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

by Majd, Hooman

  “Anyway, the next day someone came into the room and starting calling names, one by one. After each name, he’d proclaim, ‘Released.’ When my turn came, I burst into tears. That was it. I went around the big room saying my goodbyes—to political prisoners I’d become friends with, from senior political figures to even MEK (Mujaheddine-Khalq) members whose death sentences had been commuted to eleven years, to monarchists—all good people. I was taken to collect my things, and the guard signed me out. I almost wanted to spend another night at Evin, to say proper goodbyes to my fellow prisoners, to see if there was anything I could do on the outside for them. I mentioned that to the guard and he said I was crazy, that I should hurry up, as my family was waiting outside. I said, ‘No one knows I’m being released—there’ll be no one waiting for me.’ I went out, and of course there was no one, just a bunch of waiting taxis. Business was good for taxis at Evin those days. I borrowed a cell phone and called my brother, and then got into a taxi and went to his house, so he could pay the fare.

  “I tried to make it brief, or as brief as I could. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “Your story is fascinating.”

  “You know,” he said, “we had made a pact in Evin, we ‘the twenty,’ that we wouldn’t celebrate a birthday, Noruz [Persian New Year], or indeed any other holiday until all twenty of us had been released, and we stuck to it. I’m proud of that.”

  He had spoken for over an hour while others—including the somewhat frustrated host, who needed to check on the food—came and went from the kitchen, and I could tell he was tired of Evin and wanted to move on to more pleasant subjects with the other guests. I shut the tape recorder off, and we got up to return to the party.

  Evin has always been on the minds of Iranians, mostly politically active ones, from the days of the shah, when many in the Islamic regime’s leadership, including the Supreme Leader himself, spent time in its cells. It had first entered the Western consciousness during the time of SAVAK and allegations of torture behind its walls, but it was largely forgotten until Westerners were imprisoned there: British sailors in 2007, and many Iranian American journalists and intellectuals during the first decade of the twenty-first century. After 2009 it became even better known because of the widespread arrests of protesters highlighted in the Western media. The American hikers, arrested soon after the elections, probably made Evin as close to a household word in the United States as it will ever be, despite the fact that it still houses numerous Iranian political prisoners long after the Americans were released.

  There are a million stories of Evin, and each is different, but I was taken by this ordinary story of an ordinary man, caught up in one of the momentous events of the Islamic Revolution—a story that was not sensational but spoke to what Iran was today, at least for some of its citizens. I was glad to have heard his story from his own lips, an unembellished and even humble tale, for it reaffirmed to me everything I loved about Iran and more particularly about its people, an affirmation necessary to dampen the cynicism that grows inside you and eats at you with each passing day in the Islamic Republic. Everything, from the thug who said to him, anonymously, “You’re so fucked,” to the guard who later told him he was a brother; from the camaraderie between Revolutionary Guards in prison themselves and the political prisoners, to the gentle demeanor of one who holds no grudges, wishes for no vengeance—it all was Iran. These were not all things to be proud of. But my friend’s poise, his honesty above all, was what I admired and envied. And I knew there were many others like him, there had to be, some probably still in Evin while we drank and partied the night away. I’m not sure if as a child I had met any of my parents’ friends who had been in prison, except the one, a Dr. Bazargan, who to this day is still a family friend and who I only remember was as humble about his imprisonment as my contemporary is. Khash won’t remember my friend, but I’m glad he met him.

  Iran, especially after the 2009 elections and the unrest that followed, is a security state, despite the lack of machine-gun-toting uniformed personnel on the streets or even at the airports. And Evin is the symbol, for Iranians, of that security state. Artists like my friend have always been under suspicion in Iran, even under the shah, and the security state is far more real to them than to many of their fellow citizens. Karri and I witnessed that firsthand one Friday afternoon when we went, Khash in tow, to an art gallery opening, one of many held around the city every Friday. When we entered the modern structure, filled with modern art, there were two uniformed cops and a plainclothesman speaking to the owner. After they left, I asked him what the problem had been. “They wanted to know who was coming to the opening, and if there were any intellectuals, that we should tell them to leave,” he replied in an exasperated tone. “They don’t want any gathering of ‘intellectuals,’ which presumably means artists, too. I asked them, ‘Isn’t everyone who goes to a gallery an intellectual, almost by definition?’ ”

  “Wow. So what did they say?”

  “They wanted to shut us down, but I showed them around and said, ‘Look, the art isn’t un-Islamic.’ ”

  “Shut you down? For what?”

  “Who knows anymore? They hate these things, where ‘Westernized’ Iranians gather.”

  “But they left, so I guess it’s okay,” I said.

  “Yes, for now. They’re probably outside checking to see who shows up!”

  I stepped outside to see, but they had left. I went back in, and no one seemed perturbed, not even Karri, by what had transpired. Karri’s getting used to Iran, I thought. And so soon.

  At the party where my friend spoke to me about Evin, when we finally left the kitchen to go back upstairs to the rest of the guests and a late dinner, Casanova back to his new girlfriend less than half his age, I wanted to asked him one more Evin question.

  “Is there any one aspect of your imprisonment,” I said, as we went up the marble stairs, the sound of our shoes announcing our arrival to the others, “that is, if you had to pick only one, that stands out in your memory?”

  “I’ll never forget any of it,” he replied. “But you know, during the first few nights I was in solitary, all we could hear was Koran radio—just verses from the Koran being recited all day. And then one night suddenly the station changed and a song came on briefly, probably only for a minute or two, before being changed back to the Koran. Who knows why it happened. But I remember smiling, probably a more genuine and pleasurable smile, and certainly more of a smile in the heart, than I ever wore the entire time I was there, maybe in my entire life. Strange how something so simple, so ordinary, but so damn beautiful can affect you so deeply. The song was ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’ ”

  9

  FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO PARTY

  Almost as soon as we had settled into our own apartment, our daily life in Iran became indistinguishable from that of most Iranians, at least those of a certain social standing, except for the fact that neither Karri nor I had a daily job to go to. But that wasn’t so different from our lives in Brooklyn, where I work from home and Karri does too, except for the times she leaves the house to teach yoga. I did some writing, whenever Khash would allow it, and Karri did as much as she could, on the phone and over the Internet, with her business back in New York, which she had left in the hands of her partners.

  She had wanted to teach yoga in Iran, but it proved rather difficult, both in terms of finding a space that wouldn’t attract the attention of the authorities (obtaining a license to operate a studio, which would have had to be a women-only affair, would be onerous) and in terms of getting people to commit to classes. Friends and family consistently assured her that they would be the first to start practicing, but we realized that the farda syndrome was epidemic, and we’d have to live in Iran an awfully long time before farda came. Yoga is common enough in Tehran (despite some clerics’ rulings that it is un-Islamic), which even boasts a Farsi-language yoga magazine that is sold at every newsstand, and in Tajrish we would often see young women with yo
ga mats under their arms, making Karri miss it all the more. But to compensate she continued to do her own yoga practice at home.

  That meant I took Khash out for an hour or so every morning, for otherwise he would not just mimic her poses, or try to (he is quite good at sun salutations), but would actually try to adjust her as well. We couldn’t figure out how he got the idea that yoga instructors (at least Ashtanga yoga instructors) do that, but maybe he’s just a natural yogi. I’d take him out to leave Karri in peace, making grocery shopping the one chore I performed every day. We’d sometimes go shopping together in the afternoons, too.

  We’d search out stores that carried Western goods—on some days we’d find a product we didn’t even know we missed, making it the highlight of the day. One store in our neighborhood that carried canned goods and sparkling water—made in Iran but somehow not common or popular—suddenly started carrying Schweppes tonic water, I discovered one morning, in the little bottles it comes in in Europe. I excitedly grabbed as many as I could, thinking aragh and tonic might be a good substitute for gin and tonic, but to my surprise the shopkeeper asked me what tonic water actually was, and what it was for.

  I wasn’t sure what to say, but I decided to be truthful. “It’s used as a mixer for alcoholic drinks,” I said. “But of course you don’t have to drink it with alcohol,” I added, to be safe. “It tastes pretty good on its own.”

  He shrugged and rang me up, and I rushed home, pushing Khash as fast as I could up the steep hill in his stroller, to show Karri my discovery. On the way I wondered why the shop had started to carry tonic water if the owner didn’t know what it was, but I supposed that like many Iranians, he reasoned that if it was European or American, it must be good and would have a dedicated clientele among the wealthy Iranians who could afford the ridiculously expensive drink.

  Karri was somewhat less excited than I was—neither of us actually drinks gin and tonic ordinarily—but that evening she decided aragh and tonic was a cocktail well worth considering when one’s choices are limited. Tonic water was also the perfect gift to take to certain kinds of parties, particularly Khosro’s, which we now attended every weekend, that is, when we weren’t attending a different party.

  Iranians love parties. They’ve always loved them and love any excuse to have one, even if the excuse is simply that it’s the weekend, and hey, there’s nothing else to do in Tehran. They loved parties during the shah’s time, too, and when I was in college, the handful of Iranian students at my school—they started coming over to the United States for college in big numbers in the 1970s—seemed to be the only ones interested in, or actually capable of, throwing a good party with really good non–fast food and proper alcoholic beverages, as opposed to a keg and pizza free-for-all. Which is one reason I gravitated to the small but growing Persian community in my area, the other being their drugs, of which Iranian students were fussy connoisseurs, but that’s another story.

  I assumed back then that the Iranian students had learned how to throw a party from their parents, for every Iranian girl (and some of the boys) seemed to know how to cook incredibly complicated Persian dishes to serve thirty people or more. There were two drawbacks to accepting an invitation to an Iranian party then: first, all that wonderful food wouldn’t be served until the last guest arrived, and since every Iranian thinks they have to be the last to arrive anywhere, that meant ten-thirty p.m. at the earliest for an eight p.m. party, or as late as one a.m. in some cases.

  Second, for some inexplicable reason, Iranian parties would start with great music, from the latest hits to good and even esoteric alternative rock, but after dinner would switch to bad Iranian dance music, prompting the women to drag the men out to dance with them, or vice versa. Not being practiced in the art of oriental dance, I would beg off as best I could, but with Iranians no means “yes,” an emphatic no means “please beg me some more,” and an outright refusal means “please grab my hands and lead me to the dance floor.” Every man and woman followed these rules, expert dancers all despite protestations to the contrary, and I think I must have elicited some shocked reactions when, after being dragged off my seat, usually drunk and stoned, people realized I really couldn’t dance. At least not Iranian style, although I suspect I couldn’t and still can’t dance any style at all. Nothing has changed in the intervening years, except the music. The Western music, I mean, for Iranians, whether in London, Los Angeles, Dubai, or Tehran, seem to favor the same dreadful Persian pop—with more synthesizers these days, I guess—that they liked when it was still being produced in Tehran and not in California.

  Even before we had settled into our own apartment, Karri and I were invited to parties. Friends’ parties and family parties. Karri had had only a small taste of Persian partying before we arrived in Tehran, but she understood quickly that without it, life would be tedious in a metropolis that offered almost everything that its Western counterparts did except a place to go out for a drink or a place to listen to noninstrumental music. Before the Islamic Revolution, Tehran had boasted cabarets, nightclubs, and many bars (but few really good restaurants, and no potential Michelin-starred ones). Even then, real partying was mostly done in homes. People did (and still do) go out, particularly young people who still lived with their parents (and Iranian culture meant and to a large degree still means that women live at home until they are married, as do most young men, these days perhaps more for financial reasons than any other). But going out to a cabaret or club was never fully a substitute for entertaining at home, a proposition that Iranians have always considered appealing as it shows off the home decor, cooking skills, good taste, and general graciousness of the host and hostess in a society where showing off and exercising one’s ta’arouf skills go hand in hand and seem to be the foundations of almost every party.

  Partying in Iran is not restricted to the secular or Westernized elite, although the kinds of parties the devoutly Shia—the more affluent ones anyway—throw are radically different, though no less frequent. The first party we went to when we arrived in Tehran was at a cousin’s, and since my family in Iran is politically reformist but also mostly devout, no alcohol was served, and the music was a soundtrack of classical Persian music. It also meant no dancing, although the daughters of a couple of my cousins, hijab-less and decidedly lenient in their views on Islamic behavior, did decide at one point to dance.

  Karri was stunned more by the sheer amount and diversity of the food that was on offer than by anything else. Every Iranian house that is about to receive guests will have huge bowls of fruit on every coffee and side table, and bowls of nuts—pistachios and almonds—so huge and deep that it would take ages of snacking to get to the bottom, and other bowls of snacks, and often plates of pastries too, enough food to live on basically, before dinner. Dinner means at least two but preferably three or four completely different main courses—always fluffy white rice accompanied by lamb- or chicken-based stews along with other mixed rice dishes—as well as a handful of different salads and soups and other dishes, plus the obligatory sabzi, a plate of washed greens—basil, mint, radishes, watercress, or whatever—with cheese, walnuts, and spring onions on the side. Karri quickly adopted sabzi into our own menus at home, and I had to purchase it fresh every day from one or another sabzi guy whose specialty it was to sell sabzi, and only sabzi, on a street in our neighborhood. Each bunch of a specific green cost eight cents or so, making our daily sabzi intake far and away the least expensive food we consumed in Iran. Sabzi also provides many a less fortunate Iranian’s—those who cannot afford the far more expensive lettuces and spinach—daily intake of chlorophyll.

  What struck me, though, about the parties at my cousins’ was the irony that, being known reformists and related to former president Khatami, they were under state surveillance and their comings and goings closely monitored—their homes and telephones were even bugged—and despite their almost complete adherence to Islamic praxis, we guests were undoubtedly a subsection of an entry in a ledger somewhere in th
e Intelligence Ministry or the competing Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Division or both, whereas the bacchanalian parties we attended at fully Westernized and completely secular Iranian homes seemed to hold no interest whatsoever for the various authorities whose job it is to protect the morals of society and defend the Revolution from decay and disintegration. And we attended many parties like those, too.

  Of course not all parties, whether thrown by the elite or by the middle class, religious and otherwise, are as lavish as some we attended, or are blowouts that would put a Brooklyn rave to shame, but they are all a reflection of the culture, of ta’arouf and hospitality, of the lightheartedness of Iranians and their inclination to merrymaking even in the worst of times. Life might be shameful, but boys and girls just want to have a little fun, too. Intensely religious families throw rozeh parties with some regularity on religious holidays—frequent enough in Islam, but even more frequent in Shia Islam, with its imams and various other martyrs to celebrate. At such parties a mullah will melodically bespout an episode from Shia mythology, while men and women in separate rooms weep at the injustice perpetrated on their saints and the unfairness, the shamefulness, of their own lives. But in the aftermath of the recitation, these parties are usually as merry as any other, and food and nonalcoholic drinks are served, and laughter and jokes, though appropriate and not bawdy, are heard. And as was not the case in the shah’s time, when the wrong word at a party might result in an uncomfortable interview with SAVAK (the secret police that seemed to have informants in every milieu and at every gathering), today’s parties are also a place to freely discuss politics, and that’s true of parties thrown by religious folk as well as by strict secularists.

  Soon after our arrival in Tehran, before we had even settled into our apartment, we were invited to a Thursday-evening party at an estate in North Tehran. Estates are uncommon in Tehran these days, since most were confiscated early in the revolution or split up into many smaller lots and sold by the owners as property values soared in the rapidly growing capital, but this estate was intact. Invisible from the street behind mud walls, the house itself was ordinary: a villa built as a second home, well before the neighborhood, in the foothills of the mountains, was even considered part of Tehran proper. But at nearly five acres, the parklike grounds were magnificent, the pool—invisible to prying eyes—a true rarity, and the small gathering of guests in their finest a sight to clash with whatever notions a Westerner might have of life in the Islamic Republic.