The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran (25 page)

On another occasion at the same house, the diplomatic guests included representatives from Italy, France, and Germany, as well as the Australian ambassador, a young, beer-swilling, leather-jacket-and-jeans-wearing man, well befitting his country’s laid-back reputation, and the Swiss ambassador, Livia Leu Agosti, who also represents U.S. interests in Iran in the absence of an American diplomatic outpost.
“I’m keeping an eye out,” she said to me in all seriousness, “in case something happens to you.”

I expressed surprise that she might be able to do anything for me at all, given that I was in Iran on an Iranian passport and that Iran doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.

“Yes,” she said, “but they [the government] still care when I make a fuss.” Her presence was apt, I suppose, given that probably half the guests were, like us, dual U.S. citizens, but it seems odd that foreign diplomats so easily mingle with Iranians at these kinds of parties and apparently nowhere else. Iranians living in Iran have to be extremely wary of associating with foreigners, especially diplomats, who are often assumed to be spies. Iranians who are completely uninvolved in politics, especially artists, will accept invitations to embassy parties, but no Iranian official, present or former, and no one with any political ambition, would be caught dead speaking to a Western diplomat, least of all while the West was pressuring Iran with sanctions and military threats over its nuclear program. Various acts of sabotage and assassination attempts were also going on in 2011, and the majority of Iranians blamed them entirely on the CIA, the Mossad, Britain’s MI6, or all three—intelligence agencies with a presumed presence in foreign embassies allied to the United States.

Certainly none of the Iranians at the funeral service I attended one afternoon in downtown Tehran, on a stiflingly hot July day, would be invited to, let alone attend, an embassy party or one where foreign ambassadors were present. It was the funeral for Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Sadoughi, the cleric from Yazd who was the province’s Friday prayer leader and a personal representative of the Supreme Leader. He was the only reform cleric left—after six years of purges—as the
vali-e-faqih’
s representative outside Tehran. As such, his funeral attracted high representatives of the regime, such as the moderate foreign minister, who showed up in a somewhat pedestrian Mazda, texting away in the front passenger seat; arch-conservative politicians; other clerics, moderate and conservative; and senior
reform figures, such as the deceased’s brother-in-law Mohammad Khatami and his entire family.

Outside the mosque, which was near a busy square, security was tight. A few dozen Basij lounged by their motorcycles parked by the entrance, apparently waiting to heap derision on the former president when he arrived: they and some in the regime considered him a seditionist, even the leader of a path away from true Islamic governance. Khatami’s driver and entourage were well aware of this possibility, since it was the norm now wherever he ventured and cameras were present, so they escorted him into and out of the mosque through a back entrance on another street, denying the Basij the satisfaction and him the embarrassment of a rude confrontation.

Later that day I arrived at a party (Karri and Khash were waiting for me), dying for the stiff drink I knew I would find there. Once again I was aware of the incongruity of the state being far more concerned with monitoring, even harassing, its own than with monitoring parties where un-Islamic behavior was rampant. They would be concerned, naturally, if a regime figure attended such a party, and they keep watch on politicians and ministry officials who attend embassy parties, even the formal “national day” parties at embassies where a few invited Foreign Ministry officials do show up as a nod to protocol but leave before any alcohol is served. The almost complete separation of Iranian politics from Westerners on all but the most formal of occasions, in contrast to the citizenry, which relished contact with the outside world, to me spoke to how difficult it would be for Iran and the West to break down the barriers of mistrust that were now in their fourth decade of existence. If you couldn’t party together, how on earth could you ever understand each other? The segmented party culture reminded me, also, of the class structure that still existed in Iran, and the growing gap between haves and have-nots—if Iranians didn’t mingle with or speak to one another, which they most emphatically did not, how was Iran ever going to realize any of its democratic ambitions?

The expat community in Tehran is minuscule, certainly compared to that in other countries, even repressive China, and some of the neighboring Arab states. Karri, although an Iranian citizen now and someone who had surprisingly quickly adjusted to life in Tehran, was still always going to be an expat no matter how long we lived there, and I knew she would enjoy meeting, and sometimes commiserating with, others like herself. In the absence of clubs and the like for foreigners, which exist in other countries, one cannot just set out to meet other foreign residents in Tehran. So some of these parties we were invited to were a godsend, as far as I was concerned, even if they showed her a side of Iran restricted to the very privileged.

Before we left New York for Tehran, the Polish deputy ambassador in Iran, Piotr Kozlowski, had contacted me by e-mail and had invited us to dinner as soon as we settled in. I accepted eagerly. Our neighborhood in Brooklyn is overwhelmingly Polish—signs on the shops are in Polish—so we actually had more in common with the Poles than would seem apparent, and since the diplomat had a son almost the exact age as Khash, I was optimistic that we might become good friends, and that Karri might have someone other than my Iranian friends to talk to. Once we were in Tehran, I happened to tell a friend of mine, a former senior official of the regime, that I was seeing the Polish deputy ambassador. His first reaction was that Kozlowski was indubitably from the Polish intelligence services and that I should be careful. That didn’t dissuade me; their son Aleks, born in Tehran, got on famously with Khash. When Piotr asked me at the end of our dinner if I would be willing to meet the ambassador at the official residence one evening, I happily said yes, despite knowing that it might be another mark against me. An invitation followed shortly thereafter, and again we took Khash with us, for the ambassador, Juliusz Gojlo, insisted that his own young children would enjoy meeting him.

The Polish embassy in Tehran sits on a large plot of land in the northern reaches of the center of town; not quite North Tehran,
it was once a neighborhood of fancy shops and large private homes. Today it is dotted with apartments and commercial buildings, although there are still quite a few fancy stores, where Iranians shop for imported party clothes, and restaurants, where younger Westernized Iranians still party, on the main boulevard, whose name was changed from Jordan to Africa (or Afriqa, depending on the sign) after the revolution. This was not because Jordan Street was once named for the country that later sided with Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran, but because the street was named for the American educator Dr. Samuel Jordan, who founded the American College of Tehran, in 1898, later to become Alborz College (high school), the Eton or St. Paul’s of Iran, where my father was educated briefly before being expelled for punching the headmaster in the face (for
his
having boxed my uncle ’round the ears for some infraction or other). Jordan may have been an unpopular memory for the revolutionaries, reminding them perhaps of American benevolence rather than imperialism and hegemony, but I have yet to come across an Iranian living in Iran, from the older generations who remember the avenue in its heyday to the younger who have no idea who Dr. Jordan was, who call it Africa and not Jordan. Africa, it seems, sadly, can’t get any respect, not even from the citizens of an anti-colonialist, antiimperialist, and truly revolutionary country.

The Polish government bought the embassy property in 1979, just as the revolution was taking hold, and it houses both the chancery and the ambassador’s residence. A striking midcentury modern structure, with beautiful parklike grounds and a swimming pool, it had been owned, apparently, by an Iranian who fled during the Islamic Revolution. To this day the regime refuses to recognize Polish ownership of the land, believing that the former Iranian owner had obtained it through corruption and venality. But as a sign of the government’s relative friendliness with Poland—and Iranian-Polish relations have a long and congenial history—it has done nothing legally to reclaim the property and has never made the question of
ownership a public issue. (By contrast, it is mired in a dispute with Great Britain over a larger property, a big park really, that the British embassy owns on Shariati Avenue, in the north of the city.) During the shah’s time, the house and its grounds were undoubtedly the scene of some fancy parties, certainly wilder if not fancier than the diplomatic dinners that embassies tend to give, but we were happy to have the opportunity to attend a few, and if the political atmosphere had been less oppressive in 2011, other Iranians would have been, too.

We did become friends with the Polish ambassador, his deputy, and their families. They, more than most foreign observers of Iran, seemed to genuinely want to understand Iran, to forge better ties between it and their own country, and to defuse in whatever way possible the crisis between Iran and the West, which always threatens to end in an unnecessary and fruitless war. But they found it almost impossible to do much of anything: no Iranians who mattered, even those no longer allied to the government, could or would meet with them; nor did the higher-ups at the Polish Foreign Ministry follow any advice they might provide. Poland, which at one point during our stay held the rotating presidency of the European Union, could do little that was inconsistent with general European policy on Iran, particularly in light of pressure that the United States brought to bear on its European allies to toe the American line. Policy making on the ground was all but impossible.

Ambassador Gojlo hosted two more dinners for us during our stay, which we very much enjoyed, both in the company of a number of other European ambassadors and diplomats. At one, where I was the guest of honor, an ambassador, recently appointed to Iran, said to me that he and the other diplomats in his embassy had to be careful in their reports back home not to appear to be defending Iran or its policies too much; otherwise they would be accused of having “gone native.” Colonialism seemingly lives on, if only in the corridors of the foreign offices of former colonial powers. At the same party, the ambassador cracked open bottles of his finest Polish vodka—bison
grass vodka, which had recently become available in Brooklyn, too. That was the most exciting part of the evening for both Karri and me, and for whatever reason it made me feel more at home in my second home than I ever thought a bottle of booze might do.

Karri saw the Polish ambassador’s wife on other occasions, and they shared stories of their annoyance at having to ride in the back of buses alone (yes, the ambassador’s wife rode the buses, making her and Karri two of the very few expats or even well-off Iranians who did), at wearing the hijab, and generally at life in Tehran. Through the Polish couple, Karri also became friends with the wife of the Canadian envoy to Iran, who, after the downgrading of ties between Ottawa and Tehran, held the title not of ambassador but of chargé d’affaires. She and her husband had served in Iran before, many years earlier, and she knew and loved the place despite the difficulties inherent in representing a country that Iran viewed as little more than a servant of the United States, and an enemy to boot. (Canada’s relations with Iran reached their lowest ebb in September 2012, when Canada unilaterally and controversially broke off diplomatic relations, for reasons not fully explained, evacuated its remaining diplomats from Tehran, and expelled the Iranian diplomats in Ottawa.)

Later in our stay we also got acquainted, at yet another party, with the newly appointed British ambassador, Dominick Chilcott. He had previously served as deputy ambassador at the British embassy in Washington, presumably a suitable preparation for one who was to represent the Anglo-American view of affairs to the Iranians firsthand. He had only recently arrived in Tehran, and a few days after we met, he invited us to a dinner party at the British embassy. I had not been overly concerned with our connections to European diplomats while going to their homes and drinking their vodka, although I probably should have been. The British, however, and their embassy were a different story.

At least from the time of the Qajars—the dynasty that preceded the last shah’s Pahlavi dynasty, from 1785 to 1925—Iranians of all
political stripes have viewed Great Britain with great suspicion. They have not forgotten the British Empire’s designs on Iran (or Persia, as the empire called it)—motivated geopolitically when India and parts of the Middle East were in the empire, and motivated economically once oil was discovered. Indeed, at one time Iranians believed that Britain controlled everything in their country, from politics to the mosque, to the benefit of its interests, not theirs. In the early 1950s, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq dared to defy Great Britain by insisting that Iran receive its fair share from its own oil (or at least more than what the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later BP, paid in taxes to the British government); in reward he was overthrown by the CIA on the urging and with the assistance of the British.

Today many Iranians, and particularly revolutionary Iranians, hate the British more than any other nation in the world, still consider them to have designs on Persia, and accuse them of interfering in Iran on a daily basis, yet ironically have allowed them to maintain a large embassy in Tehran; the American one, a few blocks away, was long ago ransacked and occupied and remains shuttered to this day, except for the Revolutionary Guard base set up on its grounds. Some Iranian regime haters, both inside and outside Iran, claim that the British in fact still do control Iran—that they brought the mullahs to power and keep them there; others, even high officials, claim that the British deviously block any attempt by either the United States or Iran to mend ties, in an attempt to keep Iran for themselves. It is the only strategically valuable country in the world where they, and not the Americans, have a presence, and where the Americans have to rely on the British for on-the-ground information and intelligence. Whatever one’s taste for conspiracy theories, the British embassy in Tehran, at the intersection of two grand boulevards in the heart of the city, is often the scene of protests against Her Majesty’s government, and the garden party the embassy throws every year is an occasion not just for protest but for the intelligence and security services to harass Iranian partygoers, and of course to photograph them.