Intimidation In Tehran
On a sunny day earlier this summer, I took my 8-month-old baby boy Hourmazd for a walk in the foothills of Tehran’s Alborz Mountains. Families and young people crowded the tree-lined path ahead, chatting leisurely and snacking on crepes and barbecued corn. As I pushed the stroller along, a policewoman in a black chador blocked my way. She fingered my plain cotton head scarf, pronounced it too thin and directed me toward a parked minibus. It took a full minute for me to realize that she meant to arrest me. “I’ve been wearing this veil for over five years,” I pleaded. “Surely it can’t be that unacceptable?” My husband soon caught up with us and began berating the policewoman for harassing a young mother. The commotion drew the attention of a bearded superior officer, who came over to inspect me. “The problems are not few,” he said, frowning at my sleeves, which fell a few inches above my unsteady wrists. He ordered me to sign a ta’ahod, a commitment that I would not repeat my mistake. “Now go home,” he said. “Go home, and don’t come back.”
The Unbearable Chic-ness of Jihad
Not so long ago, the only place in Tehran that I might spy a pair of Dolce and Gabbana heels would have been in a smuggled copy of Vogue. These days, I need only walk through my neighborhood. High above a busy intersection where hard-liners hang “Death to America” banners looms a huge D&G billboard featuring a pair of pointy alligator-skin heels and a rather exquisite espresso-colored handbag. The Italian label is not the first to entice my neighbors with the promise of designer brand status: Last winter, an Escada billboard appeared over the local square, advertising “casual luxury look” accessories. As if none of this were enough, two weeks ago Iran’s first full-scale Western boutique opened for business nearby. The first day, as they hung up the Benetton sign and filled the windows with satin flip-flops and beach totes, I stood outside gawking, wondering what the Afghan day laborers waiting on the corner thought of the giant posters of blonde women in effusive motion. Overnight, the women in the poster had the tops of their heads chopped off (no veil), but their frozen smiles still beckon shoppers inside to buy $40 fuschia mini-skirts for girls under six.
“Halal” Music Makes a Comeback
Last summer, when Ostad Mohammad-Reza Lotfi — Iran’s most accomplished classical musician and tar master — returned from exile in the West to found a music school, hordes of eager young musicians stood in interminable lines under the Tehran sun, instrument cases tucked under their arms, waiting to take the entrance exam. The opportunity to study with the legendary composer drew star-struck young people from all across the country. Enough women showed up for an all women’s orchestra.
Located on a dilapidated block near Pich-e Shemroon, a central neighborhood that retains the dusty charm of old Tehran, the school occupies the quarters where Lotfi taught before being shut-down by authorities after the 1979 revolution. He returned once in the mid-1990s to re-open the school, but the government promptly cracked down and Lotfi returned to Europe. So, why now, under the tenure of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is Lotfi’s school of music is being tolerated?
300 Versus 70 Million Iranians
All of Tehran was outraged. Everywhere I went yesterday, the talk vibrated with indignation over the film 300 — a movie no one in Iran has seen but everyone seems to know about since it became a major box office surprise in the U.S. As I stood in line for a full hour to buy ajeel, a mixture of dried fruits and nuts traditional to the start of Persian new year festivities, I felt the entire queue, composed of housewives with pet dogs, teenagers, and clerks from a nearby ministry, shake with fury. I hadn’t even heard of the film until that morning when a screed about it came on the radio, so I was able to nod darkly with the rest of the shoppers, savoring a moment of public accord so rare in Tehran. Everywhere else I went, from the dentist to the flower shop, Iranians buzzed with resentment at the film’s depictions of Persians, adamant that the movie was secretly funded by the U.S. government to prepare Americans for going to war against Iran. “Otherwise why now, if not to turn their people against us?” demanded an elderly lady buying tuberoses. “Yes, truly it is a grave offense,” I said, shaking my own bunch of irises.
Raising a Child in Iran’s Cultural Divide
My friend’s eight-year-old son brought a DVD home from school the other day, a 10-minute collection of “highlights” from his third-grade class. As far as I could tell he wasn’t attending an Iranian elementary school so much as one of those scary Pakistani-type madrassas, where rows of boys sit on the floor memorizing the Koran and the alumni all died at Tora Bora. The first minutes captured the class making ritual ablutions before prayer, followed by scenes of them actually praying together in the classroom, and finally, a lively segment of them practicing the call to prayer. Noting my horrified look, my friend explained that “public schools here are really much better these days.” Much better, apparently, means that alongside Islamic indoctrination, kids also receive an hour of music lessons a week, their textbooks include color pictures, and teachers no longer say “raise your hand if your parents drink alcohol at home.”
Iran’s Caesarean Section Craze
As my pregnancy more visibly progresses, the question I’m asked most frequently by relatives and total strangers is not whether I’m having a girl or a boy, but whether I’m having a C-section. Vaginal childbirth is very out these days in Tehran. The procedure is quickly edging out the nose job as the dominant medical trend among Iranians, a people very fond of surgery. No longer the provenance of last-minute complications or doctors’ liability fears, Caesarean delivery is viewed here as the modern woman’s choice. An Iranian politician I interviewed recently even worked the normalcy of a C-section into a metaphor describing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Nuclear capacity is like a knife,” he told me. “It can be used in a standard operation, say a C-section for you. Or it can be used to kill someone.”