I'm Writing You from Tehran

by Delphine Minoui

  “Welcome to the kingdom of schizophrenia!” she said, desperately trying to make me smile. “You know, this is how we grew up; it’s our way of life. Here, starting in kindergarten, you learn only one thing: to lie. That’s your key to survival. At school, when the teacher asked us questions, we would immediately reply, ‘Yes, my mother wears the chador! No, my father doesn’t play cards, and he hates wine!’ Sometimes I feel like a chameleon; I change skin depending on the circumstances. During the day, I put up with the veil. At night, I have a ball forgetting about it.”

  “But … isn’t it risky?” I asked her, skeptical.

  “Risky? Of course it’s risky. But what choice do we have?”

  She emptied her glass of champagne in one go and rushed to the dance floor. The DJ had just put on her favorite song: “La Isla Bonita.” Hands stretched toward the disco ball hanging from the ceiling, Leyla’s body started to undulate—her stomach, her fingers, her eyelids, everything! She laughed with drunkenness and audacity. Her bursts of laughter drowned out by Madonna’s lyrics.

  “You don’t want to dance?”

  In the half-light, I didn’t immediately recognize Ardeshir, his thin face, his bowl cut. We had met the week before, at a rehearsal for The Blacks, by Jean Genet. It was in the basement of the City Theater of Tehran. A dark room with a few rugs on the floor and wooden bleachers. After being banned for twenty years, the play was about to be staged for the first time in the Islamic Republic, and he was the assistant director. “Ardeshir” was the name of a king from Ancient Persia. Ardeshir’s parents had deliberately chosen the name, as opposed to one of the Arab names the mullahs adored. Ardeshir was a fan of the absurd. His way of resisting. Between the lines.

  “It’s like we’re in the middle of one of your plays!” I said to him, contemplating the carnival of guests.

  “Well, yeah, our life is absurd!”

  He stopped talking to grab a bowl of olives. Then, signaling for me to sit down, he continued:

  “In the end, we’re all puppets who—”

  He stopped short. The ringing of the intercom had stolen the end of his sentence. A sudden ring, unexpected, intrusive. It was after midnight. All the guests had already arrived. Niloufar wasn’t expecting anyone else. Unless … I saw her, armed with a candle, scurrying around and imploring the guests to be quiet. Her eyebrows formed two circumflex accents. Her face was ashen. A mask of panic. I had never seen her like that. “Shhhhh!” she begged again. Instinctively, the DJ straightened behind his sound system. With an expert hand, he unplugged the speakers. There were a few bursts of laughter, a murmur of indignation, then worried whispers. Niloufar was gripping the intercom handset, pale. Her body was frozen. She took a big breath and, in her sweetest voice, said in a perfectly collected Persian, “Hello! Who’s there?” A long silence confronted the question. A lifesaving long silence that invaded her living room.

  “Phew! False alarm!” she said, hanging up the phone.

  And the music started up again right away.

  Ardeshir let out a sigh of relief. He swallowed, then turned toward me again, faking a smile.

  “So, I was saying, in the end, we’re all dislocated puppets who flail around wildly—”

  The bell rang again, with even greater intensity. And this time, continuously. A flash of panic went through the smoky living room. Instantly, the dancers froze in their high heels. Champagne glasses, placed hurriedly on the table, teetered. Then, silence again. I heard what sounded like the crackling of a walkie-talkie coming from the street. With a nervous gaze, Niloufar walked toward the window. With one finger, she discreetly pushed the curtain aside.

  “Komiteh! Komiteh!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

  The officers of the “Committee,” the morality police, were at the door! In the living room, muddled words started to fly in every direction. I was nailed to my chair. I understood one word out of every hundred. I had no idea what might happen to me. To us. Sweating, Leyla grabbed me by the sleeve.

  “Don’t just stand there!”

  What came next was like a hastily edited film. With one firm hand, Leyla gave me a makeup-removing wipe. With the other, she rapidly pulled on her “emergency outfit,” buried at the bottom of a backpack: blue jeans and a shawl to hide her hair. On the run, the guests were shuttling back and forth between the living room and the bathrooms to empty all the bottles. Mint chewing gum was passed from hand to hand. Niloufar had also transformed in a flash; she was unrecognizable. She looked like a black bat hidden in her thick chador, not even an eye visible! Index finger over her mouth, she signaled to the guests a hidden door in the kitchen before rushing into the main elevator. I caught hold of her arm, anxious.

  “Don’t worry! I’m going down to negotiate with the cops,” she said while pushing me toward the others.

  I followed the crowd.

  The back stairs were dark. In single file, we hurtled down the five floors and ended up in an underground parking lot. A putrid odor inundated the space. In the darkness, a hand grabbed onto me and forced me to crawl under a car, the only hiding place left. I was shaking. I could barely breathe. Head flattened to the ground, I tried to get a grip on myself. What was going to happen to Niloufar? Where had Leyla and Ardeshir gone? And what might happen to me? In Iran, nationality is passed down through the father. In the eyes of the authorities, I was therefore Iranian, and a “criminal” like the others. Guilty of wanting to have fun. But I didn’t have their courage. Would I have the strength to endure the lashes of the whip? Carried away by the naïve curiosity that had spurred me on since my arrival in Tehran, I had neglected to imagine the possibility of an arrest. A minute passed, two minutes, three minutes. Time seemed to stretch on for eternity. Sometimes a sob broke out. And then silence again. We were condemned to wait.

  An hour later, perhaps more, the creaking of a door woke us from our semi-coma. Had our hiding place been found? Clicks of heels resounded on the parking lot pavement. I pricked up my ears. They were a woman’s heels. Was that a female cop? The clicks, more and more pronounced, drew closer to the cars. In the shadow, I could make out a pair of dainty black leather slippers. Niloufar’s slippers! I lifted my head out from under the Renault 5 that had served as my shelter. Our hostess was safe and sound.

  “That was a close call,” she said in perfect French.

  Dozens of other heads emerged. Blackened with grease but reassured! Niloufar caught her breath, leaned against one of the cars, and proudly addressed the assembly:

  “There were three of them. Three young cops. They said that the neighbors had heard music, that they suspected an ‘indecent’ gathering, and that they had authorization to enter the apartment. I grimaced, acted utterly outraged. I told them that it was a women’s gathering, that it wouldn’t be ‘moral’ to let them enter my home. One of them snickered; he didn’t believe a word I was saying. So I risked it all. I slipped some money out from under my chador and handed it to one of the cops. At first he hesitated. Then, encouraged by the elbow of one of his sidekicks, he took the bills, slipped them into his pocket, and said to me, ‘You’re lucky. The next time, it’s prison, guaranteed!’ I didn’t say anything. I quickly closed the door behind me. When I heard their car engine, I exhaled and told myself, ‘I did it!’”

  What courage! And what nerve. Playing the part of a good “godmother,” Niloufar invited us to stay the night at her place. She said that she had enough mattresses to put on the floor of the living room. She was worried that the drunkest among us would be stopped at a checkpoint on the way home. Still in shock from the incident, I wanted to take off as soon as possible. A friend who lived not far from there invited me to spend the night with her. The next morning, I woke with a start: What about Ardeshir? I hadn’t seen him in the parking lot when Niloufar came to get us. Worried, I dialed his number right away. After a few rings, he picked up.

  “You’ll never guess what happened to me!” he said on the phone.

  He told me that, afraid of g
etting caught, he had hidden in the building’s backyard. An acrobat in his spare time, he had scaled the outer wall. A good ten feet of gray cement. On the other side, the street was dark and deserted. A tunnel. When the first shared taxi passed, one of those old orange Paykans that you can’t find in Iran anymore, he waved down the driver and shoved himself into the car.

  “It turns out I wasn’t the only passenger. The backseat was already filled with a few women! They smelled of alcohol. In fact, I quickly understood that we were all in the same boat: survivors of police raids from two different parties!” He chuckled.

  I let out a hollow laugh. I had come out of my first Iranian party petrified. In the days that followed, I declined invitations, saying I had hurt my back or had temporary fatigue. When the sun went down, I prudently stayed at home, impatiently awaiting the next day. My friends didn’t understand. They thought I was too serious. They laughed to see me so careful. I didn’t share their boldness. I secretly envied them. And then, one night, I ended up giving in. Reluctantly, I accepted an invitation to a secret alt-rock concert. It was in a Russian Orthodox church, not far from the former U.S. embassy. A redbrick building empty of any occupants since the hostage crisis. To foil the police patrols, I got out of the taxi on an adjacent avenue and tiptoed to my destination. I had learned my lesson.

  The streets were deserted. Tehran was sleeping, and I felt like a tightrope walker. In front of the door, I murmured the name of the group, O-Hum, like a password. In Persian, O-Hum means “Illusion.” When I entered, I was immediately seized by the unusual spectacle unfolding before my eyes. The church was jam-packed with young people, crosses around their necks, candles in their hands. The nave smelled like altar candles and vodka. The girls were wearing low-cut tops and the boys black T-shirts. It was really something to see how they danced with such ease, no holding back, in the forbidden space. In the middle of the improvised stage, four musicians in blue jeans strummed their electric guitars and recited poems. The meaning of the verses eluded me. But the tempo seemed familiar. In the shadows, someone said to me that it was Hafez. Hafez! I shuddered. It sent me back immediately to the “wave.” To my first Persian lesson. To you, Babai, my grandfather departed too soon.

  It was at that moment, I believe, that my fear fell away. In that sacred building transformed into a musical forum, I began to feel as if I were on familiar ground. Your Iran was changing behind closed doors, and I was changing along with it. I wanted to seize the tiniest nuances, let myself be guided by the unexpected. After a few other similar parties, I had to face facts: flirting with risk was a little intoxicating, and I was beginning to like it. I attended underground screenings of banned and pirated films. I memorized the addresses of the best private art galleries that were sprouting up like mushrooms. Between filing two reports, I even posed in a blue dress with my hair down for Khosrow Hassanzadeh, one of the first local artists to dare to paint women without headscarves.

  In June 1998, once my reporting on Tehran youth was finished and I’d returned to Paris, all I wanted to do was talk about Iran. A headline on Iran in any paper was enough to make me buy everything in sight at a newspaper kiosk. Listening to the CDs of Googoosh, the former diva of Iranian pop, gave me goose bumps. On weekends, I devoured the works of Henry Corbin, Dariush Shayegan, Sadegh Hedayat … I was enraged not to be able to read The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, by Ferdowsi, in the original edition. I binge-watched films by Abbas Kiarostami, incapable of getting up from my chair. I even stopped drinking coffee; I preferred Iranian-style tea. Addicted to the unexpected, I grew bored of Parisian parties. My city suddenly seemed so calm and bland. I no longer understood my friends, their orderly lives, their daily routines, their planned vacations, their outings to restaurants, and their dinners scheduled months in advance. The concept of seating arrangements, of the perfectly calculated number of guests, was unbearable. And not a mouthful left for the latecomers. In Tehran, there was always an extra setting at the table. A smile to offer to the new arrival. A song improvised at the end of the meal. A few guests who began dancing.

  My French half started to agitate me. I understood that my generation in France had nothing more to prove. At the same age, our mothers had fought for the legalization of the Pill, for abortion, for more socioeconomic rights, for better professional opportunities. And we rested comfortably on these laurels. Did we even know how to appreciate them? Our freedom was not a struggle; it was a way of life. It was the opposite for young Iranians. Like athletes, they slalomed daily between obstacles that cropped up in their way, despite the reforms. From morning to night, their lives were a skillful arbitration between the licit and the illicit. In their twenties, they braved the forbidden as one braves the waves. With panache.

  On June 21, 1998, the French city of Lyon hosted an event that was unprecedented for Iran: a soccer match between the Iranian national team and that of the United States. A historic encounter. The two countries had not communicated in nearly twenty years. I wasn’t a sports fan, especially not of soccer. But this time, the occasion was too good to pass up. Without a second thought, I bought a train ticket to go support the Iranian team from the bleachers of the Lyon stadium. I had never been to a soccer match in my life.

  When Iran won 2–1, I jumped for joy. I dialed Leyla’s number in Tehran on my cell phone as quickly as I could. “We won!” she raved at the other end of the line. Behind her, I could hear ululations, cries of ecstasy, car horns … “Iran! Iran!” the fans were yelling. I had tears in my eyes. I was enraged not to be over there, with them, to share in this moment of euphoria. On the phone, Leyla described the emotional crowd for me, crammed in the streets: men in pajamas, babies on their shoulders, teenagers with their faces painted in red, green, and white, the colors of the Iranian flag. “There are even Iranians dancing with the police. Now, that’s a first!” she said. And I, too, started to scream at the top of my lungs, “Iran! Iran!” I couldn’t help myself.

  YOU SHOULD HAVE seen Papa’s face. I had just announced that I would be going back to Tehran, this time for good.

  “Are you sure about this decision?” he forced out in an irritated tone of voice.

  That afternoon in August 1998, we sat opposite each other in the living room of our apartment in Paris. Since your death, Papa hadn’t been the same. Your loss cut the last cord tying him to Iran. And now everything to do with your country was a source of irritation.

  “Absolutely!” I replied, hurt by the question.

  Never before had I felt the need to justify my decisions. At home, independence was sacred. A Western way of life inculcated by my two parents. And here was Papa trying to oppose my desire to move to Tehran.

  “You can’t understand,” he said to me.

  How many times had I already heard that refrain? That was exactly it, I wanted to understand. And to do so, I had to dive in headfirst.

  I gazed at your photograph. Ever since you left us, the photo sat on the top of the living room bookcase. Seated in your Persian garden, you were smiling at the camera, with that mysterious smile that suited you so well. Your face speckled with sunspots and your hairless head made you look like Picasso. Papa lit a Gitane and sank into the sofa. He had never been very talkative. His silences often spoke for him. For once, he wanted to express himself.

  “Iran is constantly churning out problems. You’ll never be able to adapt! It’s impossible to negotiate with the regime. If you knew what his henchmen put your grandfather through for all those years…”

  “I thought he was apolitical,” I shot back, surprised by this detail that had been kept from me until now.

  “It’s a long story. Let’s just say that he wasn’t pro-shah. In fact, that’s what saved him after the revolution, even though he had been a diplomat under the old regime. But don’t think that he got out of it so easily! The Islamic Republic doesn’t only punish its opponents. It’s obsessed with controlling everything: private life, extramarital relations, property … That’s how the authorit
ies seized some of your grandfather’s land, by sticking him with accusations of ‘bad morals’ … Professional racketeers! You can imagine the rest: the summons to appear before the judge of the Revolutionary Court, who believes he’s the messenger of God; the humiliation; the bribes squeezed out of him by so-called judges; the ban against leaving the country … It went on for nearly twenty years. That business nearly finished him.”

  “And how did he get out of it?”

  “The day before his death, he won. The court announced that they were finally going to return his assets to him.”

  Papa paused and took a drag from his cigarette.

  “As if that were all he had been waiting for so that he could die in peace.”

  * * *

  So that was it, that mask of fatigue plastered to your face during your last visit to France, just before your hospitalization? For that occasion, you had dug up your old dark blue suit that smelled of mothballs and livened it up with an elegant striped tie. As if to cheat time. And to protect us, as well, from the collective suffering that millions of Iranians were enduring in silence. For you were not the only one to bear, for so many years, the burden of a revolution that had gone awry. How many poignant testimonies did I hear during my first Tehran immersion: all those stories of summary executions, of teenagers forced to enlist in the army, of dissident families who had to flee the country over the mountains of Kurdistan for having been opposed to the fundamentalism of the new leaders … I didn’t doubt that mullah-run Iran was a country of maniacs trying to cripple their people by making them trust in nothing but divine law, but I was convinced that things had changed. New political players were emerging, others were questioning themselves. Indeed, Papa knew it: for the first time in his life, he had been invited to a reception at the Paris residence of the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The occasion coincided neither with the anniversary of the death of Imam Hossein, the emblematic figure of the Shiites, nor with the umpteenth commemoration of the “Islamic Revolution.” That night was about investments, calls, offers, and encouragement to thousands of Iranian expats to return to their country.