The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

by Hooman Majd

  I looked around at all the black shirts, thankful that I’d picked one up in Tehran a few days earlier, even though the fit was questionable and the fabric better suited to a ship’s sail. I had roamed the Tehran Friday bazaar, looking for an all-black shirt that was cheap but presentable, and had settled on one for five dollars from an old vendor who insisted that it was made of cotton. “Yes, yes,” he had told me, “of course it’s cotton!” I must’ve looked unconvinced. “Made in China!” he added, as if that were a strong selling point. “If it wasn’t cotton,” he continued, “it would be shiny. See?” He was right: it wasn’t particularly shiny, but we were indoors. I bought it anyway, knowing full well that it couldn’t possibly be anything but 100 percent synthetic, and as I was walking away, I heard another vendor shouting, “Bolouse-e zedeh afsordegi! Bolouse-e zedeh afsordegi!,” which best translates as “antidepressant blouses,” a rather optimistic cry to the female customers who were, perhaps he knew better than I, after all, looking for some new clothes to lift their spirits in this, the most sullen month of the year. But as I suspected, neither the antidepressant blouses nor my black shirt could possibly deliver on their promises. In the bright and hot desert sunshine of Yazd, the shininess of my black shirt was unmistakable, as was the itch, and I suspected rash, developing around my neck as I looked left and right, awaiting with great anticipation the first of the groups of organized mourners who would be marching past me this morning.

  And then I heard the drums. A slow beat, and a young man took to the microphone at a stand at the front of the room. In a mellifluous but sad voice, he started singing the praises of the Imams as the men entering the mosque in two columns, marching slowly in step, shouted out a chorus while beating their chests with their right hands in time with the beat. The men around me followed suit, albeit with less vigor, sort of a faux chest beating or really just chest tapping, and I did the same. Following the first group of men came the chain beaters. These men were silent, but each wielded a wooden-handled instrument, something like a feather duster but with metal chain links in place of feathers, and in time to the beat they raised the chains above their shoulders and brought them down on their backs. The swish-swish sound of the chains and the loud thuds they made as they connected with the men’s backs provided additional percussive accompaniment, and some of those men, mostly the younger ones with gelled hair, rolled-up sleeves, and tight jeans, beat themselves with such vigor, creating perfect arcs with chains glittering under the fierce lights, that one wondered how they managed to remain expressionless.

  The previous day, at my cousin Fatemeh’s house in Ardakan, a village thirty-five miles away, I had announced that I wished to participate in the chain beating, zanjeer-zani, and had made a few practice swings with a set of chains that were rummaged out of a closet by a relative. They hurt. I’m sure I grimaced when they connected with my back and made facial expressions that must’ve convinced my family, deeply religious though they are, that I was suffering from a mental illness of some sort, for no sane Westernized Iranian, certainly not one who had lived abroad all his life, could possibly be interested in mourning the death of Imam Hossein with a bout of self-flagellation. In Tehran too, I had been greeted with stunned silence by the more secular Iranians when I would casually say I was going to attend Tasua and Ashura ceremonies, a silence that spoke to their inability to comprehend why. But in the end it was explained to me, after I tried using the chains, mind you, that I would be unable to actually perform anyway, as the ceremonies were carefully choreographed affairs, not unlike the various parades on Fifth Avenue in New York, and did not allow for spontaneous audience participation beyond symbolic chest beating.

  The parade at the mosque continued. Different groups of men, sometimes even very young boys, were marching past me, each group headed by a flag bearer and each group stepping and self-flagellating to a different song and beat. The officious policeman, acting as traffic cop with almost as many hand and arm movements, was thoroughly enjoying himself, although it seemed that his instructions were ignored as many times as they were obeyed. Each neighborhood in Yazd, and apparently many neighborhoods in the surrounding villages, had its own heyyat, or “delegation,” competing, it seemed, to out-beat and out-sing the others. The Afghans came, refugees first from the Soviets and then from the Taliban who had never returned home, as did the Iraqis, presumably from the Iraqi part of town, near the main square, where they run the cigarette wholesale business and where, much to my delight, I could buy Iranian cigarettes re-smuggled back into Iran from Iraq—where the Iranian government subsidizes their distribution—at half the price of anywhere in Tehran, or about thirty-five cents a pack. Every now and then the parade would stop, someone new would take to the microphone, and the crowd of men sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room would stand and beat their chests with both arms. Arms would be raised high and then brought down, crossing each other in midair and landing heavily on either side of the chest, to a rhythm created by the singer and a chorus repeated by the men. Everyone else in the mosque beat, or in my case tapped, their hearts in time. Everyone, that is, except for the few men I noticed who answered calls on their cell phones, although one did manage to hold a conversation and beat himself at the same time. “Hey, what are you doing, Mamad?” I imagined the conversation. “Oh, nothing much, just pounding my chest.”

  The women on the balcony watched, some leaning over to get a better look, and at times I felt that the men, the youths anyway, were performing for them as much as for any other reason. If they could (and if it was still legal), some of these men would have used the ghammeh, or “sharp dagger,” to cut their foreheads and march with blood streaming down their faces. Once a common practice, it was now forbidden by the Ayatollahs of Shia Islam.1 On the eve of Tasua, in a taxi from Ardakan to Yazd, a newscaster repeatedly advised his listeners (after offering them all condolences on the death of Imam Hossein) that ghammeh-zani, “cutting oneself with a blade,” was not only illegal but un-Islamic according to the great Ayatollahs, including Fazel Lankarani, Shirazi, Sistani (in Iraq), and the Supreme Leader himself, Khamenei. The reason, as he quoted the mullahs, was that in Islam it is haram, or “forbidden,” to harm one’s own body to the point of danger—that is, danger from death due to, in this case, a potential deadly infection. He neglected to mention the Ayatollahs’ other reason, one they all agree on and one that has a strong Shia basis: that any act that can be misunderstood, misconstrued, or simply viewed negatively by the non-Shia world must be avoided in order to protect the faith from those who might view it in a negative light or, worse, defame it. Men cutting their foreheads wide open could, one supposes, be viewed negatively by some unbelievers. The practice does continue privately, though (which is why the radio announcer felt it necessary to raise the issue), sometimes in back alleys among small groups of men who just cannot imagine that beating oneself, even shirtless to allow the skin to burst open, suffices as grief. Real men don’t just self-flagellate; they cut themselves.

  There’s an old joke in Iran about Moharram, the holy month, one that is told even by the pious who mourn with genuine emotion. A foreigner, it seems, arrives in Iran during Moharram and is witness to the multitude of public grieving ceremonies, the crying, the chest beating, and of course the black flags adorning almost every building and house. “What’s happened?” he asks an Iranian. “We’re mourning Hossein’s death” is the reply. “Oh,” says the foreigner, “I’m so sorry. When did he die?” “Fourteen hundred years ago,” says the Iranian. “Boy,” says the foreigner, “news sure travels slow around these parts!”

  On the eve of Ashura, which simply means “tenth” in Arabic and which is the actual day of Imam Hossein’s martyrdom, Iranian television is chockablock with religious programming. Apart from showing Tasua ceremonies across the nation, and apart from broadcasting various Rosehs, “communal grief gatherings,” on a night in 2007 (and as they do every year), reporters on different channels combed the streets of Tehran and other
cities interviewing various people on the subject of their love of Hossein. “Why are you crying?” asked one young male reporter of a five-year-old girl. “For Imam Hossein” was the reply. “Do you like Imam Hossein? Why?” asked the reporter. The girl didn’t hesitate. “Because he died thirsty!” she exclaimed, as if speaking to an idiot. (Legend has it that Yazid, Hossein’s nemesis in the battle for control of the caliphate, cut off Hossein’s men from water supplies at Karbala before the final battle and the men died fighting, but never quenching their thirst.) Another asked an older man on the streets of Tehran what he thought of Hossein. “For fourteen hundred years we’ve been mourning Imam Hossein,” he replied. “My one-and-a-half-year-old grandson beats his chest. Why? Because the blood of Hossein boils inside all of us.” Indeed. Iranian identity is very much tied up in the story of Hossein, the story of his martyrdom in the cause of justice, and the concept of what is right (and just) and what is wrong (and unjust). “Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood”—“Other than God, there was no One.” Except, perhaps, Hossein.

  Many of the contradictions (or what we think of as contradictions) of Iran play out during the holy month of Moharram. A nation is in mourning, yes; but the Iranian penchant for turning every solemn occasion into a festivity is also on display. Ancient ritual and pageantry, reviled by orthodox Sunnis as paganism and idolatry, are set against a backdrop of modernity and a quest for technology. Public displays of grief, apparently sincere, are quickly followed by sumptuous feasts in the privacy that exists behind Persian walls. Weeks of practicing carefully choreographed mass self-flagellation culminate in an ecstatic, and even at times erotic, display of male machismo. Laughter follows tears, happiness comes from sorrow. And the people often described as the most Western in the Muslim Middle East continue to live their Western-influenced lives, going to restaurants and cafés, taking the kids to amusement parks, watching movies and listening to music, and surfing the Internet, all the while surrounding themselves with symbolic solemnity. The black flags hanging outside of many homes and offices, even secular ones, are not only for show: inside the home a television may be blaring a European program (even dolorous Iranians, it seems, want their MTV); inside the office there might be a cheerful celebration of a successful business deal; but a certain lugubriousness often punctures the mood, almost as a reminder that without sorrow, happiness cannot be measured.

  It was during the month of Moharram that I witnessed another contradiction of Islamic Iranian life, not one directly attributable to the month of mourning, but one I likely wouldn’t have witnessed any other time. It is considered auspicious by some to donate blood during the month, and a friend took me to a government donation center in Tehran where we both were eager to spill blood more for our fellow man than for ceremonial purposes. We took numbers from a ticket machine, were given a short form to fill out by a courteous woman behind a desk, and sat down on plastic chairs with a dozen or so others to wait our turn. Our numbers came up within seconds of each other, and we went into separate rooms as indicated by an electronic sign. I closed the heavy wooden door behind me and sat down in front of another woman behind a desk, young and wearing a proper hijab, who took my form and starting making notes. She asked for my national identity card (which unlike my passport gives no clue as to where I reside) and confirmed the personal details I had written down one by one. She finally looked up at me and stared straight into my eyes, holding her pen aloft for effect. “And when was the last time you had sex?”

  “Excuse me?” I replied, blushing, I’m sure.

  “The last time you had carnal relations?” I had written that I was unmarried, and since sex outside marriage is technically illegal, a government official was asking me to either condemn myself or lie.

  “Uh, I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe a month or two?”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied, after holding my gaze for a few moments, her expression unchanging. “You can’t donate blood today.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised. I knew that all donated blood is checked for the AIDS virus, so it seemed an unreasonable precaution, particularly since I could have easily lied.

  “If you’ve had sex in the last year and are not married, you can’t donate blood.” She typed something into her computer terminal, presumably marking me as someone to be rejected by all donation centers for the next twelve months, even if I returned and lied. “Thank you anyway,” she said pleasantly, looking me in the eyes again. I couldn’t discern any judgment in her eyes, whether she thought I was a sex fiend or whether she was wondering with whom I had managed to have illicit sex.

  “Thank you,” I also said, standing up and feeling a little embarrassed.

  “Have a good day,” she replied, pressing the button on her desk signaling the next donor and going back to her computer. I walked out to see my friend sitting on a chair in the waiting room.

  “Did you already give blood?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied. “I was rejected. And you?”

  “Me too, for having had sex less than a year ago. I’ll tell you, that was embarrassing!”

  “Same here. I should have lied, but the girl caught me off guard.”

  We left the building with our heads lowered, as if others watching, particularly the women, would think us sexual deviants, and hastily jumped into a cab and headed home. Here was the Islamic Republic in all its glorious contradictions, I thought, as we made our way through heavy traffic in silence. A republic that openly recognizes the perils of AIDS (and even hands out free condoms) but that maintains the fiction of Islamic sexual innocence, an innocence that dictates a married man only ever has sex with his wife (and vice versa), that unmarried men only have sex with themselves, and that unmarried women don’t know what sex is. And then, to borrow a Ronald Reagan Cold War notion, the Islamic Republic trusts, but also verifies (verbally, and then later scientifically). Apart from the undoubtedly unintentional titillation factor of being asked about one’s sex life by a pretty young girl, a girl that if Muslim and unmarried (and I saw no ring on her finger) should not have experienced sex herself, the business of asking about sex appears to serve no purpose whatsoever other than to afford the examinee the opportunity to wonder whether he or she should be truthful or not (for most Iranian men would hardly like to admit, even if it were true and particularly to a young woman, that they had had no prospects for a year, while no unmarried Iranian woman would like to admit publicly that she had succumbed to the advances of one of those men). But in reality it encapsulates the very Persian, pragmatic approach to living under the sexual constraints of Islam: men might all be Muslims, but all Muslim men are, well, men. And women, after all, just might fall under their spell.

  Having been denied the opportunity to shed blood, to self-sacrifice at a time when sacrifice is pondered, on the seventh of Moharram, the day that Hossein’s armies were first denied water all those centuries ago, I attended a Roseh at a house in North Tehran. The blood of Hossein boils even in the veins of the Armani crowd, it seems, for my host, a young businessman dressed in a beautiful suit, lives in an upscale neighborhood, Shahrak-e Gharb, in a multimillion-dollar home. The Benzes and BMWs parked outside would have seemed to indicate a more common North Tehran form of entertainment inside: a party with liquor, dancing, and mingling of the sexes, but no, this was Moharram, after all. Businesses and homes all over Tehran, even some in the wealthy and more secular neighborhoods, were draped with black flags and salutations to Imam Hossein, and on the drive north a red neon sign on the top of an incomplete high-rise by the Hemmat Expressway that could be seen for miles proclaimed Iran’s love of its Imam with a simple “Ya Hossein,” an expression that was also mowed, in huge letters, into the grass embankment of another highway connecting North and South Tehran.

  At the house, what appeared to be a huge ten-car garage but was just the covered courtyard entrance to the main house was fully carpeted with expansive Persian rugs, and I sat along the edge of one wall facing a mullah who was sitting and talking
to a few men leaning against the opposite wall. Roseh is a tradition I remember from my childhood, when on yearly visits to my grandfather’s house my mother would attend the almost weekly women-only Roseh thrown by my grandmother for her friends and family. Roseh is a sort of passion play, actually a passion play monologue; the story of Hossein’s martyrdom (or the martyrdom of other saints) is recited by a mullah who is an accomplished actor and who deftly manipulates the audience into tears simply by telling them of the injustice of it all.

  I remember the shock I felt the first time I saw my mother come out of the living room at my grandfather’s house, crying hysterically, and my wondering if someone had died or some other terrible calamity had just occurred. “No, no,” my mother had assured me, “it was just a Roseh, and I feel much better now.” I must’ve been five or six years old and fresh from San Francisco, where, needless to say, the handful of Shias who may have lived there in the 1960s did not organize Rosehs. I came to understand, even though I wasn’t allowed to witness the passion plays, although I did hide outside the closed door on numerous occasions and listen in awe to the mullah’s cadences and the spectacular crying of the women, that it served a definite purpose beyond religion and faith, for those who emerged from the Roseh after a heavy round of communal crying seemed to have hefty appetites (all the cakes and biscuits disappeared before we kids had a chance to steal one or two) and left my grandfather’s house in great spirits, usually with beaming smiles framed by colorful chadors. My own mother, wiping away tears, always seemed so relieved. Hossein’s martyrdom was the supreme example of injustice: one’s own martyrdom (and every Iranian is a martyr) paled by comparison. Go ahead, have a good cry: cry for Hossein, for Abolfazl, and for all the other martyrs, including, of course, yourself.