11. As she chronicles Iranian attitudes toward government support for groups like Hezbollah, Azadeh portrays a moderate society that frowns upon radicalism and yearns for respectable ties with the outside world. Is her depiction surprising, given how Iran is typically portrayed in the media? Is it convincing?
12. Discuss Azadeh’s interaction with the family she describes in the chapter “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” How do Azadeh’s attitudes toward her reporting and the Iranians she interacts with evolve throughout the book?
13. The history of Iran–U.S. relations, particularly the impact of the two countries’ troubled relationship on the daily lives of Iranians, is discussed throughout the book. Arash describes how U.S. economic sanctions keep Microsoft from developing Farsi software, effectively denying millions of Iranians access to computer-based learning. We learn that sanctions bar Iran from buying American and often European aircraft, and that many civilians die each year from accidents in shoddy Russian planes. Azadeh also finds that the Bush administration’s democracy promotion fund has prompted a major government crackdown on civil society. She writes that “activists and scholars, the people who were toiling in their respective fields to make Iran a more open society, were being targeted as a result”. Discuss how U.S. policy intimately affects Iranians’ lives.
14. Azadeh questions “whether it [is] even possible to raise an open-minded, healthy child in a culture that was fundamentalist and anarchic”. Discuss how families cope when trying to impart values that run counter to the mainstream culture around them.
15. Azadeh writes that “paradoxically, authoritarian laws had somehow made Iranian society more tolerant”. In her description of young Iranian women’s instrumentalist attitudes toward the veil, she interprets the ease with which women shed or don the veil to suit their relationship ambitions as progress. Would you agree that this is progress within a still deeply patriarchal culture, or do you consider it just an extenuation of adjusting to fit the demands of men?
16. The portrait of Iran that emerges throughout Honeymoon in Tehran is often quite complex. Azadeh describes the regime’s censorship of music and literature, but points out that censorship predates the Islamic Republic. In describing how Iranians’ attitudes toward music have evolved in the last century, she notes how the government’s repressiveness once reflected very real culture mores: “Something in our culture nurtures tyranny, and has for centuries”. Discuss the theme of complicity between Iranians and their government.
17. Discuss how Azadeh’s relationship with Mr. X evolves throughout the book.
18. In the Epilogue, Azadeh finds motherhood in the West more challenging and isolating than in Iran. Discuss how cultural norms of family life influence how stay-at-home mothers and working mothers are able to balance their own needs against those of their children.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AZADEH MOAVENI is the author of Lipstick Jihad and coauthor, with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She has lived and reported throughout the Middle East, and speaks both Farsi and Arabic fluently. As one of the few American correspondents allowed to work continuously in Iran since 1999, she has reported widely on youth culture, women’s rights, and Islamic reform for Time, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, and the Los Angeles Times. Currently a Time magazine contributing writer on Iran and the Middle East, she lives with her husband and son in London.
www.azadeh.info
Honeymoon in Tehran is a work of nonfiction.
Some names and identifying details have been changed.
Copyright © 2009 by Azadeh Moaveni
All rights reserved.
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