Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (44 page)

Iranian television has introduced a cooking show with a handsome male host who has become the homemakers’ heartthrob. The show also has raised the consciousness of viewers, showing them that it is okay for men to cook. A channel devoted almost entirely to sports airs both sports events and call-in sports trivia shows.

For a while, the most popular television program in Iran was a slapstick sitcom about a young, educated, upper-middle-class married couple named Maryam and Ramin. They were the Iranian version of Lucy and Desi. Maryam wore brightly colored head scarves and clothing, and a shirt that covered only her hips, not a long coat that covered her ankles. She wore too much eyeliner. So did her husband, Ramin. For an hour every night she screeched at him to wash the dishes or pay the bills or compensate her for her work as a housewife. Ramin struck me as a smug know-it-all; Maryam, as irrational, emotional, childlike, and, according to her husband, always wrong. But I loved the show’s novelty and its absence of religion.

Ramin and Maryam became pop culture icons. “She is the first female comedian in our country and people love her,” said Shahla Sherkat, editor of the feminist magazine
Zanan,
which put Maryam on its cover. “Her character is stronger than her husband’s. She’s a forward, opportunistic woman who is not overpowered by a man. It’s one of the first roles in which a woman is not bringing tea to her husband or washing clothes or saying, ‘Yes, sir.’ And it’s a funny show. My daughters love it.”

Then one evening, the show went off the air. No reason was given. There was a rumor that the actress who played Maryam had demanded too much money; another that conservative clerics objected to the emotional intimacy of the show. Ramin started his own talk show, interviewing people like soccer stars and social workers. It was just not the same.

Still, as Maryam’s jewel-colored clothing illustrated, television characters sometimes can do things that are forbidden in real life. I flipped on television one day to find a tourist feature film about the provincial capital of Yazd. It showed a male and a female film crew on location doing amazing things together. They checked into a hotel together. Even though they had separate rooms, in real life it would be difficult to find a hotel that would have taken them. The woman called her colleague on the phone from her room, arranged for them to meet in the restaurant, and accompanied him along the streets of the city as they did their work. In real life, any of those activities could have gotten them arrested.

The sight of television and film actresses in all those colors and unusually shaped coverings sparked criticism in conservative newspapers that wanted a return to black and neutral tones. But some women wanted to know why television women were freer than women in real life. “Why can’t women wear the same kind of dress on the street as women wear on television?” one reader asked in the newspaper call-in column, “Hello
Salaam.
”

While television under the revolution has always given spiritual advice on such issues as how to pray, it has also begun to give psychological guidance for social and family problems. One popular morning call-in program,
Sobh va Zendegi
(Morning and Life), often invites social workers and psychologists as guests. During one program with a female psychologist, the father of a seventeen-year-old boy called in to get some advice about how to stop his son from smoking.

“Does he exercise?” asked the psychologist.

“No,” said the father.

“Does he lie?”

“Yes, and he also has a very bad temper.”

“Does he sometimes take things that don’t belong to him?”

“Yes.”

“So, dear sir,” the psychologist said, “Your son’s problem is not only smoking. It’s a combination of depression and anxiety. First of all, I am glad that a father is calling because most of the time it seems only the mothers are worried about their kids. Second, my advice is to be more friendly to your son. Get closer to him. Let him open himself up to you. Try to fill his time with useful activities, especially ones he wants to do, not ones you want him to do.”

The psychologist asked the father whether he had ever beaten his son.

“Yes,” the father replied.

“There you go,” the psychologist said. “You have already done damage that will be difficult to undo.”

One element that is not missing from Iranian television is moral clarity.

In its fictional serials, television has begun to deal with real-life issues, sometimes in ways that stretch reality. One of the most popular television soap operas is
The Days of Youth,
the story of everyday life for four single male students in their twenties who live in Tehran. In reality, most young people in Iran live with their parents until they get married, and the story of four guys sharing a small rented apartment made for compelling—even risqué—entertainment. One episode dealt with the problems of one student, whose rich parents disapproved of his fiancée. Another episode dealt with the fiancée’s discovery of her biological mother, from whom she had been separated during air raids in the early part of the long war with Iraq. A third episode dealt with a new roommate, a heroin addict who tried to commit suicide.

The series is popular, my friends tell me, because it portrays both normal everyday life and human misery—minus all the religion. “I love this show,” said my friend Nargess. “These guys sing, read love novels, and recite poetry. They help out their friends and go out with the girls they love. They deal with ugliness—drugs, prison, and bad parents.”

The program also idealizes the reality of life. The characters all seem to have enough money to rent an apartment on their own, which is not generally the case. They are never shaken down or arrested by the morals police for going out with women or otherwise misbehaving. In some ways, the program reflects the way people hope life will be. At first glance, it is astonishing that the government network has allowed it to air. But consider the stiff competition from foreign-based sources. The Islamic Republic wants to satisfy a population hungry for entertainment with something other than American sitcoms and Turkish soft pornography. Iran’s press and cinema are struggling to illuminate, educate, and entertain. And with the country’s youth impatient for change, does the government really have a choice?

C H A P T E R   F O U R T E E N

Night Is with Child

If we lose the hearts and minds of the young, we’re finished. We cannotcontrol them.

— ABDOLLAH NOURI, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT AND FORMER MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR

If you were born in America, you’d be studying at Harvard or Oxford now.

— ROYA TO HER FRIEND FERESHTEH IN THE 1999 IRANIAN BLOCKBUSTER FILM
TWO WOMEN

T
HE YOUNG WOMAN
flung off her head scarf and thrust her head out of an open window of the blue Volkswagen, her long wavy red hair flying wild in the wind. Just behind was a white police car with four officers inside. But the policemen weren’t trying to stop her. They were cheering and waving at the exultant crowds lining the street, which had been driven wild by an Iranian victory over the United States—in soccer. Caught up in the patriotic fervor, the policemen were oblivious to the blatant violation of the law—a woman with an unveiled head—that was clearly in their line of vision as they drove up Africa Street, one of Tehran’s busiest thoroughfares, at two in the morning.

I was standing on the sidewalk watching the events, feeling frustrated. Here was a bold, defiant demonstration of the power of the masses, and of their youth, in the face of rigid authority, and authority had backed down. Was I the only one to notice it? Wasn’t there a photographer around to capture the scene?

The date was June 21, 1998, and Iran had just defeated the United States in the World Cup competition in France. In a communal celebration that froze traffic, freed spirits, and cut across lines of class and gender, millions of people poured into the highways, streets, and alleyways in cities and towns throughout Iran the moment the game ended. Not since the return of Ayatollah Khomeini in February 1979 had there been such a massive display of popular emotion.

This was a victory not just for the Islamic Republic, but for Iran. After the revolution, some clerics tried to put soccer players in long pants and others even branded the game anti-Islamic. But too many other clerics liked the game too much to suppress it. Even Ayatollah Khomeini was a soccer fan; he was said to have watched matches on television during his exile in Paris. His son Ahmad had played on a team in the holy city of Qom. In 1998, one member of Parliament went so far as to argue that soccer was important for the nation’s soul, since in praying for the national team, the nation’s level of religious devotion rose.

So it shouldn’t have been surprising that for one glorious summer night, ordinary Iranians proved themselves capable of bursting out of their lethargy not for God, but for soccer. The frenzy, a kind of mad ecstasy, burst through the Islamic veneer that the revolution had imposed. The unveiling of the redheaded woman was only one of the revolutionary acts I saw that night.

In a dark corner on Vali Asr Avenue in the center of town, a young man positioned a twenty-gallon tank on top of his car. Through a hose attached to the tank he poured a clear liquid into paper cups and handed them out to passersby. The liquid was bootleg vodka. Old men in their eighties strolled the streets in nightshirts. One middle-aged woman waved flares and pounded on cars, ordering drivers to honk their horns and cheer. I saw women of all ages out on their balconies wearing only nightgowns and slippers.

But the night belonged to the young, and the young partied until dawn. Flags were waved, whistles blown, candies thrown, fireworks lighted, car alarms activated, soap suds sprayed. Young men and women danced in the streets to the sounds of American rock music. A dozen young men linked arms and danced, stringing the names of Iran’s soccer stars into a rhyming chant. Another group of young men raised an American flag and tried to burn it, but a third group encircled them and pulled the flag to safety.

As things turned out, this was not a night to hate America. The only chant I heard about the United States was not “Death to America,” but “
Iran hoorah, Amrika sourakh
” (“Iran hurray, America punctured”), a reference, I suppose, to the American team’s weak defense that had made possible Iran’s 2–1 victory. One Iranian woman stopped and kissed me when I told her I was an American. She assured me that Iran’s victory was nothing personal. Not everyone was so sporting, however. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, used the occasion to criticize the United States. “Tonight, again, the strong and arrogant opponents felt the bitter taste of defeat at your hands,” he said in a message to the team. But such words were not what resonated with the crowds. In the nationwide afterglow, people told stories about the magic of that night for weeks. Some young Iranians coined a name for it: “the coming of the second revolution.”

Much of the magic was the sheer subversiveness of the display of joy. This was, in itself, a revelation to the young people—and a red flag to the conservatives. Both groups know that a war is underway for the soul of Iran’s new generation, and that joy is only one of youth’s emotions. If so many young people could pour into the streets in celebration, they could also demonstrate in anger as well.

The ruling class doesn’t seem afraid of the people who work in its shops and factories these days. It doesn’t seem concerned about losing its base among the bazaar merchants. It doesn’t even seem particularly fearful that it can’t control dissident clerics and intellectuals. It is the youth that the authorities view with the most trepidation. At first, officials alluded to this fear sotto voce, but lately they have been shouting it out. If we don’t do something to appease the youth, the ruling class in effect has been saying, the Islamic Republic will be doomed.

Thirteen months after the soccer victory, a second scene in the first act of the new “revolution” played itself out, again in the streets. But this was a darker scene, a demonstration not of joy but of rage, as Tehran’s youth took to the streets to send a message that they were tired of being pushed around.

The unrest began on July 8, 1999, with a demonstration at the University of Tehran against the closing of the popular newspaper
Salaam
and against the consideration by parliament of a law that would have made it easier to prosecute journalists for what they wrote. Stones were thrown, either by plainclothes police or street vigilantes; the students reciprocated. Uniformed security forces arrived and ordered the students back to their dorms. That night, as students slept, a vigilante force of about four hundred men forced its way onto the campus and into the dorms. The men appeared to be organized, almost like a private army. They wore black trousers and white shirts and carried long rubberized green clubs of a type common among the state-supported thugs.

It was this act—the violation of the students’ private space—that triggered the riots and galvanized the country. “They beat the students,” Mahmoud Milani, a student who witnessed the attack, told me later. Milani had not been much of an activist, but the dormitory incident politicized him, and he emerged as one of the spokesmen for the students. “The vigilantes had clubs and chains and electric cables and broke everything they saw,” Milani said. “They kicked in the doors of the rooms. The security police and riot police stood outside and let it happen. Then the riot police were ordered to attack. They came through all the buildings and beat the students. They took refrigerators and computers. They even broke public phones. They attacked the dorm of the foreign students so that Iran would be considered an anarchist country that is not stable. They threw one Pakistani student out a window. Both his legs were broken.”