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

by Ramita Navai

  Doubt and second thoughts had kept Amir-Ali awake much of the night. Maybe he had been wrong about Somayeh. Maybe she was not as pretty as he had remembered.

  ‘If you decide you don’t want her, start eating cucumbers,’ Zahra offered helpfully, sensing the waning of her son’s enthusiasm, ‘I’ll handle it with Fatemeh and say it was me, that I think she’s too young.’

  ‘What if they don’t have cucumbers?’

  ‘For God’s sake everyone has cucumbers! When have you ever been to a house without cucumbers?’ She was right, of course.

  Somayeh and Fatemeh were plotting similar tactics. Over the years they had devised an intricate code of signals involving coughs, statements about the weather and eating certain fruit and nuts. For tonight, a bunch of grapes was the sign for love.

  Somayeh put on her best outfit: a smart white shirt and elegant tight black trousers that would remain concealed by her chador, and snakeskin roo-farshee heels that would be on show. A poster of Imam Ali was tacked above her desk on her bedroom wall. The imam’s dreamy green eyes, lined thick with black kohl, stared into the distance. A green scarf was tied round his head, the sun emanating around him like a halo. Fat droplets of blood dripped sensuously out of a gash on his forehead and trickled down his angular cheekbones towards a handsome square jaw framed by chocolate-brown, wavy hair. Below him, either side of her laptop, were two blue-glass Ikea tea-light holders that she had bought from the Ikea boutique in the uptown Jaam-e Jam shopping centre on Vali Asr. It was Somayeh’s favourite shop, full of chic, rich Tehranis. The tea-light holders had been all she could afford. Stacked on her desk were books including Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Nights of Loneliness, a Mills-and-Boon-style love story by the prolific romance author Fahimeh Rahimi, and a copy of the Koran.

  Somayeh rushed into the kitchen when Amir-Ali and his family arrived. Her first job was to serve the tea. If a girl could serve a tray of tea without spilling a drop then she would make a good bride. Not all families took the custom seriously, but they had fun with the ritual. Mohammad-Reza was making faces at Somayeh as she walked into the living room.

  ‘You little devil, stop making me laugh, I’ll spill it over you on purpose!’

  ‘Bah-bah, what delicious tea,’ smiled Zahra encouragingly.

  Somayeh bent down to serve Amir-Ali and dared to meet his eyes. He was staring right at her as he picked up his glass. Somayeh’s hands began to shake. She retreated back to the kitchen to catch her breath.

  Fatemeh passed the fruit bowl round. Zahra’s eyes were glued to the cucumbers. Amir-Ali picked out a peach.

  ‘Maybe you two should chat things through on your own?’ said Fatemeh, sensing the tension. Zahra agreed.

  Somayeh and Amir-Ali sat on the floor in Mohammad-Reza’s bedroom, three feet apart. An appropriate distance. His stare was animalistic. Somayeh cleared her throat.

  ‘I have some questions for you.’

  ‘Ask me anything you like, but you’re so beautiful that you can’t expect me to concentrate.’ Somayeh giggled nervously. She had prepared a list of exactly eleven questions and she needed to stay focused. Her future would be determined by his answers. She held her chador close. Whenever she spoke, it slipped.

  ‘Do you ever get angry?’ A flash of pale hand.

  ‘Never. My friends say I’m one of the calmest guys they know.’ His friends often berated him for his explosive temper.

  ‘How will you support us?’

  ‘I’ve worked hard all my life. As you know, I’m working for baba’s company and I hope to take over one day.’ Amir-Ali’s parents regularly complained that he would not know what work was even if it hit him in the face.

  ‘Do you pray?’ He saw a blaze of white shirt, but could not make out her breasts. Right now he certainly was praying – praying that her breasts were not bee stings. Even plums would do.

  ‘When I hear the azan, call to prayer, it doesn’t matter where I am, I have to pray. It’s like an automatic reaction. Even if I’m reading the newspaper.’ Amir-Ali never read the newspaper. And after years of enforced learning, he still could not remember all the Arabic words to the prayers.

  Somayeh smiled. Her arm dropped slightly. A glimpse of her neck – long. A sliver of a collarbone – sharp, disappearing into a soft nape.

  ‘Will you let me get my university diploma?’

  ‘With eyes like that, I’d let you get anything you want.’

  Somayeh laughed. A perfect laugh. Not too loud, not too forthright. You could tell a lot from a girl’s laugh. Amir-Ali’s mother had warned him of women who laughed too heartily; the voraciousness of a woman’s laugh was in direct proportion to her morals. The louder, the looser.

  Somayeh’s questions were businesslike and perfunctory, but her voice was gentle, her eyes sensual. Amir-Ali danced around the probing, tiptoeing across her questions, generously scattering lies and half-truths. Somayeh trod purposefully forward, every word carefully placed. They each analysed the other, interpreting every move and gesture.

  For Amir-Ali, it was usually easier to read girls when it came to his own kind. He knew what was expected of them. The rest was working out what was from the heart and what was for show. There was never any guarantee, but experience told him that Somayeh was genuine. He could also tell that she was already wildly in love with him. Tehrani girls usually acted disinterested and that was part of the ploy, but Somayeh’s lack of game-playing showed an innocence and naivety that was beguiling.

  Somayeh was too young to have learnt the art of discerning the truth. To her, Amir-Ali was the most charismatic man she had ever met.

  After an hour, they returned to a living room that was silent and heavy with expectation. Fatemeh handed the fruit bowl round and watched her daughter like a hawk. Somayeh looked at her mother as she picked out a bunch of grapes and popped one in her mouth. Fatemeh jumped up and whispered to Haj Agha to bring out the shireeni sweet pastries, the sign understood by all: a wedding.

  The hulking machinery of marriage chugged into motion. At the bale-boroon ceremony, when engagements are officially announced, Amir-Ali gave Somayeh six gold bracelets, a colossal bouquet of flowers and a silk chador. The four parents thrashed out a deal for Somayeh’s mehrieh, dowry, an Islamic pre-nuptial agreement that ensures the woman will be looked after in the event of a divorce. Somayeh could hear Fatemeh and Haj Agha bartering over her worth.

  ‘She’s a beautiful, educated girl and Amir-Ali will be getting her in her prime! He’ll have the best years of her life!’

  ‘I know she’s priceless, Fatemeh joon, but we’re not made of money.’

  The negotiating was usually the men’s job, but as usual the two sisters had taken over. Zahra soon relented, and the mehrieh was set at 192 gold coins, sixteen for each of the twelve Shia imams. It was a low amount for Tehran, but high for the Meydan and in keeping with tradition here, which regarded very high mehriehs as vulgar. Unusually for an Iranian mother, Zahra knew her son was getting the better deal. The rest of the terms of the marriage were set: Amir-Ali promised to allow Somayeh to attend university and Zahra and Mohammad would give the couple their old apartment in the Meydan as, given Somayeh’s young age, she should remain close to her family and friends for the first few years of married life.

  The two families careered towards the aroosi wedding party, with the marriage sucking up mounds of money, food and relatives in its path. In between the gatherings and the blood test (a prerequisite for all Iranians, not just cousins) and the extra cooking and cleaning, Fatemeh remembered her own aroosi as a sad, small affair. She had not wanted to marry Haj Agha. She could have resisted, but was afraid of disappointing her parents, who were thrilled at the pairing. He came from a good family of homeowners. It was a different era then: a woman accepted the fate chosen for her by others. She had been relieved when she saw him for the first time. He had been disappointed, and she had seen it in his eyes. He had been pressurized into marrying Fatemeh too, because her father was
known to be a respectable man. She had expected little from a marriage, just financial stability and, if she was lucky, companionship. Instead she got a man who rarely acknowledged her. Despite Somayeh’s tender age, Fatemeh consoled herself that at least Somayeh was marrying for love, and that Mullah Ahmad had seen its potential in the verses of the Koran.

  Somayeh’s wedding was everything she had dreamt it would be. She wore a strapless white beaded gown under a white hooded cape and she spent nearly a million tomans on a make-up artist who transformed her into one of the Western-looking girls in the government poster warnings on bad hejab. Once the ceremony was over, the men and women partied separately, each group dancing until the early hours. In her wedding photographs Somayeh looked like an alien: her eyes had been Photoshopped blue, her skin digitally retouched and she had been given a new nose, pinched and thin – the Tehranis’ style of choice. Somayeh was delighted.

  Somayeh’s married life began the day after the end of school and a few weeks after the wedding party. Amir-Ali broke his promise almost immediately. He pleaded with Somayeh to abandon her plans for university. In a flush of love Somayeh agreed. She interpreted his wish for her to stay home as passion; that he could not bear to be parted from her and see her life grow in a different direction from his own. Amir-Ali had chosen a traditional wife for good reason. He might as well have married an uptown girl if Somayeh was going to spend the next few years of their married life with her nose in books. Fatemeh and Haj Agha were angry at first, but Somayeh assured them it was her decision. She seemed so happy, the matter quickly passed.

  The first year of marriage was exciting. Amir-Ali was tender in bed. She embraced lovemaking, seeing it as a spiritual act and a religious duty to satisfy her man. Only one of her friends had married. Most of the women in her neighbourhood waited until their early twenties, and then would move in with their husbands’ families as they could not afford the extortionate rents. Somayeh did not have to endure her in-laws and the new apartment was big and modern. She had a forty-six-inch television, a breakfast bar and black leather sofas. Her friends were envious of her new-found independence. A few of the girls had started university (mostly because it increased their marriage prospects) and they had been disappointed how little it had changed their lives.

  Most days Somayeh would cook Amir-Ali’s evening meal when she woke up and then spend time with her mother and her friends. They would keep up to date with the latest news, which revolved around gossip about relationships and plummeting morals. Dog-Duck had been sacked as headmistress for being a lesbian, Batool Khanoum the divorcee was now servicing virgin boys and Tahereh Azimi was pronounced a real-life whore living and working in a brothel in the centre of town.

  Marriage for Amir-Ali was not too different from life with his parents. He had his meals cooked, his clothes cleaned and a spotless house. Although he had the added bonus of regular sex and of being adored.

  Then the inevitable happened. Amir-Ali got bored. He took immediate action, spending more time with his friends. They drank aragh sagee, ‘dog sweat’ booze, the slang name for home-brewed vodka made of raisins, and they smoked sheesheh with Reza, who had given up judo and now devoted himself to his pipe full-time. Amir-Ali discovered a new gambling den run by an old gangster near the south end of Vali Asr.

  Somayeh had been shocked the first few nights he had turned up late, smelling of alcohol. At first she was too submissive to get angry. She sobbed in the bathroom with the shower on, hoping Amir-Ali would not hear her. The passing of time and the worsening of Amir-Ali’s behaviour emboldened her, but Amir-Ali was impervious to Somayeh’s pleading and crying. The number of his Facebook friends swelled. Girls with tumbling ash-blonde hair and plunging vest tops appeared. He swore on his mother’s life they were friends from his old life. He became secretive, hiding his mobile phone. Somayeh incessantly asked Amir-Ali if there was another woman. He did what he always did when she dared to question him: he shouted at her. Her traditional outlook was suddenly not so appealing. It had lost its romance. Now she was just a pain.

  ‘Don’t I provide for you? What more do you want? Go back to your parents’ house if you don’t like it here.’ Amir-Ali wanted a woman, not a little girl who cried because he enjoyed life.

  The unravelling of their relationship was drawn out and hidden from view. It happened mostly within the confines of their apartment, but also in Somayeh’s head. Doubts and paranoia set in. Somayeh did not tell a soul. She was too ashamed to go back to her parents’ house. Her friends had placed her at the pinnacle of success, and she could not endure the humiliation of the fall.

  When autumn sapped the green from the trees on Vali Asr, exposing the road below to the white November sky, their baby was born. Somayeh hoped the birth of her girl Mona would change Amir-Ali. It did not. Instead the disappearances started. The first time, he left for work and did not come back all weekend. After thirteen missed calls and twenty frantic messages, he had texted back: I’m fine stop hassling me. Once he texted her from the airport to tell her he was going to Dubai for a week. Otherwise, she would not hear from him for days, sometimes weeks.

  Somayeh had managed to keep the first disappearance to herself. By the second, she confided in his parents, Zahra and Mohammad, unable to withstand his behaviour alone. They were not surprised. They knew everything. Amir-Ali had not turned up to work for the past six months. He had done this many times before; they had hoped Somayeh would tame him. Somayeh felt cheated. She had been lied to, as had her parents.

  Zahra and Mohammad became co-conspirators in concealing the truth from Fatemeh and Haj Agha. They were complicit in her lies to them. ‘We will have no aberoo left if he continues like this,’ Zahra had sobbed. Aberoo. Honour; saving face. It was a cornerstone of their world, and Amir-Ali had robbed Zahra and Mohammad of their aberoo too many times.

  For a while nothing changed; Amir-Ali refused to give Somayeh any answers, and she learnt to adapt to her new reality, focusing her attentions on little Mona. Soon a new cycle of disappearances began; this time they lasted longer. They were also marked by the arrival of a brown leather briefcase. Amir-Ali kept it hidden under his clothes in the back of a cupboard in Mona’s room. Some nights, he would head straight for the cupboard and she could hear the numbers of a lock clicking into place. He began to change its hiding place. Somayeh would always find it. She became as obsessed with it as Amir-Ali; she was sure the answer to her misery was in the briefcase.

  For three months her small hands worked the locks, sometimes for hours, trying to figure out the combination. Until now. The moment of the miracle. His briefcase gaping wide open in front of her, her nazr prayer answered in an instant. Her sweaty hands shook as she lifted the compartments apart. Underneath a mound of receipts and bank statements was what she had been looking for: the truth. It was spelt out in dozens of letters written in childish handwriting. It was in words she had never heard from Amir-Ali: I adore you, You are my life, The thought of your pussy makes me so hard. It was in a box of Durex condoms. It was staring back at her through black eyes, round breasts and a mass of blonde, highlighted hair imprinted on a photograph. There was an ecstatic moment of liberation before the searing pain took hold; it was the serene hit of vindication before the rage. Then she started to cry. The heat was now maddening. She started grabbing the contents of the briefcase and hurling them across the room. As she was about to pick up another handful, she saw half a dozen scratched DVDs in a Bambi sleeve. She scrambled to her laptop and pushed one in. A woman was on her knees being fucked from behind. After that clip, a close-up of genitals, the camera revealing a woman having sex with her headscarf on. Another clip was a black man with two white women. Somayeh was sick to her stomach. By now she was sobbing and praying at the same time. She had never seen porn before.

  Somayeh fled to Fatemeh’s house. Fatemeh had long known that her daughter’s marriage was in turmoil, but Somayeh would not admit it. The last few years had taken their toll; stress and heartbreak had lef
t Somayeh pale and emaciated. She told her mother everything, even about the DVDs.

  Life in the Meydan has changed in the years since Somayeh got married. Iran has a new President, Hassan Rouhani, a (comparatively) moderate English-speaking cleric with a Ph.D. in Constitutional Law from Glasgow Caledonian University. Rouhani is a regular Tweeter and speaks of equality and rapprochement with the West. Although many Iranians were elated at his election, not everyone in the Meydan was happy at the results.

  ‘Rouhani’s bee-dean!’ said one of Haj Agha’s Hezbollahi neighbours, using the word for ‘irreligious’, ‘he’s just an agent of the English, like Khatami. These types of clerics are dirty! It’ll all come out in the wash.’

  They did not want to be friends with the Great Satan, Amrika. A few weeks after Rouhani’s historic phone call with President Obama, anti-American posters sprang up across the city (before they were taken back down as yet another internal power battle between government factions was played out). Some of the posters depicted an outstretched Iranian hand about to shake the clawed hand of the devil. On each were the words, written in both Persian and English: THE US GOVENMENT STYLES [sic] HONESTY.

  Rouhani had been left with the mess Ahmadinejad had left behind. Discontent had sunk its teeth into the Meydan. Sanctions against Iran had ground the economy to a halt, sending the currency into free fall, slashing it to a third of its value in less than two years. Under Ahmadinejad subsidies of petrol had been scrapped and the government had doled out cash handouts instead, but these had not kept up with the soaring inflation that hovered between thirty and forty per cent. Jobs were even more scarce and badly paid. The sinking economy bred resentment and mistrust.

  For the first time, even criticism of the Supreme Leader was no longer out of bounds. It had started after protesters were killed, beaten and raped after the disputed elections in 2009.

  There were other, smaller changes. Somayeh’s friends were now addicted to Turkish soap operas like Forbidden Love and The Sultan’s Harem with juicy story lines shown on GEM TV, an entertainment satellite channel based in Dubai. Halfway through the series all the characters suddenly had new voices as the actors in Iran secretly dubbing the show had been arrested. And everyone knew about a hit show that had taken the country by storm: Googoosh Music Academy, an Iranian X Factor on Manoto TV, a Persian-language station run from London that had bought the format of hit British programmes like Come Dine With Me, another Tehrani favourite. And nowadays, Fatemeh and her friends had far fewer pistachios at home since their price had almost tripled.