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

by Azadeh Moaveni

  After this incident, harrowing in a distinctive way, a reminder of how casually our lives could be turned upside down, we began talking about leaving Iran. We had been circling the issue for weeks but never acknowledging it explicitly. Now it forced its way into the open. It was one thing having our security compromised by my work, which was deemed sensitive in the state’s paranoid view. It was another thing entirely to come so close to arrest as an ordinary citizen, because a teenage enforcer took issue with the fabric of my headscarf.

  Our conversations about leaving operated on two levels. There were the practical questions to work out. We talked about real estate and whether we could sell our apartment, about where we might move and what we might do in those places. Our choices consisted of Germany and England. We considered the United States, but only fleetingly. As much as I longed to live near my friends and relatives in California, my work required frequent travel to the Middle East and that made Europe a more practical choice. Europe also better suited Arash’s academic ambitions. With his MBA now completed, he had decided to continue his undergraduate study of religions at the doctoral level, focusing on Zoroastrianism. This meant he would need to study old Iranian languages, and only a very few universities in the world—most of them in Europe—offered instruction in those ancient tongues. Rather on a whim, he had sent off an application to the University of London earlier that year, at the height of the media furor over a U.S. attack. Since we had not actively been planning to leave, he had never taken the English language tests required for admission. When he did attempt to register for the exams (standing in line overnight with hundreds of others outside the registration center), he discovered that there would be no space in Tehran for months to come. It turned out we weren’t the only Iranians to have concluded recently that Iran was best left behind. Two and a half times as many young people were sitting the exams this year as had taken them the year before. Arash would need to go abroad in order to take the test in time for admission to the university.

  In making my own practical preparations, I, too, encountered the desperation of those trying to leave. It was fascinating how, when you were staying, the country seemed full of those also coping, intending to stay. When you began getting ready to leave, preparing for English exams or applying for foreign visas, it seemed as though everyone else was desperately pushing against the borders, too. I went to renew my Iranian passport, and asked the clerk to change my official status to “resident of Iran.” This was so that I could stay however long I wished during visits and not be bothered at the passport check at the airport (Iranian citizens registered as living abroad could stay a maxi mum of six months). A complete stranger who overhead me thought I was forsaking my American citizenship, and began to shriek in protest: “Madam! What are you doing? You will regret this forever, please reconsider!”

  I spent a long morning outside the British embassy in line for an extended visa, and watched the line growing longer and more impatient. The sun scorched overhead and the embassy guard refused to let people wait in the shade. He herded old people and those with children into a narrow line, unmoved as they wilted and cursed him. Many of those around nervously wondered whether their visas would be approved, and I felt during those hours the humiliated desperation of those who were, in their own society, engineers and respected matrons, but were now abasing themselves before the haughty embassy staff of a European power. Inside, I filled out visa applications for women who could not read English but were eager to emigrate and join sons and daughters. At one point, a guard walked over and asked whether he had not seen me before at the embassy. “I used to attend parties here all the time. But that era seems rather over, don’t you think?” I said. I told him the last time I tried to attend a diplomatic function, hundreds of Basij and security police surrounded the embassy, calling the guests traitors, vatan-foroush. Arash and I decided not to go inside, which had turned out to be wise. Several of our friends who braved the harassment cordon were arrested on the way out, charged with attending the Queen of England’s birthday party or some such nonsense.

  Once we finished handling our logistical concerns, we began feeling the emotional distress of leaving more acutely. Inevitably, that distress took the form of fights. Although we were in general agreement about leaving, we differed in the ranks we assigned our reasons, as well in how and whether those reasons should be shared with others. I was consumed by second thoughts that I unhelpfully aired for the first time in company. As our erstwhile therapist Dr. Majidi had discovered, friends and relatives seemed to have an oversize stake in the decision. Those who despised Iran and considered leaving themselves supported us, but those whose circumstances compelled them to stay made a sport of undermining our reasons. In the company of the latter, I felt awkward recounting our rationale. They warned that Hourmazd would grow up without close bonds to his extended family, that I would fall apart without the help and female companionship I was accustomed to. They argued that Iranian schools, the propaganda factor aside, turned out young people far more skilled in mathematics and hard sciences than graduates of western schools. I might have told myself all this, too, if I had been stuck in Iran. Arash felt blind-sided when, say, during the soup course at a dinner party, I would suddenly celebrate the science curriculum of Iranian schools. “But how can I trash the school system in front of a mother—the hostess—who has two school-age kids and will never have the chance of leaving?” I argued to Arash. “That’s rude. It’s unkind.”

  I made my case for etiquette, aware all the while that it was disingenuous. Rather than acknowledging my own doubts, I dressed them up in concern for other people’s feelings. The truth was, I was torn. I knew we needed to leave, should leave. But I didn’t particularly want to leave. I was also, strangely enough, nervous. I didn’t know how my career would fare in Europe, where I had no roots, connections, or expertise. My life had for so long existed between two poles, the United States and the Middle East. Europe was a place for airport transfers and holidays. “Why do you make yourself sound so helpless?” Arash asked. “If you can handle Baghdad and Kandahar, London could not possibly be intimidating. They speak English there.”

  Perhaps I could conquer my irrational fear of European life. But I was most nervous about motherhood in the style of the West, because I knew from the lives of my friends precisely what it would entail. I imagined myself marooned at home with an infant who did not speak, eating my meals alone, bereft of adult company and conversation. In Iran, motherhood did not entail such isolation. Like nearly all young Iranian mothers, I lived in close proximity to relatives and in-laws, and they shared my days. The culture of proximity I had found so cloying when I was single now seemed sensible and wise.

  And then there was the reluctance that lurked at the bottom of all my worries, a more abstract feeling, but as upsetting as the obvious pain of being separated from the people we cared about. “Don’t you see what it means for us to leave? It means Iran wasn’t livable enough. It means people like you and me don’t have a place here. We’re being run out, by a government that doesn’t care whether its people have a future. And don’t you see how it’s so much bigger than just us? We’re just two, but there are literally tens of thousands of people just like us. All of them, leaving. It means that all this talk of mending and changing and improving was a charade. That Iran is all heavy and rotten at the core. Doesn’t that make you horribly sad?”

  Indeed, Arash and I were joining the great stream of educated Iranians who each year abandoned (yes, abandoned) their country for better jobs and better futures abroad. Iran had one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world, according to official Iranian figures. Each year, at least 150,000 educated Iranians emigrated, taking their considerable talents with them to enrich the economies and key industries, the software, banking, and aerospace sectors, of other nations. Iranian state media lovingly, even gloatingly recounted their achievements abroad on the nightly news. Scarcely a night went by when the anchor did not intone somet
hing like “And today! An Iranian scientist in Australia decoded the human genome, a monumental breakthrough that will revolutionize modern medicine!” As though the state that ran the news broadcast with such nationalist relish were not the same state that willfully chased its most talented citizens away.

  Economic instability being a hallmark of authoritarian states, the week we decided to sell our apartment real estate prices in Tehran jumped 40 percent. The swing in the market, just the latest bit of mayhem wrought by Ahmadinejad’s catastrophic economic policies, frightened off buyers, overwhelming Iranians already struggling with high rent and home prices. The president, who now referred to U.N. sanctions against the country as a “piece of torn paper,” did not appear overly concerned. He took his inspiration from the Ayatollah Khomeini, who once famously remarked that “we did not make a revolution to slash the price of watermelon.” This nonchalance infuriated many Iranians, and the taxi driver who drove me to the doctor that week complained bitterly about the president, whose name was now synonymous with “This costs more.” The driver had taken out loans and saved for three years to buy a one-bedroom apartment in Shahrak-e Gendarmarie, a district in western Tehran. In the space of just one week, his plans had been dashed.

  For a whole month, I patiently stayed home in the evenings in case the local real estate agent wanted to bring over a prospective buyer. In Tehran, people often conducted their real estate dealings in the evenings, and the agent called only five minutes ahead of arrival. Just two people came to view our apartment. Though only eight years old, it was considered ancient—undesirable in a market saturated with brand-new buildings—and it had suddenly become expensive. Not surprisingly, most people who could afford such prices were either well-placed bureaucrats or those connected to them. One woman who arrived in full black chador immediately sniffed at being shown an apartment so “old.” The real estate agent introduced her as a surgeon, referred to her ingratiatingly as “khanoum doktor,” Madam Doctor, and tried to placate her by pointing out the building was built to western earthquake safety standards, an unheard-of feature in all the marble-encased luxury high-rise towers she was doubtless also viewing. These boasted lobbies with vaulted ceilings lined with vases of orchids, and seemed much more in keeping with her Islamic-oligarch tastes.

  She strode about the apartment, eyeing Arash’s instrument collection and our shabby antique furniture, curling her lip in distaste. “Your décor is so … so Iranian,” she said, pronouncing the final word with particular contempt. She paused in front of a painting, a piece of modernist calligraphy based on the Rumi verse “Pour nothing on my grave but wine.” It seemed to cause her physical discomfort. Her hands twitched around her chador and she turned to leave. “You should sell this place to foreigners. They would like such a place,” she said on her way out the door.

  We phoned the agent and told him to stop advertising the apartment to such people. In a building compring only five apartments, even one assertively conservative tenant could change the atmosphere. First they would demand the shared swimming pool be gender segregated. Then they might take issue with the satellite dishes and with parties. They could easily impose the culture of the regime on the building, as they had the law on their side. We couldn’t inflict such neighbors on Solmaz or on Arash’s parents. The real estate agent grumbled that he was doing his best; people were too skittish to buy in such an unstable market, because they expected that prices would fall again. And, he informed us, “People don’t want earthquake safety. They want a sauna and whirlpool in the master bath. Your place is going to take months to sell.” We told him to bring the price down. We started packing, hoping buyers would come. We finished packing. We bought airplane tickets. Still no one came.

  Smoke filled the night sky, billowing through the trees and coating our windshield in fine soot. Rioters had torched the main gas station on Niavaran Street, creating a traffic jam that we had been sitting in for over two hours. It was the first night of the government’s new gas rationing scheme, and gas stations across the city had been set ablaze. We were on the way home from a goodbye dinner party, and I called home every thirty minutes from my mobile phone, checking whether Hourmazd was still asleep. The government, nervous that the West might impose sanctions on its import of gasoline, had decided to withdraw the longtime subsidy that enabled Iranians to buy gas at the absurd price of about 35 cents per gallon. You may wonder why Iran, sitting atop such vast oil reserves, had to import gasoline in the first place. The answer is that the government had failed to build a sufficient refining capacity to meet the nation’s consumption needs. The subsidy was unsustainable and officials had long talked of canceling it, but successive governments, wary of the short-term protest and job losses it would entail, had delayed the move. The timing now, however, was more auspicious. Officials could blame the West, claiming they were forced to abrogate people’s God-given right to cheap gas because of the threat of unjust sanctions. But if the evening’s violence was any indication, this calculation had backfired. In addition to torching gas stations, rioters set fire to cars, smashed shop windows, and attacked a supermarket and bank. They hurled stones at police and chanted that Ahmadinejad should be killed.

  The authorities informed the nation at nine that evening, an ordinary Tuesday in June, that the rationing would go into effect at midnight. They neglected to notify the Tehran police in advance, so the force had taken no special precautions ahead of an announcement that would so obviously trigger an outpouring of anger. The regime also failed to explain to the nation’s seventy million people exactly how rationing would work. Would people have access to gas at all beyond their ration? If so, at what price? If not, would the authorities offer recourse? Naturally, everyone panicked, and the country descended into full-scale mayhem. People began storing gasoline in their houses, which promptly burned to the ground. In one day, 300,000 people registered applications for taxi licenses, since taxis would be allotted a larger ration (it was common for people to use unmarked, private vehicles as taxis). The next day the authorities announced that all taxis would have to bear a taxi placard, and most of the applications were withdrawn. For days, gas stations saw five-block-long queues at all hours. We were all down to the last drops in our tanks, and even at midnight the lines were still too long. “Why do we have an SUV?” I asked Arash peevishly on our third day at home.

  Taxis wouldn’t come at all, and when they did, they charged three times the normal fare. The last place I had seen such astonishingly long lines for gasoline was Baghdad immediately after the fall of Saddam (though I’m told those lines persist even now), and it struck me that if Tehran was beginning to resemble Iraq, perhaps we had chosen an appropriate time to leave. Iran’s uncertain place in the world had ceased to be an abstraction and become a reality disrupting our daily lives.

  It was the first time I had seen the square’s produce seller, usually mellow and not prone to talk of politics, unable to control his fury at the president. “He’s ruined this country,” he yelled, storming around a stand of figs and mulberries. “Why doesn’t someone shoot him?”

  I had secretly hoped our last day in Iran would be marred by another spate of gasoline rioting or an ugly encounter with the police. I wanted to depart with the memories of such hardships fresh in my mind, so that instead of feeling sad during our final hours I might think instead of the daily humiliations we were leaving behind. Instead, the day passed smoothly, and the evening was one of incomparable, poig nant beauty. Arash had carefully planned the date of departure so that we might catch, on our very final evening, the opening night of Ostad Lotfi’s concert series. Lotfi had not played in Iran for over a decade, and Tehran had been abuzz with anticipation and excitement for weeks. What did it mean that authorities were permitting open air performances by the nation’s preeminent musicians? To Arash’s keen disappointment, that summer concerts were to be held across the country, several of them including orchestras with female musicians.

  It would be a summer of mus
ic, probably the richest, most diverse array of fine performances held since the revolution. Did such official leniency suggest the brutality of the previous weeks would now ease out of the foreground? Certainly not. It was just a continuation of the perverse reality of Iranian life, which fluctuated between extraordinary brutality, commonplace routine, and unexpected, fleeting instances of real openness.

  As the sun set, we drove to Niavaran Palace. Built out of concrete and stone, the palace is architecturally unimpressive, but I was sentimentally attached to its bland modern lines. Here Arash and I had whispered through a concert of Indian music on our first real date. The Supreme Leader, a devotee of tar and classical Persian music, was rumored to live nearby, and several people in line to enter the palace joked that he could listen from his garden for free. As Solmaz handed her ticket to an attendant, a woman in chador asked her to pull her veil forward, then she whispered into her ear, “Just pull it back when you’re inside, no one will say anything!”

  At least three thousand people, among them many women in black chadors, mingled under a velvet sky before the palace steps, which were lined with flickering candles. The country’s most distinguished poets, musicians, film stars, and directors occupied the front row, and giant video screens displayed their faces as they entered and took their seats. “It’s like the Oscars!” I whispered to Arash. These celebrities sat alongside government officials and their chador-clad wives, and gazing at the scene, you could be forgiven for imagining this was a society at peace with itself, run by men who appreciated the arts, reconciled over the role of Islam in daily life. The crowd rose to its feet in excitement as Lotfi took the stage, dressed in plain white. He played with sublime beauty, even reaching for an instrument he rarely played in public, the daf. This is a round frame drum that Iranians have played for almost two millennia, long before the Moors introduced it to Spain, before it was adopted by Sufis in their rituals, before the mullah regime banned it from television. I gazed around me, at the faces of those I would miss lit by moonlight, and wished for them many more of such evenings.