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

by Ramita Navai

  Zahra looked better with diabetes. Her fatter face had plumped out her wrinkles. Standing beside her was her husband Mohammad and their two sons, now grown up and one with a new wife in tow. The unmistakable smell of money emanated from all of them. Ambergris and musk. Velvet-smooth nappa leather. Chador of softest silk. Fingers and lobes laden with gold. Mohammad was hugging a gigantic casket of clashing-coloured flowers bound with pastel ribbons, a generous gift given the high price of flowers these days. The two sons wore sharp Western-looking suits, which meant that they fitted properly and were not made from polyester. The three men were clean-shaven. They were a modern, sonati family and when they entered the room, Haj Agha felt a stab of jealousy. They were what he wanted to be.

  Mohammad had heard of his brother-in-law Haj Agha’s new-found religious zeal and was struck with respect. Mohammad was so busy making money, he did not have time for spiritual pursuits. As he congratulated Haj Agha on his latest holy jaunt, the sisters embraced and immediately retreated into the kitchen.

  Zahra’s oldest son, Amir-Ali, had done everything possible to get out of coming to the party. But when he walked into the flat, he saw that he had a reason for staying: Somayeh. Amir-Ali was taken aback by her transformation from unattractive little girl to alluring teenager. She had hazel eyes and, below a handsome straight nose, red lips sculpted in a defined Cupid’s bow. Her skin was flawless and her make-up subtle. Her roo-farshee house shoes were black sequinned ballet pumps, not the usual ugly plastic slip-on dampaee slippers that most girls in the neighbourhood wore at home. When she loosened her grip on her chador, an earlobe studded with three earrings peaked out from under wisps of highlighted hair. This surprised Amir-Ali; he had not expected his poor cousins from Meydan-e Khorasan to know about multiple piercings. These were details that mattered to him. Details that told him she would understand his world.

  Amir-Ali wanted a woman with traditional values but who appreciated the need to look good. In Amir-Ali’s experience, chadori girls were usually one of two types. They were unsophisticated with ugly, clumpy shoes or they had Botox-smooth foreheads and wore stripper heels, the rich ones picking up their vulgar, red-soled Louboutins in Dubai – wolves in black chadors. Too rebellious and deceiving to make good wives.

  A few young men in the corner of the room were trying to steal glimpses of Somayeh. Amir-Ali’s competitive streak pulsed into action. She was his cousin, and he would be damned if any of these lowly upstarts would get her.

  The attraction between them was instant. Somayeh felt her face reddening when he walked through the door. Amir-Ali was tall and muscular with a confident laugh and a sharp jaw. She noticed that his nose had shrunk in size, the handsome aquiline ridge now shaved off by the surgeon’s knife. She always ridiculed the boys in her neighbourhood who had nose jobs. You get the nose you pay for. Many of the residents in the Meydan could not afford the city’s certified plastic surgeons and had to make do with local dentists with a sideline in crude cosmetic surgery. The results were not always pretty. But Amir-Ali’s nose was so expertly shaped, it was a work of art. A mark of success and good taste.

  ‘So Mohammad-Reza, Persepolis or Esteghlal?’ Amir-Ali was asking the obligatory football question, but his mind was not on Mohammad-Reza or Tehran’s top competing clubs; his eyes were locked onto Somayeh, carefully tracking her around the room. She could feel his stare burning through her chador. She grabbed it tight round her, partly for comfort and partly because she knew it would cling to her and reveal her sylph-like body. Amir-Ali saw she was nubile and slim. You never knew with chadori girls. A few too many times chadors had slipped off to unveil dumpy hips and bounteous, fleshy stomachs, bounty he had not been looking for.

  ‘So Somayeh, are you still at school?’

  She blushed. ‘Yes.’ She hurried away. It would be inappropriate for her to talk to him for too long. In the neighbourhood, when puberty hit, cousins were no longer treated as close family. From her first period, Somayeh was not allowed to play unsupervised with the cousins she had considered as brothers. They had become potential sexual partners. ‘Boys and girls are like cotton wool and fire, you can’t put them anywhere near each other because they’ll explode in flames!’ her grandmother would say whenever she protested.

  Marriage between cousins was considered lucky and heaven-sent, a strengthening of families that brought unity. Prized above all was the marriage between children of brothers; there was even an expression for it, declaring it was written in the stars.

  Zahra had noticed her son staring. Testosterone oozed out of him. When everyone sat around the sofreh, a tablecloth placed on the ground, with plates full of food (men at one end, women and children at the other), she grabbed him by the arm and snapped in his ear, ‘For the love of God pull yourself together. Unless you’re serious about her, don’t even think about it. You can’t mess around with family, especially after everything that’s happened; even you know that.’ Without looking at his mother he replied: ‘I’m serious.’

  When Amir-Ali got home, he told his parents of his plan. He wanted to marry his cousin Somayeh. He was surprised at how quickly they agreed. She was perfect: pretty, shy, modest and an excellent homemaker. Most of the Tehrani girls that Amir-Ali knew acted as though their private parts were lined with gold, even when they were not attractive. Zahra and Mohammad had for a long time been praying that Amir-Ali would meet a good girl from a sonati family. Their son was immature and spoilt. He needed the responsibility of a wife and child to snap him into manhood. They had tried to tempt him with the daughters of rich bazaaris and industrialists, but Amir-Ali’s reputation had spread farther than they had hoped. He had been seen in gambling houses. He drank. He had girlfriends. Nobody would allow a man like that near a daughter. It made no difference that Amir-Ali had no appetite for these rich religious girls who, deep down, he suspected wanted to be Western. He needed a woman who knew his culture and his tradition. An honest woman.

  Amir-Ali had lost his virginity at sixteen to the forty-five-year-old wife of a neighbour. Fear of discovery (on his part) and guilt (on her part) put an end to the dalliance and he moved on to girls his own age. Mostly it was fumbling and frottage. Sometimes they would have la-paee, ‘between the legs’ thigh sex. He would pump vigorously between a girl’s clenched thighs. La-paee sex was the most popular form of sex among teenagers and girls in their early twenties from sonati and religious families; these were girls who did not have the same strength and devotion to God as Somayeh.

  Every now and again Amir-Ali and his friends would get lucky, but it was nearly always anal sex so the girl’s hymen would remain untouched and she would still be a virgin for her wedding night.

  ‘This guy gets married to this gorgeous girl,’ was the opening line of one of Amir-Ali’s favourite jokes. ‘She’s absolutely stunning. And of course, she says the usual crap: No one’s ever touched me! I’ve saved myself for you all these years! And on his wedding night, he realizes that she really is a virgin. He can’t believe it. He’s overjoyed. So he says to her father, you did an amazing job, such a beautiful daughter and you brought her up to be a virgin until marriage. I must thank you. But the father says: No, don’t thank me, thank her mother. So he says the same to her mum, and she replies: No, don’t thank me, thank her; she’s the one who kept herself pure. So finally he goes to his beautiful wife and says, thank you darling, for respecting yourself and for keeping your virginity. And she turns round and says: No, don’t thank me, thank my arse!’ The guys always fell about laughing at that one. Amir-Ali and his friends quipped that Tehran must be the world capital of anal sex.

  Amir-Ali’s good looks and a family move to Shahrak-e Gharb, a middle-class neighbourhood in the north-west of the city, propelled him to a different world, which finally brought with it a fully functioning sex life. This change of fortune was mostly down to his neighbour Arash, a cool kid in ripped jeans and Prada sunglasses with liberal parents. Arash’s life consisted of girls and parties. In this part of town,
some girls would have sex after only one date. Which was all very well when they were sitting astride Amir-Ali, but he did not want to marry a slut. That was when he realized that, when it came to marriage, he needed his own kind. He had never felt comfortable with the liberal, secular kids. Somehow, they could always tell him apart, no matter how much he spent on designer clothes. They thought it was cool that his father was a real bazaari done good, but he soon tired of being a novelty. More than that, he did not like the way the boys allowed the women to be so independent; it had not only spoilt the girls, but these rich men were being emasculated: they seemed to have lost their place in the world; they were constantly depressed even though they had it all, everything a young man from the Meydan dreamt of. Amir-Ali felt much more comfortable with his childhood friends, and that even included the more religious ones who disapproved of his new life. At least they behaved like men and were respected by their wives. He hung out with those who had turned out more like him; they were flexible in their adherence to religion. They slept with prostitutes and the one time in their lives they had a little extra cash, they had blown it on lads’ holidays to Turkey. At weekends, Thursday and Friday nights, they smoked pot and sheesheh, crystal meth. Amir-Ali’s best friend Reza, a judo champion, had started to spend more time with his sheesheh pipe than at the gym. Even the middle-class kids of Shahrak-e Gharb smoked sheesheh at parties.

  Life was changing for Amir-Ali; at twenty-six years old, most of his friends were married and they saw each other less. He realized it was time for a wife.

  *

  The call to Somayeh’s parents was made early the next morning. Haj Agha was flattered that Mohammad thought Somayeh good enough for his family. Amir-Ali could have anyone, but they had chosen Somayeh. Fatemeh had cried, ‘She’s still a girl, she’s so young.’ They had agreed that while they should approve any khastegars, suitors, Somayeh should be free to choose her own husband.

  When she got back from school Fatemeh and Haj Agha were listening to a cleric on television discussing virgins in paradise.

  ‘They are always fresh, energetic and young, they never age. And they’re untouched! In the Koran, it says their eyes look downwards; now we know this type of look to mean khomaar [a sultry come-hither look] but they don’t give this look to just anyone, only their husbands!’ The presenter was rapt. Discussing the virgins of paradise with the cleric was probably one of the highlights of his career.

  ‘Darling, you have a new khastegar,’ said Fatemeh as Somayeh walked through the door. Since she had turned fifteen, her parents had repelled a stream of khastegars on her behalf, but she knew instantly the identity of this latest one. And she did not want him batted off.

  ‘Amir-Ali wants to come round for khastegari.’ Khastegari is the first step of a marriage proposal, when the suitor visits the bride’s house with his family. Somayeh wanted to scream. Instead she cocked her head and shrugged her shoulders as if to say I couldn’t care less.

  ‘We’ll just tell them no. Darling, you know I think you’re too young.’

  Haj Agha came to the rescue, ‘But he’s an excellent catch! They’re rich – it would be a good life. And they’re family … ’

  ‘Well, if baba thinks it’s a good idea, they may as well come and I can think about it.’ The khastegari was arranged for the following evening.

  Fatemeh had recognized the look in her daughter’s eye and she was worried. She saw that Somayeh was flattered by the attentions of her urbane cousin. What she could not see was whether marriage with him would lead to happiness. She needed some guidance. There was only one person she trusted to give it: Mullah Ahmad. Moments like this called for Islamic divination and Mullah Ahmad was Fatemeh’s go-to mullah for estekhareh, Koranic divination. All personal conundrums were resolved, usually via telephone and in under four minutes. She would simply ask her question, Mullah Ahmad would consult the Koran and then shoot back a decisive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Job done. Problem solved. He never got it wrong. There were cowboys out there, as there were in any business. Turbaned charlatans riding on the wings of people’s misery and pain. These were the clerics who charged a fortune for their divination services. Some even offered magic spells at premium rates. Fatemeh had once visited a mullah in Qom, a holy city south-west of Tehran. The mullah was famed for the accuracy of his predictions. He was surrounded by a small crowd of cross-legged men, hands raised, waiting to ask their questions. Two assistants manned telephones, answering a non-stop stream of calls. The mullah worked the floor faster than a stock-market trader. Using a long, thin shard of camel bone (so as to not pollute the Koran with the touch of his unwashed hands), he would randomly whip open the Koran, speed-read the verse in front of him and shoot out a reply. All matters, from property to inheritance to love and adultery, were solved with the flick of a page. Fatemeh had been watching the mullah from behind a diaphanous green curtain that separated the sexes. An assistant pressed a receiver to the mullah’s ear.

  ‘Yes to the first, no to the second.’ Click.

  A man handed the mullah his mobile.

  ‘Bad, danger involved.’

  A young boy whispered in his ear.

  ‘Terrible. Lots of hardship.’

  The women shouted out their questions once the men were done. ‘Should I borrow money from my sister?’ Fatemeh had asked.

  ‘Excellent. The outcome will be excellent.’ Fatemeh never went back to that mullah again.

  Mullah Ahmad was different. He was a cleric of repute. Fatemeh had deduced this partly from his clientele, which included a growing coterie of upper-class devotees whom Fatemeh considered better educated and less gullible than herself; and partly from the fact that he was descended from a long line of mullahs. Mullah Ahmad was a kind man, and only occasionally accepted payment for divination; he got paid handsomely enough as it was. He could rake in up to 500,000 tomans for a one-hour sermon, which was nearly what a teacher earned in a whole month, and he was hired for funerals, prayer services and festivals. But he never refused gifts. Fatemeh had thrust a large envelope stuffed with money into his hands after their first appointment and ever since then Mullah Ahmad had given Fatemeh his mobile hotline number; she could call it any time of the day or night and he would answer.

  When he saw Fatemeh’s number flash up, Mullah Ahmad picked up immediately. She rushed through the rigmarole of polite enquiries about his family and his health and then fired her question at him.

  ‘Somayeh has a khastegar coming round tonight, it’s my sister’s son. Would this be a good union?’ Pause. Mullah Ahmad was opening his book.

  ‘Neither good nor bad, it depends on the purity of their hearts. If they want the union to go ahead, so it must, but only time will tell.’

  This was not the answer she was looking for, but as it was not an outright negative, the tension in her body was released anyway. She parroted Mullah Ahmad’s prophetic words to Haj Agha, who was equally relieved. Now it was up to the kids.

  That night the yearning that throbbed between Somayeh’s legs was stronger than it had ever been. She always fought the feeling, squeezing her eyes tight and willing it to leave her body alone. She no longer dried herself with a towel, scared that her own touch might ignite forbidden desire. At these moments she would pray to God and ask forgiveness. Apart from when she was a little girl, she had not given in to her desires. Her grandmother had quoted a verse in the Koran often enough to scare Somayeh with the potential consequences of succumbing to desire: ‘And whoever seeks any other avenue of lust besides with these [wife and female slaves] they are the transgressors.’

  Somayeh often consulted Find a Fatwa websites to help solve her more personal dilemmas. She had read a lengthy testimony from a doctor on the psychological damage caused by masturbation, not to mention the havoc it wreaked on the nervous system. There was also advice on how to resist the urge: exercising, reading about the prophets, fasting, avoiding anything that would stimulate lustful thoughts, avoiding people who were not religious,
attending religious ceremonies, keeping busy and marriage. Beneath the advice were the ubiquitous words: Allah Knows Best. Somayeh followed all these instructions.

  Someone had posted a question on the Supreme Leader’s website: I was talking to a woman (I was not related to) on the phone during Ramadan and although I did not masturbate, and even though I did not intentionally phone her for (sexual) pleasure, I felt myself ejaculating. Please tell me if my fasting has been invalidated? If it has been invalidated, should I atone for this? The worried ejaculator had got a reply: If you usually speak to a woman on the telephone without getting (sexual) pleasure from the conversation and without ejaculating, (in this case) if you ejaculated without masturbating, your fasting has not been invalidated, and you do not have to atone for this.

  Somayeh’s relationship with God was the best relationship of her life. She was not going to jeopardize it by needless masturbating. She felt closer to God than to anybody else. He was her best friend. He was her protector. She had heard that some people were godless; this filled her with pity, as it signalled a lack of self-belief. She could not countenance a more meaningless existence. Somayeh also adored the imams. Her favourite was Imam Mahdi, whom she always referred to as Imam Zaman, the Imam of All Time. Mahdi was still alive, but he was simply lost. God had hidden him. With every molecule in her body she believed he would appear for judgement day, when he would save the world from evil. The Mahdi also happened to answer all her prayers, which was not only fortuitous but yet further proof of his powers.