Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran (39 page)

In the course of my walks, I recalled Shirin khanoum’s memories of Tehran on the eve of revolution, in particular how the uprising was fueled by working-class and middle-class resentment of wealthy Iranians’ opulent life style. She had recounted how she and her girlfriends, conscious of the underlying injustice, used to linger outside expensive French restaurants where they could not even afford dessert. Such experiences po liti cized her generation, sparking a revolution that punished and purged the wealthy elite. The Islamic Republic had reproduced the very same conditions: one caste lived in superlative comfort while the vast middle and working classes struggled. And while this certainly provoked indignation, the feeling was tinged less with a sense of injustice or politicized anger than with covetous entitlement. The young female equivalents of Shirin khanoum and her friends did not begrudge those dining inside gracious restaurants their privilege; they simply aspired to sit on the other side of the glass.

Because young people were disenchanted with politics and thoroughly cynical about the possibility of change through political activism, their desire for a better life remained an inchoate longing. It never occurred to them to redress the situation by organizing and speaking out against the status quo. As they saw it, that was what their parents had done in 1979, and look what they had accomplished. Instead of protesting, the young turned to pyramid schemes and shady real estate transactions. As long as my generation remained concerned with achieving the upper class’s material success, rather than somehow challenging the corruption that enabled it, I did not see how very much would change in Iran. Though particularly vile, Islamic plutocracy had never seemed so well entrenched.

I spent an entire weekend lost in such thoughts, as Arash was away on a business trip to Tabriz. The night he was meant to return, he
called to tell me Iran Air was running a Tupolev aircraft on the flight back to Tehran, where it usually used Airbuses. The Tupolev is a shoddy Russian plane with a worrisome record of plummeting from the sky at the slightest mechanical malfunction. Because American sanctions bar Iran from purchasing Boeings (or even European Airbuses, which contain American-made parts), the country’s fleet of aircraft grows more decrepit each year, and the government has no option but rickety Russian planes. It had become almost commonplace for passenger planes to crash, leaving no survivors. I told Arash I preferred him to take the bus rather than risk his life on a Tupolev. The bus took fourteen hours, and he called every two or three to complain at its slow progress.

That same evening, the retired colonel’s son upstairs threw a party. Sometime just before midnight, plainclothes police, or perhaps Basij, arrived to break it up. I heard the click-clack of heels and frantic whispering in the stairwell. The guests were hiding between floors, frightened of arrest. I wondered whether I should open the door and let them hide inside our apartment. But what if the police found out and came pounding on our door? Would I then be arrested as well? I chose not to let the guests in: I heard no scuffling from upstairs, so I preferred to believe the party was being broken up peacefully. Having just prevented Arash from flying on a deathtrap, with my delivery just a few short weeks away, I had no wish to expose myself to whatever authorities were raiding the party. I turned the lights off, telling myself there was no shame in my decision.

T
he beginning of that October marked the start of Ramazan, the Muslim month of fasting. I could not fast because I was pregnant, but I would have been disinclined to do so anyway, so thoroughly disenchanted had I become with Islam. I knew I could not blame Islam itself for the laws that had made getting married so complicated, the opium-addicted mullah, the polygamy references in our marriage contract. Nonetheless, I felt they had worn away at my ties to the faith, leaving me more detached than ever before. Perhaps with time, I
could heal this rift, demarcating my own private Islam as separate from the state’s punitive caricature.

I tried to read books written by reformist Muslims, channeling my resentment into intellectual engagement. But the books failed to move me, and I found it significant that most of these reformers lived in western countries. Free from coping with Islamic realities each day, they could devote their energy to refashioning the faith from afar.

I visited fasting relatives over
iftar
(the meal that breaks the day’s fast), hoping to observe something in their behavior and outlook that might suggest how they managed to preserve their faith. But nothing in the way they broke their fast with dates and tea and discussed the day’s headlines revealed this inner, spiritual calculus. I remained estranged from the festive time of year I had once so keenly enjoyed; only four or five years ago, in Beirut and in Cairo, I had flitted from
iftar
to
iftar,
a veritable Shia socialite. This felt like the distant past of another person, so wide a gulf had opened between me and the religion I once absorbed in my grandmother’s lap.

On an overcast day toward the end of Ramazan, Arash and I went stroller shopping on Vali Asr Boulevard, threading through the crowds in line for
halim,
a turkey and wheat stew that is traditional fare during the month of fasting. It seemed to me that everyone paused to observe my waddle down the sidewalk. “Haven’t they ever seen a pregnant woman before?” I whispered to Arash. As my stomach expanded, I often searched for other women in similar stages of pregnancy on the street, wishing to feel less alone in my new, spherical form. But as my pregnancy advanced I saw fewer and fewer, until it became evident that very pregnant women simply did not go outside much. Although the Islamic revolution stressed motherhood as the central role of women’s lives, although it described in lofty terms the sanctity of bearing children, somehow the physical presence of an extremely pregnant woman was not quite appropriate.

At the Eskan Shopping Center, famous for its café where teenagers flirted over ice cream desserts, we examined sleek hydraulic strollers. I had insisted on buying a stroller—it seemed essential somehow—though I did not know where it would be used. Since 1979, when the
Tehran municipality began renaming each street and freeway after war martyrs, the city’s sidewalks had fallen into disrepair. Sidewalks had formerly been maintained by the city, but now the owner of each building was responsible for the stretch of sidewalk in front of it. As a result, sidewalks now varied in quality, appearance, and most unfortunately, height. Yards of rustic cobblestone might suddenly drop several inches to a path of aging asphalt. Walking down a basically flat side street, one stepped up and down, up and down; it was impossible to use a stroller (or a wheelchair or a walker) in most neighborhoods. Even had it been possible, it wasn’t safe, because the authorities had also permitted sidewalks to become de facto motorcycle lanes.

After we settled on a fancy stroller that appeased my pregnancy consumption needs, a model that unfolded automatically in a color called Capri, we drove to Mehr Hospital for my first weekly fetal monitoring session. Mehr, one of the city’s older hospitals, was never mentioned when people were discussing where in Tehran one should receive treatment, but it was one of the few hospitals in the city to own and use fetal monitors (acquired at Dr. Laleh’s insistence).

As I took off my shoes to enter the maternity ward, the nurse told Arash to wait outside in the hall. I supposed allowing him to be present during my actual labor was generous enough, and that it was unreasonable to expect him to be admitted to the weekly checks. I waved goodbye cheerfully, following the nurse to a bed where I would lie perfectly still for twenty minutes to ensure an accurate reading. I inspected the area minutely. It was clean, though it resembled a hospital room from the 1950s. Even though this was the maternity ward, there was no pastel wallpaper, no plants, no curtains patterned with fuzzy sheep, none of that cozy baby aesthetic that is meant to off set the clinical hospital setting and create a “natural, family-centered experience.” The nurses all wore forest green tunics,
magknaeks, and
beatific smiles, lending the ward an alien atmosphere, as though it were part of a hospital for science fiction characters.

Once I was strapped down and the machine began beeping, I turned to greet the woman occupying the other bed in the room. I assumed, because she was attached to similar equipment, that she was
also undergoing a routine check, but from her frantic phone conversations (“Traffic? I don’t care about traffic. Get here
now!”)
it became evident she was in labor. Her nails were freshly manicured and she wore ample mascara: in the view of Iranian women, childbirth is no excuse for lax grooming. She must have been in an intermediate stage of labor, I couldn’t tell exactly, but it was clear she was in an epidural-induced haze. She spoke incessantly and without inhibition about how she felt neglected by her mother, who had stopped by the previous week only four times with home-cooked meals, about the husband who had insisted on attending a business meeting and was now caught in traffic. The chief source of her distress, however, was the fear that her chosen baby name was in jeopardy.

“I had chosen Som, which is a
beautiful
name, don’t you think? … A
Shahnameh
name that sounds modern … and can you believe it, my brother-in-law, two nights ago, he tells me that it is banned, because it is too close to Sam, like Uncle Sam. … Banned! My Som! I cried for two whole days, because, you know, I’ve been calling him that for months, he is Som to me, he can’t just become something else. …” She continued in this manner for ten minutes, her voice rising in hysterical peaks.

I kept trying to summon the nurse to return, as I could no longer bear lying on my back. I had read in my pregnancy books that one should definitely, positively never lie on one’s back after the first trimester, and here I was, supine, at the instruction of medical professionals who should have known better. My arms ached from propping myself up into a reclining position, but the nurse never walked past and there was no call button. I considered yelling for help, but I wasn’t sure what I would yell and I was afraid of being impolite. My heart was racing, thudding in my chest as though it might burst, my arms trembling, the sweat trickling down my forehead. The epidural woman wouldn’t stop chattering, and suddenly I wasn’t sure I could breathe anymore. That’s when I realized I was not just very, very upset, but having an actual panic attack. This awareness helped calm me down, and I relaxed my arms, reclining limply on the rough cotton sheets.

I don’t know whether it was the woman’s neurotic prattle or my
own unacknowledged fear of giving birth in an atmosphere that still felt somewhat alien that had overwhelmed me with such a sudden, intense anxiety. What I did know was that I felt suffocated. Was there no point where such conversations would end? Can my husband come in or not, Can we pick this name or not, Can I wear this scarf or not, Can I enter this building or not? Of course, the fact was that there was no such point. That was the nature of totalitarian regimes. Previously, I had believed that this need not define my experience of life in Iran. This perspective was the key, I believed, to not living as a victim. But I was having difficulty maintaining it in the face of repeated violations. Perhaps under the moderate Khatami this attitude was progressive and empowering; under Ahmadinejad, it amounted to self-delusion. I emerged from the maternity ward wan and stiff, and Arash canceled his afternoon meeting and took me for a walk in Sayee Park. We bought steaming beets from a street vendor and ate them quietly on a bench, the sweet flesh staining our lips. He told me that in the hallway he had seen a sign announcing that the hospital admitted unwed mothers. Was this even legal? Did other hospitals practice such lenience? It was impossible to know.

That evening, the news announced that the four-hundred-person state committee that had fanned out across the country in search of the new moon had reported a sighting. This meant that starting that evening, the entire country would commence a three-day holiday on the occasion of Eid-e Fetr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramazan. In Arab countries, everyone in advance knew exactly when Ramazan was ending. This made the final day of fasting pass more quickly, the thirsty hours easier to withstand in the knowledge that they were the last. It also enabled people to plan holiday travel ahead of time. This was the way of sensible countries, but not Iran, which preferred to announce three-day holidays at nine o’clock the evening prior.

Sometime during the days that followed, I decided it was time to alert Mr. X that I would be having a baby. He needed to know that I would be on leave from work, that I would be turning off my mobile phone, and that I would not be calling with minute updates about my next story. I harbored a slim hope that this news would end our relationship.
A close friend of mine, a reporter for an important American newspaper, had received a permanent dispensation from her dealings with Mr. X on the occasion of her first child’s birth. Upon discovering she was pregnant, he bade her farewell, asking her to
halal
him, to forgive him for any trespass or distress he had caused. She had never heard from him since. I somehow doubted this would be my fate, but one never knew. He received the news cordially, offering congratulations and making no reference to our recent contretemps.