The Ayatollah Begs To Differ Part 1

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.

by Hooman Majd.

Acknowledgments.

I have based this book mostly on personal experience. In 2004 and 2005 I spent several weeks in Iran as a journalist, and in 2007 I spent almost two months living in Tehran, working on what was to become the ma.n.u.script. Both in Iran and in the United States, I have relied on my family, friends, and contacts as sources (as well as many other ordinary Iranians I have spoken to in Iran), some of whom I acknowledge in the text and others whose ident.i.ties I have disguised for their own safety or who wish to remain anonymous. I have also served on a few occasions as an unpaid adviser to the Islamic Republic, bringing me into close contact with Presidents Khatami and Ahmadinejad and numerous members of their staffs, who have all contributed to my knowledge.

I am particularly grateful to President Mohammad Khatami, who took time out of his schedule, both during his presidency and afterward, to engage in long discussions with me and to answer my many questions, and to his brother (and chief of staff) Seyyed Ali Khatami, who spent even more time with me and who introduced me to many other influential Iranians, most of whom I continue to speak with on a regular basis. I learned more about the intricacies of the politics (and the history) of the Islamic Republic from Ali Khatami than I could have from reading dozens of books, and he gave me invaluable lessons on the personalities of the characters who make up the ruling elite of Iran.

I am deeply indebted to the former UN amba.s.sador Mohammad Javad Zarif for his keen insights (and his patience with me) and to the amba.s.sadors Hossein Fereidoun, Sadeq Kharrazi, and Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, all of whom contributed to my understanding of the politics of the Islamic Republic. I'm also grateful to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki for the time he set aside to meet with me on his visits to New York.

In addition to those who are already named as characters in various chapters, I would like to thank the following persons in Iran, in no particular order, for their a.s.sistance and their contributions to my knowledge: Ali Ziaie, Mohammad Ziaie, Amir Khosro Etemadi, Seyyed Hossein Khatami, Maryam Majd, Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, and Mehrdad Khajenouri.

Finally, I'd like to thank my editor, Kristine Puopolo, and my agent, Lindsay Edgecombe, and her colleague James Levine for their hard work in making this a readable book. And, of course, thanks to my father, Na.s.ser Majd, and my mother, Mansoureh a.s.sar, for what they've taught me; and to Karri Jinkins, Davitt Sigerson, Michael Zilkha, Selim Zilkha, Simon Van Booy, Daniel Feder, Eddie Stern, Michael Halsband, Paul Werner, Suzy Hansen, Roger Trilling, Glenn O'Brien, and Ken Browar.

INTRODUCTION.

"Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood." That's how all Iranian stories, at least in the oral tradition, have begun, since as long as anyone remembers. "There was one; there wasn't one," as in "There was a person (once upon a time); but on the other hand, no, there was no one." Often, the saying continues with That's how all Iranian stories, at least in the oral tradition, have begun, since as long as anyone remembers. "There was one; there wasn't one," as in "There was a person (once upon a time); but on the other hand, no, there was no one." Often, the saying continues with "Gheir az Khoda, heech-kee nabood," "Gheir az Khoda, heech-kee nabood," or "Other than G.o.d, there was no One," a uniquely Persian obfuscation of the Muslim Arabic or "Other than G.o.d, there was no One," a uniquely Persian obfuscation of the Muslim Arabic "La'illa ha il'allah" "La'illa ha il'allah" (There is no G.o.d but Allah), and which one might think makes much less sense than the original, but is in a way perfectly reasonable. Introduce a young mind to the paradoxes of life with a paradox, you see, which is what most of the Iranian folk stories are about in the first place. As a child, I heard those stories alongside English equivalents (which of course began with the seemingly far more sensible "Once upon a time"), but it never occurred to me then that the simple (There is no G.o.d but Allah), and which one might think makes much less sense than the original, but is in a way perfectly reasonable. Introduce a young mind to the paradoxes of life with a paradox, you see, which is what most of the Iranian folk stories are about in the first place. As a child, I heard those stories alongside English equivalents (which of course began with the seemingly far more sensible "Once upon a time"), but it never occurred to me then that the simple "Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood" "Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood" said so much about the inherited culture that so deeply penetrated my otherwise Western life. said so much about the inherited culture that so deeply penetrated my otherwise Western life.

"Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood." Yes, we are about to hear a fantasy, but wait-is it a fantasy? While most Iranian stories that begin so are indeed fantasies, the fantastic s.h.i.+a stories of early Islam are thought to be true history by the legions of believers in the faith, and if evoked, Yes, we are about to hear a fantasy, but wait-is it a fantasy? While most Iranian stories that begin so are indeed fantasies, the fantastic s.h.i.+a stories of early Islam are thought to be true history by the legions of believers in the faith, and if evoked, "Yeki-bood" "Yeki-bood" wraps itself in religious significance as well as the Persian art of the epic. On one of my trips to Iran, to Qom to be precise, I picked up some CDs of wraps itself in religious significance as well as the Persian art of the epic. On one of my trips to Iran, to Qom to be precise, I picked up some CDs of noheh noheh, s.h.i.+a religious incantations, usually sung to huge crowds on religious holidays, that tell the stories of s.h.i.+a saints and their martyrdom. One CD contained a rather mellifluous version of the story of Fatimeh Zahra and Ali (the daughter and son-in-law of the Prophet) that began with "Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood" "Yeki-bood; yeki-nabood" and continued with and continued with "zeer-e gonbad'e kabood," "zeer-e gonbad'e kabood," or "under the bruised [or dark] dome [or sky]," alluding not just to the Islamic roots of "There was one, there wasn't one" but also to the s.h.i.+a sense of the world as a dark and oppressive place. The singer claimed the tale to be one of "estrangement and woe," central themes in s.h.i.+sm. There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, there was one and there wasn't one, other than G.o.d there was no One, and the world is under a perpetual dark cloud. Welcome to s.h.i.+a Iran. or "under the bruised [or dark] dome [or sky]," alluding not just to the Islamic roots of "There was one, there wasn't one" but also to the s.h.i.+a sense of the world as a dark and oppressive place. The singer claimed the tale to be one of "estrangement and woe," central themes in s.h.i.+sm. There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, there was one and there wasn't one, other than G.o.d there was no One, and the world is under a perpetual dark cloud. Welcome to s.h.i.+a Iran.

Iran is better known today by the outside world than at almost any time in its history, certainly since the fall of the Persian Empire, mostly because of the Islamic Revolution, which to many ushered in an era of successful but much-feared Islamic fundamentalism. As a child, I had to patiently explain to new friends in school where and exactly what Iran was, if they even bothered to inquire about my strange name; today I suspect that young Iranians have no such problems. When I look back now, both in my childhood and even as a young adult, I couldn't have imagined my country as anything more than a second-rate Third World nation subservient to Western powers: had someone seriously suggested to me, or any other Iranian for that matter, that the United States would one day be proposing to build a missile defense system in Europe to guard against an attack by Iran Iran (as the United States has, to the great consternation of the Russians), with (as the United States has, to the great consternation of the Russians), with Iranian- Iranian-made missiles, I would have instantly labeled that person as stark raving mad. Despite the negative connotations of a perceptibly hostile Iran, Iranians of a certain age can be forgiven for feeling a tinge of pride in their nation's rapid ascent to a position of being taken seriously by the world's greatest superpower, and all in just a little over a quarter of a century. One might argue whether Iran and Iranians would have been better off without the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but it is indisputable that had it not happened, Iran today would likely not have much of a say in global affairs.

Rightly or wrongly, the revolution and the path the nation took after its success have led to Iran's prominence and repute, but of course at the time Iranians could hardly have known that their revolt would have such far-reaching consequences and effects. For two or three hundred years Iran had been, in all but name, a proxy of Western powers-specifically Britain and then the United States when it took over the mantle of empire after World War II. Iranians overthrew a twenty-five-hundred-year monarchy in 1979 to liberate themselves from an autocratic dictator as much as to liberate themselves from foreign domination (a factor that most in the West did not understand at the time and that was also partly the motivation for the takeover of the U.S. Emba.s.sy), and for almost thirty years now, whatever can be said about Iran, it cannot be said that it is subservient to any greater power.

In the early summer of 1979, only a few months after the Islamic Revolution had liberated me from having to explain to geographically and politically challenged fellow students where I was from, I found myself at Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park, shouting until I was hoa.r.s.e. I had recently finished my college studies and was visiting friends and family in London, and as I stood on the lawn surrounded by a very emotional crowd of recent Iranian exiles-many of whom had been forced, at least so they thought, to flee in recent months-I vehemently defended the Islamic Republic. I surprised myself: as a secular and thoroughly Westernized Iranian (or gharb-zadeh- gharb-zadeh-"West-toxified" in the revolutionary lexicon), the nascent Islamic Republic should hardly have been my cup of tea, but I didn't find it hard, nor did I see any contradiction in it, to celebrate an Iran that, after years of subjugation to outside powers, finally had a political system it could call its own. That was certainly good enough for me. As a twenty-two-year-old who until recently had had very little idea of Iran's place in the world, I'll admit that my newfound political awareness of the country of my birth was heavily tinged with youthful idealism, mixed with a good measure of latent Persian pride. The English who looked on curiously at the screaming wogs (as I, along with anyone darker than ruddy, used to be called at my English public school, a school that boasted Milton as an alumnus) seemed bemused; a few shook their heads in disapproval. At least, I thought, now they know where Iran is, a country where they they will no longer have a say. will no longer have a say.

I tell this anecdote because I often see Westerners react to Iran with a sense of bafflement. But that moment at Speakers' Corner and the seeming absurdity of my brief defense of Khomeini's Islamic Republic bring to light a paradox about Iran that is still conspicuous today. Many of my Iranian friends have had these moments, and perhaps the most surprising comes from my Jewish-Iranian friend Fuad. A few years after the revolution, in Los Angeles, I had dinner with Fuad and his wife, Nasreen, where he told me a story that called to mind my Speakers' Corner experience of 1979. He had recently arrived in L.A. from Tel Aviv, where he first sought asylum after leaving Iran, and he was recounting the days preceding the revolution in Tehran. He told me that on one of the nights when millions of Tehran residents protested the Shah's government by taking to rooftops on Khomeini's instruction and shouting, "Allah-hu-Akbar!" "Allah-hu-Akbar!" Fuad and his family found themselves up on their rooftop shouting the same words as forcefully as their Muslim compatriots. Even after leaving his homeland, after settling first in its archenemy Israel and then moving to Los Angeles, even while we were getting drunk on scotch and savoring Nasreen's kosher cooking, neither he nor I saw any contradiction in either his initial sanguine view of an Islamic Revolution or his chanting, at the time, the most Islamic of Muslim sayings. Fuad and his family found themselves up on their rooftop shouting the same words as forcefully as their Muslim compatriots. Even after leaving his homeland, after settling first in its archenemy Israel and then moving to Los Angeles, even while we were getting drunk on scotch and savoring Nasreen's kosher cooking, neither he nor I saw any contradiction in either his initial sanguine view of an Islamic Revolution or his chanting, at the time, the most Islamic of Muslim sayings.

Fuad's parents had fled Baghdad in the 1930s during a wave of pogroms and inst.i.tutionalized anti-Semitism, when many Iraqi Jews made their way to neighboring Iran, settling in a country that had boasted a large and vibrant Persian Jewish community for millennia. But Fuad didn't feel in the least Iraqi, and despite his extended stays in Israel (where he also attended college before the revolution and where he learned his fluent Hebrew), he didn't feel Israeli; he felt Iranian Iranian. And as an Iranian, he was with his countrymen when they rose up against the Shah. Islam, particularly s.h.i.+a Islam, was as familiar to him as it was to his many Muslim friends; he understood that it formed their character as much as anything else did, and although he didn't partic.i.p.ate in the rites of s.h.i.+sm, he and his family were comfortable with the culture that surrounded them, a culture that, although steeped in the s.h.i.+a tradition (which has borrowed from Iran's pre-Islamic culture), was as much theirs as their fellow Iranians'.

In order to understand Iran and Iranians today, one needs to understand what it meant to shout "Allah-hu-Akbar!" "Allah-hu-Akbar!" in 1979. The expression has become known as a sort of Muslim fundamentalist battle cry, uttered in every Hollywood movie featuring terrorists and notorious as the famous last words of the 9/11 hijackers. But the "G.o.d is Great!" that Iranians shouted in 1979 predated the concepts we have of fundamentalism-there was no Hezbollah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad then, nor an Al Qaeda or a Taliban (and the PLO, the Middle East's most prominent terrorists, was still famously secular, and very few in the West had even heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone knew what it stood for)-and to the s.h.i.+a people the words signified their fearlessness in confronting an unjust ruler. in 1979. The expression has become known as a sort of Muslim fundamentalist battle cry, uttered in every Hollywood movie featuring terrorists and notorious as the famous last words of the 9/11 hijackers. But the "G.o.d is Great!" that Iranians shouted in 1979 predated the concepts we have of fundamentalism-there was no Hezbollah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad then, nor an Al Qaeda or a Taliban (and the PLO, the Middle East's most prominent terrorists, was still famously secular, and very few in the West had even heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone knew what it stood for)-and to the s.h.i.+a people the words signified their fearlessness in confronting an unjust ruler.

When the revolution came, I greeted it with fascination. Only a few years earlier, I had believed that the Shah was all-powerful, and now he was improbably on his way out. I disagreed with other Iranian students in the United States, both monarchists and revolutionaries, who thought that Jimmy Carter was pulling all the strings in Iran; my American side liked Carter, who seemed to me a truly decent man in the White House, and I believed that he was caught unawares by the Khomeini-led movement, mainly because I believed in his naivete. But Iranians hated him: the few remaining monarchists, because they felt the United States had intentionally abandoned the Shah; the revolutionaries, communists, Islamists, and everyone else, because he had not forcefully spoken out against the Shah (and had even toasted him at a New Year's party in 1978 in Iran) and was perhaps even conspiring to reinstall him, much as Eisenhower had done in 1953.

When I, along with countless Iranians at home and abroad, voted in the yes-or-no ballot following the Shah's downfall, we overwhelmingly chose an Islamic Republic. Islam had won the revolution; even the traditional and secular left-wing opponents of the Shah's regime had recognized that without Islam, without "Allah-hu-Akbar!," "Allah-hu-Akbar!," the revolution would not have been possible. Iranians still very much believed that to the victor go the spoils, and the mosques (and Khomeini in particular) were the victors in a battle that almost all Iranians were involved in. Iran was an Islamic country, a the revolution would not have been possible. Iranians still very much believed that to the victor go the spoils, and the mosques (and Khomeini in particular) were the victors in a battle that almost all Iranians were involved in. Iran was an Islamic country, a s.h.i.+a s.h.i.+a country, and now, because the very concept of the Islamic Republic was a purely Iranian and s.h.i.+a one, for the first time in hundreds, if not thousands, of years, Iranians were defining their own political system and, more important, their own destiny. country, and now, because the very concept of the Islamic Republic was a purely Iranian and s.h.i.+a one, for the first time in hundreds, if not thousands, of years, Iranians were defining their own political system and, more important, their own destiny.

This memory rang in my head when I was in Tehran in the days after Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 and as I tried to understand how he had become president. Everyone Everyone openly talked about politics, and I understood from the many unlikely people who had voted for him, along with the millions that make up Iran's undercla.s.s, that he had successfully expressed the hope, a hope that had withered over the years, that the revolution was for openly talked about politics, and I understood from the many unlikely people who had voted for him, along with the millions that make up Iran's undercla.s.s, that he had successfully expressed the hope, a hope that had withered over the years, that the revolution was for Iran Iran, for all Iranians, and its glittering promise still held. Ahmadinejad has also always understood that his message, a message of independence from East and West, plays well not only to his Iranian audience, who overwhelmingly support his uncompromising stance on the nuclear issue (if not his style), but to a wider audience across the Third World that sees in the Islamic Republic a successful example of throwing off the yoke of colonialism and imperialism.

I spoke to Fuad almost two years into Ahmadinejad's presidency, and he again surprised me with his comments. Despite Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic remarks, which like many Iranian Jews he just didn't take as seriously as we did-or as he probably should have-Fuad understood him and, yes, in some ways even admired him. Admired? Admired? It was simple for Fuad: he told me that if Ahmadinejad was sincere in what he desired for Iran, and until then there had been no reason for Fuad to disbelieve him, then as a patriotic Iranian he found it hard to argue with many of his ideas and policies. I've heard the very same thing from other Iranians in exile, even among intellectuals, and it brought to mind early opinion on Khomeini. It was simple for Fuad: he told me that if Ahmadinejad was sincere in what he desired for Iran, and until then there had been no reason for Fuad to disbelieve him, then as a patriotic Iranian he found it hard to argue with many of his ideas and policies. I've heard the very same thing from other Iranians in exile, even among intellectuals, and it brought to mind early opinion on Khomeini.

I have spent the decades before and since the Islamic Revolution living in America. The son of an Iranian diplomat, I grew up in different parts of the world, attending kindergarten in London and San Francisco and grade schools at American schools, populated by the children of American diplomats, expatriates, and businessmen, in various other countries. As a teenager, I was deposited in boarding school in England, where I finished my secondary education before rus.h.i.+ng back to America for college. I had, needless to say, a somewhat confused ident.i.ty as a child and teenager who more often than not thought of himself as more American than anything else, although by the time I reached drinking age (which was eighteen at the time), I had made the decision to live and work in Iran. The revolution that arrived unexpectedly a few years later nixed my plans, mostly because I felt that with my father's background (he had been an amba.s.sador of the Shah's regime) I would be rather unwelcome in Tehran, but also because I felt, with both regret and a little admiration, that Iran no longer had much use for my very American worldview.

But in the early days of the Islamic Republic, it was hardly clear that the new political system would survive very long, and Iranian exiles, like the Parisian Russians of the 1920s, promoted the notion that their stay abroad was a temporary one. I watched events unfold in Iran from afar, uncertain of what might happen in the nascent republic and whether I would ever be able to go back, and then the hostage crisis happened-hardly a time for a Westernized Iranian who was already in the West, watching fellow Iranians stream out of Iran by the thousands, to think about setting up shop in the old country. The hostage crisis played out long enough, with Iran's revolutionaries seemingly not only victorious in humiliating the great superpower but also determined to disengage from the West and Western ideas, that many exiles somberly calculated that they would not outlive the Islamic Republic (though some, particularly those who show up, Chalabi-like, on Capitol Hill from time to time, still cling to the hope). I had by this time started to settle down to an adult life in the United States, and as the years pa.s.sed, any fantasy ideas of starting from scratch in Iran, an Iran that by the end of the 1980s had suffered a horrific eight-year war and that I, as an able-bodied young man and unlike my patriotic contemporaries, had played no part in, were inconceivable.

A friend once told me that I was the only person he knew who was both 100 percent American and 100 percent Iranian. Oxymoronic as that sounds, I knew what he meant. I was raised and educated completely in the West, but am the grandson of a well-respected Alemeh Alemeh (learned) and Ayatollah; my first language is English, but I am also fluent in Farsi and am told that I speak it without an identifying accent. But more important, my Western outlook on life doesn't interfere with my complete ease in the company of even the most radical of Iranian political or religious figures (and often theirs with me), and in my travels to Iran I have often thought that there must be a toggle switch somewhere along the electrical system in my brain that is magically triggered to "East" when my plane crosses into Iranian airs.p.a.ce. I live in New York-where the switch is unconsciously set to "West"-and in 2006, in front of my apartment building in lower Manhattan across from City Hall Park and one block from the World Trade Center site, an Egyptian food cart vendor of kebabs had been selling halal (unbeknownst to the majority of his customers) grilled meat for lunch for quite some time. I would often say h.e.l.lo to him on my way out, and one day I stopped and asked where he was from, and he asked where I was from. When I said Iran, his first response was (learned) and Ayatollah; my first language is English, but I am also fluent in Farsi and am told that I speak it without an identifying accent. But more important, my Western outlook on life doesn't interfere with my complete ease in the company of even the most radical of Iranian political or religious figures (and often theirs with me), and in my travels to Iran I have often thought that there must be a toggle switch somewhere along the electrical system in my brain that is magically triggered to "East" when my plane crosses into Iranian airs.p.a.ce. I live in New York-where the switch is unconsciously set to "West"-and in 2006, in front of my apartment building in lower Manhattan across from City Hall Park and one block from the World Trade Center site, an Egyptian food cart vendor of kebabs had been selling halal (unbeknownst to the majority of his customers) grilled meat for lunch for quite some time. I would often say h.e.l.lo to him on my way out, and one day I stopped and asked where he was from, and he asked where I was from. When I said Iran, his first response was "A-salaam-u-aleik.u.m!" "A-salaam-u-aleik.u.m!" and then he proceeded to tell me that for the last three or four months he "had started to really love Iran." Why? I wondered. And why only in the last three or four months? Because, he told me, "Iran is the only country standing up for Muslims." and then he proceeded to tell me that for the last three or four months he "had started to really love Iran." Why? I wondered. And why only in the last three or four months? Because, he told me, "Iran is the only country standing up for Muslims."

This immigrant is no radical: from my conversations with him I discovered that he believes in America, at least the America of his dreams; it's an America he'll one day make enough money in to bring his family to and an America where he, and his children, will have opportunities denied them in his native Egypt. An America where he can say what he wants, and do what he wants, even though he believes his religion (and he's deeply religious) is under attack in some quarters. "I really like that man," he told me that same day, referring to President Ahmadinejad, enemy of America in the day's newspapers, and if our government was to be believed. But Ahmadinejad spoke to him in a language he understood-a simple language stripped of any elitism-and his message reverberated around the Islamic world, even if that world was in Queens, New York, where the vendor retired every night to a small shared apartment. It was a message of hope for many Muslims from the Third World, hope that they could guide their own destiny wherever they were. The Holocaust, incidentally, has always held little meaning to most of these Muslims who grew up with neither the benefit of a history lesson on it nor a sense of collective guilt. But of course Israel, to them the product of a war among Christians, does does hold great meaning. And men like Ahmadinejad know it. But what Ahmadinejad knew better from the start of his presidency than many other Middle Eastern politicians was that the promise of his beloved Islamic Revolution, in the wake of war, corrupt leaders.h.i.+p in the region, and declining American prestige, could hold sway even over men like the Sunni Egyptian kebab vendor in lower Manhattan. hold great meaning. And men like Ahmadinejad know it. But what Ahmadinejad knew better from the start of his presidency than many other Middle Eastern politicians was that the promise of his beloved Islamic Revolution, in the wake of war, corrupt leaders.h.i.+p in the region, and declining American prestige, could hold sway even over men like the Sunni Egyptian kebab vendor in lower Manhattan.

In late August 2006, a week after the cease-fire in Lebanon, and a week after President Bush simply declared Israel's victory over Hezbollah without a hint of irony, I happened to mention Sheikh Ha.s.san Nasrallah during a brief conversation with the vendor, who had asked me a probing question about s.h.i.+sm (presuming that I, to him a good Muslim-a notion I did not disabuse him of-would know). It was probably the first time in his life he had wondered about a sect that some Sunnis consider heretical, and when I mentioned Nasrallah, he held his hand up, signaling me to stop. I paused as he brought his hand to his chest. "When you mention his name," he said, "I get emotional, I feel tears coming; I'm sorry." I looked at him, somewhat surprised to see that his eyes were already moist. He then turned to sell a Snapple to a woman with a worried, no, nervous, look on her face, and then turned back to me and wiped his eyes with his fingers. "He is something! something!" he said. A Sunni man in tears of love and joy over a s.h.i.+a cleric, a cleric whose power is a product of Iranian nurturing, had been, I thought, an impossibility until that day.

If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with that world. True, the secular and intellectual cla.s.ses we most come into contact with from that world are much like us, and often they would like us to believe that their countrymen would like to be too, but they make up a small percentage of the Muslim population on the planet and spend as little time with those who are in the majority of their countries as we do. But Iran and its Islamic society (or even Islamic democracy) are the adversarial powers we have to face in the coming years, and to understand Iran, we have to understand Iranians. Who are the Iranians? What is the Iranian mind-set, and, perhaps more important, what moves it? And what happened to Iranians like Fuad, including some thirty thousand other Iranian Jews who, unlike him, stayed in Iran and now make up its middle and intellectual cla.s.ses?

Whether in exile abroad or inside Iran, Iranians rarely seem to behave the way we expect them to, and Iranian diplomacy and foreign policy have in recent years run circles around their Western counterparts. Iran is at the center of the United States', if not the world's, attention today, partly because of its nuclear program and the Bush administration's labeling of it as an enemy (and part of the "axis of evil") and partly because Iran's power and influence, in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, have grown exponentially just as U.S. power and influence seem to be on the wane. It is important to understand Iran and Iranians, because American and Western conflict with Iran, armed or otherwise, is unlikely to abate in the next few years, and Iran will have the ability, as it surely does now, to directly affect all Americans through its vast oil reserves as well as its ability to stall, as it has now, American vital interests in a strategically vital region.

Iran today, despite what many Westerners think, bears very little resemblance to the Iran of the Khomeini years. And yet the Iran that Khomeini made famous, to many an Iran that had taken one giant leap backward, was always there, and probably always will be. Other than what we hear of Ahmadinejad, fundamentalist Islam, and Iran's nuclear ambitions, what seems to be the most popular picture of Iran, one that appears in the media and on book jackets, is women in chadors, or at least in some form of mandatory hijab. It is understandable that Westerners should focus so often on Islamic dress as a symbol of oppression in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, or the Afghanistan of the Taliban, whether it be for reasons of feminist outrage or the more subtle (and perhaps subconscious) colonialist notion of "white men saving brown women from brown men," to borrow Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's expression (in her description of the much earlier British abolition of the sati in India, the Hindu practice of a woman immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre).

But let me tell you a story about hijab. The last Shah's father, Reza Shah, made the chador for women and the turban for men illegal in the mid-1930s: he wanted, fascist that he was (and he was a quite proud fascist-an open admirer of the Third Reich), to emulate Turkey's Kemal Ataturk, who not only had banned the fez and the veil but had even changed the Turkish script from Arabic to Latin, rendering the vast majority of Turks illiterate overnight, to force his people into a modern, which he saw as European, world. As we've often heard, during the early days of the Islamic Revolution women were hara.s.sed and sometimes beaten and imprisoned for not not wearing proper hijab, but the exact same thing, for opposite reasons, occurred on the streets of Tehran less than fifty years earlier. In the 1930s, women had their chadors forcibly removed from their heads if they dared wear them, and were sometimes beaten as well if they resisted. Of course, back then the vast majority of women in Iran could not imagine leaving the house without the chador, so the effect was perhaps even more dramatic than Khomeini's subsequent wearing proper hijab, but the exact same thing, for opposite reasons, occurred on the streets of Tehran less than fifty years earlier. In the 1930s, women had their chadors forcibly removed from their heads if they dared wear them, and were sometimes beaten as well if they resisted. Of course, back then the vast majority of women in Iran could not imagine leaving the house without the chador, so the effect was perhaps even more dramatic than Khomeini's subsequent enforcement enforcement of the hijab. of the hijab.

My grandfather Kazem a.s.sar was a professor (who also happened to be an Ayatollah) who taught Islamic philosophy at the University of Tehran and was one of the foremost scholars of the great twelfth-century Sufi philosopher Sohravardi and the "School of Illumination." He decided immediately that he preferred not to leave the house rather than to appear in public without his turban, so his students, some of whom would go on to become Ayatollahs themselves, simply moved their cla.s.sroom to his house and he continued teaching as if nothing had changed. (This act of civil disobedience did not go unnoticed by the Shah, who sent emissaries to my grandfather's door to try to persuade him, unsuccessfully as it happened, to return to the university campus.) My grandmother, meanwhile, was in despair. A very religious woman who spent almost every waking minute of the last years of her life reading the Koran or praying, but who nonetheless led a very social life, she couldn't imagine venturing outdoors without her veil, especially as she was the wife of an Ayatollah. She sought her husband's counsel, and he told her to go about her life: dress modestly, but obey the law, even if it meant wearing not the full veil but a simple scarf or even a hat instead that might attract less attention.

Neither of my grandparents was in any way political, but many other women and almost all of the religious establishment were vociferously against the Shah on this matter, and in the face of heavy resistance he eventually relented, instructing the government to cease enforcement of the law, even though it wasn't officially changed until his forced abdication (by the Allies) in favor of his son in 1941. The nonenforcement was a sort of acknowledgment that his people would not give up their beliefs on his command, and my grandfather once again ventured outdoors, and my grandmother resumed her chador-wearing or heavy-scarf-and-full-overcoat-wearing habit.

Years later, in the late 1960s, I was staying at my grandfather's house one summer on a family visit back home. My mother, who had by this time spent years in the West, had a particular routine when she wanted to go out. If it was for a quick errand around the corner or in the immediate neighborhood, she would pull a chador over her head and go about her business. Not only was the neighborhood a religious one where the chador was common, but the idea of the Ayatollah's daughter prancing about the streets bareheaded was anathema to both her family and herself. However, if my mother was going well outside the neighborhood, by taxi or by private car, she would go without the chador or even a scarf. One very hot day I remember my mother saying goodbye to me in the garden and telling me she would be back in a few hours. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress that I'm sure I had seen before. I went into the house, and a few minutes later I saw my mother, who I thought had already left, in tears. Alarmed, I asked her what was wrong. "My father thought I should change before I go out."

"Why?" I asked, my preteen mind truly puzzled, since I knew that my mother wors.h.i.+pped her father and thought him the most intelligent, wonderful man in the world.

"He says the sleeves are too short!" My mother dutifully changed into a long-sleeved outfit and went out, bareheaded of course, and I realized for the first time how different Iranian culture was from what I had presumed was mine. My mother's tears, even my young mind understood, were not because she objected to her father's expressing displeasure at her outfit; she could, after all, ignore him, as her siblings seemed to do with impunity. No, they were tears of shame: she had, after all these years away from her country, embarra.s.sed her father, her hero, by presuming that the Western culture that she had outwardly adopted could cause no offense in her house or in her country. Had she momentarily forgotten who she was or, more important, what the culture she was a product of was? The Shah certainly had, as he discovered with a rude surprise some ten years later.

Today, the chador or full hijab (completely covering every wisp of hair and skin except for the hands and face) is still worn in poorer neighborhoods and almost all the provinces (and by my mother in London every time she prays), even though it is effectively no longer mandatory. Although hijab is indeed a statute of the Islamic Republic, the definition of hijab, again, as with many Iranian concepts, is murkier and less absolute than ever before.

Every spring as the weather warms, the police crack down on what appear to be looser and looser interpretations as to what const.i.tutes hijab, and therefore modesty, but the efforts often seem almost halfhearted (and are mostly forgotten within weeks, or by the middle of the summer). As a public relations scheme to appease the religious right, as well as the simply religious, though, it has its juicy moments. In the 2007 crackdown, an unusually severe one and highly publicized in the papers (and one that led to an unprecedented number of arrests), one M.P., Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, suggested that the crackdown was important because "the current situation is shameful for an Islamic government. A man who sees these models [women with minimal hijab] on the streets will pay no attention to his wife at home, destroying the foundation of the family." Indeed. He must've wondered how on earth anyone in New York or Paris could ever stay married. But despite the occasional indignant calls by government officials to preserve the sanct.i.ty of Iranian marriage, in the chicer parts of Tehran (where the chador long ago gave way to the scarf and shapeless overcoat called the manteau) the women, many quite happily married, now wear hip-length mock-manteaus (that could have, for all intents and purposes, been sprayed on) along with a sheer piece of cloth casually draped over some very small percentage of their expensive hairdos. They would undoubtedly be thrilled if the last vestiges of enforced female modesty are one day removed, as many feel they must and will be. But then they may remember, if they ever bother to venture well outside their neighborhoods, what the culture they are a product of still is.

There have been many books and articles on Iran, on Iranians, and on the subject of Islam, particularly since 9/11 and Iran's inclusion in the "axis of evil." Some offer a critique and judgment of the nation's politics or social mores. Some are travelogues, and yet others are memoirs that give a little bit of insight into Iranian life, usually a life in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. Iran under the mullahs is sometimes portrayed in the West as one-dimensional, usually because of the constraints of "news" reporting, and many American reporters who travel there for the first time say, some even with surprise, that it is not anything like what they expected. There are also, naturally, numerous newspaper articles and books on the subject of human rights and human rights abuses (whether recent or, in the case of books and memoirs, in the past), and they are important in bringing attention to the sad failures of the Iranian revolution. I refer to some of those failures, whether they be the imprisonment of student protesters or feminist activists or a crackdown on civil liberties, but this book is not about the injustices of Iran's political system or, more important, the sometimes outrageous abuses in that system which many courageous Iranians, such as lawyers, journalists, and activists living in Iran, fight against every day. Rather, my hope is that this book, through a combination of stories, history, and personal reflection, will provide the reader a glimpse of Iran and Iranians, often secretive and suspicious of revealing themselves, that he or she may not ordinarily have the opportunity to see.

Iran is a nation of some seventy million people, the vast majority (90 percent) s.h.i.+a Muslim but with Sunni, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Baha'i minorities (though the Baha'is, officially unrecognized and often persecuted by the state as heretics, tend to keep their ident.i.ties secret). Ethnically, it is made up of Persians, Turks, Turkmen, Arabs, Kurds, and a slew of other races, often intermingled to the point where it is impossible to say with any certainty what one Iranian's heritage is, particularly since birth records and birth certificates (and even proper surnames) were only inst.i.tuted in the 1930s. It is impossible to paint a picture of all all Iranians, just as it is impossible to represent every aspect of Iranian culture or society, in any one book. There are, of course, Iranians in every socioeconomic cla.s.s, and then there are the Iranians whom we most come into contact with, the ones who live in the West, many of whom have adopted Western culture while maintaining, to one degree or another, their own in the privacy of their homes, but who are not a relevant part of this story. The Iranians one encounters in this book come from all walks of life inside Iran (although I have chosen to feature stories that reveal something about the character of the Iranian people today without concern for their background), and I try to show how even the senior political and religious figures we meet are representative-perhaps far more so than in countries that have had a longer time to establish an entrenched political elite-of who the Iranian people are. Iranians, just as it is impossible to represent every aspect of Iranian culture or society, in any one book. There are, of course, Iranians in every socioeconomic cla.s.s, and then there are the Iranians whom we most come into contact with, the ones who live in the West, many of whom have adopted Western culture while maintaining, to one degree or another, their own in the privacy of their homes, but who are not a relevant part of this story. The Iranians one encounters in this book come from all walks of life inside Iran (although I have chosen to feature stories that reveal something about the character of the Iranian people today without concern for their background), and I try to show how even the senior political and religious figures we meet are representative-perhaps far more so than in countries that have had a longer time to establish an entrenched political elite-of who the Iranian people are.

While American (and some European) politicians may often come from ordinary backgrounds, their lifestyles usually change dramatically when they are in office, and by the time they have reached the pinnacle of power, they are long removed from their more humble roots. Iranian leaders in the Islamic Republic, however, clerical or lay, continue to live their lives almost exactly as they always have, living in modest houses in their own neighborhoods surrounded by their social peers, driving nondescript cars, and maintaining their social networks. There is no presidential palace, no equivalent of the White House, in Tehran, and despite the wealth of the Islamic Republic, no fleet of limousines, or even the level of security one would a.s.sume, for Iran's leaders.h.i.+p. The presidential automobile is a Peugeot (albeit armored), and President Ahmadinejad lives in the same house he always has in a lower-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood, while his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, lives in a small villa, nice but not especially so, in North Tehran. It was Khatami who remarked to me, on a trip to the United States after his presidency, with genuine surprise and not a little admiration, that the security offered him by the State Department (as well as the limousines and SUVs) as an exhead of state was far more comprehensive (and luxurious) than anything he had had as president in Iran. He also remarked how very much it resulted in his trip occurring inside a "bubble."

Iranians are known to have a public face and a private face, a public life and a private life. For millennia Iranians have built tall walls around their houses to keep the private and public separate; one reason for the endurance of the Islamic system of government, despite its restrictions on public behavior, is that it has understood that the walls, literal and figurative, and even movable, as they often are, mustn't be breached. The Shah by contrast, with his insistence on peering over the walls, was doomed to fall.

Sure, we may have heard of baccha.n.a.lian parties, of alcohol and drug consumption, even of expressions of extreme dissatisfaction with the regime behind those walls, wherever their borders may extend to, but how do we peer inside the Iranian soul? What is it about Iran that gave us Omar Khayyam and Rumi centuries ago, and gives us Ahmadinejad and the mullahs (but also Kiarostami, the celebrated filmmaker) today? One constant throughout most of Iran's history, certainly in Islamic times, is that Iranians, the mullahs included, are great lovers of poetry: it is the literary expression best suited to the s.h.i.+a martyr complex and the very Persian allegorical way of looking at an unexplainable world. It is said that Ayatollah Rafsanjani, a former president and still very powerful figure, once said to a foreign visitor, "If you want to know us, become a s.h.i.+a first." While Rafsanjani made a very good point, almost poetically so, he could have just as well told his visitor to read and understand Persian poetry, but of course the two, s.h.i.+sm and Persian poetry, are not mutually exclusive. Virtually everyone in Iran, from the lowliest person (and even the semiliterate) to the high and mighty to all the Ayatollahs, can and will at every opportunity quote a favorite quatrain or ghazal ghazal (sonnet) from dozens of poets, including Khayyam and Rumi, to either make a point or explain life "under the bruised dome." (sonnet) from dozens of poets, including Khayyam and Rumi, to either make a point or explain life "under the bruised dome."

Indulge me for one moment (for I am not entirely immune to my countrymen's predilection for verse) while I offer the reader a clue as to what encapsulates the purpose of this book (and happens to also reflect what is, despite Western conceptions, very much part of the Iranian mind-set):

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.1

See you in the chapters that follow.

PERSIAN CATS.

The cat, a sinewy black creature with dirty white paws, darted from the alley and jumped across the joob joob, the narrow ditch by the curb, onto the sidewalk on Safi Alishah. It took one look at me, and then fled down the road toward the Sufi mosque. "That's the neighborhood laat laat!" exclaimed my friend Khosro, a longtime resident of the no-longer-chic downtown Tehran street. "He's the local tough, and he beats up all the other cats. Every time my mother's cat goes out he gets a thorough thras.h.i.+ng and comes back bruised and bloodied."

"Why?" I asked.

"He just beats the c.r.a.p out of any cat he doesn't like, which is most cats, I guess."

"And no one does anything about it?" I asked naively.

"No. What's there to do? Every neighborhood has a laat."

Iranians are not known to keep indoor pets. Dogs are, of course, unclean in Islam, and as such are not welcome in most homes (although not a few Westernized upper-cla.s.s Tehranis do keep dogs, but generally away from public view). Cats, Islamic-correct, are far more common, although unlike their Western counterparts Iranians don't so much own their cats as merely provide a home for them and feed them sc.r.a.ps from the table. That is, when the cats want a home. Persian cats, and I mean Persian as in nationality, are (to use a favored expression in Was.h.i.+ngton) freedom-loving animals, and they wander outdoors, particularly in neighborhoods where there are houses rather than apartments. They do so as often as they like, which seems to be quite often, and they get pregnant, they have fights, and they even change their domicile if they happen to stumble across a better garden or, as is usually the case, a more generous feeding hand. Such as Khosro's mother's cat, who appeared at her house one day and took a fancy to her.

Persians, despite having been best known in the West for really only two things, prior to their fame for Islamic fundamentalism, that is, cats and carpets, spend an awful lot of time pondering carpets and virtually no time thinking about cats. The Persian cats we know in the West, the ones with the impossibly flat faces and gorgeous silky hair, are not as common in Iran as one might think, or hope, and there is a national obsession neither about them nor about their less sophisticated cousins, the cats one sees on every street, in every alley, and in the doorways, kitchens, and gardens of many homes. And some of those cats are just by nature, well, laat.

Laat, like many other Persian words, can be translated in different ways, and some dictionaries use the English "hooligan" as the definition, although it is in fact wildly inaccurate. The laat holds a special place in Iranian culture: a place that at times can be compared to the popular position of a mafioso in American culture, albeit without the extreme violence a.s.sociated with him, and at other times a place of respect and admiration for the working-cla.s.s code he lives by. Hooligans are anarchic; laats fight only when necessary and to establish their authority. Iran's cultural history of the twentieth century prominently featured the laat and with perhaps more affection the jahel jahel, the onetime laat who had elevated himself to a grand position of authority and respect in a given urban neighborhood. The jahel, a sort of street "boss," occupied himself with many different illegal and quasi-legal activities but, unlike gang leaders in America, rarely found himself the target of police investigations, partly because the police were often from his social cla.s.s, partly because the police were doled out many favors by him, and partly because the governments under the Shah were loath to disrupt or antagonize a cla.s.s of society that could be relied upon for support should it become necessary to buy it.

The last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, when forced to flee the country in 1953 (in the face of a popular uprising in favor of Prime Minister Mossadeq), found great use in the jahels and laats of South Tehran when the coup organizers intent on restoring him to power (financed and organized by the CIA) hired a prominent and formerly pro-Mossadeq laat, Shaban Jafari, better known as Shaban Bimokh (Shaban the "Brainless"), to successfully lead a counter-uprising in the streets of Tehran and mercilessly beat any anti-Shah demonstrators they came across. Using street-savvy toughs rather than the military (which was anyway unreliable and caught between the authority of the democratically elected prime minister and that of the Shah) gave the Shah the cover of populist sentiment in his favor, not to mention the convenience of violent reprisal perpetrated in his name, rather than directly by him or his forces.

The laats and jahels came from the lower and therefore deeply religious strata of Iranian society and were strong believers in Islam themselves, but they were notorious drinkers and womanizers, not to mention involved in prost.i.tution and drugs. The jahel code, at least they themselves believed, was one of ethics and justice, s.h.i.+a ethics, and the occasional sin would be repented for later, as is possible in s.h.i.+a Islam. The code extended to their dress: black suits, white tieless s.h.i.+rts, and narrow-brimmed black fedoras perched at an angle high on their heads. A cotton handkerchief was usually to be found in their hands as a sort of fetish, and the famous jahel dance in the cafes of working-cla.s.s Tehran involved slow, spinning movements with the handkerchief prominently waved in the air.

The jahel, and the laat to a lesser degree, represented the ultimate in Iranian machismo, Iranian mardanegi mardanegi, or "manliness," in a supremely macho culture. Upper-cla.s.s youths affected their speech, much as upper-cla.s.s white youths in America affect the speech of inner-city blacks. There was, and still is, a perverse male and sometimes female fascination with the culture of the laat that invades even the uppermost echelons of Tehran society. At a dinner party in early 2007, in the very chic and expensive North Tehran Elahieh district at the home of an actor who has lived in America, a young man who serves as a guide and translator for foreign journalists (some of whom were in the room) peppered his speech with vulgar curse words that would ordinarily have been out of bounds in mixed company, or at least unfamiliar mixed company. "You probably don't like me," he said as he pulled up a chair next to my seat, having noticed my occasional winces in the preceding minutes. He helped himself to a large spoonful of bootleg caviar on the coffee table in front of him. "Because I swear so much," he mumbled with his mouth full. "But I'm a laat, what can I do?" I hesitated, wanting to point out that a laat would hardly be eating caviar in a grand North Tehran apartment, nor would he ever employ the language I'd heard in front of women, not unless he was getting ready for a fight.

"No," I replied instead. "I have no problems with swearing."

"I'm a laat," he repeated, as if it were a badge of honor. "I'm just a laat." His wife, seated on my other side, giggled nervously, glancing at the other women around the table whose smiles gave tacit approval to his macho posturing. What would a real South Tehran laat make of this scene? I wondered.

Despite their seemingly secular ways, at least in terms of drinking, partying, and involvement with prost.i.tutes, the working-cla.s.s laats and jahels had been ardent supporters of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and even though some royalists had suggested they be bought again, as they were in 1953, the Shah seemed to realize that times had changed and Khomeini's pull, which unlike Mossadeq's encompa.s.sed virtually all of Iran's opposition, was too strong to be countered with cash. Islam's promise of a cla.s.sless society, along with the promise of far more equitable economic opportunities in a post-monarchy nation, was appealing enough in working-cla.s.s neighborhoods, but what's more, unlike the intellectuals and aristocrats who surrounded Mossadeq, those fomenting this this revolution were, after all, from the 'hood. As such, the street toughs and their jahel bosses, the uber-laats if you will, had a.s.sumed that an Islamic state would not necessarily infringe on their territory, but the clerics who brought about the revolution weren't going to let a bunch of thugs (in their minds) have the kind of authority that they considered exclusively reserved for themselves. The jahel neighborhood authority, along with its flamboyance of style and dress, also quickly went out of favor, replaced by cleric-sanctioned and much-feared paramilitary committees known as revolution were, after all, from the 'hood. As such, the street toughs and their jahel bosses, the uber-laats if you will, had a.s.sumed that an Islamic state would not necessarily infringe on their territory, but the clerics who brought about the revolution weren't going to let a bunch of thugs (in their minds) have the kind of authority that they considered exclusively reserved for themselves. The jahel neighborhood authority, along with its flamboyance of style and dress, also quickly went out of favor, replaced by cleric-sanctioned and much-feared paramilitary committees known as komiteh komiteh (the Persian p.r.o.nunciation of the word), which undoubtedly numbered among their ranks many former laats. (the Persian p.r.o.nunciation of the word), which undoubtedly numbered among their ranks many former laats.

In the few years of its existence the komiteh, often reporting directly to a cleric, involved itself in almost all aspects of life in each neighborhood where it was set up, and apart from enforcing strict Islamic behavior on the streets, it functioned as a sort of quasi-court where all manner of complaints were investigated. Among those complaints in the early days of the revolution were charges of corruption lodged against businessmen or the merely wealthy, usually by former employees but sometimes by jealous rivals, that resulted in further investigations by real courts and sometimes the confiscation of a.s.sets, a satisfying result for the early communist and left-wing supporters of the Islamic Republic who numbered among them the now-archenemy Paris-and Iraq-based Mujahedin, as they're known to most Iranians (but referred to as monafeghin monafeghin, "hypocrites," by the government), or the MEK (for Mujahedin-e-Khalq), as they're known in the West.1 (The political left had also been undoubtedly pleased to watch as the new government nationalized many of the larger private enterprises in Iran, a program that has been in various stages of undoing since Khomeini's death in 1989 and whose undoing continues today, even under an administration more ideological than the pragmatist and reformist governments that preceded it.) (The political left had also been undoubtedly pleased to watch as the new government nationalized many of the larger private enterprises in Iran, a program that has been in various stages of undoing since Khomeini's death in 1989 and whose undoing continues today, even under an administration more ideological than the pragmatist and reformist governments that preceded it.)

The laats who joined a komiteh or even the Revolutionary Guards in the dramatic aftermath of the revolution may have thought of themselves as finally empowered politically, but they quickly learned that in an Islamic government, all real authority would rest with the clergy. In one of the first acts of the post-revolution government, ostensibly for Islamic reasons but also as a show of just who was in charge, Tehran's infamous red-light district, Shahr-e-No, or "New City," the stomping ground of many a jahel and laat, was shut down and razed. Today, the old district is bordered by a broad avenue lined with shops selling surplus military wear, including, as I saw myself, U.S. Desert Storm boots in mint condition and an a.s.sortment of other U.S. military clothes and footwear newly liberated from Iraq. On the day I was there, and as I was examining the various articles for sale in a storefront, an old man shuffled by slowly, wearing a dirty black suit and loafers with the heels pushed down. "See him?" asked the friend who had brought me, a child of South Tehran who spent many a day of his youth in the Shahr-e-No neighborhood. "He used to walk up and down this street, just like he is now, in the old days. But he was a big guy then."

Today, while laats still abound in urban areas, the jahel is but a fragment of memory for most Iranians, to be seen in the occasional old Iranian movie or to be talked about nostalgically. Once in a while, one can b.u.mp into one (or someone who at least affects the look) on the streets of downtown Tehran or farther south, as I did on Ferdowsi Avenue, just off Manouchehri, a street lined with antiques dealers, on a few occasions in the past few years. Among the Jewish shop owners and other stall vendors, one heavyset older man works out of an impossibly narrow shop carved into the side of a building.2 His dusty window displays an array of old rings, bracelets, and other jewelry, the odd off-brand man's watch here and there, and he himself sits on an old stool just outside on the pavement. He wears a black suit, a slightly discolored white s.h.i.+rt, and a narrow-brimmed black fedora one size too small on the top of his obviously balding head. His thick black mustache, from which years ago he may have dramatically plucked a hair with his fingers to show good faith in a deal, is dyed, the reddish tint of the henna showing on the outermost hairs. His only concession to the Islamic state of affairs is the day-old growth of beard surrounding the mustache: snowy white growth that betrays the dyed mustache even more startlingly than the henna hue. I don't know if he was ever a jahel, but it seems likely that he was. He sits there on Ferdowsi, keeping his own hours, like a toothless old cat, a reminder for those who might care that the neighborhood's top laat is not what he used to be. His dusty window displays an array of old rings, bracelets, and other jewelry, the odd off-brand man's watch here and there, and he himself sits on an old stool just outside on the pavement. He wears a black suit, a slightly discolored white s.h.i.+rt, and a narrow-brimmed black fedora one size too small on the top of his obviously balding head. His thick black mustache, from which years ago he may have dramatically plucked a hair with his fingers to show good faith in a deal, is dyed, the reddish tint of the henna showing on the outermost hairs. His only concession to the Islamic state of affairs is the day-old growth of beard surrounding the mustache: snowy white growth that betrays the dyed mustache even more startlingly than the henna hue. I don't know if he was ever a jahel, but it seems likely that he was. He sits there on Ferdowsi, keeping his own hours, like a toothless old cat, a reminder for those who might care that the neighborhood's top laat is not what he used to be.

The Javadieh neighborhood of South Tehran was once the city's roughest; to the young male residents it was known as "Texas," presumably because of the a.s.sociation in Iranian minds of that state with the lawless Wild West. A rough neighborhood, though, meant poor and run-down but not necessarily dangerous in the way we might think in the West. Upper-cla.s.s Iranians would never have ventured into Javadieh; they still don't, but not out of fear, rather because of the strict Iranian delineation between the cla.s.ses. Some upper-cla.s.s wealthy young males may want to affect the macho posturing of the lower-cla.s.s laat, but they would never sit down with one and have a chat over a cup of tea. Nor would they know how to deal with a chaghoo-kesh- chaghoo-kesh-"knife-puller" literally, but someone who lives by his knife. Guns have never been popular among Iranian toughs, mainly because they kill more often than maim, but also because guns in Iran have been a.s.sociated with armed struggle or revolution rather than self-defense or criminal activity. As such, governments, whether under the Shahs or in the Islamic Republic, have zero tolerance for guns, which they have viewed as threats to their power, but have had a wide tolerance for knives and other fighting equipment.

Knife fights, common enough even today, rarely end with serious injury, although on occasion death does occur, as it did recently on the street where I was staying when a fight broke out between two young men over the affections of a local girl, with whom neither had relations but whom each felt was his. The thrust of a knife, a little too hard and a little too close to the heart, probably unintentional, resulted in death, and the onetime chaghoo-kesh was transformed from street thug to murderer in an instant. But usually a knifing is meant to cut rather than kill, and in the old street tradition a knife fight begins with one or both of the men cutting themselves on the chest, to draw blood and to demonstrate the fearlessness of the