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

by Azadeh Moaveni

  In all my years I had never seen Tehran like this before. So urbane and openly hospitable to people with money to spend, yet so hard-edged and ungenerous to those who were struggling. After my round of sybaritic tourism, I spent a day visiting two girlfriends who had just had babies. Neither were particularly well-off, and both seemed downright nervous over the state of the economy. One had a daughter who was suffering allergies from the polluted air of central Tehran, the other a son who could only take a certain brand of expensive, imported formula. Five years ago, neither of these problems would have been such a big deal. The first friend could have moved to a less congested neighborhood, the second would have absorbed the cost of the formula. Now, moving was out of the question, and inflation meant that the formula cut into their monthly savings.

  A week into our trip, Solmaz called to warn us that the police were sweeping the neighborhood to confiscate illegal satellite dishes. I climbed to the roof to remove the coding device out of my parents-in-law’s dish. It was costly to replace, unlike the dish itself, and the raids of recent months had made us expert in such matters. Now accustomed to such invasions, Arash’s nephew Aryo sulkily announced that “the stupid people are back,” and popped in a Tom and Jerry DVD—already world-weary at the age of seven.

  Our two weeks in Tehran quickly drew to an end, and I found myself satisfied only on two scores. First, Hourmazd’s pediatrician had examined his underarm and concluded he didn’t need surgery. Such reactions to the tuberculosis vaccine were commonplace, it turned out, and in most cases resolved themselves without such intervention. Second, I hadn’t contacted Mr. X, and he had left me alone; I had already decided that I would never consent to deal with him again, and it was a great relief not being forced to enact that resolution. But otherwise, I felt frustratingly unresolved. I had imagined that visiting Iran would somehow be a corrective journey for me. I would either conclude that we had misjudged our priorities and would have been better off staying, surrounded by relatives who would give Hourmazd perhaps the strongest life foundation of all, or I would be abruptly reminded of how awful the country was, how inconvenient, poorly run, starkly divided, even dangerous. Instead, though, I felt all of these things in equal measure. Not being able to reach a well-defined conclusion frustrated me. I didn’t want to go back to London with my mind rehearsing its familiar, tiring dialogue (“I don’t like London … but Tehran is unlivable, right? … Remember how cars wouldn’t stop when you were trying to cross the street with Aryo and Hourmazd? … You can’t live in such a ruthless place! … but what if we stayed at home more?”).

  On our way back, something terrible happened at the Imam Khomeini airport that would silence these deliberations forever. I was rushing to reassemble Hourmazd’s stroller after passing it through the second X-ray machine (he was possessive of his “car” and wept each time it disappeared, however briefly). He had placed his hand on its side when I wasn’t looking and one of his fingers caught in the hinge as I pulled the stroller open. He screamed in pain, and by the time I managed to pry the hinge apart, his tiny finger was crushed. It was purple and pressed sickeningly thin, so thin I was certain he would lose at least the tip. As he gasped, screaming in short, staccato bursts, I asked the attendant to call the airport emergency line. In tears myself, I tried to distract him, but there was nothing on the walls but posters of mosques and ayatollahs. I think you can only absorb the full absurdity of these images when trying to use them as a distraction for a wounded, frantic child.

  As five minutes turned to ten and no one arrived to help, I grew desperate and angry. Why did the airport need a second X-ray check? We had already dismantled the stroller once upon entering the departure terminal. Even at Heathrow, the airport of a nation that was a victim rather than a purveyor of terrorism, we had only gone through one check. When fifteen minutes passed, I became desperate. What if he needed immediate first aid to save the finger? I had given him a double dose of Tylenol already, but he still seemed in agony, writhing in my arms and drenched in sweat. I decided I had to save him, and ran toward the information desk. Along the way, I saw two men carrying a small leather box that looked like a doctor’s bag from the nineteenth century walking unhurriedly toward the women’s security check. I rushed toward them, yelling, “It was us, it was us who called you.”

  I was very polite. I didn’t ask them why it had taken so long, and why, as emergency first-aid personnel, they had been walking instead of running or riding a trolley. One of the paramedics examined the finger and said there was nothing to worry about. “At this age, babies don’t really have bones so much as cartilage, so there’s actually nothing you can do. He’ll be fine. Just give him pain medication if he needs it.”

  “That’s all?” I couldn’t believe that a finger so thoroughly crushed required such little attention.

  Zoned-out from the Tylenol and drained from so much crying, Hourmazd slept all the way to London. I spent the flight consumed with anger, raging silently at all the various historical forces and individuals who had brought about the Iranian government in its present form. I cursed the Islamic revolutionaries, the radical Mujaheddin who assassinated the few moderates among them, I even cursed Yasser Arafat (the first foreign leader to visit Khomeini). I had no doubt that the Islamic regime was responsible for Hourmazd’s injury, which shows just how irrational and stupid my anger had become.

  Back at home, I dropped off our bags and took Hourmazd straight to the doctor, who immediately sent us to the hospital for X-rays and prescribed a course of antibiotics. Smashed fingers, it turned out, do require medical attention. Antibiotics are required to prevent seri ous infections, which are not uncommon in crush injuries, and even a slight bone fracture can retard the growth of a child’s finger if left untreated. We walked home together, breathing in the cool spring air, past the leafy square where Virginia Woolf used to live, past the corner where Islamic extremists blew up a bus during the 2005 bombings.

  During this walk, all the doubts and longings of the past few months seemed to fall into order. Perhaps the shock of what had happened cut through my confusion and forced upon me a preternatural clarity. I had spent nearly a decade living in one place and pining for others, utterly perplexed over where I truly belonged, what place would make me truly happy. I realized, that day, the astonishingly simple truth was that I needed to stop thinking about where I might achieve mythical, perfect happiness and just choose to live in a country that did not make me crazy. This would probably not be the place where I felt most at home, the most comfortable, or the most loved. But no matter, because that place, Iran, also denied me balance.

  The rage I had felt on the flight back had reminded me of how angry I had always been in Iran. I didn’t realize until we left, until a whole continent separated me from the sources of my anger, how that corrosive emotion had become part of my experience of life. If I wasn’t boiling mad at Mr. X, I resented the officials at the press office who disapproved of his invasions but did nothing to prevent them. I fumed at the censored Internet and the jammed satellite signal, and spent hours brooding over all the horrible things the regime had done through the years to people I cared about.

  As though this constant outrage wasn’t punishment enough, I had also found it compromised my ability to perceive life around me properly. I had blamed the government for everything—traffic, the stuffy nose I got from the pollution, boredom, my cousins’ lack of motivation, my inability to show up anywhere on time, the apathy that afflicted everyone from street sweepers to engineers. At heart I had known the mullahs were at fault, and this conviction had sapped my will to do enough, or anything at all, about those things.

  It had also encouraged me to widen the net of my blame, holding the government responsible for most of the dilemmas and challenges that befell me. Not being able to realize this properly had, I felt, lessened my person. I was smaller for losing perspective, and for not taking more responsibility for my actions. I could and should not have blamed the Islamic revolution f
or Hourmazd’s finger, because accidents are exactly that, and bad medicine is as common in the West as it is in countries run by bearded ayatollahs. Just before I had left for Iran, I had seen a news headline about a woman who had died in Britain after a nurse incorrectly administered an epidural into her arm. Upon reading that, I hadn’t condemned the Queen and Gordon Brown, but rather winced at the dreadful cost of human incompetence and the vagaries of fate.

  Living in Iran, I had lost that kind of perspective altogether, and I knew that staying away was the only way to try to regain it. I might be lonely in London for a long while yet, but compared to permanent anger and myopia, loneliness was something I could conquer. Outside Iran I was a more composed person, and that soundness was what my life—my family, my writing, my journalism—needed the most.

  On quiet evenings, when Hourmazd slept, I still gazed out the window and imagined the life we might all have had—all the Iranians in my life, in the world—living in one country, instead of scattered across the globe. It is a fantasy that all exiles indulge in, and perhaps the only recourse is the refuge Iranians have sought for centuries: literature. Persian poets of centuries past often roamed great distances, and their work traces the effect of migration on the imagination, its curious ability to both estrange and inspire. In London, I found myself reaching for these volumes more frequently than ever, grateful for the heritage in books that offers Iranians a place to retreat from the uncertainty of the present. They are a reminder that though today Iranians are diminished by the cruel laws of unjust tyrants, it has not always been so, and thus will not always be.

  Author’s Note

  Most of the characters in this book carry their real names and identities. In a handful of cases, I have changed names to protect people. In one instance I have changed the biological details of a character whose position in Iran requires special protection. In the case of the infamous Mr. X, whose “real” name was an acknowledged pseudonym, the “X” simply veils what was already hidden.

  I benefited tremendously from knowing in advance that these two years of my life would be transformed into a story. I have reconstructed most of the dialogue and events from notes, some more detailed than others. To fill the lacunae in my journal, I have relied on the help and memory of those who shared the experience with me.

  Readers may be confused to find familiar Arabic words and names, for example Ramadan and Hussein, rendered a bit differently: Ramazan, Hossein. I have used the Persian transliteration of Arabic to reflect how these words are pronounced in Iran.

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to the many individuals who supported my work in Iran and the publication of Honeymoon in Tehran.

  For generously sharing time and knowledge over the years: Farhad Behbehani, Kavous Sayyed-Emami, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Saeed Laylaz, Nasser Hadian, Hadi Semati, Hamidreza Jalaipour, Mahmoud Sariolghalam, Mohammad Atrianfar, Goli Emami, Ali Dehbashi, and Majid Derakhshani. Mohammed Reza Lotfi, for the privilege of his friendship and continual inspiration. Shirin Ebadi, whose counsel and company have enriched my understanding of Iran immeasurably.

  For sharing their expertise: Farideh Farhi, Vali Nasr, Karim Sadjadpour, Shahab Ahmed, and Sohrab Mahdavi. At the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance: Effat ol-Sadat Eghbali, Gelareh Pardakhty, and Farahnaz Abdi, who have treated me with nothing but kindness and respect for so many years. Muhammad Sahimi, Mohamad Bazzi, and Fiona O’Brien, for reading parts of the book and offering their excellent insights. My editors at Time, eternally patient with a book-writing mom-reporter: Howard Chua-Eoan, Romesh Ratnesar, Tony Karon, and Lisa Beyer. To Ambassador M. Javad Zarif, for his unstinting encouragement.

  Eshrat Abedi Hayaty, my mother-in-law, for crossing continents to look after my son while I wrote. My friends in Iran, for their stories: Nazila, Carmen, Solmaz, Shabnam, Mehrdad, Ghazal, and Ahmad. My mother, Fariba Katouzi, for her tremendous resilience.

  David Ebershoff, my editor at Random House, for his wonderful enthusiasm and generosity, and for bringing his brilliant creative instincts to virtually every line of Honeymoon in Tehran. Lindsey Schwoeri, for additional help editing. Diana Finch, my agent, for her abundant support and keen oversight of everything to do with my writing.

  Most of all, I want to thank my husband, Arash Zeini, who showed me glorious corners of Iran that I never knew existed, championed me throughout the darkest times, and nurtured my ideas and ambitions as though they were his own. Without Arash’s insight, love, and tireless help, this book simply would not have been written.

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  Questions and Topics for Discussion

  1. On her trip to Iran to report on the 2005 presidential election, Moaveni encounters many Iranians who are boycotting the vote to register their disapproval with the government. Others, however, plan to participate despite their opposition to the mullahs because they wish to shape the outcome. Compare the two perspectives of ethicality versus practicality. Discuss whether voting under an authoritarian regime adds to the government’s legitimacy. Are those who choose to abstain also somehow complicit in what unfolds? What would you choose to do in such a situation?

  2. Moaveni writes of Iran in 2005, “Iranians accustomed to a bland, mullah-controlled existence lacking in entertainment and retail prospect had never faced so much choice”. Compare her portrait of Iran at that moment with the more repressive society she describes in the book’s final pages.

  3. In exploring the shocking victory of the hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Moaveni learns that he ran on a platform of more jobs and economic change. The new president’s radical Islamic ideology was as much a shock to Iranians as it was to everyone else in
the world. Discuss whether the real circumstances surrounding the president’s victory were effectively reported by the Western media. Did you assume that Ahmadinejad reflected Iranians’ true worldview?

  4. Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel laureate, appears as a character throughout the book. How would you describe her?

  5. Compare Arash’s and Azadeh’s attitudes to the Shia festival of Ashoura. How do their views reflect their respective experiences with Islam, and Islam’s intersection with politics?

  6. Does Azadeh’s description of the government’s premarital class, with its frank discussion of sex and liberal attitudes toward marriage and divorce, resonate with your understanding of Iran as a fundamentalist nation?

  7. Was it foolish for Azadeh to risk her future by getting married under Iranian law?

  8. Moaveni writes that “Iran has struggled for centuries to reconcile the Islamic and Persian traditions”. The tension between these two pasts recurs throughout the book. Discuss what it means for Iran to be a Persian, as opposed to an Arab, nation, and how this history influences Iranian identity today.

  9. Azadeh and Arash argue frequently about Islam, specifically whether the faith should be judged by its core tenets or by the realities of its modern adherents. What do you think?

  10. In the chapter entitled “The Persian Bride’s Handbook,” Azadeh describes a society enthralled with extravagant weddings. What parallels do you see between the Iranian and the American wedding industries? What does the desire for such productions, the willingness to spend beyond one’s means, say about our societies?