- Tehran dispatch
-
- Although Iran is often portrayed as a hardline theocracy,
there is a vibrancy about its society that is rarely found in its Arab
neighbours, writes Brian Whitaker...
-
- It's not very often, I must confess, that women beg me
to change seats on a plane in order to sit next to them.
-
- No matter how much I may have fantasised about such things,
I had certainly never imagined being approached by a hijab-wearing but
discreetly flirtatious Iranian woman travelling alone on a flight from
London to Tehran.
-
- "Please help me," she said, deploying the oldest
chat-up line in the book. "I have problem with my English lesson."
-
- And so we passed a few innocently romantic hours with
English verbs and prepositions in exchange for a smattering of Farsi phrases
that I hoped would prove useful during my first visit to Iran.
-
- As we came in to land, my companion pointed out of the
window. "Ayatollah Khomeini died," she said, indicating the burial
place of the man who led the Islamic revolution. Recalling the hysterical
scenes at his funeral some years ago, I imagined his loss was still a matter
of grief for Iranians and made suitably respectful noises.
-
- But the Iran Air steward, who happened to be passing
and had seen her pointing, leaned over and said: "Why are you showing
him that? Show him something nice instead."
-
- From that point on, I knew that some basic preconceptions
were about to be shaken. Since the revolution, Iran has been known as the
Islamic Republic and recently joined, as one Iranian politician put it,
the "Axis of so-and-so".
-
- In the west, we are so familiar with the TV images of
fanatical, chanting Iranian crowds that we tend to imagine this goes on
all the time. The first revelation on arriving is that the outward trappings
of religion are far less apparent in Tehran than in Cairo; it is one of
the most secular-looking cities in the Middle East.
-
- And those giant murals saying "Death to America"
- much sought after by visiting photographers - are also rather scarce,
though they can be found if you look for them.
-
- The second revelation is that the vast majority of Iranians
are perfectly normal human beings. If they're fanatical about anything,
it's their fondness for all things kitsch.
-
- None of this helps to solve the puzzle of Iranian politics
but merely complicates it. On one hand there is an elected president and
a parliament whose members are chosen in fiercely contested ballots by
voters who may be as young as 16 (since at 16 they were considered old
enough to be slaughtered in the war with Iraq).
-
- On the other, there are the elderly theologians who approve
or reject candidates for election, lay down the law on other matters and
often, though not always, get their way.
-
- Determining the relative influence of these elements,
and that of the factions within them, provides constant employment for
foreign analysts. It's almost impossible to talk in a meaningful way about
the Iranian government without saying which bit of it you're referring
to.
-
- One thing is clear, however. The gerontocracy creates
the moral codes which others feel obliged to undermine. Thanks to the ayatollahs,
defiance is almost a national pastime.
-
- Around 70% to 80% of the population has access to satellite
television, though dishes are illegal and occasionally get seized. Forged
cards for the receivers cost a very reasonable £5 or so.
-
- The popularity of satellite TV is scarcely surprising.
Films on the legal Iranian channels are cut to remove any kissing, and
the sound is dubbed so that boyfriends and girlfriends become brother and
sister - which in most cases makes a mockery of the story line.
-
-
- The hijab, of course, is compulsory and foreign women
visiting Iran are expected to comply, too. A notice at the airport requesting
their cooperation begins: "Dear Sisters, hijab is the expression of
our Islamic civilisation ..."
-
- According to Dr Nasrollah Mostofi, Iran's tourism supremo,
this has now been enshrined by the United Nations in its global code of
ethics for tourism as a way of respecting "indigenous peoples' values".
-
- The reality among Iran's "indigenous people"
is that many - particularly the younger women - cover as little hair as
possible, teasing the headscarf back until it is perched almost on the
back of their head. If someone stares disapprovingly, they rearrange it
with an expression of innocence that says: "Oh dear, look what the
wind has done to my scarf."
-
- Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iranian women can - and do - drive
cars. In theory they can also hold any official position except that of
a judge. Contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex is supposedly
forbidden, but it goes on nevertheless.
-
- In Isfahan after nightfall, boys and girls cruise the
main streets. The girls write their mobile phone numbers on scraps of paper,
which they drop for the boys to pick up. The boys call them on the on the
phone, eyeing their quarry across the street.
-
- On the outskirts of Tehran, there's Jamshidieh Park,
a vast and picturesque area of woods and streams, cafes and picnic spots
constructed by the late Shah - though people hasten to add that it has
improved greatly since the Islamic revolution.
-
- The park is also a popular retreat for the young, not
least because its steep stone stairways are enough to deter the elderly
or infirm from venturing far - and what the mullahs don't see, the mullahs
don't complain about.
-
- Jamshidieh Park does, however, have a darker side. Last
week, a man was hanged there in public for killing a policeman, since the
Iranian preference is to carry out executions at the scene of the crime.
-
- I decided not to witness the hanging, though I'm told
that on these occasions people usually start camping out around three or
four in the morning in order to get a good view.
-
- Unlike Jamshidieh, a neighbouring slope is treeless and
bare, apart from the vast concrete wall that surrounds it. This is Evian
prison, though there are no buildings to be seen on the surface. The whole
structure - built by the Shah but still utilised by the Islamic regime
- is inside the mountain. At least one Iranian journalist is currently
locked up in its dungeons.
-
- Despite such medieval practices, Tehran is essentially
a modern capital with modern urban problems: traffic jams, pollution, drugs,
HIV and all the rest. Viewed from the mountains nearby, a thick brown cloud
of fumes rises from the city as the morning rush gets under way and hangs
there for the rest of the day.
-
- Hefty state subsidies mean petrol is sold at 20% its
market price - which only encourages congestion. Regardless of the change
of regime in neighbouring Afghanistan, vast quantities of drugs - hashish,
opium, morphine and heroin - continue flowing into, and through, Iran.
-
- In the first nine months of this year, the authorities
seized 113 tonnes of drugs and arrested more than 84,000 suspected dealers.
In the same period, 42 police officers have been killed - or martyred,
as the Iranians prefer to say - in the battle against drugs.
-
- According to Ali Hashemi, the presidential adviser on
drugs, the situation is now much worse than it was when the Taliban were
in power, because the new Afghan government has so little control.
-
- Among a population approaching 70 million, an estimated
275,000 Iranians are addicted to heroin - which has led in turn to a spread
of HIV infection. The heady days of the Islamic revolution have clearly
gone but the country is still evolving, both socially and politically.
-
- What is often portrayed as a battle between conservatives
and reformers, or between theocracy and democracy, is actually a lot more
complex. Neither side is monolithic and the dividing lines between them
are often blurred.
-
- It might also be portrayed as a battle between the young
and the old, between the generation that remembers the Shah and the generation
that does not. Amid the carnage of the eight-year war with Iraq, the ayatollahs
sought to replenish their martyrs by turning Iran into a vast baby factory
- with the result that half the population today is below the age of 15.
And they are reaping the consequences.
-
- In order to provide work for the rising generation, they
now have to create 760,000 new jobs every year - an almost impossible feat
which helps to explain the frustrations of the young.
-
- But perhaps the old-versus-young theory is an over-simplification
too. Last July the elderly Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri announced his retirement
as prayer leader in Isfahan with a searing letter that struck a chord across
the generation gap.
-
- Attacking "the crocodile of power", he spoke
of "the hellish gap between poverty and wealth ... a sick economy,
bureaucratic corruption, desperately weak administrators, the growing flaws
in the country's political structure, embezzlement, bribery and addiction,
and the failure to find effective solutions".
-
- None of this was couched in terms that questioned the
value of the 1979 revolution but, rather, suggested that the revolution
had strayed from its original goals.
-
- Since then, the ayatollah has been silent. A soldier
stands guard outside his house and turns away visitors on the grounds that
the ayatollah is not at home. Officials say this is for his own protection,
though to others it looks suspiciously like house arrest.
-
- Iranians certainly indulge in hard-ball politics, with
lots of casualties along the way, but there's also a vibrancy about it
that is rarely found, for instance, in the Arab countries with their sterile
politics, their time-serving leaders and their grovelling journalists.
-
- In Iran, it's politics with a purpose. Newspapers speak
their minds and get closed down by the dozen - only to reappear under a
different name.
-
- "The important matter is that issues surface, in
the news media or in parliamentary debates," says Massoumeh Ebtekar,
who is one of Iran's six vice-presidents and the highest-ranking woman
in the country. "Nothing is being covered up."
-
- What is developing in Iran, she says, is "a novel
form of democracy - a religious democracy. It has its own red lines, it
has its own norms and values, but that doesn't mean it's not going to work
out."
-
- Along with other Iranian officials, she dismisses the
idea that the United States will seek "regime change" in Iran
after dealing with Iraq. But she argues that efforts by foreigners - particularly
the Americans - to force the pace of reform in Iran have had the opposite
effect, strengthening the hand of the conservatives.
-
- "The reform process has been endangered by foreign
pressures," she says. "Democracy would have proceeded much more
smoothly without those pressures."
-
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,820885,00.html
|
