City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death and the Search for Truth in Tehran

by Ramita Navai

  Abdul and Morteza began to search the car.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘No. As God is my witness, I have not been drinking.’

  ‘Let me smell your breath.’

  The girls, only a few years older than their teenage interrogators, knew they were in trouble. It was midnight, they were wearing tight party manteaus, had painted nails, lashings of make-up and, apart from having taken MDMA, had been drinking shots all night. They were on their way to another party.

  ‘If you don’t let me smell your breath now, I’m arresting you.’ Majid flashed a glint of handcuff. The girl closed her eyes so she would not have to look at the twins glowering at her as she opened her mouth. They stared at her parted lips in wonder. The Ahmadi twins had never stood so close to a woman who was not their mother.

  ‘You’re not breathing out.’ They stepped towards her. The girl opened her mouth wider, trying to hold her breath in. ‘I want to hear your breath as it comes out.’ Finally the girl expelled a puff of air, warm and stinking of vodka. A moist cloud enveloped the twins. One of them had even opened his mouth a little, as though trying to taste it. The girl opened her eyes and braced herself. But all the twins had smelt was the acidic smell of sour breath.

  ‘There were these in the car.’ Abdul was holding a handful of CDs, Shakira, Lady Gaga and some Persian pop. ‘Shall I take them to the station?’ He began breaking the CDs with his hands. He had not yet managed to get very close to the girls and wanted a turn.

  ‘Please don’t take us to the police. My parents have no money, we couldn’t afford a court case. Everyone’s got music these days, you know that.’

  ‘Let them go. They’re wasting our time,’ Morteza shouted from the side of the road. There was silence. Morteza was acutely aware that he could not muster even a fraction of the rage that bubbled up from the others, frothing out of their mouths as torrents of abuse. When he saw his victims’ frightened faces he could not help but recoil, hurrying away to pretend to check his mobile phone.

  One of the girls had started drunkenly crying.

  ‘Just let them go.’ Morteza realized that he sounded as though he was pleading. The twins scowled.

  ‘Get back in the car, and if we ever see you behaving like this again, you really will be in trouble,’ said Abdul as he used his boot to slam the door shut.

  ‘Fucking sluts, they’d open their legs to their own brothers if they got money for it.’ The twins turned to Morteza. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve been like this since the protests. And we heard that you saw Mehran smoking a joint and you did nothing. Whose side are you on?’

  ‘You keep letting us down, bro.’ Now it was Abdul’s turn.

  ‘I think we should tell him,’ said one of the twins.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘There are rumours about you…’

  ‘What rumours?’ Morteza’s voice was shaking.

  ‘We’re risking our reputations being seen with you.’

  ‘I’ve told them the rumours aren’t true. It’s impossible,’ said Majid.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please just tell me.’

  ‘That you’re not a real man…’

  ‘That you’re a faggot.’ They were all staring at him. Morteza was suddenly cold, and fighting the urge to let his teeth chatter.

  ‘Who said that? I can’t believe you’re saying this to me,’ his voice as faint as a croak. The four boys were motionless. They just looked at him.

  ‘You believe me, don’t you? I love God and my country, and it would be impossible for someone like me to be like that.’ He tried to make his face grimace in revulsion, but his muscles were paralysed. ‘I want to know who’s spreading these rumours because they need to be taught a lesson.’ Morteza was starting to sound more confident. This was a matter of survival. ‘You’re discussing immoral rumours like your gossiping aunts when we’re supposed to be working.’ Morteza put his arms square on his hips, as he had seen the twins do. ‘Gossiping is more important than our work, I suppose?’ He nodded towards a car that had slowed down as it approached their checkpoint. Morteza flagged it over.

  ‘Get out.’ It was a man in his twenties with long, curly blond hair in a ponytail. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and black skinny jeans. Both his ears were pierced.

  ‘Driving licence.’ The man fumbled about nervously; when he finally flashed his licence, Abdul noticed he was wearing black nail varnish.

  ‘That bitch is wearing nail varnish.’

  ‘Hey man, I like playing the electric guitar…it’s not anything more than that…I don’t drink, I don’t party, I never break the law…’

  ‘See, and because of your gossiping, you nearly let him go.’ Morteza was ignoring the bumbling victim. He turned to Abdul, ‘Hold him.’

  The man had started to beg. The twins locked his arms behind his back and Abdul pushed his head down. Morteza got out the flick knife he kept tucked in his belt and started to hack at the man’s hair. The man wriggled and yelled, chunks of his hair scattered near his feet. When he was done, Morteza punched him hard in the back, then started kicking him in his stomach and slamming his elbow in his face.

  ‘Fucking queer bastard, you’re lucky we’re not going to kill you, you little fucking faggot.’ Morteza looked at his black eyes, burst lip and blood-splattered T-shirt and decided to let him go. He turned to the boys. ‘Don’t you ever come to me with your filthy tales again.’

  *

  Morteza was at the mosque watching the Supreme Leader on television. He was warning his citizens not to discuss the biggest embezzlement scandal in the country’s history. Bankers had used forged documents to steal over two billion US dollars from several state- and private-owned banks. For weeks nobody had discussed anything else.

  The unit kept up to date with every Friday prayer and every word the Supreme Leader uttered, vigilant for any commands that required action and any opportunities to dispense justice.

  As it got dark, the boys mounted their bikes and drove straight to Farmanieh, a posh, rich neighbourhood where they had formed an alliance with some local basijis they had met at a summer training camp. Majid had a pair of nunchucks stuffed into his trousers that he had bought from Gomrok. When he had tried to demonstrate a Kung Fu-inspired move, one of the handles had smacked him in the jaw and the boys had bent double with laughter.

  It was a Thursday night, party night. Within half an hour they got what they were looking for. Throbbing music and a stream of revellers dressed like Westerners. Morteza’s unit had been told they should leave house raids to the police, but parties were raided less and less nowadays and the police rarely took up their leads. The boys lamented the power that was being sucked out of their eager hands.

  They drove to the station. They were in luck; the officer in charge was bored, and he enjoyed showing these basijis who was in control. He told the boys they could accompany his men on the raid. The officer gathered a small team, including two soldiers on national service.

  At a plain, stone-clad apartment block, the cop buzzed every single ringer and stared into the entryphone camera.

  ‘If you don’t open the door, I’ll have my men break it down.’

  A panicked voice crackled through. ‘I’m coming down right now, officer.’

  ‘He thinks he can buy himself some time. I don’t think so.’ Morteza and the boys smirked. They were in for a good night.

  The moment the front door opened the officer pushed it wide open and streamed inside, his men and the boys following behind. ‘Check the neighbours aren’t hiding any of these idiots,’ the officer shouted out. ‘Whose apartment is this?’

  ‘Mine, sir.’ A man in his twenties was panting behind them, smiling. ‘Can we sort this out, officer? In any way you like.’ He moved towards the officer and tapped his wallet with his hand.

  ‘Think you can bribe a man of the law?’

  ‘Yes sir I do!’ He slurred his words. His friends around him started giggl
ing.

  ‘Shut up!’ the officer screamed. The giggles were becoming louder.

  ‘I order you to stop laughing now!’ At that, the group burst out into a collective roar of laughter. Morteza and the boys were confused.

  ‘You need to teach these arseholes a lesson,’ the Ahmadi twins were shouting. The officer slapped the boy across the face. He laughed harder than before.

  ‘They’re on drugs.’ The officer shrugged. He was right; they had raided mid-acid trip. The officer in charge told the boys to search the flat. Abdul found condoms in the bedroom, to be used as evidence. Morteza walked to the back of the house and began checking the rooms. He opened a bathroom door and saw one of the young soldiers standing over the loo, emptying bottles of booze into it. When the soldier saw Morteza he froze. For a few seconds, they stared at each other in silence. Then the soldier whispered, ‘They’re kids. They’re not evil, just having a good time. They’re not even that rich, they’ll be screwed with all this booze.’ Morteza closed the door.

  ‘Nothing back here,’ he shouted out. He felt no guilt at having shown mercy. He had experienced a strange connection to the young soldier carrying out this random act of compassion.

  The team led the kids outside; they were unsteady on their feet and unable to co-ordinate their movements while handcuffed to each other, which led to more laughter. Even one of the policemen had laughed.

  ‘Hey guys, we should party sometime,’ said a tall, lanky tripper to the cop.

  ‘You should whack him!’ said Abdul.

  ‘Hey, you need to get laid, that would seriously chill you the fuck out.’ The revellers burst out laughing and just as the Ahmadi twins were about to lunge towards the lanky tripper, Abdul calmly took a can of pepper spray out of his pocket and aimed it directly into his eyes. The lanky tripper dropped to the floor, rolling into a ball, crying in pain. His friend who was chained to him was dragged down with him. The younger cops rolled their eyes at each other. They hated these basiji boys. Another officer was trying to placate Morteza’s group. As much as he enjoyed intimidating rich kids, he did not have the stomach for violence, and anyway he enjoyed an occasional tipple and toke of opium himself.

  At the station the duty officer approached the partygoers, who had been deposited in a waiting room.

  ‘Guys, they’re going to give you a drugs and alcohol test. You’re fucked. I want to help you – here, eat this, it absorbs the drugs and the booze, they won’t be able to find a thing.’ The officer handed them carbon paper. One of the kids high-fived him as he gobbled up the paper, wincing at its bitterness. Five minutes later the head of the police station walked in, a big man with a handlebar moustache.

  ‘All the drunk, stoned motherfuckers with blue mouths get up.’ This time the police officers were laughing as much as the kids.

  The kids spent the next four days in an underground car park that had been transformed into prison cells. Their parents were not told of their whereabouts until the day they were released. All of them were ordered to appear before a court, and their parents were made to hand over the deeds to their houses as bail.

  As Morteza and the group were leaving, a disabled man in a wheelchair entered the station, shouting with the full force of his lungs. He was leaning as far forward as he could go. Anger had engorged his face with blood. He spat as he yelled.

  ‘Yes, my wife’s a prostitute!’ His left arm – his only working limb – was jabbing the air, his hand clenched so hard in rage that the white of his bones looked almost luminous under his stretched skin. ‘She sells her body for money because that’s the only way she can pay for my medicine. This is how the Islamic Republic treats its war veterans!’ Beside him, his handcuffed wife was weeping silently, wiping her eyes with the corners of her headscarf. ‘And as if you haven’t emasculated me enough, now you want to arrest her. You think this is the way we want to fucking live?’ Three policemen were trying to calm him down. ‘Please keep your voice down, you’re going to get into trouble.’

  His wife had been caught having sex with a client in a car. Her husband was in his wheelchair at the top of the road. He always went with her when she worked, as it was safer that way.

  ‘Fuck the Islamic Republic of Iran, fuck them all, this is what they’ve done to us! I can’t make love to my wife, and now she has to fuck other men so we don’t have to live like animals! Just kill me now!’ The Ahmadi twins were shouting at the police officer to slap the cripple. You could hear his blasphemous screams from outside the station. He had drawn quite a crowd. The police chief had heard everything from his office. He emerged sighing and shaking his head from side to side. Whenever he thought he had heard it all, something would happen that would unsettle him.

  ‘Just let them go.’ The officers were perturbed enough to quickly acquiesce. They also knew better than to argue with the chief.

  The Ahmadi twins stepped forward. ‘She’s a whore! She’s defacing the name of Islam, and you want to let her walk free!’ Majid and Abdul were also screeching their disapproval.

  The police chief stepped towards them, bellowing so loudly that the whole station was shocked into silence. ‘If you don’t show some respect, I will have you dealt with – being a basiji does not make you immune to humility and humanity. Get out of my station and don’t ever come back.’

  As the boys left, Morteza turned round and saw that the war veteran’s head could not have been held any higher as his wife wheeled him out of the police station. Morteza saw her stroke her husband’s neck; in that tiny gesture he knew the police chief had been right.

  Just over halfway down Vali Asr, tucked behind Tehran’s City Theatre, is Daneshjoo Park, a small, landscaped slab of green, thick with trees and shrubs. At first glance it seems like any other park, where lovers come to take refuge from the city and its laws; the tell-tale signs of illicit behaviour are here: knees touching, fingers entwined, numbers being exchanged. But those who care to look a little harder will see something else is happening. Park-e Daneshjoo has been adopted by the city’s misfits and deviants. Cruising gay men, prostitutes of all persuasions and punters of all ages do business among the benches and the fountains. A man with a shaved head, 500 Viagra pills, two vibrators and various other sex toys stuffed in his coat calls Park-e Daneshjoo Tehran’s ‘Little Pigalle’, his reference to Paris’s sex district – all the more impressive when you know he was born after the revolution and has never left Iran.

  Morteza had heard the boys talk about Park-e Daneshjoo as a den of immorality that needed to be destroyed. Now he was on Vali Asr walking towards it. After years of repressing his desires, he could no longer resist.

  A dirty beige smog pushed down on the city, trapped between the road and a dark blue sky. It was the day before a long weekend and Vali Asr was crammed with shoppers. Loudspeakers belted out the latest bargains and price reductions; Céline Dion and Europop blasted into the street from the clothes stores. Outside a shop selling yellow baseball caps stamped with SACRED HEART REGIONAL CANCER CENTER a green budgerigar chirped at passers-by from its cage. The traffic was at a standstill; Vali Asr had been transformed into an endless car park. On the side of the road a man in a ripped leather jacket was selling bottles of knocked-off eau de cologne from a tatty holdall. Morteza weaved through the cars, gulping mouthfuls of poisonous air.

  Morteza was astonished by the theatre’s beauty; a giant cylinder, a perfect mix of modern sixties and classic Persian architecture; concrete columns and geometric arches, intricate inlaid tiles dotted turquoise and green, big studded wood-and-metal doors. Morteza’s reaction surprised him; he must have passed by the theatre hundreds of times on the bus but this was the first time he was really looking at it. Men and women were sitting on hexagonal cement benches talking, listening to music on iPods and reading newspapers and books. Morteza wound his way through the crowds to the back, down some steps into the small park, which was on a series of levels. He sat on the edge of a bench, scanning the scene around him. A girl with a visor ov
er her black chador and Nike Air trainers was whispering in the ear of her married middle-class businessman lover. On a patch of green grass in front of him, a street sweeper was stretched out in a pool of sun, still in the lurid orange uniform that earned him the nickname of haveech, carrot, among Tehranis. He had taken off one shoe, on which he rested his head.

  At first, Morteza wondered whether the boys had got their information wrong. Nothing was happening. Then he began to notice: the looks, the slight nod of the head, the almost imperceptible narrowing of the eyes. After nearly thirty minutes of summoning his courage, he dared to hold a man’s gaze, and it was done. He followed the man to some public toilets where a line of young boys were cottaging. In a dirty, small cubicle he cried with pain as he was fucked. The man did not look in his eyes when it was done, he just disappeared out into the world.

  The next week, Morteza went back to Park-e Daneshjoo. In the toilets he tried to kiss the stranger who had met his eyes. The man punched him in the face and walked out. The next time he picked up a man, he asked his permission to kiss on the mouth. This time the man called him a pervert before slapping him.

  The woman at the door was wearing a chic beige trench coat that was cinched at the waist, a fake Hermès headscarf and no make-up.

  ‘Salaam, my name is Nassim Soltani and I would like to speak to Morteza Kazemi.’ Her husband and little boy stood beside her; it always worked better that way, people were less intimidated and more trustful of a woman with a family by her side. Nassim and her husband respectfully bowed their heads, greeting their growing audience; Khadijeh’s sister and niece had grabbed their chadors and run to the door, where they stood gawping at the visitors.

  ‘We think your son, Morteza Kazemi, may be able to help someone who is in trouble; we have heard Morteza is an honest young man who has served his country and God with a pure heart. You must be very proud of him.’ Nassim had been dealing with women like Khadijeh for over ten years. She knew how to handle them. Khadijeh nodded in approval while her relatives whispered to each other. Khadijeh shouted Morteza’s name without averting her gaze. Morteza had been listening to the conversation from the hallway. When he emerged, he made sure to step outside and close the door behind him. His family would be straining to listen. He nodded to Nassim and began to walk down the road; she quickly followed. The only chance she stood of persuading men like Morteza to talk was by extricating them from their families. After five minutes Morteza stopped on the edge of a park.