The brain drain

These girls were photographed (by me, Tori) in front of Golestan Palace in Tehran. They are not from the class of 1993.

My friend Maryam's high school class of 1993 is now gathering on Facebook. She showed us pictures of the group of teenaged girls posed in their black hoods and manteaus in the school's hidden playground. "We threw rocks at those windows all the time," she laughed. "Here we are throwing away our books. It was the last day of school and those books were from our religious studies classes."

Her school was a public school not too far from Palestine Square and the "Den of Espionage". In her class of 32 girls, 20 that she knows of now live abroad. 20! That she knows of. I told her that I am pretty sure that I am the only one of my classmates living abroad. (Any Central High School '78 graduates out there that want to challenge my assumption?)

"Of those 20," Maryam continued, "at least four have non-Iranian husbands." I am willing to be that as time passes that number will go way up. Most of my Iranian (women) friends living abroad are married to foreigners. They must think I'm nuts with my Iranian husband.

Photos, blogs, and the continuing attack on women's rights

Just in case my loyal fan base has been wondering what I am up to... well it's obvious that I am not blogging... Here's an update on some of the things that have kept me busy for the past month:



Iason Athanasiadis has a show of photographs of Iran up at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles. Many of my friends know the photographer, so I know how dedicated he is to getting a good photo. If you can't make it to his show, you can still buy our book.



Blogging Basiji

Apparently Iran's Revolutionary Guards are embarking on a 10,000 blog campaign. Hamid Tehrani writes about their efforts at Harvard's Internet and Democracy blog. From the tone of his article, it sounds as though the effort will be as successful as Orrin Hatch's ballads:

The presence of 10,000 Basiji blogs without interesting content and quality will fail to attract readers or promote any ideas. The Islamic Republic’s state-controlled media has been a failure for three decades. The Iranian regime in recent years launched several TV channels, but even poor-quality satellite dishes became a must-have for millions of Iranians to access banned foreign films, music clips or news.

Iranian regime terrified of a few women



They are so terrified of women that they are harassing women's rights activists claiming that they compromise national security and then harassing the lawyers who defend them. Shirin Ebadi's home and office were invaded by state actors. They closed down her office and have been coming up with increasingly ridiculous charges against her. From an LA Times article:

"They were looking for some excuses to shut down our center and increase pressure on us," said Mohammed Seifzadeh, another Iranian human rights attorney and confidant of Ebadi.

Then authorities accused Ebadi of evading taxes on cases she took without pay. Tax officials came to her office several days ago to inquire about financial records, which Ebadi said were not at the office.

Ebadi called the tax fraud allegation absurd, saying she hasn't charged any of her clients for legal work in 15 years.

"If the law and legal procedures are taken into consideration, I am not a tax dodger," she said. "But if . . . they treat us outside the law, they can do whatever they want."

Finally, I have been working a on a group blog: Riveter Posts. If you want to keep up with daily life in Iran, I urge you to read Catharina's accounts. She's been living in Iran for more than forty years now and is sharing her experiences with us now. Here's a short post she wrote on repairing her house:

I knew it was going to be bad, but in reality it’s so much worse than I thought it would be. I could live with the painters, who only broke a glass table, scratched up a solid wooden cabinet, dropped and broke some porcelain statues and made a mess when they sanded the walls and ceilings. I survived all of that. But then arrived a very nice gentleman who would repair and fix my parquet floor. At the same time some carpenters would fix the stairway and several doors to the bathrooms. They took the doors with them so they could fix them in their own workshop. So there I was: radiators taken outside as the floors beneath them needed fixing (and it was freezing at night), not a toilet or bathroom in the house with a door, and my whole house, including everything stored inside the closets, covered with a thick layer of dust because of the abrasing of the parquet floors. That’s when I started to cry. And what a coincidence! It was Tasua when all of Iran cries for the death of Imam Hossein. This was the first time ever that I cried with them.

Intro to The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

Haven't read the book, but that does not stop me from enjoying the intro. Found via the blog: Fudzail. UPDATE: Just realized that the well-written commentary on Fudzail's site was from Iran Writes.

Now that you've seen it, I have 2 comments:

1. Only a man could claim to be "sometimes" reminded that he is living under Islamic rule. For women, the reminder is relentless.

2. I agree that the lack of fear is surprising in Iran; that there *can* be no palpable sense of secret police. I do, however, think that if he were to stay for a really extended time, say a year or two, he would have a different view. (If he had an American wife staying with him, I'm positive he would have a different view.)

I would also argue, that if he were a woman, he would think differently as well. Every woman I know who returned to Iran after spending a significant amount of time abroad, had the sense of being watched. Many of the Iranian women I met, who had become accustomed to life in the UK or the US or the Netherlands or any number of other places, had lost much of their ability to maneuver easily in the society. It wasn't even an issue of "ability," it was an issue of willingness.

It was so much easier for me than for my expat Iranian friends. My taarof mishaps were excused, my aggressiveness accepted... People expected me to be inflexible, selfish, and miserly. With those kinds of expectations, it's easy to impress. I was treated like a full grown child: spoiled and doted upon. Trust me, had I been culturally Iranian I would have been taken to task for every misstep: whether perceived or purposeful.

I would love to hear from expat Iranian women out there who want to chime in and tell me how wrong/right I am.

I'll even tag a few:

Pedestrian at Sidewalk Lyrics
Homeyra at Forever Under Construction
Beja at A Voice of Two Cities
Ava at Love Jihadi

(I hope commenters will add to this list and chime in with their own experiences)

Bad Hejab

“Nuclear power is our inalienable right,” the staff of my favorite supermarket greets me as I walk into the bustling store. “It’s all your fault that the police are outside picking up women.” They are joking of course. They like to make fun of me when I come into the store.

Some people I know have yet to see the packs of police ushering women into awaiting minibuses, but my regular stomping grounds are in the heart of bad-hejabland. “At least the police are polite here,” a taxi driver tells me. They have to be polite. They are being watched by neighbors with cameras and internet connections. “You should see them over at some of the other spots. They are really going after women with force and being rough.”

A few nights ago Iranian tv featured some official denying that women had been picked up by force. “We’re just talking to them. We have not begun arresting anyone.”

“It’s nothing,” everyone says to me. “They do this every year.”

“I’ve been here more than three years, and I have never seen the police so organized about picking up women before. I’ve never seen them flag down cars before.”

“You’re right,” people admit.

Say whatever you would like: that we are wrong to take this issue so seriously, that most Iranians support the crackdown on hejab, that this will pass… I will tell you this: enforcing hejab makes me feel insecure and mistrustful. I am nervous walking down the street. I do not trust anyone. Why should I? I am wearing this scarf and manteau by force. Therefore, there can be no trust. If I had come to the decision to wear hejab on my own, and wore it because of choice, faith, or even subtle social pressure, that would be different. But I wear hejab because of force and that force has been even more visible the past week. Force will never allow me to make a religious choice of my own free will. It's a ridiculous notion.

The crackdown is a very visible symbol of oppression. So, some men are being picked up (or spoken with) for wearing ties or too much hair gel. That hardly compares to the insecurity of being a woman.


Links:

Anger at Iran dress restrictions

Islamica Community Forums: Anger at Iran dress restrictions

Iran police move into fashion business

Iran police swoop on slipping headscarves

Summer Veil Program in Iran, By Kamangir

Riding with dogs in taxis

“Please fix your scarf,” the taxi driver said to me. “Not because of me, but because the religious police are checking. I don’t care what you wear.”

“It’s not good enough?”

“Make it good enough for them.” I fumed a bit and then retreated into my thoughts. Up front Keivan and the driver discussed the crackdown on hejab.

“I was taking a young woman and she had her small dog with her. The religious police pulled us over. They said, We are impounding your car, arresting the girl, and letting the dog loose on the streets where it will be killed. I said, Hajh Agah, (Mister Hajh: a term of respect given to a man who has made pilgrimage to Mecca) you can’t do that. How can you take my car from me? How will I earn a living? And this young woman, what is wrong with her hejab? She is properly covered. There is no law against having a dog. And you have to consider that maybe the dog was sick, and we just came from the veterinarian.”

Riding in the car was testimony to the fact that he was able to talk his way out of the arrest and that the dog survived.

Hejab crackdown...

“The news is reporting that 93% of the population approves of the crackdown on hejab,” our cab driver told us.

“If that is true, there is no need to enforce hejab,” I responded.

“Don’t the women have mothers? Fathers? Brothers? Sisters? What business is it of the government,” the driver added. “On my wedding day, my wife asked me: What is your opinion of hejab? I said, What you wear is your business. All I want is your heart. If your heart is mine then you can wear whatever you want. If your heart is not mine, then wearing ten chadors won’t make a difference.”

The traffic on Jordan was, as usual, crawling. Since yesterday afternoon flocks of smiling religious police added to the traffic slowdown by standing on the street peering into each car that passed by. Above each checkpoint, another flock stood with a minibus and young women that they have pulled over for bad hejab.

And it isn’t just hejab, as my next post will tell you.

Pictures of Iranian women in hijab here.

Sisters, Modesty is Like Angel Making You

Okay, I made that up. But it is not too far from the type of English you might really read on a billboard in Iran.

Which brings me to announcements of a planned increased religious police presence on the streets of Iran: the authorities have announced that they are going start arresting annoying people and enforcing hijab.

What does that mean? What is proper hijab/hejab? Who are public nuisances? Listen, people may argue that enforcing hejab is Iran’s version of keeping topless men out of restaurants… But my question is this: if it is the same then do thousands of clothing police roam the streets of Santa Cruz intimidating topless men trying to get into restaurants? It seems to me that if the police have to regulate personal behavior then the rules are in need of a bit of a review.

Tough women

“Khanum [Ma’am], Iranian men do whatever their wives want.” (There is probably a better translation for this that includes the word “whipped”)

“Exactly,” my husband agrees.

In my travels around Iran, many of the men I have met from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds have expressed a kind of admiration for the tough Iranian woman. It’s kind of a new twist on machismo: “My woman is the boss. She is tough. I do everything she says.” I am not sure where it comes from but a friend of mine whose mother came to Iran from Russia tells me that her mother always said, “Marry an Iranian man. Don’t even dream of marrying a Russian. Iranian men love their wives. Russians go crazy with jealousy.”

(Iranian women are fond of denigrating their men as in: “Never marry an Iranian man.” I am not sure how deep that feeling goes. Any thoughts?)

The Iranian women I know and meet are indeed tough. I stand in awe of these outgoing, outspoken women. I know very little about the case of the 33 feminist activists who were arrested, but I, like others, am awestruck by their courage and will.

It’s ironic to me that a revolution that was inspired in part by the ideas of Karl Popper, who believed in a self-critical society, would be so unwilling to tolerate peaceful protest and the criticism of citizens who only want Iran to become a better place.

News that could change your life!

How's that for the perfect spam title?

I was watching a movie with a friend of mine who used to be a journalist. "You know what scares me most about being kidnapped?"

I know what scares *me* most, but I still ask, "What?"

"That I'll be held for months without any tweezers."

I laugh, "You have to let me post that on my blog."

"Just don't mention my name."

Well good news girls, the NYT reports that hairy eyebrows are in:

“For women who overpluck, this season will be about growing your eyebrows back so that they have a natural arch that extends out and ends in a beautiful point,” said Pat McGrath, a makeup artist for Max Factor and CoverGirl and the creative director for Procter & Gamble Beauty.

Ms. McGrath is one of the trend-setting stylists responsible for unleashing the feral eyebrow as this season’s beauty signature. At the Prada fall fashion show in Milan in February, she combed models’ eyebrows up with clear mascara so that they fanned out like plumage, lending their faces a wild expression which Ms. McGrath described as “sauvage.”

Now we just have to await the fashion world's ruling on stray facial hair and that troublesome bikini line.

Back in Town

Millions of Iranians have returned to Tehran which means the roads are packed and there is a disgusting orange cloud of smog covering the city.

School started a couple of days ago. Mornings are filled with the noises of children playing in the schoolyard before the first class starts. I like the sounds.

"Soon only the women will be educated," K tells me. "Guys just aren't making an effort. They don't see any benefit in pursuing an education."

Every year the percentage of young women attending university goes up. (I could add that critical thinking goes down, but that might be interpreted as an indictment of women rather than an indictment of the education system. The second is meant.)

"Young men have their daddies buy them stores and put them up in business. They think they can make more money that way than through an education."

We have friends in foreign-owned businesses in Iran that only have women working for them. "The men are just useless," they tell us. "We have almost no men working for us."
To be fair, the situation is more complicated than that. "Men in Iran believe that the women are making the regime work," K tells me. "After awhile, men here use inefficiency as a form of protest."

Yeah, yeah… maybe…

It's hard in Iran. People start out full of energy and ideas and slowly find themselves worn down and thwarted. It's enough to make anyone useless and inefficient.

Tips for Journalists Visiting Iran

After living here for two years, after reading countless articles about Iran, after viewing news spots and listening to radio spots about Iran, I want to offer a few quick pointers to journalists coming to Iran.

Tarof:
Tarof is a complicated system of manners than can make it extremely difficult for a visiting journalist to get a straight answer.
a. Iranians would rather agree to do something than to admit that they cannot help you.
b. An initial "no" or "yes" should not be taken seriously. If permission is not granted initially, keep asking. It pays to be persistent.
c. Most Iranians you meet will invite you to their homes. If you agree to go, please understand that your visit may cost them a lot of money. They might not really want you to come. It might be too expensive for them.
d. If an Iranian invites you to a party where alcohol is served, you might want to remember just how expensive that alcohol is. They may love to see you, but resent the amount that you drink. Try to show some restraint. A case of beer costs 70,000 tuman. Cheap, brand name whiskey costs 50,000 tuman. This is not cheap even for a westerner. Imagine what it means to an Iranian.

Outside/Inside:
This is a kind of addendum to tarof. The biggest cliché in the world is that the Middle East is a veiled society where there is a strict dichotomy between outside and inside behavior. (I know, I know, Iran does not consider itself part of the Middle East. Is a region unto itself.) Just because it is a cliché does not mean it's not true. Please take it seriously.

a. Take everything presented to you with a shaker of salt. Take context into consideration. Ask yourself, who else is listening? Who else is observing? For example, when an anti-American speech is made on the anniversary of Iran's revolution, don't forget to mention the occasion in your reporting.
b. It's hard to get to know Iran and Iranians unless you marry into an Iranian family. Don't be fooled by appearances.
c. Go to any funeral or wedding that you get invited to. Funerals do not require invitations. Your presence at one would be welcomed.
d. Most Iranians in exile do not know anything about Iran as it is today. Don't depend on them for information unless they still have family in Iran and have traveled here in the past two years.


Exaggeration:
a. Iranians are prone to exaggeration. All Iranians.


Northern Tehran vs. the rest of Iran:
a. Take any opportunity to get out of north Tehran. Talk to people who are neither wealthy Tehranis nor fundamentalist Islamists. Find the middle ground. How big is it? I have no clue myself.
b. If possible, opt for an intercity bus when traveling out of Tehran. Talk to your fellow-travelers.
c. Don't stay in a protected bubble. Your hotel, your friends or friends of friends, and most of the people you are meeting have little to do with Iran or Iranians.

Gender Roles:
There is no one more privileged in Iran than a western woman. If you are a woman, don't pass up the opportunity to come here.

For women:
a. Do not be offended if a man does not shake your hand or look you in the eyes. Don't let it make you feel anything at all.
b. Shake hands with anyone who offers his/her hand. (For men as well)
c. Don't over dress. Iranian women expect you to push the boundaries of hijab regulations.
d. Style is key. Don't let the Islamic dress code make you look unstylish. Practice wearing a scarf before you get here. Buy a fashionable jacket that covers your ass. Look good.
e. Go to as many all-women events as you can. Try to talk to women without any men around.

For men:
a. Shake hands with all of your female colleagues and all women who offer their hands.
b. Don't be fooled by women who are demure in front of men.


Tolerance:
More than once, I have seen reporters refer to the supposed religious tolerance of reformist clerics. When a cleric expresses his tolerant views, please ask him these questions:

a. Does this tolerance refer only to the "people of the book" or does it extend to the Bahai, Hindus, and Buddhists (to name just a few?)
b. Does tolerance refer to Muslims who convert to other religions?
c. What about aetheists?

Hijab:
Many Iranian women struggle to assert their own personality through their hijab. Strangely enough, style *is* a form of protest. Style, however, is a function of class. Wealthier women can afford to flaunt dress codes because they can afford to pay any fines that they might be saddled with as a result. Poorer women are more subtle because the fines would be impossible to pay and because their families commonly exert more pressure on them to conform to Islamic dress standards.

Chadors are the big black capes that women wear over their heads. Manteaus are the jackets women wear. Please keep the two separate.

Government employees are required to wear chadors. Not all of these women would choose this form of dress for themselves.

Gloves

The secret of gloves
The secret of the gloves has finally been revealed to me!

When I first arrived in Iran, I noticed that many of the women wore gloves: even in the middle of the summer! This, I quickly deduced, had nothing to do with the requirements of the hijab. The women who wore gloves spanned the spectrum of religious dress. Some of the glove-wearers wore the full black chador and some a barely there scarf with a short manteau.

Were they, perhaps, germ-phobic, I wondered?

I asked several people. No one had an answer. And then, I filed my glove question way back in the recesses of my brain.

A friend of a friend was visiting. Her mother is Indonesian and her father is Dutch. It was her first visit to Iran. Immediately, she understood the secret of the gloves. "It's so that your hands are not ten shades darker than the rest of your arms." D'oh.

I quickly confirmed this with a brand new friend of mine who is a glove-wearer. "All I have to is go out into the sun for ten minutes, and my skin gets darker," she explained.

That should give you some info about how pale I am.

But you cannot play pool with men…
I went out with some friends and K. It was raining and snowing so we decided to duck into this upscale Chuckie Cheese type place (without Chuckie and all the cheese…). There were lots of families there playing air hockey and vending games. We went upstairs to play pool.

It was fun until the morals police came to tell me I could not play. I had an overwhelming urge to throw off my headscarf, undress, and dance naked on the pool table. But instead I went outside to take a walk. That was smarter.

Okay, so you can play miniature golf, air hockey, squash, and golf with men. You can sit on one’s lap in a shared taxi. You can ski or snowboard with a man. But you cannot play pool. Must be something in the Koran about that…

Women, again

"Women would be much less sexy if they were not wearing manteaus," K's brother told us the other day. "They are so tight and sexy looking now, it would be better if the women were wearing their normal clothes."

It's hard to believe that in certain areas of Iran, women will not be dressing according to their own tastes by next summer. Things could change of course, but right now, many more young women than last summer wear their scarves low on the back of their head. (The best thing to do, it seems, is pull your hair back in a ponytail and then rest the scarf on it.)

The hemlines have come up and the waste lines have come in. It's fashionable to wear manteaus so tight that the buttons are stretched. At first I thought that women were just buying their manteaus too small or gaining weight. When I went to buy a new one a couple of months ago, the sales clerks all tried to convince me that the manteau that was too small for me was the one I should get. "It's too tight," I told them. "It looks better too tight," they responded. It was then that I finally caught on to the trend. D'oh.

On our travels we talked to many groups of young women. At one tourist spot we met a group of about 20 university students who wanted me to explain to the family we were traveling with that they were dressed conservatively because they were in university. "But they look so great," the man of the family commented. I had to agree, they did look great.

The thing I keep saying about Iranian women is that they are really fun and really different when no men are around. (They can be fun when men are around too, but not as…) One of our friends told us a story that reinforces this point. He went to Damascus last year with a tour group of about 45 people from about 12 different (mainly Western) countries.

"There were busloads of women making pilgrimages to Damascus. You could always tell when a busload of Iranian women had arrived. You could hear them laughing with each other before they got out of their buses. Then they would get out and come directly to our group and start taking pictures of us. This was a bit strange for us because we were the ones use to making the pictures," he laughed. "Within five minutes the women were all practicing their English with our group. The other women from different countries never approached us. Only the Iranian women."

We related this story to K's sisters. "Iranian women are more religious than Iranian men," they told us. "That's why we go on more pilgrimages than the men. But also we go just to be together and have fun."

Born free

"What is it like for someone who was born free to live in a country where you are not free?" K asked me.

"It's not easy," I answered.

"I am not myself here," K added.

L’Shana Tovah
Our local grocery was covered with Rosh HaShana decorations.

My sister…
Never reads my blog. Can you believe it? Of course she had some excuse about her computer being too slow for her to surf the web. Hey, it’s text only, sister! And I am writing it for her and the rest of my friends and family so they won’t keep asking me how things are going! Don’t worry, I still love you even if you never read my blog.

A night out
It’s been a bad week. I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say that even K has offered to sacrifice a sheep if things get better.

After a particularly exhausting day, K, his nephew, and I went to the movies. The theater was big, with roomy seats, a big screen, and good enough speakers. The film we chose was a comedy very much in the style of the comedies made under America’s censorship laws: chaste, smart, funny, and charming. It featured a man who is engaged to be marry, but does not quite have his heart in it despite the fact that he loves the woman. During his engagement, he meets the woman of his dreams who is divorced. After a series of mishaps, they finally get together.

On the way back from the theater, we stopped at the hospital to visit a friend. While we were waiting, we watched these absolutely gorgeous women conduct “business.” They were out in front of the hospital looking for “clients.” (Their words.) Just about every single car slowed down for them, including the cars filled with women. The women kicked most of the cars filled with men, did a little dance for the women, and almost got into a number of fights. One acceptable car stopped. Two good-looking, young men were sitting in the front seat. One woman got in. The other waited on the curb. About five minutes later, the first woman was back.

“That was fast,” I commented.

Soon, three other women joined the first two. One was clearly very high. She was a bit unsteady on her cork-heeled sandals and her eyes were narrowed into two slits. Now all four women stood kicking cars that slowed down for them.

“What kind of offer is good enough for them to get into the car,” I asked K?

“I don’t know. Maybe 40,000,” he said.

“That’s more than most prostitutes make in New York,” I responded.

A car stopped and two of the women got in. The driver was a fat, more than middle-aged, unshaven guy. This left two women on the curb.

A woman in a small white Honda-Civic-like car pulled up to the curb. The two women waiting gave here an enthusiastic greeting and piled in. They were all gone now. At least that is what we thought. Less than five minutes later, we saw the women down on the corner. Soon they were back in front of the hospital. They wandered in and out of the hospital. “Probably using the bathroom,” K said.

As the women came and went it became obvious that they could not possibly be engaging in sexual acts. They never rode with a driver more than one block and never spent more than 2 or 3 minutes in the car. (I am sure there are a lot of women making jokes about men right now.) The street was packed with cars, so they had no opportunity for privacy even if 3 minutes were enough to complete any sexual act they had started.

“They must be selling drugs,” K commented.

Meanwhile, a bearded man who was dressed in the green suit that seems to be the uniform of government workers had come outside to make a phone call. He talked on the phone while the four women fearlessly continued their antics.

“A couple of years ago, he would have had them arrested,” K commented. “Now he can’t do anything. What do you think he is thinking right now?”

“He’s thinking that he hates Tehranis,” I said. K laughed.



Revolution (just kidding)

K met another one of the thousands of government officials who roam the streets of Tehran. Of course, K started by telling him how much he doesn’t like the government. He tells everyone this. That is the key part of his standard introductory remarks. So far, this has not gotten him into any trouble. In fact, quite the opposite.

The two were talking when the official told him that there are a number of things that the regime thinks would bring down the government. He mentioned these two specifically:

1. Trying to force women back into chadors and restrictive clothing: “The women would never stand for it. They would bring down the government rather than wear chadors again.”
2. Stopping production of their stinky, dangerous, polluting car: The Peykan. “We know it’s dangerous. We know it pollutes too much. The manufacturing of these cars is a giant monster that we cannot control. Investing money does not help. This could eventually bring down the government.”

The Women's Party

Women

I was invited to a women's party. When I got there, there was a room full of women elegantly dressed and me in my baggy muslin pants and gray t-shirt. I felt like such a slob. The women had their hair streaked, curled, and set. They were wearing tight, tight pants and low-cut nylon stretch shirts. They were wearing beautiful dresses and elegant pant suits. They wore gold and pearls. The house was amazing: three floors of marble with an indoor pool.

The women were also amazing. Once I overcame my fashion faux pas, I started talking to the women about everything: food, men, politics, religion, culture. This was such a new experience for me. Alone, these women were so relaxed. They didn't attend to my every desire or worry that I was not eating enough. At one point I said, you guys are so different when men are not around. "Yes," one woman answered. "With men we cannot be ourselves."

There were women of all ages there from 6 to 80. Everyone crowded around a big table where delicious food, ripe fruit, nuts, and cakes were laid out. There was a lot of talking and laughing. At one point, the conversation turned to politics and religion. It turned out that most (not all) of the women were Ba'hai. They told me a little about the Ba'hai faith and its respect for all religions. They also told me about all of the Ba'hai who were killed during and after the revolution. There were graphic throat slitting motions all around the table.

"Every religion has its martyrs," one woman told me. "At the beginning of every religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, many people were martyred. Here too, with the Ba'hai. Pregnant women and children were even martyred."

"My grandfather was a mullah," another woman told me. "He and his brother accepted Ba'hai, and here we are today."

"Most of the Islamic people I know are very warm and caring," a bulldog of a woman told me. "There are just a few who are intolerant and crazy."

"There were more intolerant people before," said the first woman. "Now we Iranians like each other more. Now we are more tolerant of each other."

This comment surprised me since most Iranians tell me how much worse people are since the revolution. On the other hand, I was not surprised because the people I have met here have been surprisingly tolerant and open. I told them that even the very religious Muslims that I meet in Iran profess a desire for freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

Later we spoke about America. One of the Islamic women attending the party told us how much she liked Bush. She also told me that she felt Sharon was fighting for freedom of religion.

You never know what you are going to hear.

The Wedding

K and I are invited to a wedding. We don’t know the bride or groom. We only know a few relatives.

A few nights ago, our good friend who got us invited to the wedding, went to the pre-wedding party, a kind of rehearsal dinner for family only, in a private garden outside of Tehran far from other people. “You should have seen all of the women, they were so chic. I looked like a slob next to them.” There were tables of food, a good band, and about 250 “just family” there.

About 2 hours into the party, my friend heard shouts of “Scarves! Manteaus! The religious police are here!” The women ran for their manteaus. The band disappeared. The men went to the door to bribe the two religious police at the door. After about five minutes, they were successful and the two bearded guards of Islam left.

45 minutes later, however, the religious police were back. This time it was a different group with about 20 18-year old representatives of the religious police charging in with guns and rifles ready. These guys did not want to be bribed; they wanted to make arrests. The shouts were more panicked this time: “Run! Run!” The women crowded into a bathroom together. The men came in with their manteaus and scarves. “I saw the fear on their faces,” my friend said. “It was terrible. The worst thing was that I saw that people did not help each other. They only thought for themselves.” The women who were working at the party were dressed traditionally in black manteaus and black hooded scarves. They were in the bathroom changing into western clothes. “It would have been worse for them to be caught working at the party. That’s why they were changing.”

Meanwhile the religious police were on their radios calling for buses to come and pick up all of the women and all of the men at the party. “We can’t get buses at this time of night,” the response came from their command center. Other police were inside the party smelling the glasses and checking for alcohol. “Thank god we didn’t have any,” my friend said. Still another set of bearded 18-year-olds was terrifying the groom, who was not Iranian. My friend’s brother was helping the groom by translating for him. “My brother threw off his coat and tie and went to the groom’s side. He told the religious police that the groom had a heart condition and that if they continued to frighten him that he might have a heart attack. He told them that then his blood would be on their hands.” Apparently that line worked, and they stopped harassing the groom. Some of the men finally succeeded in bribing the police, but not before the father of the bride and the owner of the garden were arrested.

“The young women weren’t scared,” my friend said. “They were saying that they had been arrested several times recently and that it wasn’t so bad. They told us that you could not show any fear. You have to stand your ground. The minute you show fear, they know they have you. The older women, on the other hand, were scared. They did not want to be arrested again. It’s the humiliation that scared them. They weren’t afraid of being hurt, just of going through the whole process of being humiliated.”

The rest of the party was quiet. The food went untouched. The women remained in their hijabs. Now the parents of the bride have to find a new location for the party since they are not allowed to have it in the private garden anymore. Plus they have to find guards (preferably from the religious police) for the party and notify 500 guests and all of the staff and caterers of the new location.

August 2, 2003

K tells me that I don’t offer enough editorial opinion in my blog. I tell him that I am still overwhelmed by everything I am experiencing and that all I can do is report. His job is to editorialize, but he is too busy to write. That said, I do want to offer an opinion now, and I want people – especially women – to respond and help me understand what I am experiencing.

First an introduction, I am reading a book called A Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. (My friends have been trying to get me to read this for years, so they will be pleased that I am finally reading it.) The book is a discussion of the way that certain patterns make the world work. Here is a useful quote from the book:

In short, a pattern lives when it allows its own internal forces to resolve themselves.

And a pattern dies when it fails to provide a framework in which the forces can resolve themselves, so that instead, the action of the forces, unresolved, works to destroy the pattern.

Alexander convincingly writes that one failed pattern in a form can work to corrupt other patterns. This has become intriguing for me in relationship to Iran because so much of the way that the society works has to be enforced by outside forces. Sometimes those outside forces are made up of one or two people. Sometimes they are made up of groups of people. Sometimes they seem to be based mainly on habit or fear. Because of this enforcement, people have become accustomed to not revealing themselves. This, I think, is not new for Iranians. I have read that this pattern has ancient roots. The Okay now for my comment…

I am beginning to feel that women themselves are responsible for much of the way that society in Iran works. I see this pattern time and time again: women, mothers, aunts, everyone, raise their daughters to deny their true self. From the time they are very young, the daughters are looking after other people. They are serving guests, serving their fathers, serving their brothers, serving their mothers. They are encouraged to be cute and do cute things. They are told not to complain or say that they are hungry or ask for anything. They are told to obey. Later, when they are adults, Iranians, both men and women, complain that Iranian women are manipulative. How could they be anything else but? Because they cannot honestly ask for things, they learn to manipulate situations to get what they need or want.

When they are adults, women complain about the amount of work they have to. And believe me, they do a lot of work. Caring for a family is a lot of work. Everyone knows that. Sometimes, however, I wonder if it needs to be as much work as the women do. If a man or boy tries to help they are told not to. If I get up and look around for one second, all of the women in the room ask me if I need something. If a man needs something, it is the same.

Men who help out are teased. K is made fun of by both men and women for helping out around the house. Young women complain that this teasing keeps men from helping.

When I talk to a 27-year-old male friend about this, he tells me that he has learned not to do anything for himself around the house. “If I try to do anything, the women stop me. They say they don’t want my help, but I know they do. They just won’t let me help. Now I am lazy.” (His mother would argue that he was born lazy, and she might be right. )

He adds, “I ask my young women friends all of the time why they accept this situation. They have the power to change it, but they don’t. They all tell me that they are happy this way. I think they just have never experienced anything else.”

It is much more difficult for me to talk to women than to men. The women are too concerned about my needs to relax around me. It takes a long time for a woman to relax around me and not care if I am thirsty or hungry or tired or comfortable. I don’t have that much time with most women. Men are so used to being taken care of, that they engage me in conversation pretty quickly. They are polite. They offer me food and drink, mind you. But they are not so attentive that they overwhelm me with care.

K thinks this blog will get me in trouble. “I have told many Iranians my opinion; they agree.”

“But what about all of the women in university and all of the women entering the work force,” K asks?

“I am not saying that women aren’t powerful or professional. I am just saying that they raise their daughters very differently from their sons. I am looking at a pattern, not at individual cases. That said, I’ve heard the same story from professional women as from women who stay home. They complain that they have too much work with the family even when all of their children are grown-up with families of their own.”

K tells his brother and sister-in-law my opinion. They agree with me. “Iranians prefer boys,” they tell him.

Despite all of this, Iran still has a pretty even split of boys and girls. Girls are not dying young. They are not neglected. When you look at population figures for Iran, you see that this is not a society that disdains its girls and women. Iranians need women to take care of them. (Just kidding, but maybe that is partially true.) One thing you have to realize about Iran is that this is not a static society. It is changing and changing quickly. Iran is a society that is working on itself.

Just for a little comparison, I want to write about one of the last conversations I had with my great-Aunt Rose. She said that what amazed her most in her lifetime was how much men had changed (which means that women had changed at least as much). “When I was young, my husband did not do a thing in the house. He did not touch the babies or help with the children or cook or clean. Now I see my grandsons changing diapers and cooking dinner, and I know that the world is getting better.”

Girls riding in cars with boys

A friend of ours tells us about his experiences working on a film here: “Every day I was out in the streets in Tehran. I talked to everyone. I saw things that people who have lived there longer have not seen. It was like I was there for ten years. Like take prostitution: in Iran there is not a ‘type’ of woman who prostitutes. For many, it is not a profession, instead it is something that they once in awhile. One 16-year-old girl prostitutes because she is mad at her father. A 25-year-old is on the streets because her husband is a womanizer and she thinks ‘If he can… so can I.’ A 25-year-old student doesn’t have enough money, so she goes to the streets to sell her body. Another woman does it just to see what it is like. Of course, some of the prostitutes are also addicts. But that is not normal.”

As I wrote earlier, all you have to do is walk on the streets without a man in order to discover just how prominent prostitution is here. Yesterday, for instance, I was walking with two 10-year-old girls and men still signaled to me. What did they think I was going to do with the two girls with me? You tell me.

A non-resident Iranian friend of ours was asking her brother (a resident Iranian) to point out prostitutes. He pointed to several women getting into or out of cars in unusual places or situations. She was amazed. “Maybe I could make a little extra money,” she joked.

“It’s so easy,” I told her. “All you have to do is get into one of the cars that honks at you or flashes its lights at you when you aren’t with a man.”

“That’s what those drivers want? I just thought they were all taxis,” our friend said. She was leaning out and telling the drivers her destination they way you do when you are flagging down a shared taxi. They must have thought she was nuts.

Speaking of shared taxis
We were in one today. The driver told us that Saddam had been captured. “When is Bush coming here,” he asked? “We need him.”

I said, “You need our political help, not our military help.”

“Why? We need the military help of America. We are afraid of our government,” he said.

“Military help from America will bring about a second revolution here,” we told him. “You don’t want that.”

While we were heading to our destination, a mullah flagged down the driver. Our driver refused to stop. “May grass grow under his feet,” he said.

June 23, 2003

I am woman

I have a long suit coat that I brought to Iran to wear in order to fulfill the dress restrictions for women. It turns out, however, that my suit jacket was meant for an air conditioned office building, not for the streets of Tehran. After a lot of sweating and discomfort, N took me to buy a manteau: the knee-length jacket that women are supposed to wear.

We went into a store run by men and filled with women. “Don’t speak, don’t speak,” N said in broken English before we arrived. (When I open my mouth, prices go up.) It turned out that the prices were already marked and N thought they were good, so she let me talk. I tried pink manteaus, blue manteaus, and jean manteaus before settling on 1 black linen manteau and 1 khaki ramie-cotton manteau. The funny thing is that N had my dressing room door open, and I felt exposed even though I was still wearing more clothes than I would normally wear in the summer.

Before coming here, I promised myself that I would not obsess over the headscarf and the manteau that I am forced to wear. When other writers did that, I was bored. I thought that there were other issues of women’s life that were more important. After all, I do have to wear a modicum of clothing anywhere I go. It’s just that I don’t really want to walk around the city topless or bottomless, but I definitely do want to walk around without a scarf on my head and without a manteau. I mean, it’s summer for god sakes!

I am losing my tolerance. Anyone who knows me, knows how frigging accepting I can be (I can hear my sisters and brother laughing now). But I am losing my tolerance.

My sisters-in-law can’t run out in the street to say goodbye when friends and relatives leave; they are afraid to be seen from the doorway even; they barely leave the house during the day because of the heat. It’s not even that hot! But it is that hot when you are wearing a scarf and a manteau.

I used to believe women who said that the hijab does not restrict them in any way. Oh yeah? Try telling that to any woman that I have spoken to hear in Iran. Even religious women that I have spoken to are fed up with the restrictions. Every single woman I have spoken with from those who pray 3 times a day to those who don’t pray at all feel restricted by the dress code and restricted by this regime.

This is the first time I have been in a truly restrictive society. Church and state? Prayer in school? A religious society? Come here if that is what you want. You’ll quickly find yourselves longing for liberals and liberal society.

Speaking of tolerance

How can I have tolerance for a society that severely restricts my rights? How can I accept that and live with it? And can I help but associate these restrictions with Islam?

I was in a total intolerant tailspin when I received an email from a good friend that included a long conversation that her high-school aged son’s class is having about religion. What a wonderful mix of ideas (however immature) and gentle and humorous respect for each other’s diverse opinions that conversation proved to be. Here is a post from her son’s Islamic classmate responding to a Christian classmate’s assertion that American society suffers from a lack of religion:

“...but mainstream relgions have been manipualted and twisted into what im sure you would consider 'immoral'. for example, Osama bin Ladin's form of "Islam" and the KKK's form of "Christianity" these have nothing moral about them and actually contribute to the "downfall of society" you referred to. perhaps if one insisted on taking an optimistic outlook on things, one could say that the essence of relgion is moral, but if one were to be realistic, it must be acknowledged that the same relgion that was meant to 'inject morals' has in many cases destroyed them. now at the risk of sounding like our deep-thinking friend caleb, i must ask, is relgion, even when manipualted and used for destruction, really worth it?
and by the way, LONG LIVE THE LIBERALS!!!!!!!!”

(If you want to read the whole discussion click on http://www.grahamisbald.cjb.net/ , then click on the link to the forum, and then click on "OK Faeza.")


The Innocents

K took me on a walk of places he had been beaten up in this city. “Here is where I was thrown out of a second-story window. Here is where I was beaten and dragged and left for dead. Here is where I used to give out pamphlets and got beaten up for it. Here is where I was when I was told that the beating I got was deserved.”

This treatment he got from less than one percent of the population of his city. Less than one percent believed so fervently and extremely in their religion and its rightness that they were willing to kill and die for it. Less than one percent of this city terrorized the other 99% of the city and forced them to live with the restrictions of an Islamic regime.

It does not take much. It just takes unquestioning faith and twisted beliefs.

Read Salam Pax’s account of riding in a taxi with someone he thought was potentially a suicide bomber and ask yourself, “Who is an innocent?”

Food

A different day…Let’s just say, that if you ever come to Iran, make sure to eat ice cream with carrot juice.