The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran (21 page)

Also, Iranian religious family culture, an issue that observers of Iran’s political scene tend to overlook, has always played an important part in the regime’s support and its longevity. A short time after we left Iran, a young woman, a recent college graduate, gave a striking interview to a foreign newspaper. The Islamic Revolution had enabled her to go to college and get an education, she said, not because of its efforts to promote university education and the attendant building of new schools, but because her father would never have allowed her to go to school in the first place if the clerics hadn’t said it was okay for women to do so. Her father knew that under the regime, the Islamic atmosphere in schools—the hijab and the strict segregation of the sexes in the dormitories—would keep his daughter safe and chaste. I had heard such sentiments before, from supporters of the system and from those who believed that progress could come to the country only if Islam was a factor. Certainly some Iranians, even pious ones, have lost faith in the theocracy today, but how was one to change the beliefs, not of the young women like her, but of their fathers? Any revolution in Iran would have to account for them, even if it didn’t for the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards.

8
JUDGE NOT

“Listen, I didn’t vote, because I don’t believe in it, in here [Iran]. In fact, I’m apolitical. I just wanted the whole thing to be over. I knew, unlike the kids who were dancing and singing in the streets outside my apartment during the campaign, that the freedom they had today would be gone as soon as the election was over, no matter who won. The regime has always done this: loosened the reins that suffocate before an election, only to tighten them again after.”

My friend paused, lit another cigarette, and blew smoke out the window above us. “So when the election was over,” he said, smoke still escaping his nostrils, “I was looking forward to the summer and maybe some better work opportunities. That evening I heard on the street that Ahmadinejad had won and was a little surprised. No one I knew had voted for him, but I shrugged it off, happy that at least the election was over now. Later that night, I was sitting in my apartment when I heard the same noise outside as I’d heard during the campaign. Cars honking, people shouting. What was going on? I wondered. Don’t they know their man lost?

“I went outside to see what the fuss was all about. And I heard things I never imagined I would ever hear, not in the Islamic Republic. Things like ‘Death to the dictator’ and so on. I cried. My tears
weren’t quite tears of joy, nor were they tears of sadness. They were just tears—I’d been waiting for this for over thirty years.”

I stopped the tape recorder: Karri needed help with Khash, who was wreaking havoc at a friend’s house, where we had gathered for a party on a Thursday night, when parties, big, small, and even in the streets, are going on all over Tehran. I was in the kitchen with another friend, who must remain nameless, as he still lives in Iran; an artist my age, he was telling me about his arrest and experiences in Evin prison in 2009, and we were already on our second large glass of
aragh
. Quite a few people I knew, from good friends to family members, had been jailed in the aftermath of the 2009 elections, and it seemed almost a completely ordinary thing to have experienced across a wide swath of society, as if “Yeah, sure, I was thrown in jail” were no more unusual to hear than someone telling you he or she had just seen the latest blockbuster at the cinema.

My own temporary detention at the airport and subsequent interrogation in the city was nothing near the terrifying, cruel, or psychologically scarring experiences that others had had. And it was unlikely that I would ever experience prison, unless I did something egregiously wrong or pissed off the wrong person; throwing an American writer and journalist in jail for no particular reason would be too much trouble for the authorities and would bring them no particular benefit, not even as a bargaining chip in their conflict with the West over the nuclear and other issues.

While Karri, Khash, and I were in Iran, the American “hikers”—two young men and a young woman arrested for illegally crossing the border from Iraq into Iran—were still being held in Evin as spies, but their arrests and incarceration had brought Iran no advantages and were unlikely ever to do so; they were finally released toward the end of our stay with no quid pro quo from the United States. I was, however, aware that I was being monitored, certainly on the occasions when I visited a high-profile opposition figure (like former president Mohammad Khatami, who was under persistent surveillance)
or attended an embassy party, where by definition every guest’s attendance would be noted in a file somewhere, checked and crosschecked with other files. I also received phone calls every now and then, calls from government officials I knew, that were ambiguous but seemed designed to either draw me out and discover what I was up to in Iran, or what I thought, or simply to remind me of their presence. “Mr. Majd,” a National Security Council staffer said, one of the times he called me, “how is this trip going for you? Are you writing at all?”

“No,” I replied. “As I’ve said, I’m just here with my family, trying to absorb the culture.”

“And are you enjoying it? If you’re here as a
tourist
, I highly recommend you go on long road trips—to the sea, of course, but also to the south, with stops along the way, like in Kashan. Of course, if you’re
busy
…”

“Yes, we’ll definitely be traveling,” I replied, “and no, I’m not busy with anything in particular.”

“No? Okay, now of course I don’t have to tell you about Yazd, but I’m sure your family will enjoy that,” he said, reminding me none too subtly that they knew who I was and where I came from. “But the politics may have changed there a little,” he added, referring to the change in Friday prayer leadership: to my disadvantage, he wanted to imply. I ignored the remark.

“Yazd, absolutely,” I said. “We plan a long stay there.”

“And when do you plan to return to New York? Will you be here for Moharram?” he asked, referring to the Shia month of mourning.

“I’m not sure, exactly,” I replied. “But I’d say we’ll most probably be here then.”

“Well, call me and come and see us, so we can talk more.” It was more than a suggestion, and I did visit the National Security Council, just to be safe, where for two hours I was politely asked my opinion on a range of subjects and given the occasional helpful hint about what I should or shouldn’t write about in the future.

Karri was always a little nervous that the government hadn’t bought my story—that I just wanted to spend time in my home country with my family—and might think my mission was sponsored by the CIA or some other American or foreign agency. I told her they probably
did
suspect that I was somehow passing information to the CIA, since many Iranian officials, as prone to conspiracy theories as anyone else in Iran, find it difficult to believe that any Western journalist is not somehow also tied to the Western intelligence services, especially in recent years, as cyber assaults, assassinations, and other covert operations allegedly carried out by the CIA, MI6, and Mossad burst into full view.

That’s my take, anyway—for why else put such heavy restrictions on foreign journalists and writers? The authorities know that the vast majority of Iranians are unlikely to read anything written in any language other than Farsi, and that allowing journalists to freely report and move about the country would probably result in more
positive
reporting on Iran—they’re “not stupid, after all,” is how one government official put it to me. They seem to believe that journalists are simply not what they appear to be. But in my case, since they had no evidence that I was doing anything other than living a boring and uneventful life in Tehran—not reporting, not sending out articles, even anonymously, which I’m sure they could have traced back to me anyway—I was not overly concerned.

“You know, I’ve never been a religious person,” my friend continued, after I returned to the kitchen and turned the tape recorder back on. “Years ago, though, after I came back from Paris, where I had been studying and learning music and art, I was taken by the voice of the narrator of a television program on the Iran-Iraq War, which was still raging. I don’t know why—it was a magical voice—but I felt god had chosen him to tell the story of the war. I loved my country, and as a student of history, I knew that never before had there been a war when the entire world was gathered on one side of the conflict—all
on Saddam’s side against us Iranians—and yet we were not just holding our own but regaining territory we had lost in the early stages of the attack.

“The war: I was fascinated by this attack on us by the Arabs. I knew from then on that whatever regime came and went in the years, the centuries, to come, this regime and the way it had defended our nation would be forever remembered. The way Leonidas and his three hundred who fought Xerxes at Thermopylae are by the Greeks. You know, this was difficult for me, to see the brightness in what I considered a dark regime. But it was our bright moment. And I realized then, with the heroic sacrifices of our people, how our people view Ali and Hossein [Shia saints] as virtuous and heroic.”

He paused again, staring into space. “But back to the elections,” he suddenly continued. “People had gathered at the square by my apartment building and were shouting slogans. After shedding my few tears, I returned to my apartment, but before I could enter, three of the mothers of young men I knew, neighborhood youths, besieged me, asking if I could help find their kids. I went back out and found two of them in the square, convincing them to return home. Then the Basij came. I told the kids in my building that they shouldn’t think that they’d be able to go out and demonstrate all the time—that the authorities might have been caught off guard this time, but now they knew exactly what they had to do and would extinguish all protest.

“I knew that, so you’d think I’d just sit home, wouldn’t you? But for whatever reason, I was drawn, as so many others were, to the streets. By the third night—and you know, Saadatabad was almost like a war zone—with the Basij surrounding us and with people chanting slogans at them, occasionally throwing stones, I suddenly realized that some of the protesters were in all probability regime agents, and since I was the oldest person among all these young people, they would finger me as the leader. So, the protests had spread all over the city, and actually were over in my neighborhood within
a few days, but I decided I wouldn’t go to any other protests, since I felt we had made a point, and it wasn’t the right time to challenge the regime this way, anyway.

“But about a week later, I found out that a shopkeeper’s assistant down the street from me had been arrested, and I knew he had seen me at the demonstrations on our street, so I sensed a little danger. And a few nights later, actually on the eve of my fiftieth birthday, I heard a knock on my door, and three men were standing there. I let them in, and they looked around at my studio apartment—with no proper furniture anywhere—with obvious surprise. ‘You don’t have satellite TV?’ one asked. No. ‘No computer?’ No. They were very polite and respectful. ‘Sorry,’ another said, ‘but you have to come with us. If you have any prescription drugs, you should bring them with you.’ I changed my clothes and followed them outside, to two Peugeots. I got into the backseat of one, and two men got in next to me, on either side. When we reached Evin, one said apologetically, ‘We have to blindfold you now.’ Sure, I said. A few minutes later I was walked into a building, and someone came up to me and whispered in my ear, slowly, “
Dahan-et ga’eed-ast!
” [“You are so fucked,” but literally “You are fucked in the mouth.”] That was the first indication to me that things were really not going to be okay.”

He stopped to light another cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled slowly. I watched him without saying a word. I was getting drunk. But what must have gone through his mind, blindfolded, at Evin, with some thug telling him he’s
fucked
? Everybody in Tehran at the time knew about the torture and rape of political prisoners—they were hardly political prisoners, actually, just ordinary people voicing their displeasure at the government, not even at the regime—and in the early days of the post-election unrest, one could only imagine that if arrested, one might very well be subjected to all kinds of torture, too. My friend is the gentlest of artists, a soft-spoken single man who lives simply, without any furniture even, and whom young—much younger than him—Iranian girls find irresistible. Just
this evening he had introduced us to his latest girlfriend, a twenty-something who stared at him adoringly, prompting Karri to deem him the Iranian Casanova. He loved Khash and would play with him for hours if we’d let him, or if we had no pity on our friends.
Dahan-et ga’eedast
. For what?