Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (15 page)

During celebrations in February 1999 for the twentieth anniversary of the revolution, Khamenei’s aides acknowledged as much when they pointed out how his image had softened. He hosted a meeting with athletes and actors. He publicly discussed his passion for soccer and how he had stayed up late to watch Iran beat the United States in a World Cup match the previous June. He was shown in television footage strolling in a flower-filled garden, smiling. In the background soft music played. The man who had once studied music and then banned music was now using music to try to get the people to like him.

But it was easy to see that these exercises in public relations were really a result of Khatami’s challenge to Khamenei’s authority. In the battle over the shape of the Islamic Republic in the twenty-first century, Khatami had come to represent those forces who believe that lively public discourse will open up the political system and that cultural isolation is neither possible nor desirable. Khamenei—at least in his public pronouncements—represented those who want to keep the country Islamically pure, walled off from the West.

Their differences were on display in their public statements. More than once, Khatami attacked the state of Israel as a “racist Zionist regime,” but suggested that Iran would not impose on the Palestinians its own views about a peace settlement. Khamenei seized every opportunity to condemn the state of Israel and rail against the Middle East peace process and the Palestinians for signing a peace agreement. Khatami wanted to find ways to forge a positive relationship with the American people, if not necessarily with the American government; Khamenei reflexively condemned the United States, calling those who seek a rapprochement “simpletons and traitors.”

The reality was that despite their differences, the two clerics needed each other if Iran’s fluid political system was to function. Khamenei had power on paper—and the keys to the security apparatus—but Khatami had the support of the people. They didn’t openly attack each other, for that would have undercut the myth of the unity of the ruling elite. And their relationship was flexible as well, for each was mindful that their views could change with political circumstances. At times, they seemed to work together, one pursuing the cause of reform and the other struggling to prevent factional conflicts from spinning out of control.

Their peculiarly symbiotic relationship was on clear display when Khatami gave an interview to CNN in January 1998 in which he expressed his desire to break down “the wall of mistrust” with the United States through cultural exchanges. Nine days later, Khamenei branded the United States “the enemy of the Iranian nation” and “the Great Satan,” but pointedly referred to Khatami as the “respected President” and dismissed their differences as “a tone of speech and difference of taste.”

Khamenei’s praise for the President on a personal level quieted those conservatives who charged that Khatami was undermining the achievements of the revolution. But his diatribe against the United States reinforced the mind-set in the Clinton administration that Iran’s leadership was not yet united or predictable enough to modify its hostile attitude toward the United States. So much for Khatami’s larger goal of predictability, rationality, and accountability.

However much Khamenei and conservatives stand in Khatami’s way, though, I have become convinced that the real challenge to Khatami’s rule and the reform movement in Iran is only partly political. I saw that one morning in Yazd. Khatami stood before four hundred clerics, teachers,
bazaari,
politicians, disabled war veterans, and professionals. He preached a radical message—tolerance. “The majority does not have the right to act like dictators,” he said. “The minority must have the right to express its opinion as well.”

A woman in a chador leaned over and whispered to me—in English, “He is making a counterrevolution. It’s about time.”

But outside the hall, as I waited with the Iranian press corps for our bus to leave, an elderly woman came up to our group to ask what all the commotion was about. When we told her who we were, she screamed at us. “Write about poverty!” she said. “Tell the President how poor the people are. He doesn’t know.” She thrust a plastic bag holding a kilo of potatoes into my face and said, “I paid eight hundred for this little bag. Last year they cost only four hundred.” She pinched the potatoes for me to see for myself. “Look how small they are,” she said. “Tell
that
to the President.”

The two speeches—by Khatami and by the woman with the potatoes—captured for me the main lines of debate in Iran at the turn of the century. The first was part of the intense, often angry debate about the rule of law and the creation of civil society, that is to say, what the Islamic Republic will look like in the future. The second represented a much more universal and fundamental dialogue: “How do I feed my kids?” It is a question that still begs for an answer in Iran, whether it is asked of Khamenei or Khatami.

I sometimes wondered whether Khatami would end up like Mehdi Bazargan, the revolution’s first Prime Minister. Khomeini criticized Bazargan for being too weak, when he really was too much a believer in the rule of law. “It has been my role to be a liaison between modern culture and social science on the one hand and tradition and Islamic belief on the other,” Bazargan had told me on a bus the day of Khomeini’s return to Iran. “We will be guided by tolerance, freedom, equality, and justice.”

But then I thought of the differences. Bazargan was a transitional figure, a fervent opponent of the Shah who came into power not through the will of the people but through the will of Khomeini. He had no organization behind him during a period of chaos and terror after the revolution. Khatami came to power with the support of powerful factions from different ends of the political spectrum and, more important, the mandate of the people at a time when revolutionary fervor had waned.

Perhaps it was more to the point to wonder if Khatami should be compared to Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, who believed that if Russians got a freer political system, economic prosperity would naturally follow. The woman with the small potatoes probably knew little about global economics. But her rant suggested that there were Iranians who would settle for a China-style solution instead: fix the economy first and let political liberty take care of itself later on—if ever.

There are, of course, enormous differences between the unfolding evolutions of Russia and China and the process now playing out in Iran. But all three have now had to face the question of how to make ideologically driven societies practical enough to feed their people and free enough to satisfy individual yearnings for liberty.

In finding his own answer to that question, Khatami became convinced that for much of the country the Islamic Republic had lost its legitimacy. He believed that transparency in the political system was the key to curbing corruption and promoting economic growth. If only he could create a tolerant civil society governed by the rule of law, the system would prosper and endure.

But was he steering fast enough? The Iranians who voted for Khatami wanted a new kind of leader; but they wanted jobs too. Two decades earlier, many of them had made a revolution not only in the name of Islam, but for the cause of improving their lives, and those of their children. And they were tired of waiting.

PART TWO

———

Private Lives,
Women’s Lives

C H A P T E R   F I V E

Leaving the Islamic Republic at the Door

There was a Door to which I found no Key,

There was a Veil past which I might not see . . .

—
RUBÁIYÁT
OF OMAR KHAYYAM, TWELFTH - CENTURY PERSIAN POET

We used to drink in public and pray in private. Now we pray in public and drink in private.

— POPULAR JOKE IN TEHRAN

Y
EK! DO! SEH!
Chahar! Panj! Yek! Do! Seh! Chahar! Panj!”

The teacher barked out the numbers in Persian. The women were out of formation, and she was determined to drum some discipline into them before she dismissed them for the day. No, this was not basic training. It was an aerobics class in a private home in north Tehran.

In fact, it felt far more comfortable in that room than outside in the street, where the rules about what a woman could do were different. Here, as in many other private spaces in Iran, was a safe, legal place where women could literally strip off their Islamic dress, be themselves, admonish each other, and laugh together without the prying eyes or standards of the morals police.

Private space is one of the true wonders of Iranian society, but one of the hardest for an outsider to figure out. There is a range of refuges from the theocracy’s strict rules, from private homes to private salons and clubs to semipublic facilities set aside for women or men—or even to remote bits of the outdoors where the morals police just don’t go. The availability of these refuges is one of the reasons the Islamic Republic endures.

There are not enough of these refuges, and the ones that exist are invaded from time to time by the state. But because of them, ordinary Iranians need not feel oppressed all the time. Personal expression, it turns out, is entirely possible in Iran. You just have to be careful when and where you engage in it, and you have to be ready for nasty surprises when the rules change. So seeking out and defining the refuge of private space has become one of the necessary skills of life in Islamic Iran.

The aerobics studio is a good case in point. More than a dozen leotardclad women lay on black mats spread out on the hardwood floor. They panted and sweated to the beat of dance music sung by an Iranian expatriate, whose music was banned in Iran and who was living and working in Los Angeles. The cassette tape had been smuggled into Iran, along with the latest pirated videos of American films. The aerobics drillmaster was Ladan, a twenty-two-year-old former gymnast whose long brown curly hair streamed down her back. The ninety-minute workout was rigorous, even by American standards. When it was over, all the women let out a long, loud collective whoop acknowledging their hard work.

Two years before, Maryam and Mina, two sisters in their forties, had pooled several thousand dollars of their savings, gutted part of the vast walled house they shared, and built a state-of-the-art aerobics studio. They installed ballet barres, ceiling-to-floor mirrors, lockers, and a sound system, and bought Iranian-made stationary bicycles, treadmills, and other exercise machines. A license from the Ministry of Health authorized them to engage in bodybuilding, aerobics, and yoga classes. Government inspectors made periodic visits to ensure that the premises were safe and that nothing that could be construed as un-Islamic was going on.

“We decided when we turned forty that we wanted to do something for our country and something for ourselves,” said Maryam, a twice-divorced painter and mother of two. She and her sister rejected the idea of opening an art gallery not only because they thought the bribes to city authorities would have been too high, but also because an art gallery would have been a public space for both men and women in which women would have had to keep their heads and bodies covered. “Ours had to be a fun project that would help other women and not violate the Islamic codes,” said Maryam. “This is what we came up with.”

What they built is not only a place of exercise, but also a place of repose, decorated with huge bouquets of purple iris and yellow daffodils. There is a separate space for weight training and nutritional analysis and a tiny kitchen in which to make tea. On the day I visited, a platter of chocolate-covered creampuffs was laid out to celebrate a client’s birthday.

Mina, who is two years younger than her sister, told me how depression has spread like a contagious disease among her generation. “When I turned forty, the sadness that came was a passing thing,” she said. “But for some women the depression stays. A lot of my friends say, ‘I wasted my youth raising kids and now I’m worth nothing.’ There are so few places for women to go to meet other women. I can’t move heaven and earth. But I can do this.”

At the end of the class, Ladan, the instructor, said she would dance for me. Technically, dancing is prohibited in the studio. The authorities have given permission for athletic exercise, which is considered healthy therapy; not dancing, which is entertainment.

Ladan was dressed in a low-cut belly shirt, tight red and white paisley pedal pushers, big gold hoop earrings, and athletic shoes. But the dance she chose was pure Persian. She turned down the lights and put on the sinuous music. She thrust out her small breasts, revealing her slightly rounded belly and her navel, threw back her head, and put her arms over her head. She parted her wide lips in what I can only describe as an orgasmic smile. Then she moved, swaying and undulating her way around the room. She outlined the curves of her body with her hands and beckoned the audience to her.

It was a moment of sheer sensuality like others I have been invited to see from time to time in Iran. Men can be wonderfully erotic when they show their skills in traditional dances that have survived, despite the Islamic Republic. But for women, there is an additional dimension of freedom. So much of a woman’s body is covered in public, so much is forbidden and repressed, that when the veil falls, even for a moment, there is a heightened sense of excitement. The women whistled through their teeth and hooted at Ladan as if she were a male stripper. Then, when the music stopped, Ladan and the other women put on their head scarves and the coats they call
roupoush
(outerwear) and left their refuge for the public space of the street.