In the week between the first and second rounds of the election, Iranians marveled at the Ahmadinejad surprise, but the moderates still did not imagine that he would ascend to the presidency. I certainly never considered it possible; I was blindly convinced that the regime itself considered Rafsanjani the sensible candidate. Still, however poor Ahmadinejad’s prospects seemed, his presence on the ballot alarmed reformists. They realized many things too late: that their inability to unify and support one promising candidate had left the field dangerously open; that the highest echelons of the regime opposed Rafsanjani and were organizing his defeat; that the pairing of the notoriously corrupt Rafsanjani with an unknown populist made for unpredictable voter behavior. It was no longer clear at all who was driving events, and the imperative of getting Rafsanjani elected, however distasteful his record, became a shared cause. The reformists found themselves trying to resurrect a man they themselves had ruined.
On June 24, 2005, I was watching the early results on CNN, getting ready to go out for cocktails at Beirut’s newest rooftop bar perched above the Mediterranean. I remember the moment exactly—the strawberry juice I was drinking, the taxis honking in the Christian quarter—the way people often recall precisely where they were, what they were doing, when the unthinkable occurred. The phone rang. It was Nasrine calling from Tehran, her voice tearful. “He’s ahead … he’s ahead by thirty percent,” she said. “Go vote now.” I dialed the number of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, a place not known for its dutiful participation in the democratic process. “Would it be too late, please, for me to come vote?” “Voting finished at two,” the attendant snapped, before hanging up. Frantic at being away, I called everyone I knew in Tehran, ordering them to the polls. But by six P.M., it was obviously too late. I put down the phone, feeling terribly alone and misplaced. The world seemed to be falling apart, and Beirut, going about its shimmery summer evening, scarcely took notice.
In the week that had passed since the first round of voting, I had researched Ahmadinejad’s tenure as mayor. He was an unabashed religious conservative, and his work as mayor showed a disturbing tendency to inflict his own hard-line values on a more progressive population. He had sought, for example, to turn back into mosques the many cultural centers that had been created in Tehran. These centers figured importantly in the lives of middle-class young people, being among the few places they could go to socialize, borrow books, and freely cultivate their minds. The impulse to shutter these centers and replace them with mosques signaled a sinister disregard for young people’s modern needs. Even clerics spoke openly about Iran’s spiritual crisis, how years of stern Islamic brainwashing had alienated young people from the faith. When even senior clerics admitted that mosques were more empty than ever before, how could Iran choose a president who wanted to build more?
We had all been wrong. Desperately, fatally, irretrievably wrong. The election had mattered after all, and so had voting. A fundamentalist former mayor with no record of leadership at the national level, whose major efforts as mayor of Tehran were to turn the capital’s squares into cemeteries and segregate the elevators in government buildings, had become president of Iran.
CHAPTER 5
Days of Wine
In July, a month after the election, a number of Iranian officials conveyed to me directly and via intermediaries that they had been displeased with my article. It had run under the headline “Fast Times in Tehran,” and it opened with a scene in which friends of mine drank alcohol while driving down a Tehran freeway. The officials’ disapproval, in fact, revolved entirely around this passage. In my years of reporting on Iran, I had always wondered what story would eventually get me into trouble. Perhaps it would be an investigation into regime corruption, I had thought, or a clandestine interview with a dissident under house arrest. That I could be reprimanded for mentioning the public consumption of cocktails had never crossed my mind. I couldn’t believe that such a trifling scene—amid far more damning descriptions of how young people despised the mullahs—could provoke the ire of so many. What I considered an example of some of my best reporting, a wide-angle portrait of a despairing generation, was reduced to “the article in which Ms. Moaveni’s friends drink on the freeway.”
I tried to make a case for my story with one official, an Iranian diplomat I kept in touch with by e-mail and had met on a brief trip to Europe. “But don’t you think it shows how sensible the Iranian government has become? That it tolerates the natural behavior of young people?”
He did not agree. I asked why this one depiction rankled so much, when Tehran’s underground party culture had been documented in enough articles to render it almost a cliché.
“Yours was so … unsubtle,” he said. But his offhand tone did not suggest he actually minded. It seemed as though scolding me was a duty, as if he needed to be on record registering disapproval.
“Do you actually think that people around the world believe Iranian young people don’t drink?”
“That’s not the point. There are limits in an Islamic country, and this crossed them.”
I left feeling irritated at myself for not having anticipated such a reaction.
More upsettingly, another official conveyed this message through a friend of mine: “Efforts were made to ensure Ms. Moaveni’s safe return to Iran after the publication of her book. We read her story with disappointment. We had not expected this of her.”
While it all seemed quite irrational to me—my first book contained many instances of people drinking, after all—it was clear I would need to make amends to the Iranian authorities. Fortunately, the timing could not have been better. That summer, Lebanon was a dead news story, and my editors were eager for me to return to Tehran and parse Ahmadinejad’s victory. My work on Shirin khanoum’s book also required some time in Iran, for one more round of in-person interviews. And, truth be told, I was impatient to see Arash again. I had been thinking about him, remembering the witty, insightful way he had described Tajikistan. I booked an open ticket to Iran, where it seemed I might spend a more productive summer all around.
Upon arriving in Tehran, I made my obligatory phone call to Mr. X, who greeted me rather indifferently. “Welcome back, keep in touch,” he said briefly, without asking further about the purpose of my trip. Neither did he mention my article, which I found strange, given the widespread censure it had managed to provoke. Since I wasn’t about to bring it up myself, our conversation ended quickly.
The first thing I did, before even alerting my friends that I was back, was to write a sober article about the Basij for Time. My article, I hoped, would humanize the militia’s rank and file, explaining how they were partly compelled by poverty to become members. Given that the militia organized the get-out-the-vote effort that propelled Ahmadinejad to victory, the Basij offered a legitimately current subject. More important, the story would be placed in my government file, and I could always invoke it to argue that I covered the Basij as forthrightly as I did tipsy Iranians. The story only took a couple of days to finish, as my notebooks were already full of research and interviews. I concluded that Ahmadinejad won the Basij’s loyalty by promising to relieve the grinding poverty and joblessness that afflicted most of its members; ultimately, they would judge him on whether he was able to improve their daily lives.
Next, I sought an interview with one of my best sources. I wanted to understand Ahmadinejad’s surprise win, and this government official was both well connected and candid. His assistant set up a meeting for the following day at one of the Shah’s former palaces in north Tehran.
I arrived early, and an attendant escorted me through a spacious, sunlit foyer to what must have been a drawing room in the Shah’s day. A chandelier composed of a thousand delicate crystals hung over the empty room, whose walls were covered in intricate paneling. I much enjoyed meeting government officials in former palaces. The opulent backdrop offered a striking contrast to the mullahs’ turbans and Islamic rhetoric, and I felt privileged to be watching one of
history’s truly great revolutions unfold. Sooner or later, though perhaps not during my lifetime, the Islamic Republic would evolve into a normal country, and college students would study the revolutionary mullahs along with Robespierre.
Usually a bearded male secretary arrived to interrupt these musings before they blurred into visions of Marie Antoinette. But that day, the cleric I had come to see was especially busy and kept me waiting longer than usual. I could hear him trying to explain to foreign reporters, in between cryptic, hushed phone conversations with senior officials, the fateful outcome nearly everyone had failed to predict. Perhaps Ahmadinejad’s election affirmed stereotypes that many held about Iran. But for those who knew the country well, Iran was a nation of moderate, educated young people receptive to the West. Their election of an avowed hard-liner demanded explanation.
Seeing the Al Jazeera logo on a camera inside the room, I realized I would be waiting for a long while yet. The officials of the Islamic Republic granted Arab journalists special access, more time, and precedence whenever possible. The regard was mutual, for Tehran’s Arab press corps—composed mostly of journalists who sympathized with Islamist ideology—often covered the country as though the revolution were an unmitigated success, ignoring student protests and reporting on stage-managed marches in a manner befitting Pravda. Underlying all this was the fondness of Iranian officials for all things Arabic, including the language, of course, in which the Koran had been revealed, and the longing of Arab journalists from secular dictatorships for an Islamic dictatorship. And so I waited another half hour, wondering whether anyone would notice if I poked around the drawing room. I took a few steps inside, and discovered the grand piano was less out of tune than I had expected. I ran my hands across the keys, warming up with a Chopin exercise I learned when I was twelve and then turning to an old Persian melody I had played as a child, “Golden Dreams.” Many displaced families nostalgic for Iran favored it especially.
After a few moments, an assistant called out, “Hajj Agha will see you now, Ms. Moaveni.”
I hurried toward him, rehearsing all the questions that had vexed me since I’d first heard of Ahmadinejad’s victory. In the first few days, while still in Beirut, I had reread my notes obsessively, trying to understand how this had come to be, how everyone had misread what was about to happen. I tore the sheets out of my notebook and spread them across my desk, attacking the sentences with a highlighter, in search of recurring themes and clues. As I struggled to decipher my handwriting, slowly the signs started to appear, as though written in an invisible ink only now being dusted so that its message might be revealed. Over and over, the words stared back at me: “marriage,” “loans,” “jobs,” “salaries,” “pyramid scheme,” “unemployment,” “rent.” These were the concerns of most of the Iranians I had talked to, and only at the eleventh hour had they been linked to Ahmadinejad’s promises of curative economic justice.
I sat down opposite the official across a coffee table covered in newspapers and a platter of raisin cookies. After we had exchanged a few pleasantries, I was ready to pose my first question. But Hajj Agha, a tall, fidgety man whose graying hair peeked out beneath the sides of his white turban, put in:
“Ms. Moaveni, if you were to grant me permission, it would make me very happy to provide you with a piano.”
“A piano?” I said.
The lustful mullah is a classic figure in modern Iranian culture, as archetypal as the hypocritical clerics of Molière. When I first began reporting in the Middle East, I imagined that clerics who espoused political Islam were devout ideologues, too busy pursuing Islamic government to pursue women as well. Experience soon overturned this naïve belief.
“That’s very kind of you, but I don’t really play anymore. I’m sorry if I disturbed you earlier.”
The assistant carried in cups of tea.
“Not at all. You play very beautifully,” he said. This was untrue. Even in my adolescent prime, my exasperated teacher had advised my mother to consider tap dancing lessons for me instead.
“Please allow this as a gesture from a friend,” the cleric continued, once the door closed. I did not know at the time that many clerics frowned upon even classical music, and that the proposal was theologically, as well as professionally, inappropriate.
“Should I find myself in need of a piano, I’m certain my father would be pleased to buy me one,” I finally said, reaching for a cookie and breaking it in two with what I hoped signaled closure.
I asked how he saw the future, and we turned to a discussion of whether the country was going to fall apart, now that a fundamentalist (or a more-fundamentalist-than-most) had mysteriously taken over. Many factors had been at work, the mullah explained. Ahmadinejad had emphasized day-to-day problems and focused on the poor, an appeal he made effectively in a television interview after the first round, portraying himself as exclusively preoccupied with improving people’s economic welfare.
“It is true,” the cleric admitted, fiddling with a bowl of sugar cubes, “that the reform movement’s disorganization is truly to blame. If the moderates had banded together, chosen one charismatic candidate, and run a platform that stressed both social and economic reform, people would have voted for them in droves.
“On the other hand,” he mused, “the top leadership wanted a subservient president, a yes-man, and it made sure it got one.”
This was a coded way of saying (to be more blunt in a certainly bugged room would have been unwise): Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, wanted a weak president who would not challenge his leadership or make him look fusty, so he colluded to get Ahmadinejad elected.
“I’m confused,” I said. “I thought I understood Iranian society. I thought most people wanted more secular government, wanted freedom and reform, and now they’ve gone and elected a man who considers cemeteries decorative.”
The mullah put the sugar bowl down and looked at me very seriously. “Do you think the people who voted for him even knew that? He spoke only about jobs and the economy.” He paused. “But still, don’t make the mistake of thinking that only class drives politics. Iran, as you should know by now, is more complicated than that. Eight years of failed political reform disappointed people. It made them indifferent to politics. This time around, they figured that if they could not have real freedom, they might as well have more manageable rent, better jobs. How old are you, by the way?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“So when you voted for Khatami you were in your early twenties, like the rest of the young people who elected him. In those years, the college years, human rights, listening to music, holding hands on the street mattered. Now that you’re almost thirty, and thinking of getting married inshallah, you may have realized how difficult it is for the average Iranian your age to start and support a family. It is a simple truth that in a country this wealthy, that is unjust. Redressing that, providing justice, is what this man promised. And as you know, we have a long historical tradition of demanding just that.”
It was an honest answer, one that admitted an uncomfortable truth: as long as reformists sought change within the system, they would be tainted by its inherent shortcomings. Its failures would be seen as theirs, and before long, their promises of a more open society would be considered as empty as the conservative promise of piety. Taken together, the last three presidential elections had not contradicted one another: Iranians wanted a more liberal, democratic society, as well as job opportunity and an easing of economic hardship. They had simply never been offered a candidate who emphasized it all. Voting for Khatami did not imply a disregard for the economy, just as voting for Ahmadinejad did not indicate a lack of concern for freedom. Slowly, my bewilderment lifted, and I could see this election for what it was—a natural pendulum swing between fixed priorities, the movement itself illustrating that neither side alone sufficed.
I called Nasrine as soon as I arrived home from my interview with the mullah, and she came over promptly after work. I told h
er to buy a toothbrush on the way, as my aunt was away in California and we had her apartment to ourselves. Nasrine tended to trudge loudly when she was unhappy, so I could tell by the lively clack of her heels up the steps that she was in bright spirits. She dropped her laptop bag on the couch, handed me a bag of carnelian cherries, and kissed me on both cheeks.
I poured us tea, and we settled into the L-shaped sofa, where we would spend the next several hours talking about the latest stories we were reporting, watching satellite television, and checking our e-mail.
“You’re here just in time,” she said. “I have a blind date tomorrow night, and I need you to come with me.”
“Don’t be silly. With who? I hope not with one of those Internet guys.”
The latest stage in Nasrine’s quest for love involved trolling Iranian websites for dates. Though the men she met were inevitably second-rate, she maintained that there were eligible types to be found if one was patient. I had no wish to tag along.
“I mentioned to Arash that I could really use some moral support, and he’s agreed to stay for the beginning at least,” she said, innocently.
I had to laugh at her connivance. In the end, though, Nasrine managed to convince me that the evening would be fun. As her chaperones, Arash and I would have plenty of time to chat. And should the young man prove unsuitable, we could help extricate her from the date.
The next evening, as Nasrine and I headed to pick up Arash, I admitted to myself that this was an ideal second encounter. Nasrine’s suitor provided instant material for conversation, and as co-chaperones we were paired without being on our own date. All of this made me relieved, and at first sight of him, I felt the same pull, the same deep attraction, I had in May. He got into the car, leaning forward to shake hands. “It’s lovely to see you again,” I said.
Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran Page 7