Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran (15 page)

“I’m going to miss my flight, and I don’t have time for this,” I said curtly. When I had first arrived in Iran, fresh and green from northern California, I had obeyed like a schoolgirl in such situations, naïvely deferential to authority, certain the worst could not happen to me, of all people. Only when the worst (arrest, near arrest, public humiliation, and so forth) befell me, repeatedly, as a result of my submissiveness, did I learn to respond like the Iranian young people of my generation: with loud, shrill confrontation. This was the rather simple trick by which my friends—indeed, most young Iranians—managed to evade the bullying ways of the Islamic system: by shouting down its enforcers, daring them to engage in hostile, full-fledged confrontation. It sounds counterintuitive, but it was actually effective. Very often the
authority figure in question was either too young, cowed, bored, or poorly paid to deal with an angry female whose shrieks typically gained her the solidarity of passers-by.

I described this kind of resistance in my first book as the culture of “as if,” a mode that involved behaving “as if” most of the regime’s rules did not exist. Although it was technically illegal to reveal locks of hair, listen to western music, read censored books, and consort with members of the opposite sex, Iranian young people rendered these restrictions meaningless by ignoring them. In pushing back this way, they had reasserted some control over their daily lives. If you had asked me at the time, I would have said that it meant the authorities would never again be able to impose their harshest codes, that the days of telling Iranians exactly what to wear, say, watch, and do were over. The mullahs could not, after all, do battle against an entire generation, I thought.

The rebelliousness of Iranian young people often led outside observers to conclude that they were willing to confront authority in more meaningful, or more overtly political, ways. But I never found this to be the case. Every few months an editor at
Time
would ask whether we could do an “Iranian youth at boiling point” story, and I would explain that Iranian youth weren’t even heating up yet. That they were willing to shout down a police officer or flirt during a public Islamic ritual meant mostly that they were concerned with freedom in their immediate ten-foot radius. Beyond that, the risks involved in rebellion swiftly outgrew the rewards. Busy investing in the logistics of emigration—the English proficiency tests, visa applications, and language courses—many young people envisioned their futures abroad, and were unwilling to compromise those hopes for the sake of somehow changing Iran, a notion they considered chimerical, costly, and best left to a future generation.

The localized subversion they practiced was not unlike shooing away mosquitoes in high summer. The pests would buzz off momentarily, perhaps drawn to the neighbor’s porch light. But they would always be back, until someone mustered the energy to seek a more enduring solution.

At the airport on my way to Dubai, the guard let me pass through to the gate, though she first made me sign a
ta’ahod
promising not to repeat my offense. Certain she would toss it out without a glance, I signed it Googoosh, the name of a famous Iranian pop diva, and headed out to find Arash. If the ease with which one entered or left the airport was any measure of whether the government was tightening or loosening its controls on women’s dress, the incident was worrisome. It was unheard-of to be asked to sign a
ta’ahod
at Mehrabad, the capital’s main airport, but we were flying out of the new Imam Khomeini airport (IKIA), located in the desolate stretch of desert between Tehran and the holy city of Qom. “What a difference a vowel makes,” I’d said to Arash, pointing to the freeway signs directing us to IKIA. “Just imagine, if that second ‘I’ were an ‘E,’ what kind of country this would be.” IKEA, after all, could supply Iranians with more of what they actually needed.

With its vaulted ceilings, its tunnels to the planes, and its smart café serving cappuccino and berry tart from Tehran’s finest bakery, IKIA matched the standards of the developed world’s airports. Unfortunately, it had been designed to meet the travel needs of Iran circa 1980, and the decades of delay in its construction made it rather useless. IKIA was far too small to function as the chief airport of a nation of seventy million, and on many mornings the outgoing flights quickly overwhelmed its capacity. The lines for the departure hall’s handful of two-stall bathrooms, for example, were grounds enough to merit the commissioning of another two terminals.

Built largely in cooperation with the Revolutionary Guards, the airport had been embroiled since 2004 in the conflict between Iran and Europe over the country’s nuclear program. The Guards were a military force distinct from the conventional army, and notorious as the trouble-making arm of the Islamic Republic; they oversaw the country’s ties with Islamic militant groups and were accused by the United States of destabilizing the fledgling Iraqi government. Inside Iran, their economic clout had expanded in recent years, and now major infrastructural projects, instead of being sourced to firms with technical expertise, were granted directly to the Guards. European
countries, irritated by Tehran’s diplomatic antics, balked at letting their carriers fly in and out of IKIA, citing a runway problem that they privately admitted was manageable. The Europeans’ ban on the new airport would almost certainly be dropped in the months to come, but in the meantime it reminded Iranians that their government had lost its credibility in the world.

As I recounted the airport run-in, I hastened to add what I considered an important detail. “Ahmadinejad himself doesn’t support this kind of harassment,” I said. “He said in a public speech that our country’s problem is not the hejab, which I think made him look quite sensible.”

At the time, I believed Ahmadinejad. I thought his practical approach to hejab (which in Iran refers to the practice of women covering their hair) was a cunning way to win over educated, urban Iranians who would be wary of his hard-line religious views.

Arash, Homayoun, and Gita looked at me skeptically, but I continued, arguing that the harassment at the new airport didn’t represent a new wave of repression but only the heavy-handedness one should expect of establishments run by the Revolutionary Guards. Like so many people at the time, reluctant to brace for the worst, I looked everywhere for hopeful signs that under this new president perhaps our lives would not change so dramatically.

After three days in Dubai, Arash and I returned to Tehran. On the way back from the airport, we stopped to eat liver kabobs near the old slaughterhouse district of the city. As we pulled the succulent meat off the skewers, I gazed around at the plastic tables of the fluorescent-lit dive, at the photos of Ayatollahs Khomeni and Khamenei hanging on the wall, and felt a pang of intense doubt. Was this the life I really wanted? I wasn’t uncertain about being with Arash, of course; traveling together had only underscored how well we fit and how close we had become. But did I truly want to live in Iran again, given how uncertain the country’s prospects seemed? If Ahmadinejad turned out to be intolerant of criticism, the climate for journalists would likely deteriorate. And I couldn’t imagine myself living in Iran and not working as a reporter. But since work and study tied Arash to Iran for at
least the near future, I saw no choice for myself but to stay put and hope for the best.

O
ne afternoon a couple of weeks later, Arash called me from his office. “Is everything all right? You haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary today, have you?” No, I replied. Why? Nothing special, he said. We’ll talk when I get home.

We never discussed anything private or sensitive on the phone, for we were certain the lines were tapped. I knew that the authorities had tapped the phones I used back in 2000: Mr. X occasionally revealed information he could not have had without access to my private conversations. And since I had moved in to Arash’s apartment, the quality of the phone line had deteriorated. The crackles and hums, which mysteriously afflicted only our line, not the others in the building, convinced me we were being listened to. That the authorities knew we were living together did not concern me particularly. If one day they decided they wanted to toss me into prison, a spotless record of celibacy would not deter them. Now I impatiently waited for Arash to come home.

“I was followed the whole day,” he said, immediately upon opening the door. He had first noticed the man in the morning, lingering outside the door to the office building. Arash’s alertness to detail was exquisite, bordering on preternatural. At a glance he would notice the faulty knot in a silk carpet, the minute flaw in an intricate piece of jewelry. But the man who followed him stood out so dramatically that he surely wanted to be noticed. He had worn a polished suit, a bright tie, and dark sunglasses, and he was closely shaven. You could walk the streets of Tehran for an entire day and not encounter a man with such appearance, for though shaving had become commonplace (strictly observant Muslim men wear either a beard or stubble), the tie, as a western accessory, was still unwelcome in public space. In addition to his striking attire, the man had a memorably hooked nose.

He was still standing across the street when Arash left the office; he surfaced again near the entrance to a building where Arash had a
meeting, and indeed he appeared outside every place Arash went the rest of the day. “Are you sure it hasn’t to do with you?” I suggested hopefully. “Some textile mischief?”

While I had been monitored by Mr. X since the moment I began working in Iran, I had never, to my knowledge, been followed. The incident at the jewelry stop was the first indication that my movements were being watched, and Arash’s experience was the first time someone close to me had been followed. To be harassed for your own work, which you have chosen of your own free will knowing the consequences, is one thing; it is entirely another to feel the impact of that choice in the lives of those close to you. For the first time, living in Iran seemed truly dangerous. I felt miserable that I had inflicted this upon Arash, however indirectly. Though it was not my fault, I also felt somehow ashamed.

Two days later, we met for lunch at a kabob restaurant near Sayee Park, and the man appeared in the crowd, made brief eye contact with us, and disappeared. I couldn’t swallow my food knowing he might be in the restaurant, and walked through both floors to ensure he was gone. Arash behaved gracefully, never once blaming me for the intrusion of the henchmen of the Islamic Republic into his life, but I could see that he was worried. The man with the colossal nose had followed him on a workday and his lurking outside the offices seemed to signal that the company itself, in addition to Arash, was in his sights.

“I’m a little nervous,” I confided to Shirin khanoum the next day. “What if Arash thinks a relationship with me is too much of a liability? And if he doesn’t think so, what if his parents find out and
they
think so?”

Working in the media carries a certain cachet in the West, but in Iran many considered it unseemly, for the output of the Iranian media, accustomed to a lapdog relationship to government, was either propaganda or just sloppy and unprofessional. The press’s reputation did not improve in the Khatami era. Although real independent news papers emerged alongside the reform movement, the independent press was linked so closely to the activists and writers who advocated political change that journalism came to be regarded as de facto political activity. And traditionally, Iranians looked down on politics,
considering it a dangerous arena full of people of compromised character.

“Liability! Ridiculous! He’ll think no such thing,” Shirin khanoum said indignantly, sliding easily into the role of a Jane Austen mother, intent upon and confident of her daughter’s marriageability. “There are a hundred reasons why you benefit him. He should think of those. In fact, why don’t we all go out to dinner, and I can walk him through it. Yes, that’s perfect. That’s what we’ll do.” A while later she phoned her husband and asked him when he might be free to have dinner with “Azadeh and her
namzad”
(traditional Iranians do not recognize the category of boyfriends, who are elevated in discourse to fiancés).

Perhaps she was worried that Arash might genuinely harbor second thoughts; perhaps she feared we were settling into that infertile, indefinite cohabitation so common in the West (the previous month, when we adopted a beagle and a St. Bernard, she scolded me: “Azadeh, you need to get rid of those dogs and get yourself a baby!”). Either way, out of the purposeful warmth that was part of her nature, she sought to do me a good turn, directing her considerable talents to the task of protecting our courtship from the regime’s nosy stalker.

O
ne lonely weekday afternoon—since I worked from home, most afternoons seemed lonely to me—I nearly flung a mug of coffee at the computer screen in frustration. I was trying to check some facts for Shirin khanoum’s book, and nearly half the websites I needed to access were blocked by the government filter. The inclusion of the word “women” in a Google search produced the maddening “Access Denied” screen; even the site of the U.N. Development Fund for Women was blocked. The censors’ crude policing tools seemed to have become more aggressive, filtering the most innocuous sites.

I called Arash at work to complain. “How am I supposed to get any work done? The connection is dead slow, and I can’t find the information I need.”

He promised to bring home some filter-cracking software that would help, but warned that it would probably only work for a couple of days. The government updated its censorship software regularly,
catching and filtering the proxy websites, tools used to help Iranians skirt the government barrier.

It occurred to me that I probably wasn’t the only one suffering from the sealing off of the Internet; perhaps there was a story in the seemingly stepped-up censorship. I began making calls to bloggers, journalists, and women’s rights activists, and discovered that, indeed, the government had launched a fresh onslaught.