Descendants of Cyrus

by Thornton, Christopher;

  An urban island, Golestan Palace is as serene today as it was in the nineteenth century, even in the midst of the postelection turmoil and the chants of antigovernment demonstrators. If there were protests going on in the streets nearby, we didn’t hear them. If tear gas was being sprayed on the protestors, none of it drifted our way. Unfortunately, Reza Shah Pahlavi saw the palace as an eyesore, and a symbol of Iran’s outdated (Asian) past. He was particularly offended by, and destroyed, the section where Nasser ad-Din Shah stashed his many women and enjoyed his many affairs. Some opposed the move, arguing that, morality and modernism aside, the wing represented a valuable part of Persian history. Despite these arguments, it came down. Yet neither Reza Shah, nor his son Mohammad, could completely sever themselves from this symbol of the glory of Persian history. Both held their coronation ceremonies in Golestan Palace and used it for state ceremonies.

  Considering the geography of Tehran, built on the southern slope of a mountain range, it would make sense that the city would expand north, where cooler air would substitute for air conditioning in the pre-electrical era, and all through the summer water would cascade down from snowmelt at the higher elevations. Both of the Pahlavis followed the masses, or led them, building summer palaces within the forest land of Saad Abad, on the northern edge of Tehran. In the heyday of the monarchy Saad Abad was a royal preserve, off limits to the common folk. After the Islamic Revolution it became a vast museum complex covering over one hundred hectares of gardens and walking paths that lead into the Alborz Mountains, where panoramic viewpoints look down with superior remove on the seething, traffic-clogged city. No longer the Pahlavis’ playground, today Saad Abad is the place where Tehranis come to stroll, and picnic, and smoke water pipes, and sip tea over endless games of backgammon on weekends.

  One of the largest buildings of the complex was refitted as the Museum of Fine Arts, to display works by well-known Iranian artists as well as Western masters, such as the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali and the Russian landscape painter Ivanovich Shishkin. As fine a painter as he was, none of Shishkin’s forest scenes ever rivaled the view from the windows of the museum. Stately groves of birch trees arch over the roadways and walking paths that wind from museum to museum and often nowhere, the best direction of all.

  After the fine arts museum I had plenty of time to take in the rest of Saad Abad’s prime sights—the simply but aptly named White Palace and Green Palace—unless they, too, were going to close early. Which first? Seniority ruled the day. I chose the Green Palace, because it was older and closer, in case it, too, shut its doors before closing time. Closing or not, I took my time getting over there, absorbing the beauty of the woods and the brightness of the sun as it passed through the summer leaves. This was the Tehran I had grown to enjoy—a city with ample oases of green to escape the maddening traffic that could paralyze the streets almost any time of day, and the needs, anguish, and activity of fourteen million souls, some of whom had recently spilled out onto the streets. Parks could be found in every part of town, but Saad Abad was the envy of them all, and on this day many Tehranis were taking advantage of it, treading the footpaths to avoid not only the traffic but the political chaos that added to it.

  The Green Palace is so named both because of the plant life that climbs its exterior walls, imported from the northwest region of Zanjan, and the green stones from which it was built. Even though the Green Palace predates the Pahlavi period, the Pahlavis put it to good use, holding receptions and receiving important guests to show off its main attraction—the Mirror Hall, a room bedazzled with enough—yes—mirrors to turn a flickering candle into a sparkling light display. I wasn’t wowed by the bling. It was the view from the rear terrace overlooking the city that was far more satisfying to the eyes. And it was a bold reminder of the sweep of Persian history, for the moment making the postelection tumult almost insignificant, a single discolored tile within a mosaic comprising thousands.

  Then there was the White Palace, actually more manor house than anything that could be called a palace. Reza Shah Pahlavi added it to Saad Abad in the 1930s, to give the historic compound a bit of modern posh. By far the most unusual feature is the giant pair of boots that stand at the entrance, all that remain of a monolithic statue of Reza himself that once welcomed visitors. In 1979 revolutionaries tore down the statue but could never get to the firmly planted boots. They may remain a visual oddity, but far more peculiar is the interior of the palace, which stands as a time capsule of prerevolutionary Iran. Little has changed since Reza’s son Mohammad fled the country on January 17, 1979. The décor is 1970s chic, with a tiger pelt on the floor that reminds visitors of the shag carpeting craze of the tasteless decade, and the shah’s liquor bottles are left where they stood, to remind visitors of the very “un-Islamic” decadence of the Pahlavi era.

  We had time for one more stop. Heading south from Saad Abad, Sohrab and I swung west past graceful, aquiline Milad Tower, which stands like a giant flower with a gently tapered stem supporting a bulbous crown. The tower was another modernizing project of Mohammad Reza in the 1970s that was never realized until decades after his downfall. The shah intended it to be the centerpiece of a vast business complex to boost trade and make his country a hub for international commerce. Reminiscent of Seattle’s Space Needle, Milad Tower was going to place Iran at the center of a modern global economy. It didn’t work out that way. Construction began in 1975, but four years later the shah was deposed, and the tower wasn’t finally opened until 2007, a little late to serve as a symbol of a modern international economy and not the vision that the shah embraced. Today it better represents the colossal contradictions of today’s Iran. Its revolving restaurant and telecommunications infrastructure plants a foot in a world we call “modern,” yet the theocratic regime that opened it has drawn Iran backward, to a collection of values that most in the modern world view as regressive and repressive, even medieval.

  Milad Tower behind us, we sped along the highway toward Azadi Square and another symbol of Tehran and the shah’s monarchial rule. Dominating the enormous roundabout is Azadi Tower, named the Shahyad Tower when it was completed in 1971 for a ceremony to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire. But the massive military parade the shah ordered for the occasion, along with the amount of money spent, had skeptics wondering if he was really honoring the empire, the monarchy—which he headed—or himself. A giant upside-down Y pointing skyward, the tower was meant to signify the optimism of an emerging nation on the global stage, buoyed by seemingly endless supplies of petroleum being exported to an oil-thirsty world. Azadi Tower was a gateway, the splayed legs white curtains fluttering in a refreshing breeze.

  Less than ten years later the Islamic Revolution would bring not only theocratic rule but all its inevitable contradictions to Iranian society. The King’s Tower was renamed Freedom Tower, just as a long list of restrictions imposed constraints on almost every aspect of Iranian life. Instead of experiencing greater openness, the country damaged its ties with traditional allies and never cultivated new ones in the Arab or greater Islamic world. In a piercing irony, Hossein Amanat, designer of the tower, is a member of the Baha’i faith, a religious minority severely persecuted under Islamic rule, and shortly after the Islamic Revolution he fled the country. He has never been back.

  Again, the day done, Sohrab dropped me at the hotel, and we set a pickup time for the next morning. This time Vali Asr Square was empty of Revolutionary Guard troops and basiji, but the desk clerk told me he had heard of more protests going on along Enqelab Avenue, a ten-minute walk south. I headed down to have a look. A protest was definitely going on, but this time there were no scuffles or tear gas or truncheon-wielding basiji roaring around on souped-up motorbikes. Instead, a long column of people, men and women, young and old, were marching along the street in silence. There were no chants. Many carried candles, the tender flames protected from the evening breeze by the walls of paper cups. In another cruel irony, they were
marching along Enqelab (Revolution) Avenue toward Azadi (Freedom) Tower. If the purpose of the revolution was to point Iran in the direction of greater social and political freedom, the message was lost in translation. If the protestors had chosen to give voice to their grievances, I imagine they would have recited the lines of the Sufi poet Rumi, which expressed the freedom of the truly liberated spirit:

  Be like the sun for grace and mercy.

  Be like the night to cover others’ faults.

  Be like running water for generosity.

  Be like death for rage and anger.

  Be like the Earth for modesty.

  Appear as you are.

  Be as you appear.

  *

  It would be four years before I would return to Tehran, and in that time a political swing of the pendulum had rocked Iran. The chaotic presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been replaced by that of liberal-minded pragmatist Hassan Rouhani. The hardliners had been pushed onto their back foot. Rouhani supporters celebrated in the streets on election night, honking horns and shouting cheers from car windows. In 2015 the nuclear agreement was signed, promising long-awaited relief from sanctions and the rebuilding of a long-ailing economy, which would be jump-started by massive foreign investment. Perennial optimists even talked of a “Persian Spring.” Perennial cynics chose to watch and wait.

  “They do this all the time,” a friend told me who had voted for Rouhani, and it had been her first vote in a presidential election in decades because there was only a glimmer of hope that a vote would make a difference. “After hardline rule they’ll let a reformer in to make us happy, but they won’t let him really do anything.” For days she was indecisive—wondering whether to give credibility to a “democracy” that many believed to be a sham, or to remain silent and have no reason to complain about the outcome.

  Like Barack Obama in 2008, Rouhani rode a wave of youth support, a not insignificant voting block in Iran, considering that 60 percent of the population is under thirty and the voting age is sixteen. And Rouhani was reelected in 2017 with 57 percent of the vote, again driving supporters into the streets to celebrate, in Tehran and other cities. Prior to the election, there was apprehension in the air. Would the result be tampered with, as widely believed to have occurred in 2009? Iranian opinion was divided.

  “They would never try that again,” another Rouhani supporter told me. “Last time they were caught off guard. They thought the people would just accept whatever they said the outcome was. They never expected such resistance.”

  Rouhani took his victory as an opportunity to press for further social change. “It would be a misrepresentation and also an insult to the Iranian people to say they only had economic demands,” he said. “People had economic, political, and social demands.”

  He threw even more red meat to his supporters: “We cannot pick a lifestyle and tell two generations after us to think like that. It is impossible. Their views about life and the world are different than ours.”

  Rouhani felt the wind at his back, the hardliners on the defensive: “People’s access to social media should not be permanently restricted. We cannot be indifferent to people’s lives and businesses,” he went on. Hardliners cringed. It was social media sites that allowed protestors to plan demonstrations in 2009 when mobile phone service was cut, and it was social media that was largely credited with helping to drive former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011—reason enough that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the popular Telegram messaging service work fitfully, if at all, in Iran.

  I wondered if Rouhani might prove to be Iran’s Mikhail Gorbachev, the last chairman of the Communist Party and president of the Soviet Union—a well-intentioned leader who tried to reform a system whose internal rot had pushed it past the point of reform and ended up destroying it. I also wondered if his promising words had any trickle-down effect, if they would make any practical difference on the streets and in daily lives. To put this in American terms: “Where’s the beef?”

  No one expected Tehran to turn into the Sin City of the Middle East, as it was becoming in the days of the Mohammad Reza Shah, or for women to shed their headscarves to return to the city nightclubs, but Rouhani had apparently dented the forces of otherwise formidable hardline resistance.

  “I like going back to Tehran now,” a friend living outside the country told me. “So many new restaurants have opened up. Now there are lots of places to go at night. People play music on the streets, music that wasn’t even allowed just a few years ago.”

  There had also been an explosion of coffee shops and late-night cafés, not only in Tehran but in any city of any size. A quick Google search of “coffee shops Tehran” yielded twenty-four hits for central Tehran alone. To his credit, Rouhani had expressed sympathy for the demands of Iran’s young people, stating that Iranian society didn’t offer them enough places to socialize and enjoy themselves—golden words to an entertainment-starved generation.

  It was all too easy to become cynical in Tehran, and the cynics eyed Rouhani’s words with customary suspicion: Perhaps it was a ploy to get young people off the streets and into cafés, where talk of insurrection, or even reform, would be cast into the wind by rushes of caffeine.

  “This government doesn’t give a shit about the people,” another friend told me. “It only cares about one thing—staying in power. It doesn’t do anything without thinking about its survival.”

  Whether survival was the motivating factor or not, Tehran had definitely “opened up”—by Iranian standards. On the grounds of the Iranian Artist’s House, a complex of venues for art exhibits and film screenings, groups of musicians had gathered to play classic Persian tunes on modern instruments. One night I had dinner with a friend, back in Iran to look after her ailing mother, at a vegetarian restaurant with outside tables and a second-floor balcony overlooking the busy courtyard within Honarmandan Park. As a sign of Iran’s newfound liberalism, social “safe zones” had developed, where the strictest codes of the Islamic regime could be suspended, or at least relaxed, but informally and unofficially, and always at the violator’s risk.

  When we met she leaned over the table, out of sight of the street, to give me a cursory hug. “Here it’s okay,” she assured me.

  We shared a vegetarian pizza and a mammoth Mediterranean salad as middle-class families and members of Iran’s creative underground filed through.

  “Would you like anything else?” our waiter asked, once our plates had been cleared away.

  “Can you bring me a glass of red wine?” my friend teased.

  The waiter smirked. “Not now, but maybe if you come back in a few hours, after we’re closed.”

  Each night I finished up at the Café UpArtMann, named for the apartment block where it occupied the ground and lower levels. The split-level gathering place is ground zero for disaffected, liberal-minded youth. The male baristas sport nose rings and dreadlocks, reasons for arrest for violating the codes of Islamic dress just a few years ago, and their female counterparts pay the most meager lip service to the hijab rule. The patrons follow suit, especially on the subterranean level, another step removed from the ubiquitous eyes of the regime, where women will allow their scarves to slip off the backs of their heads.

  It was at the Café UpArtMann one night where I met Niloofar, a former journalist for a series of reformist newspapers. It was not by chance. The get-together had been arranged by my dinner partner at the Iranian Artist’s House. I thought Niloofar would be interesting to talk to because she likely knew something about efforts toward free expression in Iran and the confrontations with the government they inevitably entailed.

  Niloofar was young, in her early thirties, with a slight frame, bright face, and long, curly brown hair that hung below her drooping headscarf. She had started working during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, and like Rouhani a favorite of the liberal forces who had promised profound changes in Iranian society and who, like many reformers, came up
far too short in their eyes.

  “I had a lot of friends who were put in jail,” Niloofar said, as we sipped chai teas and the background soundtrack played 1960s Brazilian bossa nova. “The government always had red lines, but we never knew what they were or where they were. A cartoon that was permitted the last month might be considered insulting or too critical the next. Or criticizing high government officials—if it was someone who was falling out of favor anyway this could be allowed, depending on what we wrote, but we could never be sure.”

  Niloofar’s topics of interest edged close to red lines: gender issues, civil rights, free speech, and Iran’s policies toward, and relationship with, the United States. Education was another favorite theme, as she saw many shortcomings in the Iranian system at all levels.

  “In the history books there is so much mischaracterization of our past,” she said. “All of the periods before the revolution are presented as dark, with a lot of emphasis on how the rule of the shahs harmed Iran.”

  I had to interject: “And then Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and returned Iran to its true—Islamic—path, and brought light to Iranian society.”

  She nodded.

  This was curious. So much of what I had seen not only in Tehran but throughout the country did nothing to show the past periods as “dark.” Persian culture, on the other hand, was loaded with artistic and architectural achievements, and they were trumpeted, not merely because they brought in badly needed tourist revenue, because the country didn’t have the kind of tourist numbers to bring in any significant revenue. As in any ancient culture, they were a way of saying: This is what we accomplished. This is who we were. This is where we have been.

  None of this is to discredit Niloofar’s views on Iranian education. On the contrary—and Iranian society is replete with contradictions—they show the uneasy relationship the Iranian government has with its own past, its people, itself, and, above all, the Persian identity.