Descendants of Cyrus

by Thornton, Christopher;

  Watching all this was enlightening. During the 2009 demonstrations the government had simply cut off internet access as well as the cell phone network, and that was enough to stymie e-communication and any political activity that depended on it. But since then the world of social media, with all of its sprawling paths for communication, had exploded, and the government had taken up the challenge and raced ahead of the e-subversives, keeping Facebook and Instagram and Telegram and Twitter out of the hands of not only the refuseniks but appointed tour guides like Aydin, collateral damage in the battle against political dissent. Our food arrived—a vegetarian pizza for me and a lasagna for Aydin—and we split a bottle of the sparkling, slightly sweet grape juice that now passes for red wine in once wine-saturated Iran.

  It was awful, but as bad as it was I enjoyed it, purely for the illusion of having a real bottle of mellow smooth Shiraz on the table. Still, it was hard to reconcile this with the fact that the world’s oldest sample of wine was discovered in Shiraz, dated to 5,000 BCE. Imaginary though it was, the ruby bubbly washed down the dinner, and then it was time to walk it off.

  We headed toward the city hall, the buzzing pedestrian shopping streets, and the spacious plaza where they all intersected. It was the center of Rasht nightlife. Children darted around on bicycles, and the latest of late-night shoppers scooped up last-minute purchases. Like many pedestrian zones in urban spaces, Rasht’s was peopled with bronze figures engaged in everyday activities—a reader sitting on a bench, a woman huddling under an umbrella, an old man about to mount a bicycle, strollers carrying imaginary shopping bags.

  The air of normalcy would soon be punctured. We had turned down a side street off the main square and were heading back to the hotel when we met a phalanx of several hundred regime supporters, or counterprotestors, who had been called in to support the regime. They were marching down the middle of the pedestrian lane, waving posters of Khamenei and Khomeini while a sound truck followed along, blasting proregime slogans. Chants of “Long live the revolution!” rose from the crowd. Oddly, there were no signs proclaiming, “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” The insurrection may have erupted so quickly the Revolutionary Guard hadn’t had time to print them up. Following further behind was an army of basijis, gunning the engines on their souped-up motorbikes as they careened onto the sidewalk, challenging pedestrians in a show of thuggish intimidation, to erase any doubt among the people of Rasht who controlled not only the streets but the country itself.

  Aydin tugged me out of the path of the basijis as though I were a toddler who needed to be shielded from playground bullies. This was understandable. As a foreign visitor who had been granted a tourist visa to enter Iran, I was, in keeping with the protocols of Persian hospitality, a guest of its government, and therefore my safety was the responsibility of the tour agency that had arranged my visit. Aydin, the guide assigned to serve as my host, was also, in effect, my babysitter. But it was not all gracious Persian hospitality at work here. There was also more than a little self-interest at play: God forbid that news reports carry a story of an American tourist being injured in an antigovernment demonstration in Iran.

  The tour agency had been so worried that for the past two days Aydin had been fielding calls from the Tehran office, morning and afternoon—“How was everything going? Had we run into any problems with the demonstrations? Had we seen any of the protests?”—the voice on the other end of the line asked.

  Earlier that day his phone rang again, as we were approaching Rasht after leaving Ardabil. I asked Aydin if it was the office again, knowing the answer was yes. I recognized the other voice as the young woman who had come to my hotel in Tehran to collect the payment for the tour the day before I left.

  “What did they want this time?”

  “They heard there might be some demonstrations in Rasht and told me that if you go out tonight I should come with you, keep you away from anywhere that might be a trouble spot.” And that was why he had joined me for dinner and the stroll to the plaza and through the shopping streets. But the futility of this was obvious. Riots, protests, demonstrations—they could erupt anywhere. The cat-and-mouse game between protestors and the security forces had long ago reached the point where it defied predictability. The green movement forces had learned to play catch-me-if-you-can on the streets, on the internet via social media websites, even via text messages through downloaded VPNs. Antigovernment protests were largely conducted in the e-sphere—the new guerrilla warfare of the twenty-first century. A former journalist for several reformist publications told me their offices were constantly being closed down by government authorities, but the impact on alternative voices was minimal: “We just moved somewhere else and reopened,” she told me.

  “I’m flattered that I’m so well looked after,” I told Aydin.

  “As long as you’re in Iran they are responsible for you,” he replied, opting for a neutral, professional response, but with forced formality.

  Of course, it wasn’t that simple. In Iran no political issue is. I suspected that the tour agency had suspected (correctly) that I had written essays about my previous travels in Iran, and so they wanted to keep me away from any events that might provide grist for newsprint. Not that they cared what I might write. But if the foreign ministry learned that the agency had issued a tourist visa to a visiting American who then scribbled stories about political dissent, and the agency supervising his movements did nothing about it—that would never do.

  Tonight, what was most noticeable were the reactions of those going about their usual business on a Thursday evening. While the demonstrators shouted their proregime slogans, and the basijis gunned the engines of their supercharged motorbikes, the strollers and shoppers ignored them, as though inattention had become a form of counterprotest. Up and down the pedestrian street, small crowds gathered to watch the spectacle, but along the sidewalks where the basijis buzzed the strollers and behind the storefronts, the mood was one of helpless, strained tolerance.

  Once the protestors had moved on, Aydin and I headed back to the central square, passing the music stores and DVD outlets, budget clothing stores and high-end boutiques. At the end of the square the historic city hall and its iconic clock tower were brightly lit. We popped into a sweet shop for a quick dessert and cup of tea, and Aydin chatted with the pastry chef in Turkish about the events. The chef had little to say. He just wanted it all to go away so business would get back to normal.

  The impact of the proregime sideshow may not have been as lackluster as it first appeared. Beneath the veneer of calm, passions had been stirred. After we returned to the hotel I went out and sat for a while in a café down the street. Small groups of young Iranians traipsed in to spend the rest of the evening sipping cappuccinos. Couples with children in tow gathered around the tiny tables to munch on slices of cheesecake from the pastry case. The menu was printed only in Farsi, but a woman at the next table had heard me struggling to communicate with the barista and came to the rescue. She got me a black tea with a small side of milk, but also saw an opportunity to air her views on the events in Rasht.

  Her name was Tahereh, or Tina, as she called herself in Canada, where she had lived for the past twenty years. She was back in Iran for a few months to spend time with family members and take care of “other business,” which she referred to in typically opaque terms. Tahereh was another long-term expatriate who, out of desire and necessity, had long kept her feet planted in two lands. She had listened to President Rouhani speak to the nation earlier that evening in a half-hearted attempt to calm the political waters, but she came away unmoved.

  “All this is talk, talk, talk,” she said. “The people on TV, they say the protests are all about prices and inflation, and all the corruption in the government, but none of that is the real problem.”

  “And what is that?” I asked.

  “Nothing is going to change until they get to the heart of things.”

  “And what is that?” I asked.


  She paused a moment and then replied, almost cautiously: “Freedom. That’s what no one wants to talk about. The people simply want more freedom. Instead of giving it, these people in the government, they say all the social problems are left over from the time of the shah, or the fault of the West. What they’re really saying is that the people should just forget about that time and the more liberal values, the more open lifestyle. They say that if we would just forget about those things we would have an Islamic paradise.”

  She leaned a little closer. “Yes,” she said, “no doubt there are problems. People are going through very hard times, and some of it is because of the sanctions, but the real need is simply greater freedom in every form—expression, behavior, dress, thought, beliefs.”

  I knew that some of these freedoms were novel concepts in Iranian society. During the reign of Mohammad Shah Pahlavi true freedom of expression was nonexistent. Prisons were busting with political activists, as the visit to the Qajar-era prison museum in Tehran showed. This lack of candor, even call it fear, had deep roots in Persian culture, in which open criticism of anything or anyone is something of a no-no. Iranians, as Iranians say, constantly live “behind the mask.”

  Tahereh was standing close to my table and the café was not crowded, yet she spoke quietly, measuring her words, careful not to say too much or to be overheard—by whom? As in former communist countries, there is always the fear of the watchful eye, the open ear. Public encounters must be accompanied by strict social protocols—politeness, obligatory graciousness, little intimacy or candor—all while maintaining a protective shield around the personal self. There is nothing particularly new about this separation of the private and the personal, nothing that can be blamed on current political life. It is as old as Persian culture itself, but the presence of a paranoid and repressive government has a way of reinforcing tradition.

  After a few days in Rasht and Ramsar, and the side trip to Masouleh, Aydin and I were ready to make a break for Tehran. There was a lot of coast yet to see, and we breezed through it along a narrow, two-lane highway that could pass, with a little imaginative assistance, for California Highway 1. The sea was to our left, the coastal fields and waning dribbles of the Alborz Mountains to our right. The road split the two—sea on one side, mountains on the other—and between the road and the mountains was a broad plain with just enough room, and just enough rainfall, in welcome wet years, to produce two of the crops most closely associated with Iran’s agricultural output, not to mention Iranian culture.

  The Caspian shore has been the tea-growing center of Iran since the late 1800s, after several attempts over the centuries to cultivate the plants had failed. Prince Mohammad Mirza, a native of Lahijan, near Rasht, came to the rescue. The prince had been the Iranian ambassador to British India and, being a fluent French speaker, succeeded in passing himself off as a French laborer to learn the secrets of tea cultivation while working in tea plantations. The scheme worked. He managed to smuggle tea plants and seeds back to Iran to cultivate around Lahijan, and the result is what we could see from the roadside as we drove along the seaside highway—field after field of ripe green tea plants, their leaves fluttering and flapping, row after row, in the coastal breeze.

  After tea, came rice. The region around Ramsar has long been the rice-growing center of Iran, the origin of the heaps of fluffy grain served with every meal, topped with butter or seasoned with fresh saffron. As we passed, the waterlogged rice fields shimmered steely grey under semi-cloudy skies, with the mountain backdrop casting long shadows across pools now dormant in the winter but waiting for the first sign of spring to burst back to life.

  After rice came the mountains, the ragged, rugged peaks of the Alborz range. A few miles past Chalous, the road to Tehran turned sharp right and began its climb into the mountains, running parallel to a stream that cut through the Alborz on its way to the Caspian. The road to Tehran followed the path of the stream in reverse, gradually rising as the stream descended, offering dramatic views into the valley, which gradually became a deep gorge plunging from the side of the roadway. The road continued to rise, and rise, high into the mountains. The receding snowfields became snowdrifts, the snowdrifts knitted themselves together, and soon the slopes were shrouded in an even cover of shimmering, glittering snow, iridescent under the glare of the sharp winter sun.

  We were nearing the top of the pass. The air was frosty cold. Just before the highest point on the road we stopped at a rest area where many other drivers had pulled over to pick up snacks and steaming cups of coffee before beginning the descent. Rest stop though it was, it was also the last chance to view the high alpine scenery before it would recede into rearview mirrors, and memory. Other drivers pulled into the parking lot to snap selfies against the background of the Alborz. Others stamped their feet, wiggled their shoulders to shrug off the cold, and exhaled clouds of steam as the gas station attendants filled their fuel tanks.

  Then it was all downhill—almost. There were still a few kilometers to the top of the pass, but after we crossed it, Aydin was able to shift into higher gear and take some of the load off his straining Saipa. As the kilometers rolled by, the snowfields that covered the mountains in sweeping white blankets gradually thinned. The air was still crisply cool, but the deep freeze had lifted. Bare ground appeared. We passed side roads that led to the ski runs that drew Tehranis away from the city for weekend escapes—from its congestion, its chronic smog, and of course even the stern oversight of the regime and the daily stresses—economic, social, and political. As the road became level I was a little disappointed to see the last remains of the snow disappear. Apartment blocks and industrial parks crowded the roadside, sparse at first but then thicker, until mega-urban sprawl obliterated any sign of the alpine glory we had left behind.

  Then we were back. The traffic stumbled and lurched through the city streets as it always does in Tehran. We passed Azadi Square and the landmark Azadi Tower, which strikingly resembles the logo on Aydin’s Saipa. And then down Enqelab Avenue to Enqelab Square, where the hard realities of life in Iran returned. The threat of protests, in the government’s eyes, had not receded, like the snowfields of an hour ago. An army of basij forces decked out in full riot gear encircled the square. The gates of Tehran University were similarly “protected” from any social and political unrest. There soldiers stood guard and army jeeps were parked to the left and right of the gates. Meanwhile, students passed in and out with visible nonchalance. And that was what was most striking about the dramatic and at the same time demure scene. Along the streets around the university, shoppers, sidewalk strollers, and office workers who had ducked out early went about their business with the same casual disregard. Unrest, intimidation, warning, crackdown—this was all part of life in Iran, as natural as the falling of snow and seasonal melting in the nearby mountains.

  4

  Mashhad

  Shrines of All Kinds

  Listen: this story’s one you should know,

  You’ll reap the consequence of what you sow.

  This fleeting world is not the world where we

  Are destined to abide eternally:

  And for the sake of an unworthy throne

  You let the devil claim you for his own.

  —Ferdowsi

  I felt a tap on the side of my arm. It was gentle at first. I thought it was an inadvertent bump from the passing crowd. Then I felt it again, more deliberately, and then a voice spoke softly, almost in a whisper: “Please, please . . .”

  It came from a man of about thirty-five, wearing sunglasses, a black jacket, and sporting a goatee. We were standing at the entrance to the Imam Reza Shrine in the center of Mashhad. A throng of pilgrims was going in and out, and we were planted in the middle of the passing current. I had been snapping photos of the goings-on, as any tourist might at the gate of one of the holiest shrines in the world of Shiite Islam. Mustafa, my guide, had told me that this was fine before he wandered off in the direction of the market stalls selli
ng souvenirs all around the shrine.

  There was another tap, and now the bearded man with the tinted lenses was tugging on my arm.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he almost whispered, now tugging the sleeve of my jacket. Then he pointed at my camera and mumbled something in Farsi he should have known I wouldn’t understand. The repeated thank yous were a blind stab at politeness. He kept tugging at my sleeve, trying to pull me in the direction of the security booth near the entrance gate. I didn’t move. Again he tugged and again mumbled in Farsi. Then another man appeared, who confronted Mr. Tinted Lenses. An argument ensued, but Persian style, with neither man raising his voice, pounding a fist, or in any other way exhibiting the heat of open confrontation.

  Both men, I realized, were plainclothes members of the security services, stationed at the gate to keep an eye out for suspicious activity and, when boredom took over, perhaps to grab a photo-taking foreign tourist.

  What was surprising, but also characteristic of Persian culture, is that no matter how contentious an argument becomes, voices are never raised, and this was the case of the sparring security men. They discussed, argued, or debated—it was hard to tell which—and then Mustafa appeared. The three then parried, but quietly, back and forth. Mustafa was asked to produce some sort of document, which he did. Mr. Tinted Lenses squinted at it, and the debate continued.

  It was decided that the photo-taking foreigner would be delivered to a higher authority. As a simple tour guide, Mustafa had no vote. He and I were led to the security booth, where the debate continued. Mustafa showed the men his paperwork, the security men squabbled, but civilly and quietly. Tinted Lenses tried to press his case, but from what I could tell he was having a hard time of it. A decision was reached. Mustafa folded up his paperwork, and we left.