Month: June 2008

Categories
photo Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan Culture Shock

As I have explained previously, part of the spirit of an overland trip is seeing the connections between places–meeting Kurds in Syria and Iran, seeing how falafel changes from Syria to Jordan, making out modern differences among the various Gulf states. Equally educational, however, and quite shocking, was the complete change in atmosphere from Iran to Turkmenistan. In some ways, I thought that there might be some similarities–there are after all Turkmen in Iran, not to mention all the Azeri Turks (the largest second largest ethnic group, at around a quarter of the total population), both governments are infamous for being somewhat oppressive, or at least not beacons of freedom, and parts of the territory of modern Turkmenistan have often been part of same state or empire as now Iran through the years, giving the two countries a shared history.

All of the changes once we crossed the border were shocking. Gone of course were the chadors and veils and all the social/gender regulations of the Islamic Republic. That much could have been predicted, although the sight of women with free-flowing hair felt surprisingly novel. Also gone was the (albeit stressed) urban culture of Iran, with shaded streets and water flowing down the gutters–replaced with empty Soviet avenues and post-Soviet monuments to Niyazov, the former president also known as Turkmenbashi.

Long, beautiful hair!

For dinner in Merv we found ourselves in a bar with children pulling beer on tap and pouring vodka, scantily dressed Russian waitresses and, to our great delight, pork shashlik on the grill (which in fact is the first thing Derek mentions if asked about the country). Most surreal: The two friendly Turkmen that we met at the bar hounded us for a good 45 minutes to go with them to some sort of after-hours club (meaning past 11 p.m., the national curfew) to “fuck babies” as they described in their faulty English. Their sense of hospitality simply couldn’t stomach that we leave Turkmenistan without sleeping with a Russian or Turkmen woman–a sharp contrast to Iran, where such an act could bring severe criminal punishment. Just miles away on the other side of a border, was nearly everything forbidden in Iran, in such apparent abundance that a visitor had to expend effort not to partake.

The simplest answer, of course, is that Iran lay on one side, and Turkmenistan on the other, of the Iron Curtain. Turkmenistan and the other Central Asian republics were systematically secularized and made accustomed to the free flowing alcohol and more liberal sexual mores of the USSR, while in the last thirty years Iran moved dramatically in the opposite direction. It is a severe reminder of how much control a government can have over culture.

Categories
Iran

Tour in Iran: A Review

American citizens can receive a tourist visa for Iran only if they are on an organized tour. Fortunately, for those of us who do not care to be in a tour group, the tour can be a tour for two or even one, as long as it is guided and with a recognized tour agency. For our tour, we used the widely recommended Pars Tourist Agency (www.key2persia.com), based in Shiraz.

After looking through Pars’s website and researching some Iran guidebooks, we put together a 30 day itinerary for our two-person tour, and asked Pars for a quote. Zahra, our contact at Pars, communicated well in English over both email and phone and was reasonably responsive. First, Pars suggested that we change our itinerary to 25 days, as maxing out the 30-day visa period would not be viewed favorably by the foreign ministry in its review of our application (all visa approvals for U.S. citizens are handled through Tehran directly). For a personalized guided tour for two using public transportation (a budget option that Pars calls “Iran Life”), Pars quoted approximately $1500 per person for the 25 days, including transportation, lodging (with breakfast), a guide and entrance fees, and about $1000 per person additional to have a private car. Shortly after we arrived in Iran and after in-person discussion with Pars, we modified our itinerary to 28 days, for which we were charged $1650 per person.

We had had a few concerns about our tour. First and foremost, we were concerned that the “guide” requirement meant that we would not be able to spend time by ourselves, interacting with Iranian people. This fear was totally unfounded. We were able to spend as much time as we wanted wandering the cities alone, either when our sightseeing program was over or when we felt like being alone (we’d just tell our guide when we’d next like his company). In places such as Esfahan and Tehran, where our itinerary had ample time, we spent entire days alone, unfettered by our guide. In truth, it was often good to have him around, since he acted as an interpreter better facilitating our interaction with locals. Our concern that the guide worked as a pair of ears for the Iranian government was also without any basis.

Second, we were concerned that our budget “Iran Life” trip would not allow us to see everything we wanted in the time we had, because we would always have to track down public transportation. This was also unfounded. Whenever necessary or optimal, our guide would commission taxis (or share taxis), allowing us to see essentially everything we wanted quite efficiently. If anything, I thought that our tour was probably more comfortable in the end, since the truly long stretches were done by modern bus, far better than sitting in a car for hours at a time. Especially given the necessity of hiring taxis for day trips, we thought that the tour was very good value. The standard of lodging varied but was generally quite acceptable, and I’m not sure that we could have paid for much more than transportation, lodging and admissions with the amount we paid for our tour (seemingly leaving Pars not much profit after paying the guide, although I’m sure that their negotiated rates for the hotels are better than we could arrange for ourselves). [In terms of expenses, it may be worth establishing whether you will pay for your guide’s meals. Our first guide assumed that he would pay for his own meals, while our second guide was somewhat ambiguous on the point until we expressed what the first guide did.] Pars also helped us arrange, at some additional cost, the initial approval process for our transit visas for Turkmenistan, which was very convenient.

So, positive things aside, some criticisms:

The quality of the guides is variable. We ended up having three guides on the trip, one for the first two days, a second for the rest of the trip (save one day, when he had to run an errand) and a third for that one day. Of the three, we felt that two were excellent (both in terms of knowledge and attitude) while one was seriously deficient. He was a nice enough guy, and did what we asked, but his knowledge of the sites was substandard (noticeably less than Lonely Planet, which really should serve as a baseline for a guide anywhere) and at times we did not feel that he was totally honest with us (a long ordeal involving a train reservation that nagged us for several days of our trip). (We think that we may have gotten a poorer guide in part because our itinerary was relatively tiring and demanding (one person called it a “marathon tour”), although we don’t know for sure.) All things considered, this problem wasn’t a deal-breaker for us–we’re pretty self-sufficient with books on background information and as I said the tour was reasonable value not including the guide. It would have been better, however, to work before the tour at securing just the right guide. [This is tricky of course, on your first tour, but I can suggest a name if you email me!]

There were a few problems with hotel reservations. Since our guide did all of the work on planning our sightseeing and transportation, during the tour Pars–that is, the office–really only had to worry about our hotel reservations. Unfortunately, this process was not without glitches, which proved quite frustrating to us (and our guide) on the ground. It would be helpful if Pars (or one’s guide, as we requested after the second incident) confirmed each hotel reservation immediately before the tourists’ arrival. In one incident, the faulty reservation meant that we suffered what seemed to us to be a severe downgrade in lodging, which royally pissed us off and severely impacted our first half day in Esfahan in terms of time and aggravation.

Be clear about the sites you want to see, and if there are any that are particularly time-consuming or out of the way, be proactive in making it happen. Our initial itinerary with Pars only included a rough outline of the places we wanted to visit, including names of cities and certain attractions. We expected that Pars would fill in the details, and, for the most part, they did. When our itinerary specifically included places that were a bit out of the way, however, we had to be fairly persistent with our guide to sure that we ended up going. After the first few days, we also made sure that we visited the sites we wanted to in the order we wanted to, going over our itinerary with the guide in advance. Bottom line: If you know what you want to see, be fairly aggressive and do not shy from handholding your guide there.

Categories
Iran photo religion

On Iranian Identity

Traveling in Iran, we have come upon some interesting points on Iranian identity, relating to everything from Islam to Zoroastrianism, and the ancient Iranian empires to the State of Israel, which I thought would be worth covering in a post. It is interesting to see which strains of Iranian history and culture are emphasized by Iranians and the Iranian government, and why.

Iranians all over the country speak very proudly of the Achaemenids and the great Achaemenid site of Persepolis. I believe this is not only because there was so much that was great about the Achaemenid Empire, from its expansive territory to its successes as a truly cosmopolitan, universalist and seemingly benevolent world power, but because it (along with, to a lesser extent, the Sassanid Iranian Empire) represents what Iranians see as purely Iranian greatness, a past untainted by the Arab conquest, which is viewed largely as a destructive invasion by a relatively barbarian people. This focus on ancient, pre-Islamic Iran was also shared by the 20th century Pahlavi dynasty, which deliberately positioned itself as a continuation of Iran’s ancient past, including by naming itself after an ancient Iranian language. While there is something slightly sad about a country’s dwelling on its greatness of nearly 2,500 years ago, it is interesting to see how some Iranians, frustrated with and contemptuous of the current government, bulk the Islamic Revolution together with the Arab conquest and the coming of Islam as things that are non-Persian and bad, as defined against Cyrus the Great, Persepolis and all that is Persian and glorious.

One woman explained to us that Iran has a long tradition of gender equality going back to Achaemenid times, and that the concept of female subservience (including as promoted by the current government) is fundamentally Arab. Indeed, a paradox of Iran is that despite its laws it is in some ways more gender equal than other countries we have been to. Women here are quite visible in the workplace, unlike some parts of the Arab world, and many places, such as restaurants, that would be segregated in other parts of the Islamic world are not segregated in Iran. What makes Iran such a backward place, gender-wise, is largely not culture, the young woman argued, but merely law. (There is little doubt in my mind that Iran has the potential of far exceeding any other country in the region in gender equality and female success, socially and economically–even now, women make up a solid majority of Iranian university students.) Other people have told us that some Iranians are rejecting Islam altogether due to their disaffectedness with the Islamic authorities, turning instead to Zoroastrianism. One Zoroastrian pointed out to us that many Zoroastrian practices are not based in religion at all, but the ancient customs of the Aryan people. Viewed in this light, Zoroastrianism becomes an ancient and heroic Iranian alternative to Islam.

One young person we spoke to went so far as to say that the country’s present leaders are not Iranians at all, but Arabs. This statement isn’t accurate, of course, but there is what could be called a strain of Arab supremacy that runs through Iranian religious belief. As I mentioned in my post of 5.20 on Shia Islam, Iranian Muslims pay special respect not only to the twelve Imams of Twelver Shiite Islam but also their various relatives and indeed all other descendants of Mohammed. Such descendants are called seyeds and even have a special outfit, including a black turban.

A seyed, Esfahan

I was never able to confirm whether all such people are clerics, or have any special benefits under Iranian law, but it is certainly true that they are afforded respect and take enough pride in their designation to want to stand out (by their dress). Now, many countries have a notion of aristocracy–but it definitely seems strange that Iranians would be celebrating people who are, along at least one identifiable line of descent, not Iranian at all but Arab, given that Arabs as a rule are quite disliked by Iranians as barbarians who came and damaged the high culture of Iran.

Respect of seyeds is but one example of putting religion over ethnicity, also a common feature of a version of Iranian identity. Superficial but telling, the stress that the Islamic government of Iran places on religion over matters of national history is revealed in Iranian money. Iran is the only country I can think of that has, on its money, sites that are not located within the country’s borders. In Iran’s case, no bills contain Persepolis, in the hearts and minds of many Iranians and non-Iranians alike the most beloved and inspirational of Iran’s cultural heritage, but the 1000 and 2000 Rial notes do contain images of Mecca and Jerusalem.

1000 Rial and 2000 Rial notes, showing Islamic sites not in Iran

(Showing the political orientation of the money even further, the new 50,000 Rial note makes a special reference to Iran’s contentious nuclear program.)

One of the most significant areas in which Iran puts religious politics over ethnic politics is its virulent anti-Israel policy.

Anti-Israel mural, Tehran

I found myself asking, “Why should Iran even care about Israel?” Iranians generally have no fondness for Arabs, even if co-religionists, and go so far as to consider some of them, Saudis in particular, their enemies. Palestine is quite a distance from Iran, and, let’s face it, Iran and Israel in many senses don’t have anything to do with each other. Given that Jordan and Egypt, the countries actually bordering Israel and most affected by the problems rising from the existence of Israel, have made peace with Israel, why is it up to Iran to become a protagonist in that struggle? The answer is that through its struggle against Israel Iran believes that it is assuming leadership of the Islamic world, a mantle that Iran clearly desires. Do Iranians as a people have anything at stake? No. But the Islamic government does. (In one of the most perverse statements derived from propaganda that we heard in Iran, and generally we heard quite few, an otherwise smart man told us that Iran must oppose Israel now before Israel invades Iran, because the Zionists’ objective is to expand Israeli territory indefinitely. Today the West Bank, tomorrow Tehran? Also, note that the mural above is instructional in nature–if you are a follower of Imam Khomeini, you must support Palestinians (even if you didn’t know you cared about Israel).)

In addition to promoting Iran’s Islamic identity over Iran’s non-Islamic history, the Iranian government uses its religion of Shiite Islam specifically as a major building block of Iranian national identity.

One potential problem with Islam for Iranians, as I described above, is that it originated with Arabs, who are generally perceived quite negatively, and came to Iran through the Arab conquest, which is thought of as a destructive and negative period of Iranian history. Even today, Islam as a whole is in many ways dominated by Arabs. (We were told, for example, that the Saudis treat Iranians poorly in the hajj, assigning them substandard amenities and suboptimal access.) One “solution” for this problem has been the promotion within Iran of Shiite Islam, a sect that it would grow to dominate. Iran is now 90% Shiite Muslim, but it wasn’t always so; even up to the 17th century, there were as many Sunnis as Shiites in Iran. The balance was changed by the Safavid dynasty, which forced the conversions not only of Sunnis but also of Zoroastrians to Shiism. (I sometimes wonder why this sort of historical perspective does not make people question their beliefs.
)

One Iranian woman described Iran to me as “the center of Islamic culture.” Of course, many places can lay claim to that title, and more convincingly than Iran, but the Iranian government is hard at work promoting Iran as the center of Shiite Islam (a title it undoubtedly now holds). For the Safavids, the Shiite faith was a way for Iran to distinguish itself from the also-Islamic but Sunni Ottomans and Central Asians with whom Iran was at war, and to raise the prestige of Iran as a sort of sub-leader within the confines of what is in some ways a foreign faith (perhaps comparable to the state churches established during the Reformation). Shiism still serves the state function of helping strengthen national identity and status by acting as a brand of Islam that is Iranian rather than Arab. The current government continues to promote Iranian-style Shiism not only in Iran but throughout the Islamic world, by funding of Shiite mosques and otherwise, with the additional political aim of building support for Iran, Shiism’s center, within other countries.

Another way that the Iranian goverment uses religion is by creating confusion between faith and state. Iranian people are, undoubtedly, deeply religious, and the government equates religion and state such that it becomes difficult for Iranians to reject fully their government without in part rejecting their religion. One example of this is what I think is an ambiguous use of the word “martyr.” Immediately after the Islamic Revolution, Iraq took advantage of the chaos in Iran to launch an attack, leading to the debilitating Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988. Portraits of Iran-Iraq war “martyrs” are still painted on countless billboards and buildings. While calling war casualties “martyrs” no doubt helped the war effort (by borrowing from religious fervor), to me, dying in a war is not religious martyrdom even if your country has no separation of church and state. The Iranian government does not seem to recognize this distinction when bandying about the word “martyr.” According to one popular government slogan, a country whose citizens are willing to martyr themselves will never fail.

One can only wonder about a government that promotes the human sacrifice of its citizens.

The Iran-Iraq War served to unite the Iranian people under their new government, and the current government takes many actions to make the memories of the war endure despite the passage of much time, maintaining an atmosphere of perpetual war. An Iranian told us that Ahmedinejad recently had a plan to bury war dead in new memorials in every Iranian city, and another told us that now was not the time to push for political reform because the country is still recovering from the war.

I do not know if Iran is still in a period of recovery from the Iran-Iraq War, but it is clear that the wake of the Islamic Revolution, with its conscious and forceful reorientation of Iranian identity, has not settled. Of course, all the strains of Iranian identity will continue to co-exist, as always, but it remains to be seen when a national sense of balance will be reached.

Categories
Iran photo queer

Gay Life in Iran

Our introduction to gay life in Iran was a strange one. Our first evening in Iran, while walking around Shiraz looking for something to eat, we crossed a public square in the middle of town that at first glance did not seem out of the ordinary, but turned out to be one of the most aggressive gay cruising grounds we had ever seen. The first man we met had an extremely high feminine voice (although he was like 6’2″) and showed Derek a (straight) porn video that was on his mobile phone, suggesting that we walk over to his house. The second started with polite chatter but then moved quickly to sex (“In America, man on man okay?”), repeatedly asking Derek the size of his, um, ****, and complaining about local sizes. Despite a very reserved appearance (he was an academic of some sort), this man was quite explicit about what he wanted, and persistent. (I suppose we could have just walked away, but while not sharing his interests we stuck around fruitlessly trying to engage him in more substantive conversation.) Passing through the same square on the way back from dinner, another man told us that he loved America and George Bush and said that George Bush was gay. All of this, happening on our first full night in Iran, was utterly surreal.

Having gay sex in Iran is a capital offense, as is well-known, and there have indeed been cases in which gay men have been executed (although it is not clear whether they were executed merely for homosexual sex or for that in combination with other crimes). Even if one is not executed, there is no doubt that punishment for being openly gay would be quick and harsh. Iranian President Ahmedinejad famously said at Columbia University that there are no gays in Iran, and one fairly liberal, open-minded Iranian we spoke to agreed with that statement, only acknowledging when pressed that there may be a handful, four or five. (Other Iranians did recognize that there were of course gays and lesbians in Iran, and were embarassed at the absurdity of the President’s statement, with which they were surprisingly familiar.)

So is there gay life in Iran? In one month, without much effort, we witnessed a surprising amount. Just by keeping our eyes open, we came across what we believe were four gay couples in Iran. One was relaxing by the river in a large Iranian city, one guy’s head in the other’s lap. In the same city, two other young men, rather similarly and tidily dressed, were walking hand-in-hand. Having just passed us on the street, they looked back and lifted their clasped hands to show that they were together, then a couple seconds later again looked back and lifted their hands. One young man showed us a tattoo on his arm apparently of his boyfriend’s name, which he showed to us saying, “I love [Abdullah],” and pointing to the young man next to him. A fourth couple was quite suggestively stroking each other’s hands and forearms on the Tehran subway, much to our shock. Some of you may argue that all these were the sort of liberal male/male expressions of closeness/friendship without any sexual content that one sees all over from the Middle East to India. As one man told us, two Iranian men can share a bed naked without fear of interpretation of homosexuality–it is just simply acceptable among male friends. But we’re quite familiar with those sorts of behaviors as well, from our experience traveling, and these were not those. In our best judgment, these individuals expressly signaled to us their sexuality (why us I’m not sure, other than that we are two foreign men), and we think they were gay.

The situation seems to be that public awareness of homosexuality is so low in Iran, being gay so unthinkable, that you can get away with a surprising amount of public displays of affection, certainly more than a heterosexual couple can. What we saw gay men do in Iran was beyond the mere friendly same-sex handholding as in India or elsewhere–they were flagrantly physically affectionate, with no-one the wiser.

Public awareness of homosexuality is so low, the possibility so far under people’s radar, that you can also have a public cruise in the center of town. In addition to the square in Shiraz, we visited a park in central Tehran known as a gay meeting place not only on gay websites but even in Lonely Planet.

In the early evening, gay men make up a small (though to the westerner easily identified) minority, among many young people and families, but grow to dominate the park more and more later at night, numbering in the dozens. The atmosphere was much lower key than Shiraz, with men talking to friends and saying hello to strangers but without a sense of desperation.

Park, at night

We were told that, during Khatami’s presidency, there were even drag queens or transsexuals in the park, but after the accession of Ahmedinejad the police came and arrested them, and ordered them never to return to the park again (better than the treatment of such people at the time of the Islamic Revolution–apparently transsexuals working in cabaret shows were put in large bags and thrown off of high places, a traditional Islamic punishment). The police continue to raid the park, including by posing as attractive young gay men on the prowl (of course, a classic ploy in the U.S. as well, as former Senator Larry Craig knows). If the police catch someone taking a compromising action or making a compromising statement, they make them sign statements promising never to return to the park–it is less clear what happens at a second offense.

Of course, banishment from the local park isn’t the only risk gay men face in Iran. We were told by one young man that he had been beaten up by basijis, a radical fanatical group that is a remnant from the Iran-Iraq war, near the park because he was perceived to be gay. Despite being able to hold your boyfriend’s hand in public, you can’t actually be “out,” or self-identified as a gay man or couple. One man told us that he was able to find and have sex but could not maintain a relationship for fear of exposure and total destruction of reputation and career. And, ultimately, there is the possibility of execution.

Two bonuses on this post, a poem and a joke.

A poem, mine:

Did guys in Texas fear being arrested
before Lawrence v. Texas the sodomy laws tested?
So the guys of Shiraz cruise the parks for the hung
with no ‘pparent fear that they too get hung.

One piece of “evidence” of the ancient and persistent existence of homosexuality in the Middle East (like anywhere else) is that many Middle Eastern countries have a city that is infamous for homosexuality, and the butt of all gay jokes in that country. In Iran, this city is Qazvin (we were there, but didn’t notice anything particularly gay about the place), and we even heard boys in Tehran teasing one another by saying that the other was from Qazvin. At our request, a gay Iranian told us this Qazvin joke:

The grim reaper came to collect the soul of a Qazvin man. “You may write a last statement,” the grim reaper said, “before you leave this world forever.” The man answered, “Oh, I’ve already prepared my statement–it’s under the bed. Could you bend over and get it?”

Categories
Iran photo politics religion

The Hejab, or On Equality

There’s even a street named after it.

Iranian law enforces the hejab, or the Islamic dress code, on all women age 9 and over (corresponding to the age at which girls could be married in Iran immediately after the Islamic Revolution, although that age has since been changed). Iranian women do not wear the burqa, like women in parts of the Arab world and Afghanistan, but the rule seems to be that absolutely everything be covered except the face and hands. (This rule even applies to, with ridiculous effect, Iranian movies, in which female characters are covered even in domestic scenes in which in real life a woman would not be covered.) The hejab is often satisfied by wearing a chador, a very large piece of black cloth that is draped over one’s head and held in place with one’s teeth or hands to cover nearly the entire body but the face. Alternatively, and preferred by many women, is a coat (called a manteau and sometimes fitted), along with a headscarf. Young women in big cities flout the rules a bit by wearing shorter manteaus and wearing their headscarf rather “high” on the head, exposing a good portion of their hair. Some non-Muslim women tend to dress even a little more casually, perhaps exposing a little neck or ankle. [See my post of 6.4 for photos.] But the hejab is the law. If you break the law once, we are told that the police will just take you to the police station and call your family. But if you kept breaking the law, you would be fined and eventually end up in prison. The Ahmedinejad administration has ordered police crackdowns on the hejab, especially in the summers when the temperature climbs and it becomes tempting to relax one’s clothing. As once reported in the press, “Police will seize women with tight coats and cropped trousers.”

Bathroom sign

For some of you it may be tempting to view the hejab as something cultural, rules that we as non-Muslims may not be comfortable with but may well be desired by Iranians for the ordering of their society. I personally am certainly comfortable with traditional dress (cf. post of 4.16), and recognize that different cultures do find different clothes more or less acceptable or objectionable. But through our travels in Iran we have come to feel more strongly than ever that dress is an important form of personal expression, and that the legally enforced hejab is an unreasonable infringement of women’s liberties. (This may sound a bit American–and indeed I also find objectionable (although not in the same way) rules in France and Turkey that prohibit the wearing of headscarves.)

Often, in conversations with Iranian women, the hejab comes up. When we asked them what they think about having to wear the headscarf, we generally heard a curt “I hate it.” Young ladies that Derek tries to photograph will spontaneously point at their headscarves, saying that it’s ugly and that they would much prefer to be photographed without it (although of course that is not an option). Even women who said that they themselves would wear it even if it were not legally required, because it is dictated by their faith and tradition, told us that they did not think it should be the law, and that women should be free to choose. I do not know if there have been any reliable polls, but one fairly liberal, but older man thought that perhaps half of Iranian women would wear and half not wear the hejab if the law were lifted. (We were told by one older woman that, in Tehran before the Islamic Revolution, almost nobody wore headscarves, but the legal requirement in the last thirty years has restored the hejab to the level of social mores as well–even we started joking that women with high scarves must be of questionable morals, akin to a very short miniskirt–and if the law were revoked more women would probably wear headscarves than in pre-revolutionary days.) But just as women will object to the hejab, they will also point out that it’s just the tip of the iceberg, a meaningless symbol compared to the other social and legal handicaps women suffer in the Islamic Republic. Upon reflection, however, I have come to the belief that the hejab explains much about what is wrong with gender relations in Iran.

The first problem with the hejab is simple inequality. Although I believe that as a technical matter the hejab imposes restrictions on men as well (and at times men have been harassed by police for having “improper” hairstyles or whatever), from our experience the law doesn’t stop men from doing much of anything in the way of dress. Men wear short sleeves all the time, have all sorts of hairstyles from long to spiky, feel free to leave three or four buttons undone exposing a usually hairy chest and wear sandals exposing their feet. We’ve even been told that it’s okay to wear shorts, although we have not seen anyone doing this.

Exercising. The man looks a bit more comfortable, don’t you think?

Because the hejab is required for women when they may be in the presence of unrelated men, it creates for women a constant awareness of, a burden to check for, the possible presence of men. If dress is slightly relaxed, because they are alone or in a private place, they must rush to fix it if a man (especially an official) appears on the scene. It creates for women two spheres–the private, in which they are free to wear whatever they’d like, and the public, a space controlled by men in which they must modify their appearance. It is, simply put, a symbol of patriarchy.

No hejab, no service.

Another, deeper problem with the hejab revealed itself when we asked why it was necessary. What we were told repeatedly by men was that women need to conceal themselves in order to reduce temptation for and sexual violence by men. This is, of course, the exact mentality that allows rapists to defend themselves by pointing to the victim’s dress. This attitude is not only damaging to women, because it assigns female culpability to the male problem of sexual violence, but, I believe, also to men, who are seen in this view as totally lacking self-control. Indeed, some anecdotal evidence would suggest that this worldview generates male misbehavior–one young tourist we met in Tehran said that she received 10-20 unwanted and persistent advances by men each day, and another foreign woman temporarily living in Iran confirmed that Iranian men seem to have no sense of shame or fear of rejection. The Lonely Planet describes the Tehran subway as a “frotteur’s heaven.” Iranian men in the U.S. certainly don’t behave this way–it must be the culture of giving men a free pass and blaming women that causes it.

A few words on what tourists should do in Iran. One man we spoke to laughed bitterly when mentioning his conversations with female tourists from Europe who answered, when they were asked what they thought of Iran, simply that they liked Iran and that Iran was great. “What if they had to live here?” he asked, “What if there was an Islamic Republic of France? Let’s see what they’d say then.” After hearing this, we felt it our responsibility to be truthful, and not gloss over our true feelings on important questions simply because it is easier to avoid political issues.

Also, we have seen some Iranian domestic tourists from the larger cities avoid wearing their hejab when possible. For example, in a hotel lobby, two young ladies were sitting across from Derek without their scarves on, next to their scarf-wearing mother, and only rushed to put them back on, while expressing annoyance and rolling their eyes as they did it, when an Iranian man entered the room. On a daytrip to the countryside, some Iranian women in our group courageously took off their scarves, since they were in the presence of only western tourists and the tour op
erators. Sadly, on that tour, most of the western tourists kept their scarves on, no doubt not only because they were afraid of getting into trouble (we were told once that foreigners are levied a $3 fine), but because they thought that respecting local law was the “right thing to do.” But does this kind of law deserve respect? Or should the foreigners show solidarity with courageous Iranian women?

It may be the law, but does it deserve respect?

One story: We were showing New York postcards (which we carry for such show and tell) to three older women in a city park. They asked for a card, and we selected the one of Radio City Music Hall. Women are not allowed to sing or dance in public in Iran because the solo female voice and female dance are considered too seductive, causing many female musicians to move to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution. We wrote on the back of the card, “In this place, they make music that could make you cry and there is beautiful dancing. One day, the people of Iran will dance and the women will sing. Iranian people will walk hand in hand with the rest of the world.” Each sentence was met with a quiet but firm “Inshallah [God willing].”

Categories
Iran photo politics queer religion

Freedom in Iran

To a liberal, open-minded Westerner, it may be all too easy to enter Iran thinking that maybe most Iranian people like the Islamic regime, that the country’s laws, while unappealing (to say the least) to us, are to them not only acceptable but what they expect, and how they want their society to be organized. It is tempting to think that the differences between the Iranian system and, say, the U.S. system can be written off to culture. People vote in Iran, after all, and in the last elections chose Ahmedinejad. Very quickly, within the first few days in Iran, this sort of relativism was wiped clean from our minds.

Iran is not a place where people are free to decide to be Muslim, or follow traditional behaviors, or be for or against the government; it is a place where people feel oppressed by the fanatically religious minority, the mullahs who have undemocratic, total control over the government and military and dictate a way of life that people would not choose. We heard it far and wide, from older women to youngsters, from Muslims to Zoroastrians, from big cities to smaller towns. Of course, we spoke more often with people who speak English, and we communicated (in English, through a translator or by non-verbal means) more often with people who reached out to talk to us, the foreigners, but our sample size was not small–Iranians are exceptionally friendly and we spoke to literally many dozens of people during our month in Iran. The bottom line is that people do not feel free in Iran, and that people have a strong desire to be free.

Two hand gestures became very familiar to us while traveling in Iran and communicating with locals. The first was a hand wrapping an imaginary turban on one’s head, a symbol for the theocratic elite of the country. Repeatedly, people would make the gesture, sometimes accompanied by the hand stroking an imaginary beard, to signify that it is the mullahs who have control and are mismanaging the country and restricting people from enjoying their lives in the manner that they wish. The second was the throat-cutting gesture, hand across the neck, which was used surprisingly often not only to describe what would happen to you if you tried to exercise a freedom that was not provided under Islamic law, but also as a general symbol for the government–nowhere else have we seen people associate their government so closely and so repeatedly with execution. One person told us that the only thing stopping the Islamic government from restoring stoning as a form of punishment is international pressure.

What freedoms are missing in Iran? Iran is in some ways more free than other countries we have visited. Some public criticism of government officials (though not the unelected religious hierarchy) is permitted in the press, particularly since the Khatami presidency. Traveling about the country, it feels less like a police state than Syria, where to take a long-distance bus trip your ID is checked, or Uzbekistan, where during our visit in 2003 there were frequent police checkpoints on the roads. The police presence in Iran is fairly minimal, and soldiers (usually fulfilling their compulsory military service) are friendly. What makes Iran different from other countries with comparable freedom deficits is that the freedoms unavailable in Iran are deeply personal, things that affect people on an intimate, daily basis. People speak of the censorship and lack of freedom in countries such as China, but the reality is that, day-to-day, most people in China can live largely as they wish, where their personal lives are concerned; the government does not seem to involve itself. Syrians, who seem to have almost no political freedoms but do have many personal ones under their secular government, still seem quite content with their government. Political freedoms, I feel after a month in Iran, are in a sense secondary to those personal liberties that we demand in our private lives. Of course in many cases, including possibly Iran, political freedoms are necessary to achieve the more personal ones, but if you had to choose only one, politics would come second.

After one young man told us that the thing he wished most for Iran was freedom, we asked him, “What does freedom mean to you?” “I wish I could hold my girlfriend’s hand in the street,” was his reply. Romantic/Sexual freedom is core to our identity as humans (or even deeper, to our animal souls), and one area in which the Iranian government is particularly active. We were told by one man that he is afraid even to walk down the street with his girlfriend, because of the ever-present possibility of adverse action by the police. While young people often have illicit (sexual) relationships, the dating scene is so limited that almost everyone we heard having been married or about to be married was married or engaged to his or her cousin (though this may also have to do with the frequency of arranged marriages). Forms of sexual expression that may be illegal in other countries as well, but are likely usually tolerated, such as adultery and homosexuality, are capital offenses. One man told us that, if a man discovered that his new wife is not a virgin, he would have the right to annul the marriage and likely without much legal repercussion kill the man who had slept with her.

Freedom of religion/conscience is also core to our identities. While Iran permits the practice of certain non-Islamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism), following long-established Islamic custom, there are also severe restrictions on religious belief. Perhaps most shockingly, apostasy, or renunciation of Islam by a Muslim, is punishable by death. Given this ban, the permitted minority religions are not allowed to proselytize, nor are they allowed to worship publicly. Religions other than the permitted ones, including most infamously the Bahai faith, are severely persecuted with the full force of the state. Atheism, of course, is unthinkable.

When it comes to one’s romantic/sexual life or one’s faith, however, people will to some extent act according to their desires, regardless of the law. We were told that non-martial sexual relations were fairly common among young Iranians, some engaging in anal intercourse to preserve the woman’s technical virginity. Many of Iran’s parks, especially those located somewhat outside of city centers, are filled with amorous young couples hiding among the trees. There is even a dangerous but not-so-underground gay life in the big cities [see my post also of 6.6]. Similarly, Mohammed himself said that there is no compulsion in matters of religion, and people in Iran believe in their hearts and minds many things deviant from the Islamic legal requirements. We were told by several Iranians that it is common for a person to be a Muslim on paper (Iranian government ID cards state the citizen’s religion), but not be one in spirit. One woman we spoke to said that her father and her siblings were all essentially atheists, and that her father encouraged her to learn about other religions and to pick a faith that feels right to her. Another young man, who had grown to equate Islam with the hated Iranian government, told us outright that “Islam is shit” (!) and that he wanted to become Christian. (We tried with little traction to tell him that there were plenty of bad Christians in the world as well.) He wore on his neck a cross, which had been given to him by his parents, who accepted his choice. It was a shock to see in front of us a man actually wearing around his neck evidence that could be used to convict him of a capital offense.

Cross on the neck of a Muslim man who wished to convert to Christianity, a capital crime. After we took this photograph, the man, to our surprise, asked us to re-take the picture, with his face. Later, his friend reminded us never to show that second photograph to anyone (of course we had no intention), using the throat-cutting gesture.

But of
course people, while acting outside of the law, remain afraid. Iranians love to talk about politics, and wanted to talk to us about politics, but also let us know that they feared that our conversation was somehow being monitored. People told us that we, as Americans, were likely being followed, and a man who had invited us into his family home (such invitations are not uncommon in Iran, one of the friendliest and most hospitable countries in the world) was certain that the police knew that we were there. One man who wanted to speak to us had us step away from his university classmates, because he didn’t feel he could trust them not to report the conversation. The apparent total control that the government has, its apparent ability to monitor its citizens’ activities and the severe punishments provided under the law lead to a general sense of distrust and paranoia. Without such intimate and essential freedoms as sex and faith, nearly everyone becomes a potential criminal and target of the state, a person who has to live with distrust, paranoia and potential severe punishment.

All this leads to a sense of discontent and pessimism that we have not seen in many countries. One woman told us when we said we were from New York, “I wish I was born in America.” One young girl we spoke to, when we showed her pictures from New York, said that if she lived in New York she would never come to Iran. Another young man, hearing that we were American, said, “New York, yes. Los Angeles, yes. Iran, no. Mullah, ech,” and wrapped an imaginary turban about his head. “Will things change?” we often asked. The answer generally fell somewhere between thirty years and never. Those who were the most pessimistic said that their government was deliberately keeping the country at a relatively poor state of economic development, so that people would not have the energy for political action or rebellion. Others said that the mullahs very carefully calibrated the laws to give Iranians a modicum of freedom, such as the relatively recent allowing of women to ride bicycles, a change that an optimistic Iranian specifically identified to us as a sign of progress in Iran (though to us of course it sounded absurd). Multiple people said that the government encouraged the relatively free availability of hard drugs in Iran, because the religious elite prefers that young people be chemically dependent rather than politically active. One person painfully pointed out that Western governments don’t really even care about the Iranian people, raising a conflict with Iran only when it comes to issues of security such as the nuclear program.

Lee Bollinger said in his introduction to Ahmedinejad’s address at Columbia University that “there are not enough prisons to prevent an entire society that wants its freedom from achieving it.” In the longest conversations we had with Iranians, I tried to remind them of this, and I must confess that I cannot entirely understand why 100,000 women in Tehran, Shiraz and the other biggest cities don’t just suddenly take off their headscarves one day. But of course I understand that there are real risks, and that, while Iranians may be able to sense and desire the freedoms that we take as essential, I cannot feel the fear that someone who grew up in the Islamic regime feels. Until the day comes when freedoms are restored in Iran, many Iranian people will have to continue living parts of their lives underground, or emigrate, as so many are choosing. One fellow traveler we met in Iran, an Irishman, said that he would kiss the ground when he returned home. And indeed visiting Iran does make a visitor appreciate the freedoms he enjoys back home–but a better reaction than smugness or selfish relief is outrage, for these are freedoms that we should all be able to take for granted, should not even have to be thankful for. How to direct one’s outrage remains, of course, a difficult question.

Categories
Iran photo politics

Being American in Iran

“Down with Israel / Down with USA”

Wearing the Stars and Stripes

When we told other tourists in Iran that we were American, they, after expressing surprise that we could get an Iranian visa at all, were intensely curious at how our experience was, usually assuming the worst. We imagine you’re curious as well. So, what’s it like being American in Iran?

First and overwhelmingly, any impression that you may have of Iranians hating America or believing America to be the “Great Satan” is 99.9% wrong. To the contrary, almost all Iranians have an almost irrational love of America and Americans. My Iranian-American friend had told me this many times, but even then I did not realize the extent to which merely being American would make us recipients of so warm a welcome, indeed make us so popular in Iran. Almost everyone reacts favorably to our being American–more so than in any other country we have visited. When we told one older lady that we were American, she cooed, “Ooh–great! We love Americans!” One Swiss tourist that we spoke to told us that before she arrived in Iran she was afraid that people would think that she was American, and react badly to her. “I was so wrong,” she told us, “Iranians love Americans. They want to go to America!” We saw one man wearing second-hand U.S. military clothing and many others wearing New York Yankees baseball caps. One young man insisted on writing in my notebook, in English, “The people of Iran love the people of the U.S.A.,” and wanted me to distribute his message in the U.S. [done] We were even told that many young Iranians, despising their own government, like George W. Bush!

Why do Iranians love America so much? I think there are three factors: political, economic and cultural.

A primary reason that many Iranians like America is that they find their own government backward and oppressive, and think of America as the epitome of progress and personal and political freedom–to put it tritely, a beacon of hope. I am cautious of believing that this is the dominant reason why Iranians like America, but I do believe that it is at least as important as the economic and cultural ones, especially with younger Iranians. We even heard it said that if America invades Iran (yes, the thought is on their mind, although most Iranians seem to recognize that the U.S. currently has enough on its plate), there will indeed be some Iranians lining up to welcome the U.S. troops (though I imagine that in the event of an actual invasion nationalism and self-defense would kick in, and the vast majority of people would oppose the alien invaders). All of the anti-American propaganda put forth by the Islamic regime and its press? It seems almost totally disregarded. (I even recall reading an article during the darkest days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq that Iranians believed that the invasion was probably actually going smoothly, and that the Iranian media was misrepresenting American progress.) Far from thinking America an enemy, I imagine that many educated Iranians’ worldview is far more similar to that of people in the U.S. and the West than that held by their government.

Probably close behind, America represents economic prosperity and opportunity. Iranians have a sense that their country has what it takes, including especially a talented and well-educated populace, to be far more successful than it is today (and from our time in Iran we believe that this sense is correct), and many Iranians believe that the main thing stopping Iran from such material progress is its government. One Iranian told us that the Islamic Revolution, with its accompanying brain drain, flight of foreign investment and know-how, disconnection from the global economy and medieval laws, set Iran back 200 years, not an uncommon belief. (Part of what depresses the Iranian economy are of course international sanctions. But interestingly, and perhaps changing my ideas on the efficacy of sanctions, some Iranians we met put the blame for sanctions on their own government for its unwillingness to improve relations with other countries, rather than other countries for imposing them.) With so many problems at home, not only political but economic, many young Iranians hope to emigrate, we ourselves having met in our brief stay not only people who will be leaving Iran in the next year for the likes of Canada and Australia but many more who wanted to and were making longer-term plans to emigrate. Almost all Iranians who were planning or hoping to emigrate told us that America would be their first choice, were it attainable, I imagine not only because America is uniquely a land of immigrants and has a large Iranian community but because Iranians are very familiar with America from American popular culture.

Which leads us to the final reason, which is that there may be certain cultural affinities between Iran and the U.S. Traveling in Iran has helped me recognize how Hollywood is perhaps America’s greatest asset. Many Iranians have satellite television, and multiple channels feature solidly American programming, from movies to reality shows (they even get NPR!). Iranians took quickly to addictive American popular culture (its brashness may be in tune with Iranian culture, one person hypothesized), and see through it a world not only different from their own but also more appealing. We were also repeatedly told that Iranians like Americans more than Brits or Europeans because they think that Americans are friendlier, while Europeans are relatively cold and impersonal. Are Americans actually friendlier? Maybe, but we also suspect that Americans in particular (along with perhaps people from other English-speaking countries) are quicker to engage Iranians at a personal level, including especially in political discussions, instead of staying somewhat more aloof or cautious about approaching certain subjects, and that this eagerness to converse frankly may lead to a feeling of intimacy or closeness. (A western woman who studies Iran told me that despite America’s somewhat troublesome history with Iran and the Pahlavis in the 20th century (see my post of 6.5), few Iranians held a grudge against the U.S., although many Iranians still hold strongly negative views against the U.K. for its historical negative involvement in Iran.) Finally, it doesn’t hurt that there are so many Iranian-Americans, and that the U.S. is home to a pre-revolutionary Iranian culture in exile. Often, we heard music playing that was identified to us as “L.A. Iranian music,” or music from Iranian artists (including women, who are legally prohibited from singing in Iran) who fled to “Tehrangeles” after the Islamic Revolution.

To be popular and liked is nice, of course, even if only because we come from a particularly country. But traveling in Iran has also made us aware of some things about ourselves and America.

We are reminded how core to our beliefs certain American ideals are. Even with what we think are our liberal, open minds, certain issues stand out as black and white for us, and being in Iran has made these issues seem more clear and important than ever, as the lack of certain basic freedoms in Iran is mentioned with despair by many Iranians that we speak to. We didn’t come here to be propangandists for our system, or to make any kind of political point–we came as tourists. But political discussions constantly arise in Iran because Iranians love talking about politics, and because the circumstances of their country bring so vividly to the fore many political issues. Sometimes, Iranians we speak to simply ask what we think about our government or theirs. Other times, we get questions about Western perceptions of Iran or what we think about the hejab, or Islamic dress code. Because we are not satisfied at feeling smugly relieved that we’re from the “land of the free,” because we feel genuinely distressed about
the laws in Iran and because Iranians feel close to us, making us feel close to them, we have felt a moral obligation to give honest and complete answers, and not cursory or glib ones, so that people understand how we think and exactly what our objections are to certain aspects of the Iranian system. In almost every conversation we have with Iranians, they are disgruntled with their system, and we want to make clear to them that most of the world would agree that they should be disgrunted, and that they are right that things in Iran are askew. The Iranians’ friendliness, their mastery of English and their relative sophistication, all made us feel that they really should have what we have, in terms of civil liberties and a free society; everyone should, but almost especially them.

At the same time, I have come to recognize some arguably negative things about life in America and the West. When describing things in the U.S. and elsewhere, it is amazing how often sex, alcohol, gambling, etc., arise. We mentioned that we were in Bahrain immediately before Iran, and, when asked about Bahrain, had to explain how Saudis drive over the causeway for alcohol and prostitution, a very visible aspect of downtown Manama. We were talking about indigenous peoples, and ended up describing how U.S. Native American economies are now based largely on gambling. The same, of course, with Macau, pictures of which on our iPod we sometimes shared. (From the same set of pictures, we found ourselves explaining the redlight district near the former Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.) Unwittingly, I would use sexual double-entendres with our tour guide (so much of our humor relates back to sex). Western culture is often, as Iranian clerics may argue, permeated with vice. While the same vices may exist to some extent in Iran, forced underground they are not nearly as visible or pervasive.

Perhaps most chillingly, being in Iran made me wonder whether this is the sort of outcome that religious conservatives want for America. Iran has it all: laws dictated by religion, sectarianism (in its persecution of faiths such as the Bahai), harsh punishments for private beliefs and acts, deviation from accepted international standards. I am not saying that the U.S. is Iran; while there is a strain of puritanicalism and evangelicalism running through American history the culture is nowhere near as traditional, the population as a whole not as devout, and, perhaps as important, separation of church and state is a stronger American tradition than adherance to a particular faith (whereas past Iranian governments, from the Sassanids to the Safavids, have very much tried to combine church and state). But many Iranians, at the time of the 1979 revolution, likely didn’t think that the new government would be an Islamic one, and to a certain extent it must have snuck up on them. And so it makes me believe freedom-loving Americans must be vigilant in making sure that the ideals they hold most dear persist in America.

One small story, a bit more personal: We met one Iranian man in Tehran who said that he had lived in the U.S. for over thirty years, and finally decided to move back to Iran, bringing with him his two young, American-born children. He told us how happy he was with his decision, including by relating to us that, on the first day of school in Iran, his boys had come home so relieved, so comfortable to be among people like themselves and away from the racial tension of their California school. I was simply appalled. Given the lack of freedoms in Iran, given the lack of economic opportunity, given that almost every young Iranian wants to move abroad, I simply could not believe that this man had brought his American children to grow up in Iran. My adversity was irrational, to a certain extent, but as an immigrant and having many immigrant friends, I was forced to imagine how different (and likely more difficult) the children’s lives would be because of their parents’ decision. I thought of all of the sacrifices my parents made to give us the chance to grow up in the U.S., and thought the Iranian-American selfish. Hearing him speak of America in the third person, as if he was not effectively American himself from having spent all of his adult life in the U.S., I was deeply offended. Hearing him say strongly negative things about American culture, including what I felt were outright falsehoods on the immigrant experience and the veracity of the “melting pot,” as if modern Iranian culture was, in the balance, superior, I feared that Iranians would believe his slanders. I expressed my outrage, somewhat to my discredit, which the man handled well.

Categories
Iran photo

History of Iran: The Islamic Revolution

This is part of a series of an overview of Iranian history–please refer to my posts of 5.10, 5.11, 5.19, 5.27 and 6.1.

***

“Freedom! Islamic Republic!”

The troubled reign of the Qajars (1794-1925) was terminated by military officer Reza Khan, who took the name of Pahlavi (after the pre-Islamic language) and declared himself Shah, founding the Pahlavi dynasty. Reza Shah began a program of rapid industrialization and secularization (modeled in part after Turkish contemporary Ataturk, including a program of westernization of dress), which was to a certain extent successful but also created many opponents. His son, Mohammed Reza Shah, would be the last king of Iran.

Mohammed Reza’s problems began in part with his cooperation with the CIA in a successful coup to overthrow the popular Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who had just nationalized the country’s oil industry to the great disadvantage of the British, who were operating a concession. Economic mismanagement and harsh persecution of dissidents through a secret police led to widespread discontent, leading to yet greater protests and crackdowns. Finally, in 1979, Mohammed Reza Shah fled Iran, and an exiled opposition leader named Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to seize control.

Bank bills immediately after the Islamic Revolution, left in circulation but with the portrait of Mohammed Reza stamped out

Opposition to the policies of Mohammed Reza Shah were spread across a wide swath of the political spectrum. However, Ayatollah Khomeini with quick and ruthless organization in the months following the departure of Mohammed Reza Shah founded the reactionary and undemocratic Islamic Republic of Iran.

Home of Ayatollah Khomeini following the Islamic Revolution

Shiite Islam became the language of the Iranian state, and laws based on a medieval reading of Islam, including the hejab, or Islamic dress code, and the reduction of the marriage age for girls to 9, were enacted. Capital punishment became the law for homosexual sex, apostasy (rejection of Islam) and numerous other offenses. Stoning and other corporal punishments were revived. Khomeini became the unelected “Supreme Leader,” who (rather than the elected President) controlled the military and the judiciary, and appointed the “Guardian Council” that has an effective veto on the laws passed by the democratically elected parliament, the Majlis, and as supervisor of elections can disqualify politicians from running for office.

Khomeini blessed the invasion of and taking of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in 1979, calling the U.S. the “Great Satan” and making opposition to the U.S. a key aspect of Iranian state policy. Khomeini also made opposition to Israel a key Iranian position [more on this to come in a future post on Iranian identity].

Defaced seal of the U.S., Former U.S. Embassy, Tehran

Art on the walls outside the former U.S. Embassy, Tehran

Following the death of Khomeini in 1989, he was succeeded by Ayatollah Khameini, who, as Supreme Leader, was able to thwart the reform ambitions of former President Khatami.

This shrine at Qom (described a bit in my post of 6.2) and the shrine in Mashhad, the holiest one in Iran, are essentially two huge construction projects, with additions being built (in a somewhat shabby manner, it appeared to us) at a fast rate. Some Iranians that we spoke to complained about the state funds that were expended on expansions of religious buildings, including Shiite mosques in other countries (such as Lebanon and Bahrain, both of which are substantially wealthier than Iran) and gold domes, and religious education (to the detriment of secular education).

Finally, a political joke told to us by an Iranian man in one of Tehran’s many beautiful parks: A man walked by a mosque and saw that it was serving food. Puzzled, the man asked his friend where the worshippers were. The friend said that to see people praying, you should go to the University. (Tehran University is famously the site of Friday prayers in Tehran, although few students attend.) “If the University is filled with worshippers, where are the students?” he asked. “The students are all in prison.” “If the prison is filled with students, where are the criminals?” “They are running the government!”

Categories
Bahrain India Iran Kuwait photo Syria

Women of Cover

In our travels thus far through the Middle East, we’ve seen a variety of different styles of cover for women, and I thought that it would be interesting to compare them. Please note that this is intended to be something of a fashion post, rather than a post debating the hejab (Islamic dress code) itself. [Note: None of the individuals pictured was a source of any information for this or any post.]

Colored headscarves

Young women in Syria. In Syria, the scarf is very much a fashion accessory in addition to a religious and customary expectation. In the big cities, many women choose to go without.


Ladies’ police uniforms, Bahrain

Television personality, Bahrain

European tourists at a hotel restaurant, Iran (female tourists, like all women in Iran over the age of 8, are required to obey the hejab in public places)

Trendy mother and daughter, Iran

More trendy scarves, Iran

Black headscarves

We never confirmed this, but this style of headscarf must be required in schools and certain jobs, as they are quite common in Iran.

Getting away with showing a lot of hair, Iran

Black robes

A full black robe is fairly common in more traditional parts of the Arab world, including the Gulf.

Kuwait. Kuwaiti women all seem to wear their hair in huge buns.

Bahrain

A bedouin woman, looking quite stylish in Aleppo, Syria

Young ladies in Hyderabad, India, in style

A step further

The chador, the standard Iranian cover for older women

Iranian tourist in chador, Syria. There are many Iranian tourists in Damascus, on pilgrimage to Shiite sites.

The most annoying thing about wearing a chador, I think, must be the fact that it doesn’t have any clasp to stay together, forcing the wearer to constantly hold it in place, either with hands or teeth. This chador has a pattern.

A druze woman, Syria

An exotic tribal look, in Bahrain. We like to call this type of face cover a “beak.”

I’m not sure why, but one of these ladies in Aleppo, Syria has her face totally covered, not too common a look.

Burka store, Hyderabad. Burkas are sometimes seen in India and the Arab world, but not all that common in the countries we have visited (though I recall seeing quite a few in Zanzibar). Burkas are not worn in Iran, other than perhaps by the Arab minority.

A burka-style hood and face cover, in Damascus, Syria. Again, not too common.

Extras

As a reminder that head covers and veils are not uniquely Muslim, a (Hindu) Rajasthani woman from India. Of course, Christian women also often wear veils, especially in churches.

The wearing of cover in the Middle East is definitely a pre-Islamic custom. A carving at Palmyra, Syria, dating from the 1st or 2nd century AD showing women in veils.

Categories
Iran photo

Iranian architecture

Regent’s Mosque, Shiraz

Iran is of course a center of world culture, and perhaps its greatest legacy to the world is its architecture, including especially Islamic religious architecture.

Some of my favorite Iranian architectural features are the oldest–the brick- and stuccowork that decorate Iranian buildings from the 9th to 12th centuries. [My favorite example of such brickwork (and one of my favorite buildings, period), is from 10th century Samanid Bukhara and will appear in a post on the Samanids to come.]

The Jorjir Portal dates from the 10th century (and was only rediscovered in the 1950s), and is now an entrance to the Hakim Mosque, Esfahan, itself a much newer structure.

The Kharaqan towers, 11th century, reportedly built as tombs for two Seljuk Kings. The tomb towers are now in the middle of a field (not too far from Qazvin).

Detail. Each face of the more ornate (and newer) building has unique geometric patterns. Dazzling, though also bordering on the baroque.

Similarly ornate are the Seljuk-era brick domes of the Friday Mosque of Esfahan, itself an architectural treasure spanning centuries of styles.

A much later example of brickwork, from the Karim Khan Citadel of Shiraz (18th c.).

The patterns on the towers of the Shiraz citadel are similar to mud brickwork on ruined cities and caravanserais in the Iranian desert (date unknown). [picture to come]

Another type of ornamentation that seems to have fallen out of favor sometime before or during the Mongol conquest–stucco. This example is from the Nain Mosque (10th c.), which is notable for being built in the “Arab” style before the form of the Iranian mosque was established. Our experience suggests that stucco decoration is not very durable, and often only fragments remain.

The exquisite stucco Oljeitu Mihrab (14th c.), with beautifully carved minbars. For additional information, see my post of 5.27.

From what I understand, muqarnas, the “stalactite” ornamentations found in Iranian niches, began as structural necessities–but the level of elaboration can be remarkable.

Nazir-ol-Molk Mosque, Shiraz (19th c.)

Kerman Bazaar (18th c.)

Iranian architecture is perhaps most famous for its domes and tilework. The Soltaniyeh Dome (14th c.) is one of the most impressive structures we have ever seen, and one of the largest domes in the world. For additional information, see my post of 5.27.

This dome was in a trading hall in Kashan’s bazaar. Try to get a sense of the scale and design!

Some more domes, from inside and out.

Imam Mosque, Esfahan (17th c.)

Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, Esfahan (17th c.)

Friday Mosque, Yazd

Ganj Ali Khan Mosque, Kerman

Some minarets

Imam Mosque, Esfahan

Friday Mosque, Yazd

The mathematician in me was fascinated by the geometric tilework of Iran’s buildings, especially the calligraphy. It is fortunate that Arabic script is so decorative, given the Islamic ban on representational art!

Hakim Mosque, Esfahan

Friday Mosque, Kerman

Friday Mosque, Esfahan

Also from the Hakim Mosque in Esfahan. Not calligraphy, but beautiful.

Of course, not all of Iranian architecture is religious. The palaces of Esfahan, though modest in scale, are among the most beautiful we have seen anywhere (see my post of 5.19), and as you can see in the Kerman and Kashan photos above, the bazaars of Iran are richly decorated.

We were told that Iranian leaders often dedicated attention not only to the construction of mosques (to fulfill the religious function) and bazaars (the economic), but also baths (the social). Sadly, most of Iran’s hammams are no longer in service (cf. my post of 4.27 on other bathing traditions), although I did visit functioning public baths in Yazd and Qazvin. We confirmed that the public bathing culture ended at the time of the Islamic Revolution–presumably, public bathing was thought decadent and a possible locus of misbehavior. [Perhaps under the same theory, men’s urinals seem to have been abolished in Iran–the only ones we found were at the airport, and Iranian men seemed to avoid them, preferring to wait for a stall. At one of the Iranian public baths I did visit, men wore swim trunks and showered in newly constructed stalls, all of which seemed a bit silly to me.] This hammam in Kerman, like many in Iran, has been converted into a teahouse (see my post of 6.2 on the shop outside the entrance).

Finally, we were amazed by some of the gardens of Iran. Not so much because of their plants or general aesthetic layout (east Asian gardens are in a totally different league), but because of their hydraulics. Many Iranian cities are located at the edge of the desert and use water from mountain springs instead of rain, and the gardens have been laid out to take advantage of these sources of water. Mountain springs are channeled through the garden, with numerous waterways spreading the flow into beautiful, crystal clear grids–almost creating the effect of a gigantic fountain. The waters of the gardens then empty out into orchards and the “gutters” of the city. The clear mountain water coursing through the urban landscape is used to flood-water the plants and trees lining city streets and provides Iranian cities with a feeling that is clean and fresh.

Frontal view of Shahzade Garden, Mahan (in the desert near Kerman)

Fin Garden, Kashan. The pool of water in front is the spring itself, from which waterways thread through the whole garden.