Descendants of Cyrus

by Thornton, Christopher;

  He opened with the inevitable: “Where are you from?”

  I told him, he translated, and immediately the rest of the group relaxed, the faces brightening. I decided to get ahead of what was to come—the litany of questions that would begin—“Why did you come to Iran?” I asked Mohammad, the English speaker, if this was the first time he had visited Persepolis. Oh no, he replied, he had come here several times, the first with a group from school when he was very young. What did he and his friends think about all they had just seen? Did it make them proud?

  The others could manage some English, indicated by the looks of at least vague comprehension that appeared on the young men’s faces.

  “Oh, no!” Mohammad exclaimed. “We’re not proud of anything!”

  There was a quick translation. Heads nodded in agreement. The bluntness of his answer was surprising.

  “What do we have to be proud of?” Mohammad continued. “Our politics? Now that’s all we have. Our art and culture, science—that’s all in the past.”

  One of the group translated for the others. There were more nods of agreement.

  Mohammad went on: “These leaders talk about the greatness of Iran, but Iran is not important today. You come from a country that is very important, even if it is still very young.”

  There were more nods of agreement, and I noted the remark of condescension but could not argue with it, because it meant no offense, and it was true. When you’re speaking for a civilization seven thousand years old, one with only a couple of centuries behind it seems hardly out of diapers. I asked Mohammad what would make him feel differently about his country.

  “We want more freedom,” he said, and this time no translation was needed. The nods of assent were more deliberate. I asked what he meant by freedom. A free and fair vote? Iran had that, sometimes, and more often than many countries. Freedom to criticize the government, its policies? The Iranian press was filled with virulent critics who poked at every and any government policy. Nothing was off-limits—except attacks on the legitimacy of the Islamic Revolution itself, and the ruling clerics who struggled to keep it alive despite the virulent streams of criticism of almost every government policy. Is this what Mohammad had in mind?

  “We want more social life, places where we can go to meet others, do what other young people do, in other countries. For people our age it’s normal. There shouldn’t be all these restrictions.”

  There was another translation. The nods of assent became a chorus.

  On any freedom index in the world, the availability of nightclubs hardly ranks alongside press freedom and the right of assembly, but I could not turn up my nose at his definition of freedom, because for those of his generation that is where it all started—today a nightclub, tomorrow an opposition newspaper, and then an opposition government. I asked how many of the group had been supporters of President Hassan Rouhani in the last election. All the hands went up.

  “If there was different leadership in this country things would be less strict,” Mohammad went on. Heads kept nodding. For a brief moment the hint of a brighter future shone.

  I asked about weightier matters, like Iran’s relationship with the rest of the world, its image, the willingness of others not to continuously place it in the unwelcome family of “rogue states.”

  “We don’t want all these troubles with other countries, the U.S. What we want is just to be a normal country, for the rest of the world to look at us that way.”

  The impromptu translator conveyed the more complicated bits of Mohammad’s private protest. More heads nodded. The chatter continued, jokes and jabs were exchanged, and suddenly I felt out of the loop, like someone who did not grasp the punch line of a joke. Eventually it emerged that one of the group, Davood, was a member of the basij.

  Soon after Ayatollah Khomeini had taken control of Iran he knew that his Islamic Revolution, and the reign of his cabal of clerics, would have to be guarded against all threats, both from without and within. To maintain internal control he recruited a massive army of young enforcers, men and women, drawn mainly from the marginalized lower classes outside the more prosperous urban areas. The arrangement was a simple quid pro quo: in exchange for their service they would receive perks, such as advantages in applying for government jobs, and generous payouts whenever they had to be called to duty. From a less cynical point of view it could be called “leveling the playing field”—offering socioeconomic stepping stones to those who would otherwise have none. For the more critical, the basiji were selling their allegiance to a totalitarian regime. They were the ready-to-be-exploited underclass of Iran. Today there are estimated to be as many as one million “guardians of the revolution,” and they played a prominent role in quelling the postelection riots in 2009. It was largely the basij forces that brought “order” to the streets of Tehran and other cities where protests had broken out. Donning crash helmets, waving rubber truncheons, and zipping through the streets on government-supplied motorbikes, the basiji were both loathed and feared.

  Ayatollah Khomeini had not stumbled upon anything new. The young had been coopted to support many revolutionary movements in recent history. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, it was mainly the young and educated who served as the enforcers of Communist Party chairman Mao Tse-tung’s purist principles, which led to the purging of all foreign influences from Chinese society and the jailing of their own university professors. The foot soldiers of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge were mostly teenagers who saw the deranged dictator as an ideological hero who would rid Cambodia of all the forces that wished to destroy it, again from without or within. In 1930s Germany the Hitler Youth was created to instill the Nazi philosophy and guarantee unquestioned obedience to the new order among the country’s most impressionable.

  However, the creation of the basij and the circumstances that maintain it don’t quite adhere to the historical pattern. In all of the previous cases, the driving force was ideological fervor. One could even call it mania, mania bordering on hysteria fueled by paranoia. Ayatollah Khomeini, his senior clerics, and all their successors have struggled to instill the passion for the Islamic Revolution in Iranian society, especially in the early days of the revolution and especially among the youth, but the effort has been largely a failure. They have won over some true believers, but the vast majority of Iranian youth, well aware of the government’s notorious corruption and hypocrisy, have become deeply cynical, and in the four decades the regime has held on to power its corruption and hypocrisy has been increasingly exposed, only deepening the cynicism of the youth. The regime leaders, ever pragmatic and ever committed to retaining power, have given up on turning most of the youth into true believers. Instead of trying to win support through ideological commitment they have waved the carrot of pragmatism before the eyes of Iranian society’s most disadvantaged: support us, no matter what you think of us, and we will take care of you. It is a cynical bargain for both sides and can be sustained only as long as mutual need exists.

  Tall and lanky, and without his black helmet, riot shield, and truncheon, Davood looked more like the captain of a volleyball team than a member of the security police. I asked him why he had joined. Did he believe in the principles of the revolution? Did he believe that Iran needed to be a more devout society? Were there internal enemies that were a threat to the nation’s integrity, even its survival?

  Davood drew a blank. I half expected a torrent of ideological claptrap, but he had no ideology to spout. He was just a young man with few ways to move up in a society where proven loyalty to a corrupt regime was often the only step to advancement. His answer was simple, devoid of any moral complications, as decisions often are, and have to be, in any totalitarian state: “It’s easier to get into a university. There aren’t many opportunities in Iran, and so many of them are controlled by the government.” The Islamic regime was simply a fact of life that he had known all his life, and it had to be accommodated, negotiated, and navigated. It was an iceberg that could si
nk one’s chances in life if one wasn’t careful.

  “Hey, no politics—”

  Another member of the group had edged close and spoke quietly but firmly. His words were more caution than warning, one friend looking out for another because they had long learned that unwanted ears could be anywhere. And it had its effect. Davood clammed up, and after an awkward pause the conversation eased into topics that pulled it into a politically safe zone: What had I seen in Iran? Had I met many Iranians? Would I come back?

  It was surprising how smoothly but deliberately the change occurred. Almost immediately the demeanor of the young men shifted from gathering interest to awakened fear, as though they had touched an exposed electrical wire and knew enough to retreat. I voiced the scripted replies they expected, and then the group trudged off, after handshakes all around and expressions of heartfelt wishes that I enjoy the rest of my trip. But as they left, the young man who had cut off the discussion edged close. He asked, politely, if I could be his foil for language practice, so we jabbered a bit but soon began conversing on subjects not covered in any English-language textbook. He waited until the rest of the group was out of earshot but still spoke softly.

  “You know, it’s not possible to talk freely in Iran . . .”

  I nodded, not to express agreement but slightly and vaguely, to indicate I grasped not only the truth of what he had said but the sense of shame that accompanied it.

  “We do want more freedom,” he went on, “but we have to be careful what we say.”

  And so it ended.

  It was late afternoon by the time Sohrab and I were on our way back to Shiraz. The sun had dipped low to the west, almost touching the tops of the faraway hills, deepening the colors of the fields and orchards on both sides of the road. Despite the rural beauty glowing in the light of the late-afternoon sun, a shadow was lengthening across my memory of the day. Not even the smooth strains of Sarah Vaughn could lift the mood. I thought of Davood and felt sad that such cynicism had taken root in someone so young. It was all the more troubling when one considers that 60 percent of the Iranian population is under thirty-five, with no meaningful memory of life before the Islamic Revolution, an event that effectively severed the youth from their own identity and history. Persepolis was a place where they could finally connect to it, stand in the aura of a hint of Persian greatness, and the experience only filled them with shame.

  I wondered what reaction Sohrab had to visiting Persepolis. After all, he had been here countless times escorting foreign tourists like myself and witnessed their probing curiosity and awe. Had the novelty of the experience faded? Had it become too routine? I asked him, and rather than answering yes or no, he responded with a story. One day he brought a group of visiting relatives around the site, and that day then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was scheduled to deliver a speech in front of the grand staircase. It was an attempt to wrap himself in the glories of the Persian civilization so that some of the luster might redeem his inglorious and dysfunctional government.

  “I told the others that they could listen if they wanted to, but I just walked away. I went back to the parking lot and waited in the car. Everyone knew what he was going to say. I didn’t have to hear it.”

  “Every time you come here, doesn’t it give you any sense of pride?” I asked. Sohrab had never been shy about discussing politics, and often in unvarnished terms. “Cockroaches” is how he referred to the clerical leadership, and all of the Iranian leadership. This time he chose to couch his views in a business metaphor.

  “We need better management,” he said. “Like the Catholic Church a thousand years ago, this government is still in the Dark Ages.”

  12

  Shiraz

  Of Senses and Sensibilities

  God wants to manhandle us,

  Lock us up in a tiny room with Himself

  And practice His dropkick.

  The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor:

  Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

  —Hafez

  A few years ago a Greek friend of mine, well versed in the ups and downs of travel in distant parts of the world, decided to spend a month in Iran. Her starting point was Shiraz, and when she arrived at her hotel, the concierge greeted her with characteristic Persian hospitality: “Welcome to Iran,” he said. “You can have anything you like!”

  “Can I take this off?” she asked, fingering the edge of the headscarf.

  He leaned close and whispered, “Maybe in a few months—the bastards will be gone.”

  That was her introduction to Iran, and it was an appropriate one, for it conveyed the general attitude of Iranians toward the Islamic regime. A few hours later she was riding in a taxi, and the driver started talking politics. The conversation led, as conversations with foreign visitors often do, to the government.

  “The shah was bad, but these fucking bastards are worse, a thousand times worse!” he shouted. The window was open, his words free for all the world to hear. She expected the security forces might appear out of nowhere and haul him off to jail, but no. This was Iran, where the government is well aware of the people’s loathing and can only hope that their acts of rebellion are confined to outbursts from car windows. In fact, they may even welcome them, for they let air out of a balloon that might otherwise burst.

  Shiraz is an ideal entry point to Iran, and it is also the best place to end a journey, for this city more than any other expresses the love of beauty and the pleasures of the senses that the Persian culture has long embodied. First impressions are lasting ones, but so are final ones, and one could not take away a truer and more accurate impression of the Persian culture and the values it has celebrated for several thousand years than in Shiraz.

  “The spring is beautiful in California. The valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink. . . . The full green hills are round and soft as breasts,” wrote John Steinbeck, describing his native state in The Grapes of Wrath. But he could have been just as easily describing the fertile, undulating landscape that surrounds Shiraz.

  The world’s earliest remnant of wine, dating to 5000 BCE, was discovered here, and by the ninth century BCE the city had become the primary exporter of wine in the Middle East. The semi-arid climate, with its soft spring rains and searing summer heat, could not have been more perfectly designed for the cultivation of the grapes that for seven thousand years have been the prime ingredient of fine Shirazi wine.

  A book of verses underneath the bough

  A flask of wine, a loaf of bread and thou

  Beside me singing in the wilderness

  And wilderness is paradise now.

  So wrote Hafez, widely regarded as Iran’s greatest poet. Many of his well-known ghazals, or love poems in the Persian sonnet form, praise the ruby elixir that made his city famous. Hardly a poem ends without his mention of it, and hardly one neglects to mention his love of it.

  For those outside Iran, it might be surprising that, despite the ban on alcohol under the Islamic Republic, the love of wine, and the passions it inspires, have not vanished from Persian life.

  “I don’t have to go to Dubai to drink. My family makes our own wine in the bathtub at home, and it’s better than anything you can buy,” a friend in Tehran told me.

  Shiraz was home to another of Iran’s greatest poets, Abu-Mohammad Mosleh Al-Din Saadi Shirazi, or simply Saadi. His tomb lies in a compound northeast of the city center. The first time I was here I decided to make it my first destination because the peaceful setting would offer a connection to the Persian culture I could carry with me for the succeeding days.

  Like Avicenna, Saadi was a bit of a wanderer and lived a life kaleidoscopic in color. He was born in Shiraz near the end of the twelfth century. His father died when he was very young, and a life of relentless poverty forced him to flee to Baghdad, where he studied science, law, theology, and literature. In 1219, the Mongol invasion again sent him on the road, and he would spend the next thirty years of his life w
andering through central Asia, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. But the life of a vagabond gave him an education a more settled and comfortable existence never could have equaled. The sources for his work were refugees of war, traveling merchants and thieves, vagrants, farmers, and teahouse philosophers, in other words, common people, who in many cases wove elaborate tapestries of wisdom from their everyday lives.

  There is much of the common touch in the works of Persian poets, and many of Saadi’s lines read like the drops of two-penny wisdom found in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack:

  Whatever is produced in haste goes hastily to waste.

  And:

  A grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.

  A master of the quip Saadi was, but the hardships he endured early in life were later reshaped into mature wisdom:

  Two things define you:

  Your patience when you have nothing,

  And your attitude when you have everything.

  Saadi’s marble bier stands in a small, six-sided, tower-like chamber topped with a high dome. Blue tiles, hand-painted with quotes from his works, fill the inner walls. A colonnaded hall extends from the tomb alongside a rectangular pool that stretches beneath a canopy of trees. The setting is quintessentially Persian: elegant but modest, blending air, water, and light into a work of art that ties the creative world to the natural as well as the spiritual.

  By the time we got to the tomb it was late afternoon, and the early summer sun was streaming through the arches of the colonnade, deepening the blue of the tiles while sparing us the searing summer heat that was yet to come. In a mark of respect, visitors, one by one, placed the traditional two fingers on the cool stone surface as they passed through the room that held his bier. According to custom, the visitor also prays for the peace of the soul of the deceased by reciting verses from the Fateheh, the first chapter of the Quran. For today’s Iranians, the gesture is a way of reaching across the ages to touch, quite literally, the heart of the Persian culture and those who have best expressed it.