I'm Writing You from Tehran Page 19

  IN THIS DO-NOT-ENTER, access-denied Iran where everyone was withdrawing into his or her sanctuary, learning your language, Babai, became my ultimate refuge. So far, I had clumsily fumbled with the words, mangled them mercilessly, and I couldn’t grasp the richness of their nuances. In fact, I had never made the time to wind between the alef and the jim, or to teach my pen to navigate from right to left. Ironically, the pervasive censorship gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in the language, for good. By chance, I met Sara, a young researcher in sociology. She was between projects, so she was teaching Persian to make ends meet. In our first class, Sara suggested I explore the language by reading blogs. She had one herself, dedicated to poetry. If you had still been among us, she would have moved you as much as she did me.

  I was immediately won over by her methods, so different from the academic model. In those times of repression, blogs were booming. A parallel world, sealed away in the Internet, mocked the censors’ archaic scissors. Combining spoken and written language, blogs also offered an ease of access that newspapers didn’t: short texts, simple words, sentences with no verbs. An ideal introduction to that overly sophisticated Indo-European language. Farsi, which is written in Arabic script, is an eternal game of riddles. On paper, only the consonants appear. The vowels are contained within little accents, which disappear on computer screens. “Flower,” gol, can thus be read as gel, the word for “mud.” With Farsi, imagination is essential to sussing out the meanings of expressions. In your language, Babai, to say “my darling,” you write “my heart.” Friendship and love are declared through metaphors. A loved one proclaims that he is “the dust beneath your shoes.” To express that you miss someone, you convey not solitude but a “restricted heart.”

  Persian, Sara explained to me, is in a permanent game of hide-and-seek with feelings. You constantly have to read between the lines to discover the real meaning. As if the language itself were designed to resist. In the seventh century, the Arab conquest imposed its alphabet on the Persian people. Under duress, they assimilated the letters of the invader, but were determined to preserve their own vocabulary. After the 1979 revolution, the ayatollahs tried once again to inject Arab words, the language of the Quran, into the spoken language—an offensive against which scholars like you were constantly shielding themselves by reciting rhymes as some recite Quranic verses. Sara, too, made it a point of honor to resist through words. I laughed to see her strive to speak a Persian as “pure” as Saadi’s poetry. When I was with her, I didn’t say motshakeram, derived from the Arabic shukran, to say “thank you.” I said sepasgozaram. A subtle way of signifying opposition to the regime.

  Sara was a waifish young girl brimming with energy, a woman-child full of contradictions that she hid behind an angelic smile. She came from a family whose enlightened faith had suffered greatly when the zealots ascended to power. Like Baghi, to whom they were close, her parents had lived through the hope and excitement of the revolution. Very quickly, they made the bitter observation that the Islamic Republic betrayed Islam more than it served it. Her father, a man engaged in the opposition movement Melli-Mazhabi, religious nationalists, had paid a high price and ended up behind bars. In her family, there were also shahids from the Iran-Iraq War and Mujahedin dissidents, a veritable cross-section of Iranian society, the perfect example of a heterogeneous Iran. Sara was the real rebel of her family. She had never joined any political organization. Her permanent penchant for defiance had instead turned her into a roshanfekr, a “freethinker” in the true sense of the word. Married very young, she confided in me that she had made her divorce a springboard into freedom, moving alone into a minuscule apartment and swapping the black chador worn by the women in her family for a lighter headscarf. At university, the hallways buzzed with rumors when she passed by. She didn’t care. At night, after prayer hours, she escaped by writing poems. Often, inspiration came to her in the middle of the night. By candlelight, once the city was sleeping, she unleashed her words in a notebook. Unlike in the Quran, the verses invoked freedom, love, drunkenness. Sometimes she would sing while she wrote. Singing behind closed doors, her precious stronghold. Just like her blog, where her poetry had taken refuge since Ahmadinejad’s arrival.

  With Sara, I gradually became immersed in another world—that of words, the dance of words. Through our lessons, we sealed a peculiar pact. She read me her poems as a sneak preview, sometimes testing my progress in Persian based on my level of comprehension. To prove my dedication, outside our lessons I would copy down the signs on my street that I was finally able to decipher. She laughed when I told her that sometimes I even dreamed in Persian. In return, I made fun of her insomnia when, the day after a long night of writing, she would arrive an hour late to our meeting. But we wouldn’t have canceled our sessions for anything. They constituted our escape bubble. In the andaroon of these Persian lessons, once the door was closed, we felt freer than we had ever been. Suddenly, everything vanished: our fears, our inhibitions, our uncertain emotions. We were so different, but with time, she would become my closest friend. That was the force of a common language: Sara was the first person with whom I spoke only in Persian. Thanks to her, I had reconnected with the other half of my identity.

  One night, I decided to look again at the poem by Hafez, the one you left me. I felt afraid to confront again those verses and their Persian calligraphy. During my first years in Iran, I grasped only the tempo. But this time, like pieces of a puzzle, each word settled into its rightful place. The rhymes started to tickle the page. All at once, I was finally able to read that ode to the wave, to the voyage, that invitation to venture beyond the reassuring sands of the shore.

  “A poem is never finished, only abandoned,” said Paul Valéry. Without warning, you had bequeathed a few verses to me. After years of persistence, in the cycle of secret time, the poem about the wave made sense. And so did my life. That night, I realized more than ever that it wasn’t just you, my enigmatic grandfather, I had come looking for in Iran; it was also a piece of myself.

  WHILE I WAS learning Persian, Fatemeh the militiawoman was starting to learn English. During a dinner at her home, I discovered her new obsession with the language of Shakespeare. She and Mahmoud had just returned from Dubai, their first trip abroad. As mysterious as ever about his activities, he said he’d gone there for professional reasons. She had joined him, eager to window-shop and eat McDonald’s in that shopping paradise that had arisen from the desert. The trip had completed her transformation. On the plane back, she devoured Gone with the Wind, bought in a bookstore in the Emirates, and shed all the tears in her body. A world unknown to her until then, a world of romance, suddenly opened its doors.

  “The book never leaves my side. I reread it every night,” she confided in me at this dinner, before making off to the kitchen.

  She came back again right away, bearing a tray laden with dishes that were unusual for an Iranian meal: a green salad, some steamed vegetables, and Salisbury steaks.

  “It’s a ‘light’ recipe,” she announced, eager to mention that she had discovered it on a German satellite channel.

  I glanced furtively at the TV. Just above it, in place of the bouquet of plastic flowers, the only decorative element that had survived the move from Darakeh, a box blinked: it was one of those illegal receivers that allow you, with the help of a prohibited satellite dish, to connect to the outside world. In Tehran, all you had to do was count the satellite dishes all over the roofs to understand just how many Iranians violated the rules. In the end, this Basiji couple, too, had surrendered to the temptations of the outside world.

  Fatemeh took me aside. She wanted to show me a photo of her slim figure in a bikini, taken with her cell phone in the shade of a hotel room balcony in Dubai.

  “Don’t tell your husband, okay?”

  In fact, she was dying for me to tell Borzou, eager to project an image different from the one her conservative husband wanted to impose on her. During our last get-together, I had introduced
them to Borzou. Every six weeks, the Los Angeles Times was giving him two weeks of vacation to escape the Iraqi quagmire. Along with the daily attacks on American forces, a religious war had sprung up between the Sunnis and Shiites. Obviously, Mahmoud, the failed shahid, had inundated Borzou with questions about the GIs. Fatemeh had dragged me into more intimate conversations about French lingerie.

  She kept surprising me. The more time I spent with her, the more I saw her change. After that incongruous health-conscious meal, she started calling me regularly to go get coffee or ice cream. Under the pretext of practicing her English, she always managed to broach subjects that remained taboo with her husband: the contraceptive pill, abortion, love before marriage. She told me I was the only one in whom she could confide so openly. For Valentine’s Day, which the hip young people of Tehran celebrated by exchanging little gifts, she offered me a scented candle inside a candy-pink champagne glass. “A token of friendship.” She smiled at me. She adored all things kitsch. I had lost count of the number of red, yellow, and gold jewels she wore, concealed beneath the folds of her dark chador.

  A few months later, she even abandoned her long, cumbersome veil, replacing it with a more practical headscarf-coat combination. Mahmoud had given in to her whims, on one condition: that she turn back into a black crow in the presence of his parents. Sometimes Fatemeh called me to go for a hike on Darakeh Mountain. At the summit, we met up with her husband to eat a kebab. The roles in their relationship were gradually reversing. He, who was normally so loquacious, always ready to defend Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, stayed in the background more and more. She was the one who, in her high-pitched voice, asked the questions and provided the answers. Astonishingly, Fatemeh was Westernizing at the rate that I was becoming more Iranian. As if we were rubbing off on each other.

  I wasn’t the only reason for her emancipation. One day, when she had dragged me to her favorite beauty salon, the one that drew the most beautiful eyebrows in Tehran, she gave free rein to her heart. “My sister just got divorced,” she announced to me. The mother of two children, she had lost custody, an injustice suffered by a number of Iranian women—which Fatemeh had never realized, conditioned as she was by Basiji propaganda. Suddenly, the suffering of Iranian women exploded in her face. Revolted by the discrimination they were subjected to, she confided in me that she wanted to resume her studies, which she had abandoned after her marriage. It was law that interested her in particular: she wanted to investigate the roots of the marriage laws, to better understand the origin of gender inequality.

  Although impressed by her growing empowerment, I was surprised when I saw her, fist raised to the sky, at the pro-government rallies commemorating the anniversary of the revolution or the American hostage crisis, continuing to proclaim her loyalty to the regime. Was there hypocrisy in her approach? Was it a pretext to keep her Basiji card and the social advantages that came with it? Or else another example of Iranian split personality?

  Fatemeh didn’t weigh herself down with this kind of question. She fully inhabited her contradictions. Without reservation, she opened all the doors of her universe to me.

  “That’s enough political talk!” she said to me that day, in the middle of the small beauty parlor. “Tomorrow, I want you to come with me to a ladies’ night!”

  It was a “night” in the afternoon, starting at four o’clock. The small party was taking place at the home of one of her Basiji friends, not far from Darakeh. Entering the apartment, I noticed that Fatemeh’s revolution had spread to her little world of militiawomen. At the entrance, black chadors hung from a coatrack like cadavers from the gallows. Their owners were already on the dance floor, in the middle of the living room, wriggling to the latest illicit tracks from “Tehrangeles,” the “capital” for exiled Iranian singers. Their outfits rivaled one another in frivolity: form-fitting clothing, crimson bras under transparent blouses, fake-leather or leopard-print pants, studded belts. Of all her friends, Fatemeh was the “sexiest,” with her exposed stomach and her lacy bustier. I felt like I was at a show. At the hour of the muezzin, I watched them turn the sound off and slip, one after another, into one of the bedrooms for the sunset prayer—only to reappear moments later on the dance floor, as if nothing had happened. Fatemeh was in her element. She shook her wild locks from right to left, like a lioness tossing her head as she escapes from her cage. Seated in a corner, like an anthropologist I took a mental snapshot of each of her gestures.

  “What are you waiting for? Come dance with us,” she beckoned.

  I hadn’t budged from my armchair since the party started. Forcibly pulled up by Fatemeh, I ended up on the dance floor during a Spice Girls song. The women formed a circle around me and started ululating. I raised my hands to the sky, snapping my fingers in imitation of them. While I was dancing, the face of a deceased friend popped into my head: Ardeshir. I thought of our past conversations, of our exchanges on Iranian theater of the absurd. That acrobat had hit the nail on the head. And to think that those who had caused his death were in all likelihood from the same group as these militiawomen in full metamorphosis.

  WOULD YOU EVER have imagined what happened next, Babai? Grandmother also joined the resistance.

  One morning, she summoned me, triumphant, to her apartment below. Finger pressed insistently on the intercom button, she demanded that I come down to see her as quickly as possible.

  “Look at my new outfit!”

  She had resurrected her gray raincoat, the one that had survived all those storms. She had meticulously detached the old clasps, replacing them with buttons, perfectly vertically aligned. The golden buttons were hammered with an embossed face of … the former shah of Iran!

  “I took them off one of your grandfather’s old suits,” she said.

  “And you’re going to go out in the street like that?”

  “Why not?” she replied, hands on her hips in a gesture of defiance.

  Looking at her in that moment, I understood the incredible deliverance a satellite dish could offer an oppressed society. The week before, I had become the latest victim of the magic saucer invasion, giving a dish to Mamani. Since the disappearance of Marie, your mutual “friend,” she had retreated into her solitude. I figured that several hundred television channels would give her a bit of comfort, and company. At first, she had a hard time using the remote: she was baffled that sometimes the TV spoke English, sometimes Chinese, not always Persian. But the discomfort stopped abruptly on the day I wrote down the numbers for the Iranian channels, about thirty of them, broadcast from Los Angeles. There was something for every taste: musical, culinary, cinematographic, leftist, anarchist, monarchist. Run by Iranians in exile, they were the “voice” of dissidence abroad.

  Mamani rapidly found her niche among the numerous televised debates, broadcast between video clips, in which a motley array of adversaries, experts, and know-it-alls unleashed hours-long, epic monologues on the future of their country. Their acerbic critiques of the regime started to radically reshape her way of thinking. She who had always stayed away from politics suddenly made elaborate speeches on death by stoning, attacks on freedom of expression, the mandated veil. She was unbeatable at naming all the furious ayatollahs, imprisoned students, exiled dissidents—nurturing a true affinity for the son of the shah, Reza Pahlavi, exiled in Virginia with his wife and children.

  The episode with the buttons was only the first sign of an obsession exacerbated by the satellite dish. During this time, the heir to the throne, long ago forgotten, resurfaced in the media. He was making the rounds abroad, jumping from one capital to another doing interviews. Mamani could spend entire days cloistered in her bedroom, nose glued to her little screen, scrupulously keeping a lookout for appearances of the young shah. For fear of missing something, she even spurned the intercom. Her preferred mode of communication, the one she had long used to call me incessantly, was not compatible with her new pastime. I thought my ears were playing tricks on me.

  One day, while I was sitting
at my table, head buried in my Persian homework, the telephone rang. At the other end of the line, Mamani was overcome with excitement:

  “Quick, quick! Come look at the TV! His Imperial Highness Reza Pahlavi is speaking live!”

  I bounded from my chair. How could she be so reckless? Saying the shah’s name on the phone, under Ahmadinejad’s reign, was pretty risky. I hurtled down the stairs and charged into her bedroom. Index finger on my lips, I signaled for her to stop talking immediately.

  Eyebrows raised, Mamani looked at me in bewilderment.

  “But I didn’t say anything bad! What’s gotten into you? You’re worrying over nothing!” she upbraided me.

  I was speechless. There was such irony in the turn of events that had brought us to this moment. After all those years of ostracism and mistrust toward others, it was Mamani who was giving me lessons in courage.

  IN AHMADINEJAD’S CORNER of the world, there was no room for critical voices. Nor for discontent. When the bus drivers started to complain, they, too, wound up behind bars—with their wives and children! Those same drivers, symbols of the common people whom the president had promised to support with the country’s oil income, ended up paying a high price when they went on strike for better salaries, new vehicles, and access to social services. Upon their release a few weeks later, I received an email. It was summer 2006. One of their leaders, with whom I was in touch, invited me to meet them. They wanted to share their prison experiences, to talk about the threats and the end of a dream for a better future.

  I knew the subject was risky, the kind of topic that sparks anger because it “sticks the pen in the wound,” as the pioneering French investigative journalist Albert Londres would say.

  Furthermore, my press pass had expired a few days earlier. I was waiting for it to be renewed. That same night, I was supposed to meet Borzou in Jordan. We hadn’t seen each other in two months. Missing my plane was out of the question. So I hesitated. I was torn between the desire to practice my profession and the fear of exposing myself to risk. But I thought of Mamani’s boldness. I also thought of Baghi, his resistance behind the scenes. I felt cowardly refusing the interview. If I declined the bus drivers’ invitation, who would tell their story? I picked up a coin. Tails, I would do the interview. Heads, I wouldn’t. I flipped the coin with my eyes closed. It flew, bounced back onto the table, and fell flat against the wood. When I opened my eyes, the choice had been made. Tails: I had to go.