by Holly Morris
“You’re not going to use this footage just to play into people’s fears and stereotypes, are you?” says Persheng, having noted our “scary” collection of b-roll. I think she’s worked with Western crews in the past who wanted a flavorful, but not necessarily real, story. She wants me to know that Iran is not all terrorists and veils.
“No, no,” I say. “I understand that it’s just government manipulation. Don’t worry. But the show has to acknowledge those fears and misperceptions in order to move beyond them, right?” I explain.
Despite the glowering religious icons looming above, the country does not feel scary, and we’ve yet to experience any anti-American sentiment from a three-dimensional human. On the contrary, we’ve been greeted with warmth everywhere we’ve gone. Earlier we were chasing down a rumor of a wall said to be covered with anti-U.S. slogans. We arrived at the location and asked the old security guard about it. “Oh, I painted over that years ago,” he said with a dismissive laugh and a sweep of his hand. “Please, please sit and have some tea with me, and perhaps a pipe?” he said, nodding toward a hookah.
The story of Iran’s Islamicist revolution, and especially its impact on women, is not simple. In the 1970s, before the revolution, Iran was run by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who succeeded his father as shah in 1941, and Tehran was experiencing rock music, reefer, and miniskirts along with much of the world. Wearing hejab was actively discouraged by the government. But while a wealthy minority lived the high life, the masses lived in poor conditions with high illiteracy and little health care. Like Batista in Cuba, the shah was an autocrat installed and propped up by the United States (read: CIA), and he stirred up a great deal of popular resentment. Workers and middle-class students protested against widespread offical corruption and the lack of jobs. Religious conservatives railed against “Westoxification” of their country. Some women, both religious and secular, who wanted the regime out, took to wearing veils as an act of political defiance.
Many political factions participated in the resistance to the shah—not only Islamists, but leftists, communists, and feminists as well. But as the anti-shah forces gained strength, it was the more conservative elements of the opposition that came to the fore.
In January 1979, the shah was forced out of the country as the result of a massive popular uprising. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France and joined with secularist anti-shah forces in the formation of a new government. Over the next few years, faced with a hostile United States and a bloody war with neighboring Iraq, Khomeini and the theocrats consolidated their power. As Maryam is fond of saying, “The deal was done.” A band of conservative religious clerics slipped into the void of what was essentially and originally a political—not religious—revolution.
For Iranian women, the revolution has been a mixed bag. A “jihad against illiteracy” and greater access to education have created opportunities that were previously unavailable to most Iranian women. Sixty percent of Iran’s university students are women now, compared with 25 percent before the revolution. But Khomeini also put in place a system of draconian family laws and strict dress codes for women. Veiling was no longer optional but mandatory.
In the twenty-five years since conservative theocrats took power, there has been a slow, staccato walk toward political reform. Women have successfully protested for more freedoms and for the relaxing of some veiling requirements. On May 23, 1997, the reformist religious cleric Mohammad Khatami was democratically voted into office as president. But, since the religious supreme leader trumps the elected president in the Islamic Republic, Khatami was less able to bring reform than a now frustrated populace had hoped. Some blame Khatami for the slow change; others think his hands were tied by the reigning theocratic powers. He was reelected in 2001, but faith in Khatami continued to plunge. (And in July 2005 ultraconservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president.)
Nonetheless, Khatami’s election in 1997 ushered in an era of relative freedom for the Iranian press. At any given time, there are about fifty nongovernmental publications on the street in Tehran. But publishing remains risky business. Recently there has been another of several waves of crackdowns by the conservatives; scores of publications have been shuttered, and many of their publishers are under indictment.
While my first-amendment instincts cry out at this censorship, I know that my own culture also has forces that get in the way of a free and robust press. Here in Iran it is the government that impedes; in the United States, it’s profit-driven media conglomerates. In the United States, news judgments are frequently not based on what people need to know, but what they are perceived (through polls or ratings) to enjoy consuming. Thus, a market fundamentalism—a tyranny of profit—determines what is news. As Neil Postman says in his now twenty-year-old (yet still prescient) critique of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death, “Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment—and cares.”
The role of the press in Iran’s reform movement is critical to understand, so I want to meet Shahla Sherkat, one of Iran’s best-known publishers. Last year she was sentenced to four months in prison and a three-thousand-dollar fine—a significant amount of money in Iran, undoubtedly more than a year’s salary for her—for attending a conference of international journalists and arguing in a public setting that hejab should be a matter of choice, rather than law. Sherkat remains hard at work while her case is on appeal.
Sherkat’s magazine Zanan has a circulation of more than 100,000 and rides a dangerous wave of feminism and politics. For more than a century, through shahs and clerics alike, Iranian women have struggled for more liberty. Zanan marks a contemporary chapter in that struggle and the magazine is credited with turning out the critical women’s vote for President Khatami, the only candidate who called for greater freedom for women and for the government to move to a less strict interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law.
We walk up to the second floor of an unremarkable gray cement building in midtown Tehran and into the Zanan offices, which are filled with a dozen young women in conservative black and gray hejab. Early-nineties PCs hum with activity and stacks of magazines accent the waiting area. I am struck by the spendy graphic sophistication of the covers, and by how politically frank they are. One of them has been enlarged and hung behind Sherkat’s desk: a red and black image of a woman pulling the veil back to reveal her lipsticked mouth. Sherkat greets us with a reserved smile and a Western handshake. Forty-something Sherkat, who has dark, intense eyes, is dressed conservatively in a tan gown with a full black head scarf. We set up to interview her at her desk, behind which are shelves bulging with feminist books from publishers around the world.
“Does This Woman Wear a Chador?”
“Sir, Have You Ever Hit Your Wife?”
“Girls, Boys, and the Popularity of Nose Jobs”
“Where Are These Girls Running To?”
“The Political Rights of Women in Iran”
“Women, Why Do You Buy Gold?”
Once a revolutionary student who hit the streets to bring down the shah, Sherkat now regards herself as a reformist journalist. By way of introduction to the magazine, she takes me through past issues.
“This issue features an interview with Mrs. Khatami. It was published especially for the elections,” she says, holding up a cover with a smiling first lady. While Sherkat and her magazine have supported Mrs. Khatami’s husband, they turned critical of him when, after elected, he appointed only one woman to his cabinet.
“This one,” Sherkat continues, holding up another issue, “is about runaway girls in Tehran and how homelessness is becoming a problem; this one is about AIDS.” Other issues the magazine covers include domestic violence, rhinoplasty, patriarchy, feminist films, and temporary marriage. The latter, a loophole in Islamic law, allows a couple to marry for as little as a few hours. Some condemn it as legalized prostitution; others defend it as a way f
or unmarried women to have sex in a country that prohibits it.
Her magazine, now in its twelfth year, is still being published, despite a prison sentence over her head for speaking out against the legal enforcement of hejab.
“What do you think Western feminists misunderstand about Iranian feminism?” I ask.
“And also, what do they understand?” she responds warmly, a small, sly smile bringing her face to life.
“Yes, well . . .” I stumble, reminding myself not to lead with my Western guilt.
“Basically I think the Western feminists don’t know that an Iranian feminist movement exists. Some people think that women in Iran still remain at home hiding behind the veil. But, as you may have noticed, women are present and active in many layers of social and political life in this country,” Sherkat tells me. “This is not something granted to them by the government, but rather the will of women themselves, which has forced the government to accept their participation in various aspects of life in the society. I am a Muslim, I have Islamic faith, and at the same time I am doing the work that I do.”
Sherkat sees no conflict between her religious faith and her feminist faith. She explains that women in other Islamic countries, however, such as Saudi Arabia, are often denied more rights, such as driving and voting, than are Iranian women. Zanan, she says, tackles issues relevant to Iranian women’s lives. Many of those issues are previously unexposed in journalism and certainly are not discussed in public.
But I want to know more about the overall tension between reformist journalists and the government. As of April 2004, there were eleven journalists behind bars, several of whom have never been charged or tried. Several major daily newspapers have been shut down and websites are heavily censored.
“So how do you survive in this atmosphere? I mean, it’s hard enough to publish a magazine anywhere,” I say, knowing from my own experience that feminist publishing is a difficult racket.
“Journalism in developing countries is like walking on a tightrope, it requires a tremendous balancing act—never mind publishing a magazine that is exclusively targeted toward women. Sometimes you encounter an extremely valuable article with a potentially strong impact on the readers, one that can all by itself result in greatly positive influence on the society as a whole. I may decide to publish such an article,” she says, “even if it results in the closure of the magazine,” she says matter-of-factly.
She continues: “There are also times when the costs of publishing a piece outweigh its benefits, and can cause problems for a magazine that has been around for ten years and may even survive for another ten. In this case we decide not to publish such an article.”
Near the end of our talk we discuss the coming elections, and Sherkat turns the tables. She’s been pretty sober up to this point, but she gets a playful crinkle around her eyes and asks me, “Which of our two countries do you think will have the first woman president?”
I know she’s challenging the presumption that the United States is more liberal on women’s issues. And it’s true that although Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton come to mind, it does feel implausible that the United States will have a woman president anytime soon.
“Forty-six women are candidates for this term of the presidency. We have an article about it,” she says, handing me an issue still hot from the presses.
Who knows. Maybe Iran, like Pakistan (Benazir Bhutto) and India (Indira Gandhi) and New Zealand (Helen Clark), will be led by a woman before the United States is.
On the way out, walking past the young women who work for Sherkat, I don’t focus on their gray and black chadors as I did when I came in; instead I notice the subtle sheen of pink on the lips of the graphic designer, and the researcher’s lavender toenails.
It would be six months after we left Iran before Sherkat’s appeal was settled and her prison sentence for publicly challenging hejab was commuted. The fine still stood. The mullahs got the money. Zanan is still publishing.
The next day Maryam continues our education in the boundaries of hejab by taking us to a “happening” coffee shop in northern Tehran. We linger around a cascade of outdoor decks vibrant with young women and men sipping café glacé and making eyes at one another, just like in any mall-of-youth in the world. Sixty-five percent of Iran’s population is under twenty-five—which means an entire generation has come of age since the revolution. Like twenty-somethings the world over, members of that generation are interested in defining their own lives morally and politically. The decks are surrounded by trendy stores featuring high-ticket Western items and designer knockoffs. This is tony Tehran and we are among the Westernized elite, who find the clerics’ dress code oppressive and push its boundaries. Only one woman here seems to be honoring the most modest interpretation of hejab. She is a lone woman, with a baby, and is wearing a black chador. She stands out as not fitting in.
“Capri pants visible at two o’clock,” I stage-whisper to Orlando, our cameraman, so he can film a daring, tall brunette with glistening peach lipstick, toeless sandals, and painted toenails. “And check out that ingenue.” I nod toward a twenty-year-old with a fiery red veil perched five inches back on her head. “How does she manage that?”
“Bobby pins,” says Julie.
Personal acts of defiance, such as wearing makeup, revealing an ankle, letting bangs tousle out from underneath a carefully positioned scarf-cum-veil, give a pretty clear indication what these woman think of living under sharia as interpreted by them—the mullahs. Despite it being against the law, Iranian women wear a lot of makeup, much more than American women do. I love this beauty revolution. “How do they get away with this?” I ask Persheng.
“They don’t, always,” she responds. “I have a friend who went too far when she was camping up in the Alborz. She was caught with her veil off and sentenced to flogging. Seventy lashes. Luckily, she was able to buy them off and get a more lenient flogger who wouldn’t hit so hard.”
Legislating women’s powerlessness (via, in part, a dress code that makes them invisible) seems to be the centerpiece of the theocratic leaders’ struggle to maintain their own power. From Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to Turkey, the degree of political freedom a population experiences in general is directly expressed in the degree of control over women. But this is certainly not a tactic limited to Islamic societies. Tightening the reins on women and overall political freedom happens whenever fundamentalism lurks. Case in point: the Bush administration’s agenda to limit civil liberties (the Patriot Act) and revoke a woman’s right to choose.
“You guys are obsessed with the veil,” Maryam sighs. She shakes her head and finishes her qahvé Turk as we shoot through a second tape at the coffee shop.
“You’re obsessed too much with it,” she says, waving her hand. “It’s finished. The deal is finished. I mean, it’s more than twenty years now.”
“Would you wear the veil if you didn’t have to?” I ask.
“Of course not,” she says, looking at me as if I am a confused simpleton. “Would I wear it? What a thing to ask.”
While Maryam would not choose to veil, many Iranian women would for a variety of reasons: to honor the Qur’an’s code of modesty, to avoid harassment from men and keep from being overly sexualized, to keep the sun off.
Maryam is right that the veil is just a scarf, a piece of clothing worn throughout the Muslim world and beyond. Obsessing about it instead of, say, the repressive marriage and family laws of Iran, may seem misguided. But in making the veil mandatory, as Iran’s theocracy has done, the veil becomes a powerful and institutionalized symbol of oppression. And for better or worse, TV is a visual medium, and the veil is a powerful image. So I toss Orlando a third tape.
Resistance to the mullahs’ monoculture is not limited to the big cities or urban sophisticates. Jeannie came back from the scout trip with a story of a folk painter and rice farmer named Mokarrameh Ghanbari. Ghanbari, she told us, was challenging Islamic art taboos in a way that h
ad made her a sensation in the tiny village of Darikandeh, on the Caspian plains. We leave behind the haze and head for the hills to meet her.
We drive through the Alborz Mountains, passing the highest peak in Iran, the 18,300-foot volcanic Mount Demavand, which has been muse to hundreds of Persian poets. The Caspian plains are the heartland of Iranian agriculture and run the length of the country’s northern border, stretching between the Alborz and the Caspian Sea.
Julie and I are used to being in production overdrive and assumed we’d make it to the Caspian in five hours. (That is, unless our tires melt in the outrageous heat.) But every hour or so our Iranian team pulled home-field rank and stopped for tea and pistachio breaks at one or another of the open-air roadside eateries with thatched roofs. When it comes to road trips, the Persians’ three-thousand-year-old culture becomes apparent. Very civilized. We Westerners had to curb our eat-and-run ways. And we Westerners were outnumbered four to three.
The road through the Alborz, like most that breach mountain ranges, follows one stream up to the divide and another back down to the plain. Along the way we pass a huge dam. “My father oversaw the electrical production of that dam,” says Persheng. Persheng’s parents now live in Manhattan. The Iranian diaspora, like the Cuban, is largely made up of the country’s well-off and educated who chose to (and were able to) leave.
The descent out of the Alborz is much steeper and curved, and the trucks, fueled with cheap gas and testosterone, play chicken on the two-lane highway. I secretly thank Allah for the alcohol ban. Because the Caspian fog creeps up these canyons, they are more lush than those of the ascent, and the steep downgrade makes the views more spectacular. Despite the occasional spike of adrenaline through my body, I begin to relax. “A fast-moving car is the only place where you’re legally allowed to not deal with your problems,” says Douglas Coupland, extolling the virtues of road trips. And, I’d add, in Iran, a fast-moving car in the mountains, away from the watchful eyes of the morals police, is one of the few places you can let your scarf slide back enough to allow a bit of fresh wind to cool the scalp.