The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran

by Majd, Hooman

  He did eventually return to Islamic Iran to clear his name: he had to endure a sort of trial at the Foreign Ministry, rather than in the notorious revolutionary courts, at which he was only partially successful in establishing his innocence. He was accused of serving alcohol at the embassy while he was ambassador, which he openly admitted and which he pointed out was not illegal under the shah; and he was accused of having a close relationship with the now-hated shah, which wasn’t true and which he of course denied. After the revolution and the ransacking of the shah’s offices, zealous revolutionaries had amassed thousands of the shah’s personal papers related to affairs of state, and among them they had found handwritten notes signed by my father. He was surprised that his notes, which were addressed to his boss, the foreign minister, and not the shah, had ended up in the shah’s office and personal papers, but the reason was simple: the always honorable Khalatbari, rather than present my father’s opinions and positive findings to the shah as his own, something many if not most politicians would have done, had simply delivered my father’s messages directly to the shah in his weekly meetings. This was beyond the comprehension of the revolutionaries. Khalatbari was a career diplomat with no strong political leanings, but much to my father’s dismay and utter sadness, he had been executed days after the revolution. At the conclusion of his own trial, my father was fired, rather than retired, from the Foreign Ministry he had served and loved. And now my father could sulk again.

  This time he knew the sulk could have no effect; nor would anyone else care or even be aware of it. But sometimes the sulk itself was enough. It was a peculiarly Iranian sulk in that it was performed solely for the sake of pride. He refused to appeal or challenge the verdict against him, refused to hire an attorney and press his case that he deserved his pension, if not his good name back, because pride told him he mustn’t demean himself. Pride told him that somehow his inquisitors would be embarrassed by his refusal to challenge them; they would realize by his silence that they had been mistaken in their treatment of him and would eventually come around and offer their apologies along with all his back pay. Of course, that was never to happen; nor did anyone at the Foreign Ministry give a damn at the time, or even now.

  But I do sometimes wonder, more than twenty years into the sulk, if my father hadn’t been right all along. For every time I’ve had a meeting at the ministry, the older diplomats—and even some younger ones who have studied the history of Iran’s diplomacy—praise my father for his impeccable reputation and even his honor. I remind them that he lives in a small flat in London and hasn’t been paid in over thirty years; the only response, as is not atypical in Iran, is an awkward, even uncomfortable smile—one that would have given my father great satisfaction in his sulk, if he had ever seen it.

  The various forms of sulking have always been a part of the Iranian national character. In my own family, which I’ve hardly ever thought of as dysfunctional, sulks have been plentiful—one or another members of my extended family, especially those in Iran, aren’t speaking to some other member at any given time—and it’s often hard to keep track of who is not speaking to whom, over what particular slight. But sulking is also common among friends, in business, and of course at the highest levels in politics, since way before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eleven-day public fit of pique.

  Mohammad Mossadeq, the oil-nationalizing prime minister who was famously overthrown in a CIA-MI6 coup in 1953, was given to fits of pique, too, and was often portrayed in the West, particularly in the British papers, as an emotionally unstable person who would faint, retreat to his bed in pajamas, and generally appear to act like a stubborn child if he didn’t get his way or if he wanted to make a point. Time magazine even said, in a report published in 1951, “Better than most modern statesmen, Iran’s Premier Mohammed Mossadegh knows the value of the childlike tantrum.” Time editors understood the value of a tantrum, or a sulk, but surely didn’t understand its part in the Iranian character. Years before his tenure as prime minister and on the world stage, in 1919, he had sulked all the way to self-imposed exile in Switzerland, so offended was he that Iran had agreed to a treaty with Great Britain that gave the colonial empire control over his country’s finances and armed forces. He returned home only after the Majles, the parliament, rejected the treaty, something he had worked feverishly against while abroad. But Mossadeq’s behavior was never a shock to Iranians, who understand the value of a good sulk, not even to the shah, who fled to Rome before returning to reclaim his throne almost reluctantly, and whose criticisms of Mossadeq, before and after the coup, didn’t include questioning his rival’s proclivity to petulance.

  Yes, the big sulk that attracted the world’s attention in 2011 had been preceded by Iranian sulks of all kinds, but none greater than the sulk by the Islamic Revolution itself, directed at the United States. No one has really thought of it as a sulk, but the strained relationship, or lack of relationship, between the United States and Iran fits with the Iranian temperament. In a sulk, usually the sulking party wants the other to come to admit its offense, its mistakes, and to correct its behavior. By sulking, the Iranian party also presumes that the other party needs, and will miss, it more than it needs the other. That has been Iran’s position vis-à-vis the United States ever since the hostage crisis of 1979, if not from the moment Ayatollah Khomeini set foot in Tehran nine months before.

  Certainly many Iranians harbor a deep-rooted antagonism toward the United States, which they view as the successor to the British Empire in the Middle East, especially since the 1953 coup removed the democratically elected prime minister, Mossadeq, in favor of the shah, who then, with the full backing of the United States, built a security state and a secret police that tortured and jailed many of the revolutionaries in power today. But those very same revolutionaries also feel a tremendous admiration for America and American values. And I think that this admiration—this sense of desire for a relationship—is necessary to give a sulk a raison d’être. Iranians’ litany of complaints against their former patron, a country whose values they admit in private that they admire, might be collected in a book entitled Why We Sulk. Iran has been waiting for more than thirty years to hear that America—and only America, the world’s sole true superpower, matters to Iran—will respect her, that she can be an independent, sovereign state with the full ability to chart her own destiny without interference from any power, something that has not been the case for the past two hundred years.

  Only when Iran is convinced that America sincerely accepts her as she is, not as what the United States wants her to be, may the thirty-plus-year sulk come to an end. Meanwhile, the sulk baffles many Westerners and makes them think the ayatollahs and revolutionaries who rule Iran are simply impossible, just as Westerners once thought Mossadeq impossible. The pain Iran has suffered—U.S. sanctions have meant, for example, that since 1979 it can’t upgrade even its civilian Boeing aircraft fleet, resulting in a scandalously high airplane accident rate—has also made her strong in many ways. It has forced Iran to seek more reliable and less politically fraught—European and Asian—alternatives to U.S. technology and even to boost its indigenous industry, lending credence to the opinion that it is the United States that is losing out in its long-standing grudge match with Iran. That may be the case in some aspects of geopolitics, but from the perspective of an American family trying to live in Tehran, the Iranian sulk, and the U.S. response to it, is highly inconvenient and at times downright stupid, even as the sulk, because it is not what most Americans think—an instinctive hatred for Americans—allows for Americans to visit Iran without the real possibility that they may come to harm. Ghahr, ghahr, ta roozeh ghiamat, ghahr. Judgment day can’t come soon enough, and certainly not for American Iranians and Iranian Americans.

  5

  FARDA

  Waiting for the day that Iran normalizes its relationship with the United States and therefore with the rest of the West has become for many Iranians, real-life Estragons and Vladimirs, an absurdist pl
ay. While waiting and hoping that things will change, some sulk. Many Iranian youth have been in a sort of collective political sulk since 2009, when an intolerant regime dashed their hopes for a better future, and they have virtually withdrawn from civil society, waiting to join the millions of Iranians who have emigrated, or else retreating to their homes—often their parents’ homes—waiting for an invitation to do something semiexciting in a republic where excitement, at least of the public sort, is effectively banned. Older Iranians, whether onetime revolutionaries, proponents or opponents of the nezam, or merely apolitical, often wait for something else, and it’s usually a business deal, or a court date over some disputed property seizure, or an appeal of a court decision, or really anything that has to do with money.

  Outwardly Iran is economically not very different from Europe or the United States, at least in terms of busy shops, Western and Asian consumer goods aplenty, billboards advertising the latest electronics, automobiles, and luxury items, and new construction in the capital rivaling Eurozone boom towns of the 1990s like Dublin. But a not insubstantial number of Iranians, unemployed and unemployable (there simply aren’t enough jobs for the population, an issue exacerbated by the effect of years-long economic sanctions on the country), sit around and wait for deals they are working on to materialize. And an equal number of Iranians are waiting to happily assist them, or to take advantage of them, depending on one’s point of view, in their business and legal ventures.

  When we first arrived in Tehran and were staying at Khosro’s house, a frequent visitor—actually, an almost daily one, usually at lunchtime—was Reza, a sort of business associate of his, a man with a pronounced and sometimes difficult-to-understand Rashti (from Rasht, a northern city on the Caspian Sea) accent. I had met Reza on my previous trips to Tehran; he was supposedly helping Khosro with a court case involving some land belonging to Khosro’s family. In the early days of the revolution, the state had confiscated the small parcel, and the law stated that in cases of nonpolitical property seizures, the government had to reimburse the landowner. But this being Iran, years had gone by, and despite almost weekly appeals to the court, nothing had happened. Reza had promised Khosro that he would expedite the case, for he had connections at the courts, but that was a few years ago. Eight years, Khosro reminded me. Eight years? Karri couldn’t believe it. And he still comes by every day? For what? He came for lunch, of course, which Khosro happily served him and us, but also for a little money, you know, to help continue greasing the wheels. Fifty here, Khosro told us, a hundred there (in U.S. dollars). After lunch, Khosro would mark in a ledger how much he had given Reza that day. It added up, and fast.

  Reza Farda, we called him, not his real surname but one given him by Khosro, because every day Reza said he would have Khosro’s favorable court decision in hand “tomorrow,” farda in Farsi, or fuurrd’a, as it sounded to us in Rashti. Or actually, maybe the day after tomorrow at the latest.

  A short man with a large belly that matched his appetite and thick graying hair and beard, Reza had his charms, and like all Iranians we met, he wanted to play with the baby. Every day in Khosro’s small kitchen, he picked up Khash and kissed him and professed his undying love and admiration for the boy. We often tried to leave Khosro and his sometime employee Ali alone with Reza to discuss their business over the endless cups of sugared tea Iranians consume with abandon, both before and after a meal, but apparently they really had no business to discuss. Karri was bemused by the fact that she and Khash caused no interruption (or embarrassment) in the routine whereby Reza would show up, hungry and ready for a little snack or a big lunch, depending on what Khosro had on offer that day, simply to show his face and to report that he had just come from somewhere or other and to assure his client that his land, and his money, would be his within twenty-four hours. Farda. Khosro was in a bind, he explained to Karri, for if he stopped feeding Reza or, worse, didn’t give him the money he demanded, all the money he had given him up till then would have gone to waste, and he’d be back to square one with the court. Certainly true, Karri argued, but surely Reza can’t be telling the truth about the court case, that it will be resolved tomorrow? No, of course he isn’t, but Khosro felt he had no choice but to wait it out.

  Reza, whenever he sensed Khosro’s frustration and sometimes his anger, would make outlandish promises beyond his usual ones. One day, in front of all of us, he not only promised that the case would be resolved by tomorrow, but he told Ali to go and pick out a new motorcycle, right away, for he was going to buy him one with the fee he was about to collect. How’s he going to get out of this one? I wondered. “That’ll be interesting” was Khosro’s response, but of course after a few days there was neither money nor motorcycle to be seen, and somehow all involved knew there wouldn’t be. Yet lunch was still served. “Khejalat nemeekeshee?”—“Aren’t you embarrassed?”—Reza’s wife had asked him on occasion, he admitted, probably because he never came home for lunch rather than because he was leading Khosro on, but he had no qualms about disclosing his wife’s concern. No, he wasn’t embarrassed, and the wife remained, as they tend to be in Iranian business relationships no matter how close, unseen. On another occasion, when Khosro was particularly frustrated with Reza (and perhaps because of Karri’s incredulous questioning), he asked Reza how and what he should think of him if Reza never delivered on his promises. “Kola-bardar, of course,” exclaimed Reza. A con man.

  During the time we were at Khosro’s house, and in the months that followed in our own apartment and even to this day, Reza continues to visit Khosro and collect fifty here, a hundred there, and consume a delicious lunch courtesy of Khosro’s mother. She lives in the house behind Khosro’s, separated by a small garden that was once lush but has since been taken over by families of stray cats that she can’t help but feed. And Khosro still waits. Reza Farda’s obligation to him was informal, in that any agreement had been made verbally, and there were no documents to prove bad faith on Reza’s part if Khosro one day decided to give up on the game and try to recover some of his cash outlay, if not the lunches he’s served.

  This type of arrangement is more common in close relationships, when family members or very close friends are involved in a business transaction, than in the kind of relationship that Khosro and Reza had. But I suppose eight years of breaking bread together had created a relationship beyond business, as reluctant as Khosro might have been about it, and at any rate if Reza is unable to deliver for him, it isn’t clear at all that he never intended to in the first place. In fact, Khosro is confident that Reza would love to deliver, for that way he will actually make far more money than the fifties and hundreds he pockets from time to time. His capacity for lying through his teeth about when he might deliver, a running daily joke, is mostly indicative of a comfort in Iranian society and particularly among Tehranis with lying and exaggerating, rather than any real confidence game, Khosro believes. Comfortable with lying? My people? Really?

  “We’ve become a nation of liars,” the cabbie said after he felt a little more at ease with me. He had picked me up downtown, near the Foreign Ministry, and my destination was way uptown, a good forty-five-minute or hour drive away, even on the highways that bisected Tehran’s clogged surface streets. “Have I met you before?” he had asked when I got in the front seat. “You look familiar. Do you live in Pasdaran?”

  I was wearing a gray suit with an open-collared shirt and carrying a briefcase, and with the close-cropped graying beard, I suppose I could pass for a former Revolutionary Guard, many of whom live in that neighborhood of Tehran, named for the Guards themselves. No, I had replied, but I also hadn’t offered any clues to my profession, former or current. Did he think I was lying? Perhaps.

  But he had started the conversation by stating that he was a retired army officer, one who had joined the army in the shah’s time, and he was in the mood, as almost every cab driver in Tehran always is, for complaining. Particularly if he thinks his passenger might be someone who will sympathize
with him or, better yet, can do something about the jeremiad he is about to unleash. “The Islamic Revolution,” he said, “has brought about many advances, in industry and technology and the like. But in terms of akhlagh, manners or character, we’ve regressed.”

  I merely nodded.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he continued. “A man goes to confess his sins to the prophet. He tells him he’s a thief and a womanizer, constantly cheating on his wife. The prophet tells him there’s only one thing he must not do anymore, and that is to lie. The man, quite pleased, goes away, but within hours he realizes that he is incapable of sinning anymore if he can’t lie about it. He can’t go out that night either to steal or to womanize or both, because he can’t lie to his wife. You see? That’s why lying is the worst sin, and why our society is crumbling.”

  A good story, I commented, but I was not entirely sure why he told it to me. And while I could understand that perhaps lying had become more prevalent—at least in the overcrowded and highly competitive capital, where getting ahead by any means seemed to have become accepted behavior in recent years—I still wasn’t convinced that it had become a part of the Persian persona, despite the fact that time and again during our stay in Iran I heard people say that it had, and that in general the wonderful Persian manners of two millennia, which admittedly included a more refined form of not telling the absolute truth, had given way to the modern Iranian lying boor.