Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran

by Azadeh Moaveni

  “Nasrine says you’ve just been to Tajikistan. Was that work-related, somehow?” I asked, fishing for something interesting to talk about.

  “It was meant to be a trekking trip, actually. But most of the routes I had in mind were blocked by snow, so I spent a week in the capital, instead.”

  “And how was it?”

  “Frankly, totally depressing. And nothing at all like I had expected. Lots of run-down Soviet architecture, all cement of course. I don’t think Tajiks are very accustomed to western-style tourism, and twice I was called a spy for writing in a journal.” He went on to describe how the Tajiks seemed to consider all Iranians sex tourists and crudely plied them with women.

  His experience reminded me of Afghanistan, and soon we were engrossed in a lively discussion about the ethnic mélange and violent ways of Iran’s neighbors, the post-Soviet ’stans.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Nasrine nudged me, glancing toward Sonbol, who had dismounted and was now striding toward us.

  Maybe I could get the interview over with quickly, and go back to talking with Arash. I pulled out my notebook and asked Sonbol whether her ability to have a racing career made life in Iran more palatable, hoping to direct the interview toward the subject of youth frustration. She evaded this with a bored mention of the upcoming Istanbul Grand Prix, and then dispatched one of her friends to the stable’s kitchen. “Egg rolls please!”

  Constantly batting her eyes and holding side conversations with the others at the table, Sonbol seemed as impatient as I for our interview to be over. I asked her whether she had always wanted to be a race car driver; mistaking herself for a head of state, she sighed loudly. “I’ve been asked that so many times, can’t you just read what I’ve said on the Internet?”

  Though annoyed, I explained politely that I couldn’t filch material about her from other news stories, which she interpreted to mean I was done bothering her with intellectually taxing questions. She launched into a wandering aside about her hobbies, especially her heartfelt wish to go trekking in Nepal. It finally occurred to me that all the eyelash batting, the dreams of roaming through the Nepalese mountains, were directed at Arash. “She’s using my interview to flirt with him!” I whispered to Nasrine. “She probably thinks Nepal is a mountain.”

  A question about state television’s refusal to broadcast images of her receiving winner’s ribbons caught Sonbol’s attention, and she finally warmed to the topic of women versus the Islamic state. Curiously, her sympathies lay with the latter. She told me that Iranian women had somehow been too lazy to push for equitable rights—that if they had sufficient courage, like her, they would find that it was actually quite easy to secure new freedoms.

  Her comment reflected how little she knew about the women’s rights movement and its long history in nearly every domain of Iranian life. If women had made too few inroads, this spoke to the immensity of the challenge, not a deficit of courage. But Sonbol was a twenty-something party girl, full of herself and indifferent to such context. If she had been a more important contact, a senior official or an influential cleric, I would have circled back only at the end of the interview to probe what she had said. Since I doubted I would ever need her expertise again, I decided I could challenge her right then.

  “Sonbol jan,” I interrupted, “I’m surprised to hear you think Iranian women aren’t using sports to pursue access to public space.” The ruling clergy forbade women to attend sports matches, ostensibly because the unruly atmosphere was unfit for them but in reality because they frowned on women and men mixing in public and on women participating in sports. Earlier that spring, a group of about a hundred women had blocked the entrance to the Azadi soccer stadium before a match with Bahrain, chanting “Freedom is my right, Iran is my country.” They scuffled with police and chanted for five hours before finally managing to storm the stadium gates in time to watch the second half of the game, the first women to openly enter a sports stadium since the revolution. The breakthrough had taken place under Khatami, who was present at the game that day and ordered that the women be given seats. Perhaps only a handful of Iranian women were drawn to auto racing, but hundreds of thousands were passionate lovers of soccer, and having fought their way into the stadium was a significant achievement.

  “Nothing that happens to me here is affected by the outcome of an election,” Sonbol said, munching on an egg roll. Arash followed our exchanges with twinkling eyes.

  Night had fallen, and mosquitoes were preying on my exposed ankles under the table. I leaned toward Nasrine and suggested we head back to Tehran. Sonbol seemed not to notice our move to leave, though Iranian hospitality demanded she attempt at least twice to detain us.

  “I should be getting back, too; I have guests waiting for me at home,” Arash said, rising from his chair. Sonbol suddenly remembered she had brought lamb kabobs to grill, but the three of us insisted we really could not stay, and began walking toward the parking lot.

  Nasrine asked Arash to join us for dinner, but he said he actually did have houseguests he couldn’t abandon. After conferring over the best route back to Tehran, we shook hands and parted ways. I was pleased enough with the evening. As I saw it, Iran might have its own Danica Patrick, but this fact mattered little outside Sonbol’s privileged world. Even she, who should arguably have been grateful for the state’s magnanimity in letting her race, seemed not to consider her career meaningful. If, as Kambiz Tavana argued, Rafsanjani’s strategy for Iran was to toss young people scraps of liberalism—a female race car driver here, a female deejay there—I saw no great hope for his candidacy. Most young Iranians considered the revolution an abject catastrophe, and sought to leave for other lands where they could have a future. Convincing them otherwise would take much more than any ayatollah would be willing to give.

  The next morning, I went to see someone who understood Iran better than almost anyone. Shirin Ebadi lived in Abbas Abad, the neighborhood in north-central Tehran where my mother had grown up in the 1950s. Back then, fruit orchards and two-story houses covered most of the district. Now, like the rest of the city, Abbas Abad featured many oversize apartment towers unsuited to its narrow streets. The unfinished minarets of Mosallah—the city’s colossal ceremonial mosque, forever under construction—loomed over the neighborhood. I jumped out of the taxi a block ahead of Shirin khanoum’s street, near the local pizza shop that borrowed its pizza descriptions and menu graphics from Domino’s.

  In 2003, Shirin khanoum won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work defending human rights in Iran, and two years later she and I began collaborating on her memoir. I had been familiar with her efforts before she received the Nobel, as she had represented the families of the victims in Iran’s most recent, prominent trials—the notorious 1998 murder of a dissident couple by state agents, a 1999 police attack on a student dormitory, and a brutal child abuse case that highlighted Iran’s terrible custody laws. In 2005, the year we met in New York and began working together, Shirin was in her late fifties. She wore her dark hair, tastefully highlighted with streaks of golden brown, practically short, and her rounded eyebrows emphasized her soft, pleasant features. She was a small woman, but her assertive stride and intense manner lent her a more sizable presence.

  I found her mercurial, constantly shifting between the many facets of her complex life and persona: she could be warm and winsome, radiating the inviting grace of an Iranian hostess, or as tersely combative as a seasoned trial lawyer. At times the depth of her humility moved me, while on other occasions I found her almost arrogant, prone to over-swift judgment of people and their circumstances. With time, I came to understand her better, and realized she had grown into precisely the person her work demanded she be. If she was tough, it was because she must be to fight against her everyday opponents, the unscrupulous, brutal authorities of Iran. If she was a touch paranoid, it was because she had been hounded by the regime for nearly two decades. Despite all the edges of her personality, Shirin khanoum was also deeply generous
and lots of fun.

  In the long hours we had spent together tracing her fascinating, rich life, from her early years as one of Iran’s first female judges, to the loss of her judicial career after the revolution and her emergence as a defender of human rights, our relationship had deepened. I looked to her for guidance in many areas, especially those confusing junctures in Iranian political life where the wise choice and the ethical choice seemed entirely at odds. These moments were Shirin khanoum’s specialty, and she handled them decisively and swiftly, with great skill.

  She opened the door looking more rested and animated than usual. The last time we met, she had been suffering from all the stress and exhaustion of her work—padded braces had encased both her neck and wrists (pinched nerves), and she was on medication for high blood pressure. I was relieved to see the braces gone, and the comfortable way she padded around in her house slippers. We needed to work on her book’s final chapters, and I pulled out the questions I had prepared.

  I felt we hadn’t explained quite fully what drew her, a young woman in her early twenties, to become a judge. “Did you have any role models, anyone you looked up to?” I asked.

  I could tell from her impatient expression she thought this was a silly question. “I’ve never wanted anyone to be my role model, because that’s close to hero worship, something I’ve always been wary of,” she said sternly.

  “But is there no one whose work you admire?”

  “I suppose I can’t hide my affinity toward people like Indira Gandhi,” she conceded. “She was defeated once, but she didn’t withdraw. She pulled herself back up and returned to the ring.”

  I sped through the rest of my easy questions, and gathered my thoughts for what I knew would be difficult.

  “I think we need to help readers understand better what kind of democracy you envision for Iran, and how you see Iranians getting there. You’ve talked so much about Islamic democracy in the early pages, but later you tell us that because Islam is forever open to interpretation, it’s difficult to use religion as a foundation for legal rights. How do you square these views? Also, if the Iranian government has shut down most of the legal avenues for criticism, how are Iranians supposed to bring about an Islamic democracy, anyway?”

  Shirin shook her head impatiently. “Do we really need to get into this? This is supposed to be a book about my life. I’m not a political scientist; why should I have to explain something even political analysts can’t figure out?”

  “Because people look to you for guidance,” I said gently. “You symbolize the possibility of peaceful change, and they expect to hear your thoughts on what they wonder themselves.”

  “Well, I just don’t know what you expect me to say. Should I say armed struggle? That’s all that’s left when peaceful movements go nowhere. But obviously I don’t think that. Iranians are ready to go to prison, to be killed for dissent, but they’re not ready to pick up weapons.”

  “I’ve heard you say many times that change is going to take a long time. Why don’t you just explain both the limits and importance of working within an Islamic context, and be honest about your own frustrations?”

  She nodded in assent, and I could tell by the glint in her eyes that she was already honing her thoughts, that I had convinced her. Often she felt she had to respond to my questions with answers—with the solution to a complex, unworkable situation—when all I wanted were her candid thoughts.

  We paused for a break mid-morning; Shirin poured us coffee and cut slices of a moist swirl cake with creamy icing and raisins. I asked whether she was still planning to boycott the election, and whether that might not backfire as a strategy. I already knew why she had no intention of voting. The Guardian Council, a powerful, unelected cleri cal body charged with vetting elections and legislation, had intensified its interference in domestic politics, barring many reform-minded candidates from the last parliamentary elections. In this election, it had approved only eight of the thousand people who had applied to run, and disqualified every single female candidate. Shirin khanoum believed that such interventions in the process rendered Iran’s elections a sham.

  “But what about the consequences of not voting at all? Would that not be abandoning the fight, leaving the political theater open to unpopular radicals?” I asked.

  “My daughter asked me the same thing,” she said. “They held a debate in her college class, and decided that it’s better to vote, if only to prevent Rafsanjani from being elected by a wide margin.” Almost everyone believed that Rafsanjani would win, and a common concern among liberal Iranians was that he not win with a landslide. They believed he should win in a manner that reflected the ambivalence of the electorate, the fact that he was primarily an alternative to the conservatives. If we all agreed that was important, her daughter had wanted to know, then why was it right for Shirin khanoum not to vote? “Not voting is also right, as an act of civil disobedience. The world is not black and white, and some choices are subjective,” she explained to me. “From my perspective, something may be entirely right, but from yours it will still be wrong. What I happen to think is that by voting, I add another drop to the bucket of the regime’s legitimacy. You, of course, are free to think differently, for it is in this way that we represent different aspects of reality.”

  Our discussion about the election drew to a close, and I gathered my things to leave. On the way back to my aunt’s, I reviewed what we had talked about and tried to piece together my thoughts. By instinct, I found myself closer to Shirin khanoum’s daughter’s opinion, inclined to shape the outcome by active choice rather than by abstention. There was something to be said for staving off the greater evil—a position shared by many in Muslim societies. But the clarity of Shirin khanoum’s moral position also resonated with me, and though she had never said so outright, I felt there was a rare dignity in choosing not to vote, particularly in not voting for Rafsanjani, a man who had presided over Iran during an era that had witnessed numerous extra-judicial killings, as attested to by files Shirin khanoum had seen with her own eyes.

  If I had lived Shirin’s life, perhaps I too would refuse to vote. Her work involved daily entanglement with unimaginable evil, and that had shaped her judgment of how best to deal with Iran’s rulers. Earlier that year, when we were in New York working on her memoirs, we sat facing each other in her hotel’s breakfast room, for twelve hours each day, poring over her life. We sorted through the details of cases she had defended, and events in Iran’s history about which she held special, privileged information.

  She told me about the hundreds of young people the revolutionary regime executed in the early 1980s, most of them members of the Mojahedin-e Khalgh. This group, which opposed the leaders who had taken power, had targeted top officials for assassination. Many believed that the Mojahedin’s campaign, together with the state’s brutal response, actually enabled the regime to consolidate its power. In the years that followed, survivors and families of victims had sought out Shirin in numbers; she had more information than I could ever have imagined. They told her about how women were raped before execution, a brutality the state justified by its belief that virgins cannot go to hell (a final condemnation these women, they felt, deserved). They told her about how the authorities even forbade relatives from holding funerals for their dead kin. Much of this testimony we did not include in her memoir: we would collaborate again in the future, Shirin told me, and talk about these things “another day.”

  But she wandered through the painful memories all the same, recounting the story of her young brother-in-law, who numbered among the executed. The prison wardens used to call his mother and inform her of injuries he had suffered during interrogation—once a broken jaw, another time a fractured arm—so that she could send money for his medical treatment. “What had he done? His only crime was selling newspapers. There wasn’t any law anymore. … People’s lives had become so cheap.” Shirin’s eyes filled with tears. So did mine.

  On another of those days in New
York, she told me about how the government recruited and trained special teams for assassinating dissidents. “They usually didn’t kill people the same way. Some were killed in car ‘accidents,’ others in fake robberies. … Others were stabbed; some were gunned down. One other method was to inject them with a drug that would later result in a heart attack, a seemingly natural death.” The assassins, of course, belonged to the Ministry of Intelligence, Mr. X’s employers. That night I had nightmares of being stabbed as I left a meeting with Mr. X, of being chased down dark alleys.

  She told me many stories of prison torture, of inmates being blindfolded and led to mock executions. But these did not terrify me as much as her account of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photo-journalist who died in 2003 of injuries sustained while in police custody. I had heard she had also been raped, but had dismissed it as a rumor. Police rape was Iran circa 1989, not 2003. This was my denial at work, of course. Zahra Kazemi—the holder of a western passport, a resident of North America—could have been me. Shirin had represented the family in court.

  “Zahra’s mother visited her in the hospital,” Shirin told me. “She saw her under an oxygen mask, and realized she was being kept alive by machines. She pulled back the sheets and saw dark bruises all over her breasts, her arms, and her thighs.”

  I put down my pen, and bit down hard on my tongue, to hold back my tears. We went downstairs, so I could smoke a cigarette on the street outside the hotel.

  Since those days, I had come to view Shirin as a repository of the regime’s darkest secrets. Her decision to boycott the election arose partly out of this history, but for most Iranians, the impulse to boycott reflected more prosaic concerns. By 2005, the status quo permitted considerable space for criticism in the cultural sphere. Those who felt the need to comment on their society did so by producing films, becoming activist photographers, and pursuing other cultural endeavors that reflected and commented on the country’s dire reality. Frustrated young people started underground bands like 127 and penned lyrics that ambiguously communicated their despair. Though rock music was still semi-taboo, they often managed to hold small concerts on university campuses or other closed venues. A few years earlier, young people had had no such outlets for artfully expressing the dark, complex reality of their lives. That they were able to do so now made Iran more tolerable. The government denied them many things, but it permitted them to articulate their deepest selves in ways that actually encouraged their creativity.