, bizarre scene that, to others, caused not even a flicker of discomfort, and I hurriedly bade my adieu to Ihsan after the prayer was completed and hastened out into the crowded avenues of Shiraz.
In Isfahan, I again found myself faced by the disturbing combination of violence and religion at the Martyrs’ Cemetery, Gulistan-e Shuhada’. It was very moving to gaze for a moment at the photos, framed and mounted on the endless rows of gravestones. These were the so-called Martyrs of the Revolution who had given their blood in the war against Iraq. I felt myself stunned into silence as I looked at the lost lives of young men, all of them so young, teenagers and early twenties. It was a powerful witness to something, but I could not think what that something for which all these children had given their lives might be.
Later that day, I was relaxing in the cool passage-way under Isfahan’s Kaju Bridge where young students go to flirt. I could hear the rush of the Ziyandeh River below me and began, again, to think about Iran. At one and the same time, it could flatter the American way of life and spill the blood of its children in a war that to an American seemed quite medieval in its motivations. Before I was able to become too absorbed in my own thoughts, a man in his thirties sat next to me, clearly interested in this foreign traveler so peacefully taking his repose along with all the other Iranians. His name was Hussein, an unemployed painter who, like so many other young Iranian males, passed his days largely in idleness in the daily hope of stumbling upon some type of worthy employment. He was a gentle man, and I began to share with him some of my feelings from the Martyrs’ Cemetery. I had picked an unfortunate moment to raise issues of violence and religion, since at that time the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had kidnapped a number of Iranian diplomats, a Sunni slap in the face to the Sh‘ite nation. Iran would later responded by massing large numbers of troops on its eastern border. I revealed to Hussein my distaste for this combination of violence and religion. Even aside from religious concerns, history has shown us that war is of no use and only perpetuates violence. He didn’t agree, claiming that sometimes war is the only way to right a wrong. Dialogue and diplomatic measures, which I had emphasized, often breakdown, making the use of force a legitimate means of attaining goals, even, he added, religious goals. My position remained firm: The struggle for justice is important, necessary, but must be undertaken without weapons. I confessed that violence may well be a condition endemic to the human race, but insisted we try, at least try, to end the cycle. He smiled at my words, as one would at an enthusiastic but naïve child. Later that week, America bombed Sudan and Afghanistan to revenge its honor in the wake of the explosions at its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
*****
The thought which came to my mind as I paid one last visit to the Shah-e Cheragh of Shiraz, was that I too should go on pilgrimage. As I joined the pilgrims, I observed no devotional urgency in their behavior. Actually entering the shrine and paying homage at the saint’s tomb within seemed the last thing on people’s mind. Rather, dozens of families on pilgrimage had dispersed themselves throughout the shrine’s courtyard, preferably in the shade which the portico running the length of the courtyard offered. In my solitude, I couldn’t help feeling a little envious of the solidarity of the families enjoying their picnic lunches, laughing together, being together, as a family. I wondered at this Iranian definition of the holy place, which, from what I observed, meant a picnic with the family. People did now and then rise and proceed ever so solemnly to the shrine’s central sanctuary, where they would pray for forgiveness, cry in regret, perhaps ask for a favor. But this ritual seemed incidental to the central place occupied by the family picnic in the performance of pilgrimage. I liked that possibility, that pilgrimage was essentially the designation of a time and place to become more keenly attuned to the holiness of the family picnic.
*****
Slowly, my understanding of Iranians began to crystallize, somewhat at least. My conversations had revealed to me a central element in the Iranian’s constitution, namely a desire for freedom. In the past, this desire had led to struggle against the domination of British and Russian imperialism during the nineteenth century, American domination in Iran during the twentieth. Now, however, this desire for freedom had become confused, since it was now a struggle from within. A carpet salesman in Isfahan, Iraj by name, had kindly invited me to lunch with him and his partner, Mehrdad. We enjoyed one another’s company and the news we shared of ourselves. As businessmen, the two expressed their discontent and frustration with the government, its clerical leadership, and the obstacles which it had created in the way of efficiency in the economy. Where, they both asked sarcastically, do these mullahs get all their money – “az koja avordand?” Iraj became more reflective, and tried to express something of this Iranian desire for freedom that I found so pervasive. Very seriously, very boldly, he stated that the government may put obstacles in front of him, even take away his freedom of movement, but it can never touch his thoughts.
Freedom does seem to suffer perplexity if not maladjustment these days in Iran. The answer I received from the many young men I asked why they wanted to go to America was almost uniform: Freedom. Equally uniform, however, was their response when I asked them what freedom means: Freedom to be with girls – “ba dokhtarha.” This confirmed my observations. I hadn’t seen any unbearable curtailment of intellectual or political freedom. Discretion was certainly necessary, but people were never hesitant to criticize the government and its success in destroying the economy. One man with whom I chatted in central Tehran stunned me with his comment that he thought Khomeini a monkey – “Khomeini maymun bud!” I was equally surprised at the comments of a student of Persian literature in Isfahan, who attributed the current cultural bankruptcy in Iran to the religion and its attempts to limit the freedom to speak as one wants about politics, religion, anything. Still, I had to remind him that he was speaking very freely at that moment about just such things.
The freedom behind the American vilification of Iran does not touch any of the freedoms commonly claimed -- freedom of speech, freedom of belief, and so on. There are problems, to be sure, but the real freedom under threat in Iran, which may be the actual center-piece in the American struggle with Iran, is sexual freedom. The American media ought to state things clearly. Our goal is not the elimination of an Islamically oriented government. If so, many of our current allies would no longer be allies. In point of fact, Iranians lead a daily life very much like ours, the one significant difference being sexual freedom (at least on the surface). It certainly is a cause worth fighting for, in terms of affective maturity between members of a society, but it seems this truth has become clouded by the attempts of the American media to attribute the grand struggle with Iran to other things. Both governments accuse the other of terrorism. Both try to exert their influence in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea for control of the oil. But when it comes to the people, Iranians and Americans, the fundamental difference is sexuality.
The young women of the upscale northern section of Iran let their veils slip back on their heads, an act both politically provocative and sexually suggestive. In the traditionally conservative city of Kashan, there is a park, Bagh-e Tarikhi-Fin, which was built during the Qajar dynasty (1779-1924). It is a beautiful combination of streams and evergreen trees, but it also serves as a place where young men and women from outside Kashan come to flirt. Two young ladies sitting at the bench adjacent to me offered a cookie as a way to strike up a conversation. We chatted a bit about ourselves, and then they expressed their hope that I would telephone them at their home in the traditionally religious city of Qum. When I hesitated, one of them asked whether I didn’t want to speak with them by phone. Not wanting to be rude, I said that certainly I wanted to speak with them. The act of giving their phone number could not take place so openly, of course, and they directed me to meet them at a certain corner of the park to carry out the suspicious deed.
Taking their number and bidding adieu, I surmised that this act of harassment could only be construed as an oddly isolated incident in socially conservative Iran, but then, less than an hour later, I felt myself being followed by two other ladies, with marked sexual insinuation, which is, surprisingly enough, quite safe in Iranian society. You can share meaningful glances, even savory verbal exchange, and know that nothing will come of it. If whispers and promises turned into action, the police or some self-appointed guardian of morals would intervene. It does free one in an odd sort of way to relate with the opposite sex without fear, since the limits are well-known, but I was still surprised at the forwardness of one of these girls. She asked me whether I thought Iranian girls pretty. I responded by saying that I could not form a judgment since I hadn’t had the opportunity to know them other than by sight. What they thought about the world, what they aspired to, was still unknown to me. At that, she asked whether I had a girlfriend. When I said no, she asked whether I’d like her as my girlfriend, and we could talk together about all sorts of things. Was it a game, or did I sense a slight but not completely ungrounded hope on her part that I would suddenly sweep her away then and there from a world so carefully regulated and designed to suppress her yearnings within? I began to see the justice in the struggle for sexual liberation. This young lady was a bundle of confused emotions, and the freedom necessary to discover and explore those emotions will come only after marriage. By then, however, too many patterns of emotional immaturity are already established. I wondered whether marriage in Iran was a matter of convenience. I also wondered whether a marriage of convenience was better than what existed in U.S., where personal interests take precedence over social ones and one is never sure what marriage means or is for. Perhaps, in the end, both the coerced sexuality of Iran and the undirected sexuality of America do lead to antagonism between the genders and the inability to communicate maturely.
Still, I could not help but feel that Iranians had suffered in recent decades from politically organized sexual repression. Admitting this as the only legitimate element in the American struggle with Iran would add righteousness to a struggle that the American media has successfully depicted as a battle between good and evil when in point of fact it is only a conflict of political and economic interests with no moral high-ground.
In Isfahan, three young men invited me to tour the city in their car. Muhammad, his best friend Shahram, and Muhammad’s cousin Alireza, gave me what became more a tour of Iran’s sexual, rather than Isfahan’s geographical, landscape. We drove wildly all over the place with Alireza behind the wheel, listening to forbidden Persian music produced in America, the tunes of Daryush and Laila, at the highest possible volume. The conversation constantly focused on sex, interrupted only now and then at the sight of a beautiful woman standing at a street corner or waiting for a bus. At those moments, the three men directed all their physical and psychologically energy at her, shouting out all kinds of remarks about her looks and their yearnings. The young ladies, for their part, put on the appearance of disgust, but still could not hide their pleasure at being the object of a male’s attention. It was all amusing in a way, but also a bit disheartening, this sexual negotiation within the rigid parameters of Iranian society, and I was left with the feeling that I had for a moment returned to junior high school and its twisted, confused, tortured emotional life.
Later that night over kebabs which Muhammad’s mother had prepared, we discussed the matter. None of the three thought mixing with girls a bad thing, but it was simply not possible; again, this freedom, as opposed to other freedoms, did not exist. Alireza had been caught with a girl some years back and sent to prison for a few days where he received a sound thrashing by a mullah. As a result, he harbored a deep-seated and apparently permanent grudge against religion as a whole. His cousin Muhammad explained things more objectively. Things in Iran, he said, were so out of joint sexually, which left people feeling so strangled by the regime in general, that now even the government recognized that its intense focus on sexual segregation had been a mistake. But, Muhammad continued, admitting that would mean denying its own legitimacy as a government, so much of which was based on its policy of sexual repression. Besides, constantly highlighting the sexual dimension of Iranian life, even in repressing it, was a way for the government to distract the nation’s attention from the real problems of life, such as poverty and mismanagement of the country’s resources. Still, Muhammad hoped that the government could gradually distance itself from its entanglement with sexual repression for another form of legitimacy under the dispensation of President Khatami. Interestingly, he connected this possibility to Iran’s fascination with America, as I had already begun to suspect. Certainly, sexual liberation would free people from a convoluted obsession with sex and allow them to pay more attention and devote more energy to organizing their lives, not to mention the life of the economy. And, he added with a wry smile, with sexual freedom, we would no longer be interested in America.
*****
The beautiful park in northwestern Shiraz, Bagh-e Eram, had offered me refuge from the city’s unexpected poverty. As I sat amidst the streams and fruit trees, I sensed that this is what I had hoped for from Iran: the cool shade of peaceful gardens, in which to think and talk with undemanding and maybe even truly refined companions. I believe Hafiz composed his poetry in a place like this. Clearly, poverty is kept from intruding into this garden, the five-hundred toman entrance fee ensuring a space free of the poor. I had expected to meet in Iran Iranians like the ones I knew in America, who were largely well-off, well-educated and well-mannered. For some reason, I hadn’t given real consideration to the possibility of poverty and the masses of the poor. I had thought that Iran, with all its natural resources, especially oil, would be relatively free of poverty. I had also studied Iranian history with its great artistic, architectural, and literary achievements, and had naively assumed that the leisure needed to produce such art was a function of wealth. The Iranian art I saw in the context of the current reality bespoke creativity, not because of wealth, but despite the rampant poverty.
Leaving the garden, I headed towards the western section of Shiraz, near the hospital, where I came upon Mr. Izadi. He was well-dressed and well-groomed, the son of a mullah, as I later learned, and himself employed in one of the government’s ministries. His introduction of himself was motivated by the Iranian curiosity which by then I was beginning to know all too well. He was, like the others, shocked to hear that I was an American, and asked, as if to himself, whether they were now admitting Americans. We hit it off, and he suggested I spend the day in his company. It was a treat to see Mr. Izadi in operation. He traveled by bus, where he was always recognized, clearly with affection. We visited some of his friends in the hospital, after which a group of Afghani refugees approached us in their tattered clothing and unwashed condition. Mr. Izadi knew them well, treated them as his friends, and immediately began to discuss their situation with them. Apparently, he was making efforts to ensure that they received proper medical care. For the rest of the day, we visited homes in the areas beyond the city of Shiraz proper, sometimes respectably middle-class, sometimes poor and very much like shanty towns. Every visit, I marveled more and more at this middle-level bureaucrat and his genuine love for his people. If I might be permitted the reference, he had what is commonly referred to as a Christ-like quality in his love for all, especially the marginalized, and also in his inability to judge and condemn but to accept all without condition. What relation might this Shirazi bureaucrat have to the demonic images of Iran in the American media?
We ended the day at the house of one of Mr. Izadi’s friends, who worked along with his sons as a weaver of carpets. His friend was elderly and a bit decrepit. He had spent many years working as a camel-driver before settling with his family on the outskirts of Shiraz. We sat to drank tea together, while his sons, mostly in their twenties, asked me all about America while criticizing their own government. I was startled that they would do this in front of Mr. Izadi, the son of a mullah and himself a representative of the government, but no one seemed to think it unusual. An even greater surprise came when they turned on the television and began scanning the many cable channels provided by their satellite dish. Nothing was absent, from Iraqi news and its anti-Iranian propaganda to American films and their r-rated scenes. Wasn’t this forbidden? Mr. Izadi, perhaps sensing my confusion, said that as a government official, he could never have this in his own home. Then he fell silent and attentively followed the program along with the rest of us, laughing and commenting when appropriate. Clearly, he did not condemn the programs.
The next morning, Mr. Izadi sent a young man, Muzaffar, to my guesthouse, who was at the time still serving his compulsory eighteen months in the army. We visited the Shah-e Cheragh and ate pancakes together, much to my surprise, in its inner sanctuary. When Muzaffar passed me a pancake, I hesitated and asked whether it would be more respectful to eat outside. He looked at me blankly, as if eating pancakes in the inner sanctuary of the Shah-e Cheragh was the most natural thing to do. When we were finished with our breakfast, we walked through the city, visited his brother in his butcher store, and finally paid a call on two of his friends. He referred to them as “fahishe,” a Persian word I knew only as prostitute. I told him I wasn’t interested, but he insisted they were friends, even though using the English “courtesan” in reference to them. They met us in a gallery of boutiques, but did not stay long. Muzaffar informed me later that they had become frightened at the possibility of being apprehended in the company of two men to whom they were not related. I still wasn’t sure of their status, especially when Muzaffar told me that they sometimes give money to him, since his pay in the army is ridiculously low as a conscripted soldier. Had Muzaffar tried to trick me into behavior which the Iranian government could have used to harass me? No, I concluded, this is just another one of Mr. Izadi’s assorted friends, whose behavior, social status, or even youthful exploits do not diminish Mr. Izadi’s love for them.
*****
The operative word in the Iranian media these days is change, “tahavvulat.” My mornings in Tehran in late August were spent wondering whether the reports in the newspapers had any substance or were merely meant for public consumption. On the basis of the press alone, one would have concluded that reform was sweeping every sector, every nook and cranny, of the nation. And yet I was left puzzled. One paper reported the imminent founding of an Islamic labor party by the labor organization, Khane-ye Kargar, whose secretary general, Reza Mahjub, is also a member of parliament. Also involved are the minister of labor, Hussein Kameli and a female member of parliament, Sohaila Jelodarzade. It certainly did not appear to be a grass roots movement. Was this reform, or another attempt by the regime to claim popular sentiment and use it to renew its claims to popular legitimacy? In the years following the Revolution, the regime had very shrewdly co-opted Labor Day into its panoply of a reinterpreted Islam, a day which previously had been the emblem of socialist and Marxist movements in Iran. Things were not always as they appeared.
“Keihan,” “Khabar,” “Hamshahr”. Every major newspaper seemed a buzz with calls for social justice, more equitable distribution of wealth, the right of constructive criticism, the need for change in administrative practices, the need to diversify the economy and increase local capital and production so that Iran not be so heavily dependent on its oil resources alone. Some reports were startling, such as President Khatami’s statement that the government derives its authority from the people. Others left less of an impression, but still suggested considerable importance for life in Iran, such as the report that the Commerce Bank had lifted the credit limits for non-oil exports. As a result, five dairy farms were about to go into operation and begin exporting their products.
Night-life for me during my week in Tehran consisted of television. One program focused on discipline in the family and the fine line dividing discipline and cruelty. The program was clearly directed at Iranian men. Another program discussed the burdens that the dowry placed on young men hoping to marry and suggested that in the increasingly urban landscape of modern Iran, something approaching a pre-nuptial agreement might be more in synch with the times. Every night a political speech or religious sermon received top billing. Movies, plays, poetry readings, were also shown, even music videos. One video depicted a pregnant woman desperate for love. In the end, she kills herself, and her husband, realizing himself guilty of neglect, does the same by jumping off a bridge into the oncoming traffic, the entirely morbid skit, of course, set to song.
Could it be that my week-long media binge in Tehran was not just consumption of state propaganda, but did reflect something of the national reality? In northern Tehran, great wealth seemed both normal in its context and yet surreal next to the fear that I saw in the eyes of homeless children whose glances would implicate me as I made my way back to my comfortable hotel. I have still to recover fully from the sight, children whose eyes pleaded with me to relieve them in some way of the terror of spending another night on the street without any protection, without a parent to tuck them in and kiss them gently to sleep. Tehran was no better than any urban metropolis in this respect.
Again, I had not expected to find such poverty in a country with an abundance of natural resources. On the one hand, the brother of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamani, controls billions of dollars as head of a foundation meant to serve the weak and dispossessed, Bunyad-e Mustazifin, and yet the faces of poverty are unsuccessful in their attempt to hide their pain. I still carry with me the sight of a man lying on his blanket on Rudaki Avenue in Shiraz, his life clearly destroyed by addiction to drugs; of a woman sitting on the main avenue also in Shiraz, Karim Khan-e Zand, covered as the law required except for the stump of her maimed leg which she exposed in order to solicit the potential sympathies of the crowds passing by.
There was a reason why no one was helping these people, as I learned when my neighbor paid me a visit in the guest-house where I was lodged during my week in Shiraz. Apparently, Ghulamreza, another of the lodgers at this guest-house, had seen me and learned that I was an American. As I discovered that night, the two of us sitting on the rug in my room, he was from the city of Bushehr in the province of Khuzistan which is located near the Iraqi border. So many had fled Khuzistan during the Iran-Iraq war. Ghulamraza wept profusely in front of me that night as he recounted his woes. His eighteen-month old son cried every night because he had no milk. Troubles with his wife had started due to his destitution, and she had contemptuously returned to her parents. According to Islamic law as he understood it, his child, Isma‘il, was his to care for, and he was doing what he could along with his aged parents.
I found it all very pathetic, and since he seemed healthy enough, I asked him why he wasn’t working. He claimed that as an outsider in Shiraz, he was unable, no matter how he tried, to find even the simplest of jobs. No one would employ him over a local. I then asked him about charity organizations. A look of total disbelief came over his face at the naïveté of my question, and I felt compelled to believe him when he said there was no one in Shiraz who would help him. With a certain astuteness, he claimed that the economy was a mess and that people were too fearful for themselves and their own to help an outsider. As the tears came to his eyes, he said that that was what had led him to me. He had heard of the impartial goodwill of foreigners to those in need. Besides God, I was his only hope. I was rather uncomfortable with the totality of the hope he entrusted in me, but his words did explain something of the poverty I saw. I recalled how my first night in Shiraz, the young man at the desk of the Sasan Hotel had cautioned me to trust no one in Shiraz, not even your brother. Poverty will undoubtedly have that effect on a people’s moral fiber.
The government may very well be using the media to serve itself, but the discussions I followed in the Iranian media are relevant to Ghulamreza’s life and to the lives of many others -- social justice, equitable distribution of wealth, administrative reform, anti-drug campaigns, family life, and so on. I don’t know if change will happen in time for someone like Ghulamreza, but I do know that Iran is talking about its problems, unabashedly. One could say that Iran has become quite American in this respect.
*****
It was my final day in Shiraz, and I wanted one last taste of “falude,” a sweet of deliciously frozen vermicelli soaked in lemon juice. I sat down and beheld an overweight, very shabbily dressed man looking back at me. He would have been taken for homeless in America, and he possibly was. His hair and beard were disheveled, and his heavy clothing, including wool cap and corduroy coat, seemed out of season in the hot summer. I tried without success to avoid his gaze and concentrated on enjoying my falude. He took the initiative. In perfect BBC English, he announced that he had sacrificed body and soul for literature. I turned, astounded at both tone and content of the statement. Of course, I knew he was addressing me. He belonged to the ‘middle’ intelligentsia which, as far as I could see, had been thoroughly defeated in the last twenty years. The ‘upper’ intelligentsia either had been able to flee before the Revolution or still lived in Iran, rich and very careful to pay off the right people. He had been consumed, his whole life, by the beauty of English and Persian literature, while living on the insufficient salary of an Iranian professor. Now he had no one. He was undergoing treatment for some illness, which, he mentioned, he was unable to afford. He seemed ready for death, and pursued our conversation as if it was to be his last. He coached me on Persian, comparing it to Italian, which must be sung when it is spoken, advising me to have one of my friends play the violin when I spoke Persian. Finally, he said he would pray for me when it was his time “to fly,” then added that he would pray for my nation, and finally concluded that he would pray for the whole world. I told him I would pray for him too. He asked that I take his picture, again with the resignation that it might be his last. I look at that picture today now and then, and I find myself wondering whether he has “flown” yet and is now praying for us all, Americans and Iranians alike.
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