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

by Azadeh Moaveni

  In the course of the evening, as Arash, Aryo’s mother, and Mahmoud Agha all drifted in separately to hear the news, our pretense of respecting the law crumbled, and we complained openly about the backwardness of censorship in the twenty-first century. Aryo appreciated being admitted into the confidence of the adults, and repeated, with a conspiratorial glint in his eye, “Yeah, what jerks!” His mother cast him a stern look. I tried to imagine the day’s lessons from his six-year-old perspective: Our family deliberately breaks the law. The law is senseless. We have been punished for breaking the law, but we intend to do so again. This time, however, we will spend more money on a smaller dish so as not to be caught. Money protects us from the unfair law. Money is good. Germany is good. Iran is bad. Long live the Power Rangers.

  Solmaz was walking Aryo to school one morning when three police officers in pine-green uniforms stopped a car that was idling in traffic. The woman behind the wheel wore a fuchsia headscarf and Jackie O sunglasses, and the officers motioned for her to pull over and roll down her window. One leaned over to inspect her appearance, informed her she was “badly veiled,” and proceeded to issue a formal warning for violating the Islamic dress code. When the woman pro tested, they told her she could either sign the warning or be detained. Solmaz, who was also wearing a bright-colored headscarf, grabbed Aryo’s hand and hurried across the street.

  It was not the most terrible incident that occurred that day, but it was the one Solmaz witnessed and would recall as the moment after which everything changed. That Monday, for no apparent reason, the authorities launched the most ferocious crackdown on “un-Islamic” dress in over a decade. Overnight, they revised the tacit rules governing women’s dress. The closets of millions of women across the country contained nothing but short, tailored coats, ankle-length pants, and bright headscarves. Suddenly, these styles were grounds for arrest. In the days that followed, the police detained 150,000 women for failing to abide by the official dress code. We were all afraid to leave the house, because it was obvious the authorities were out to make a point, arresting even women who were “sufficiently” covered.

  When forced outside by a meeting or an appointment that could not be rescheduled, we sent each other text messages upon departure and arrival, as though commuting through a war zone, as though we were in danger of disappearing en route, which I guess we were. The broadcaster who read the state’s evening news bulletin, a wolfish-looking man with puffy gray hair and an imperious voice, informed us that 86 percent of Iranians supported the crackdown. By that time, however, we had installed the new satellite dishes on our balconies, so we could see footage on foreign news channels of angry scuffles, of police forcing screaming, kicking women into their cars. During the height of the crackdown, Arash told me sales at Laico’s stores dropped precipitously: women were afraid to go out to buy bed linen.

  Ironically, the same problem applied to all of us who needed new wardrobes. My own closet contained the long abayas and chador I wore to official meetings and religious places, and the short, tight manteaus I wore everywhere else. I could not exactly see myself going out to buy bread dressed in an abaya, which is, after all, the national dress of Saudi Arabia, and looks it. I wrote to my best friend in California about the new campaign, complaining that the weather was getting hot and that I would be sweating in long, shapeless cloaks. She wrote back confused, having been under the impression that I had been wearing those shapeless cloaks all along. I suppose to people living in free countries where women wear what they please, the difference between a relaxed dress code and a stern one sounds inconsequential. In fact, it mattered desperately. In the years when women could wear colors, could show off the lines of their figures, what in effect became acceptable was the expression of individuality. Between the year 2000 until that April of 2007, I wore a headscarf and manteau in Tehran, but I still looked, from head to toe, like Azadeh. I did not resemble the thousands of other women on the street, but only myself. As I presume was the case for most women, this helped me to perceive the oppressive weight of the regime as lighter than it perhaps actually was.

  We gathered one morning over breakfast, discussing the new restrictions. Arash’s mother had invited us upstairs so that we could visit with Arash’s father, who had returned from Tabriz the night before and would be leaving for the Caspian that afternoon. The Ahmadinejad government was still refusing to take back the indebted factory, and as pressure mounted on the company, he was nearly always traveling between the factories in Tabriz and the company’s store at the Caspian. We lingered over breakfast, spreading fresh cream and cardamom-carrot jam over buttery rolls laced with ginger, fresh from a Tabriz bakery. Solmaz appeared, late as always, looking as though dressed for a funeral, in the loose, long black manteau that had become the only prudent outdoor garment. She poured herself tea and sat down to lecture Aryo. “If we are stopped on the way to school, you are to remain quiet, okay? Just sit there and think up a riddle for me. Remember, if you try to defend me, you might just make things worse.” He nodded seriously.

  The regime appeared divided over the crackdown. Conservatives in parliament issued a letter thanking the Interior Ministry and the police for their fine work and suggesting that the United States and Israel were responsible for Iranian women’s immodest dress. But the same week, the head of the judiciary argued that such “tough measures [would] backfire.” It seemed the Islamic Republic’s institutions were at war, and as usual, ordinary people suffered the consequences. I suggested that the infighting might herald an eventual easing of the new restrictions, but everyone around the table said it was too difficult to speculate. In Iran, sometimes internal rifts produced the most unexpected openings; sometimes they produced violence and chaos. Usually I was at my busiest during such fraught times, reporting both analytical pieces and accounts of how the turbulence affected women’s daily lives. This time, though, I did not write a word. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance told reporters not to “undermine” the police’s “public decency” drive with criticism, and threatened repercussions for those who engaged in such “divisive” journalism.

  I felt comfortable not writing about such momentous injustice. Many years ago, when I first started reporting, I believed that journalists who watched demonstrations and riots from the sidelines were somehow not the real thing. That you had to be in the midst of it all, to see the expression on the policeman’s face when he raised his baton to beat a teenage girl, to smell the sweat of those running in fear, to hear the shouts of the protesters resounding in your ear. The tension between personal safety and getting up close to the story lies at the very heart of journalism, and I had long since decided I was not willing to risk my life. I had stopped reporting in Iraq once the terrorists began beheading their captives, and while I respected my colleagues who continued, I knew I could not live that way. Covering wars changed many reporters forever. Once you consciously begin risking your life for journalism, the knowledge that you are doing so can disfigure your personality. You become enchanted with the romance of your sacrifice, dependent on the adrenaline-laced theater of close escapes, and emotionally walled off from those who do not inhabit the same charged, dangerous world. The safe repose of everyday existence begins to feel oppressive, and you begin to feel alive only when death lurks in the background. While no one can question the sheer nobility of reporting in hostile places, chronicling unimaginable evils, I did not want to be that reporter.

  Having long ago made peace with my decision to put safety above the story, I sat back and observed the crackdown unfold with the same trepidation and dismay as those around me. Several days later, however, in early May, I learned of an occurrence that shook my measured convictions. The call came in the afternoon.

  “Hi, this is ABC. We were wondering if you could talk to us later today about the implications of the arrest of Haleh Esfandiari.”

  “What arrest? … Are you sure? … When?”

  He told me that Haleh, an academic at the Woodrow Wilson Cen
ter in Washington, D.C., had been taken to Evin Prison earlier that day. She was one of the few Iranians I knew who had successfully risen to prominence in the United States and still made a point of nurturing the careers of young Iranian-Americans. I had met her when I was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, and since then had enjoyed her warm support and advice. I often consulted with Haleh about projects and story ideas. When my first book was published, she had invited me to give a talk at the Wilson Center. I still remember how proud I felt at being introduced by such an accomplished, impressive Iranian woman, how much it meant when she squeezed my hand after the talk and whispered that I had done well. The news that she was now in Evin left me cold. I asked the reporter twice again whether he was certain. Such rumors were not unheard-of in Iran.

  “I know her,” I repeated numbly, waiting for the reporter to acknowledge what upsetting news he had relayed.

  Silence. He was waiting for me to say whether I would agree to the interview.

  “She’s my friend. I’m in shock.”

  “Do you know anyone else who might be willing to talk about it?”

  I said I didn’t, and hung up. My very first thoughts, after I read the wire stories over my agonizingly slow dial-up Internet connection, were of what I could write in her defense. It was odious that the authorities were arresting academics on baseless charges, but to target Haleh was also exceptionally obtuse. She was one of the most respected, influential voices in Washington, arguing for a moderate Iran policy, convening conferences and hosting speakers who advocated engagement and a recognition of the two countries’ mutual interests. If those in Washington who wished to bomb Iran had one formidable foe, it was Haleh. Now the mullahs had put her in prison. As I imagined how I might say this in a story, I also felt, with growing dismay, how unwise that would be. The authorities had arrested her on the grounds that she used the Wilson Center as a base from which to plot the regime’s overthrow. Having spoken there more than once myself, in defending Haleh I would only draw attention to the association. The charges against her were precisely those Mr. X said were being prepared against me. Clearly, the safer course would be to stay silent, but to say nothing was also unbearable. I knew that if the situation were reversed, if I were the one sitting in Evin, Haleh would use the full force of her influence and connections to help me. How could I sit in my Tehran living room, doing nothing? I asked Arash what he thought about my writing some sort of opinion piece. Something that focused on her activities in Washington.

  “Are you forgetting that barely a month ago you had a nervous breakdown when the mailman rang?” He reminded me that we still did not know for certain whether Mr. X’s threats were empty, and that, with a small baby, it was reckless to raise my profile with such a story. I knew he was upset at my suggestion.

  “But I don’t want her to think I did nothing.”

  “If she knew about your situation, she would understand. That’s what makes her the person you admire.”

  Perhaps Arah was right. But I have never felt so small as I did that evening, preparing for bed in the comfort of my own home, imagining Haleh in a cramped, musty cell in Evin. It was loathsome to have to choose between protecting myself and my family, and acting ethically to help a friend. I began to wonder why Arash and I were still in Iran, when the present and what we could see of the future had nothing in common any longer with our purpose in life. And when did we start having a purpose in life? We had never discussed such a notion. I made a list in my head anyway: doing work we believed in (and hoping that work somehow made a difference to the country we both loved); raising our son in a reasonably stable environment with decent schools; being able to say, at the end of each month, that the joy we derived from our surroundings (our family and friends, the mountains and the city, the intimacy of the produce seller noticing we were buying less fruit) outweighed the petty nuisances (traffic; pollution) and the emotional burdens (the nervous tension; Mr. X).

  We were not bound to stay in Iran by forces out of our control. It was a country that had for three decades inspired in millions a fierce, desperate urge to flee. It was said that back in the early 1980s, shortly after the revolution, one man resorted to packing his fiancée in a suitcase and putting her on a plane as checked luggage. She arrived, of course, in a freer land, asphyxiated. This story circulated for years throughout Iranian émigré communities in the West, a heartrending example of the lengths to which some people would go in seeking a better life outside Iran’s borders. I heard it often as a child, and I brooded over the horrific last moments the suffocating fiancée, the suitcase bride as I came to think of her, must have suffered. Somewhere along the way, the story was embroidered to add bananas as the only thing she had to eat along the way. Had she even been able to peel them? I wondered with my child’s imagination. Or had she lost consciousness first? I fell asleep that night haunted by thoughts of Haleh in her cell, and of the suitcase bride’s hungry, tragic end.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Looming Mountains

  On a sunny weekend morning in the middle of spring, Arash and I headed out with Hourmazd for a walk in the Alborz foothills. Several days earlier, the familiar police vans and officers detaining women for improper dress had disappeared from the streets, and it seemed the anti-immodesty campaign had eased. We were eager to resume our weekly mountain stroll, one of the few stress-free public outings we could enjoy with Hourmazd. The tree-lined, paved path to Velenjak was navigable with a stroller, and the place drew mostly families and well-behaved young people, rather than the thuggish bands of young men who tromped around nearby Darband. From between the pine trees, billboards advertised electric kettles, panini presses, and high-tech deep fryers. People strolled along the path, chatting leisurely and snacking on crepes and barbecued corn. More adventurous young men and women donned puffy uniforms and darted around the paint-ball grounds. As usual, the “Answers to Your Religious Questions” booth stood empty and unattended.

  As I pushed the stroller along, a policewoman in black chador blocked my way. She could not have been older than sixteen, an adolescent fuzz of mustache above her lip. She fingered my plain white headscarf, pronounced it too thin, and directed me toward a parked minibus with dark windows. It took a full minute before I realized that she meant to arrest me. “I’ve been wearing this veil for over five years,” I pleaded, “surely it can’t be that unacceptable.”

  “My dear woman, it is your own fault for having chosen to wear such a thin veil, when you could have opted for a nice, thick, long shawl,” she scolded.

  Though I was nervous, I also had a hard time taking the teenager entirely seriously. She was underage, the thickness of my veil was debatable, and there was an infant in my stroller. Did she not notice the stroller? And why was she picking on me, when women wearing layers of makeup and more objectionable attire streamed past? Arash soon caught up with us and began berating the policewoman for harassing a young mother. Tongued-tied in my anger, I admired the perfect torrent of words. Arash used the motherhood jargon of state propaganda to admonish the girl; the language of the regime gave him full cover to attack. The girl shrank, with the deference to male authority natural in a traditional teenage female. The commotion caught the attention of a bearded superior officer, who came over to inspect me. “The problems are not few,” he said, frowning at my sleeves, which fell a few inches above my unsteady wrists. He ordered me to sign a ta’ahod, a promise that I would not repeat my mistake. “Now go home,” he said, “go home and don’t come back.”

  We climbed back into the car, silent and furious. Hourmazd detested his car seat and had screamed and cried throughout the thirty-minute ride to Velenjak. His pale skin was still red from the exertion, and the collar of his shirt still damp with sweat. Now he took one look at the car seat and began to scream. “What do you want me to do? They won’t let us take a walk,” I told him. Why had I ever thought parenting in Iran would be challenging only once elementary school started?

  At that moment, neit
her Hourmazd, nor I, nor Arash could bear another half hour of weeping. I held the baby in my lap as Arash recited the opening lines of “O mountain, today you heard my scream,” a poem by Houshang Ebtehaj, an eminent Iranian poet living in Germany. Ebtehaj composed the poem in the early years of the revolution, after morality squads barred him and a group of friends from climbing the very same mountain.

  We drove home, stopping to buy groceries for lunch. The produce seller was flipping the channels on his television and paused on a state-produced miniseries. Something in the drama provoked Arash. “Look at them, at all the money they waste making preachy serials for their own entertainment,” he said. Noticing a middle-aged woman in black chador who was inspecting dusky purple eggplants, he added, “If my saying so doesn’t offend Hajj khanoum.”

  “But we’re dissatisfied also,” she said, looking up in surprise.

  The produce seller selected a few choice mangoes to cheer us up. Then he added a basket of strawberries. “They’ll boost her IQ,” he said, smiling at Hourmazd. Advanced in years and partly deaf, every second week the produce seller forgot Hourmazd was a boy. One of his own sons usually bellowed, “He, Hajj Agha, he’s a he!” We gathered our consolation fruit and headed for the car, looking forward to an afternoon spent indoors, far from the morality police and their sixteen-year-old enforcers.