Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran (10 page)

“That’s very kind of you, but I don’t really play anymore. I’m sorry if I disturbed you earlier.”

The assistant carried in cups of tea.

“Not at all. You play very beautifully,” he said. This was untrue. Even in my adolescent prime, my exasperated teacher had advised my mother to consider tap dancing lessons for me instead.

“Please allow this as a gesture from a friend,” the cleric continued, once the door closed. I did not know at the time that many clerics frowned upon even classical music, and that the proposal was theologically, as well as professionally, inappropriate.

“Should I find myself in need of a piano, I’m certain my father would be pleased to buy me one,” I finally said, reaching for a cookie and breaking it in two with what I hoped signaled closure.

I asked how he saw the future, and we turned to a discussion of whether the country was going to fall apart, now that a fundamentalist (or a more-fundamentalist-than-most) had mysteriously taken over. Many factors had been at work, the mullah explained. Ahmadinejad
had emphasized day-to-day problems and focused on the poor, an appeal he made effectively in a television interview after the first round, portraying himself as exclusively preoccupied with improving people’s economic welfare.

“It is true,” the cleric admitted, fiddling with a bowl of sugar cubes, “that the reform movement’s disorganization is truly to blame. If the moderates had banded together, chosen one charismatic candidate, and run a platform that stressed
both
social and economic reform, people would have voted for them in droves.

“On the other hand,” he mused, “the top leadership wanted a subservient president, a yes-man, and it made sure it got one.”

This was a coded way of saying (to be more blunt in a certainly bugged room would have been unwise): Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, wanted a weak president who would not challenge his leadership or make him look fusty, so he colluded to get Ahmadinejad elected.

“I’m confused,” I said. “I thought I understood Iranian society. I thought most people wanted more secular government, wanted freedom and reform, and now they’ve gone and elected a man who considers cemeteries decorative.”

The mullah put the sugar bowl down and looked at me very seriously. “Do you think the people who voted for him even knew that? He spoke only about jobs and the economy.” He paused. “But still, don’t make the mistake of thinking that only class drives politics. Iran, as you should know by now, is more complicated than that. Eight years of failed political reform disappointed people. It made them indifferent to politics. This time around, they figured that if they could not have real freedom, they might as well have more manageable rent, better jobs. How old are you, by the way?”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“So when you voted for Khatami you were in your early twenties, like the rest of the young people who elected him. In those years, the college years, human rights, listening to music, holding hands on the street mattered. Now that you’re almost thirty, and thinking of getting married inshallah, you may have realized how difficult it is for the average Iranian your age to start and support a family. It is a simple
truth that in a country this wealthy, that is unjust. Redressing that, providing justice, is what this man promised. And as you know, we have a long historical tradition of demanding just that.”

It was an honest answer, one that admitted an uncomfortable truth: as long as reformists sought change within the system, they would be tainted by its inherent shortcomings. Its failures would be seen as theirs, and before long, their promises of a more open society would be considered as empty as the conservative promise of piety. Taken together, the last three presidential elections had not contradicted one another: Iranians wanted a more liberal, democratic society,
as well as
job opportunity and an easing of economic hardship. They had simply never been offered a candidate who emphasized it all. Voting for Khatami did not imply a disregard for the economy, just as voting for Ahmadinejad did not indicate a lack of concern for freedom. Slowly, my bewilderment lifted, and I could see this election for what it was—a natural pendulum swing between fixed priorities, the movement itself illustrating that neither side alone sufficed.

I
called Nasrine as soon as I arrived home from my interview with the mullah, and she came over promptly after work. I told her to buy a toothbrush on the way, as my aunt was away in California and we had her apartment to ourselves. Nasrine tended to trudge loudly when she was unhappy, so I could tell by the lively clack of her heels up the steps that she was in bright spirits. She dropped her laptop bag on the couch, handed me a bag of carnelian cherries, and kissed me on both cheeks.

I poured us tea, and we settled into the L-shaped sofa, where we would spend the next several hours talking about the latest stories we were reporting, watching satellite television, and checking our e-mail.

“You’re here just in time,” she said. “I have a blind date tomorrow night, and I need you to come with me.”

“Don’t be silly. With who? I hope not with one of those Internet guys.”

The latest stage in Nasrine’s quest for love involved trolling Iranian
websites for dates. Though the men she met were inevitably second-rate, she maintained that there were eligible types to be found if one was patient. I had no wish to tag along.

“I mentioned to Arash that I could really use some moral support, and he’s agreed to stay for the beginning at least,” she said, innocently.

I had to laugh at her connivance. In the end, though, Nasrine managed to convince me that the evening would be fun. As her chaperones, Arash and I would have plenty of time to chat. And should the young man prove unsuitable, we could help extricate her from the date.

The next evening, as Nasrine and I headed to pick up Arash, I admitted to myself that this was an ideal second encounter. Nasrine’s suitor provided instant material for conversation, and as co-chaperones we were paired without being on our own date. All of this made me relieved, and at first sight of him, I felt the same pull, the same deep attraction, I had in May. He got into the car, leaning forward to shake hands. “It’s lovely to see you again,” I said.

Nasrine steered her Kia into the slow-moving traffic of Niavaran Street, the main thoroughfare of north Tehran that ran into the Shah’s summer palace. She and her date had arranged to meet near Book City, one of Tehran’s most popular bookshops, and they traded coordinates by mobile phone. He suggested that she find a parking spot on the street, and that we proceed in his car to a nearby park, where we could stroll and have coffee. Before long, he pulled up alongside us in a gray Peugeot, double-parking so that he could alight and introduce himself properly. He wore a tight white T-shirt that outlined his premature paunch; there was a heavy gold chain around his thick neck, and he smelled powerfully of an unpleasant, overly spicy cologne. From the moment he opened his mouth, we bit our tongues, dug our nails into our palms, to keep from laughing. Nasrine managed to whisper before we climbed into his car, “Are my eyes deceiving me, or is he wearing
foundation?”
Arash had already scrambled into the backseat, and with a beseeching, hunted look, Nasrine hopped in beside him.

Forced into taking the front seat, I realized with my closer vantage
that he was indeed, unfathomably, wearing a thick layer of foundation. He had told Nasrine that he lived in Los Angeles and was only in Tehran to visit family.

“Where do you live in L.A.?” I asked.

“Sort of central.”

“Do you mean Westwood? The Valley?” I prodded, growing suspicious.

“Yes, around there.”

It took me about twenty more seconds to ascertain that he did not in fact know that California is situated on the West Coast. While I attempted to make small talk, Nasrine was whispering furiously to Arash in French about how to abandon her date. The opportunity presented itself not long after we arrived at the park, when he ran back to his car to retrieve his mobile phone. We all felt a twinge of guilt at leaving him that way. But as we hurriedly crossed to the other side of the park, we agreed he deserved to be abandoned, given the foundation and his false biography (likely meant to attract women with the prospect of a green card). Nasrine’s mobile began to ring.

“What should I do?” she asked.

“Just turn it off. What can you possibly say to him?” I said. “He’ll get the message soon enough.”

We retreated to a nearby coffee shop, ordered
cafés glacés, and
laughed until our stomachs hurt. Once we finished recounting her date’s worst qualities, Arash and I scolded Nasrine for her antics. He advised her to start trying to meet people through friends, an approach that would at least weed out the foundation-wearing charlatans. I told her to have the decency to take the front seat when she enlisted her friends to come along on disastrous dates.

Our conspiratorial escape from Nasrine’s date seemed to seal us as a threesome intent on finding her a decent relationship. Before disbanding that evening, we agreed to meet the next day for lunch. Arash casually asked for my number, and entered it into his mobile phone.

Later, when we were alone, Nasrine said, “See, I told you he fancies you.”

“I’m not so sure. He has such lovely manners that I think maybe
he’s just being polite.” I was sincerely uncertain, and preferred not to be too hopeful, lest I be disappointed.

“Whatever. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough. Did I tell you Sonbol’s been calling him ever since they met? She wants his father’s company to sponsor her next race.”

“No, you forgot to mention that.”

“But he hasn’t paid her any attention. Not even polite attention.”

“Good.” If Nasrine was right, I couldn’t wait to find out.

S
hortly after noon the next day, my mobile phone beeped with a text message from Arash. “Are you all right? Yr phone appears off. Worried.” I was meant to meet him and Nasrine for lunch, but not for another hour. I called him back.

“Nasrine says you could be arrested any minute. So when your phone didn’t answer I thought maybe something had happened.”

“Her imagination is overactive,” I said, laughing. “Of course I’m not going to be arrested.” I was annoyed at Nasrine for telling Arash such a thing. Overly dramatic by nature, she had surely embellished some aspect of my work—perhaps my interactions with Mr. X—and convinced him I had one foot in prison.

“I was just visiting a cousin, and their house doesn’t get cell reception,” I said. Nasrine called a few minutes later to tell me she would be delayed at work (matchmaker contrivance, I presumed), and so the two of us went to lunch alone, feigning surprise at her unexpected deadline. Arash suggested we go to Café 78, a coffee shop in central Tehran popular with writers, artists, and musicians. Such coffeehouses, the kind that carefully listed the contents of the salads on the menu, were still novel. Most restaurants, in the Soviet manner, listed only the one word, “salad,” as though only one type existed and the desire to know its ingredients was somehow westernized and decadent.

The authorities frowned on establishments that provided thoughtful people a milieu for conversation, so they often needled Café 78’s owner with petty zoning edicts. One week the café had to stop serving
lunch, since she had been told that cafés serving coffee were not permitted to also offer food (the state apparently considered lingering a danger). The next week, the café resumed serving sandwiches and salads, but customers found the coffee page of the menu crossed out with a large X and covered with an inleaf suggesting a restorative herbal tisane. Such nuisances were still annoying, but compared with the mid-1990s, when the police would storm cafés and round up women for improper Islamic dress, they were tolerable, even laughable.

Such repression, the kind that sought to serve Islam by preventing the serving of coffee, provided rich material for satire. Like most people who suffer under such regimes, Iranians coped by honing a subversive, mordant humor. When I first moved to Tehran in 2000, this love of irony struck me as one of the most charming aspects of Iranian life, though I knew its purpose was to ease the pain of being ruled by heartless, inept, and hypocritical mullahs. During one of my first afternoons driving in the city, I struggled to execute a three-point turn across lanes of chaotic traffic. Halfway through the turn, my veil slipped off, and I froze, uncertain whether to clear the road or adjust my covering. As a man passing by surveyed the traffic jam I had caused, he noticed me fumbling with my scarf, grinned, and yelled, “Islam is in danger!”

Though the corruption and fundamentalism of Iran’s present rulers was unparalleled in the country’s history, Iranian writers had a long tradition of holding their leaders to account through satire. During the two years that I lived in Iran, I spent many evenings reading aloud to my aunt and uncle the columns of Ebrahim Navabi, the country’s premier satirist. These sessions, during which we laughed, proclaimed him a genius, and repeated certain passages until they were committed to memory, seemed to dissolve the layers of accumulated resentment, providing the resilience that enabled us to make it through the next day.

Though scarcely a month had passed since Arash and I had first met, the Tehran summer had grown unbearable. The dry heat beat down powerfully and the café’s air-conditioning sent out only meek,
occasional puffs of cool air. I looked about our surroundings carefully, trying to commit the details to memory. I felt certain that this lunch would matter, and that I would later wish to recall what he wore, what I ordered. We dipped tall spoons into glasses of cool
sekanjebeen,
a sugar syrup of mint and vinegar over grated cucumber, and began a conversation that would go on for hours.

I started by asking about the photo on his mobile phone, of a little girl in pigtails with a lovable smile. I knew already from Nasrine that Arash had a daughter from a previous marriage, and wanted to create an opening for him to talk about her. “Her name is Amitis and she’s almost four,” he said, gazing at her photo with clear adoration. He told me that she lived in California with her mother, and described the time they spent together on his visits. “She loves the children’s rock-climbing gym. She’s always saying, ‘I want climb big mountain!’ because she knows I go mountain climbing, and wants to come too.” The tender way he talked about her charmed me, and I could tell he was a doting, engaged father.