Authors: Ramita Navai
The trip changed both their lives. Fatemeh had new-found respect for her husband. Haj Agha appeared less miserable. It was as though he had discovered the mystic power of his religion, the essence of Shia Islam that seemed to elude so many. Whatever it was, Haj Agha was hooked. It was several years before he would take his next trip, as any extra cash was quickly sucked up after the children were born. When the money did start to roll in, Haj Agha began his pilgrimages, always going alone. His dedication became a compulsion and it irked Fatemeh. The mould of Fatemeh and Haj Agha’s marriage had been cast: an uncommunicative husband and a wife who was desperate to please, forever disappointed and yet resigned to her life. Fatemeh consoled herself that at least her husband was addicted to mourning and not to opium, like so many of the men in the neighbourhood.
In Tehran, his spirituality was hard to fathom. He rarely spoke of God, rarely read the holy book or the hadiths, rarely attended mosque. The strongest devotion he showed was to the television set. But Fatemeh could not complain too harshly, for she was riding in the slipstream of Haj Agha’s holy journeys, which saw them hurtling up the social ladder; paying your respects to the imams gave you status in this neighbourhood. Ever since Haj Agha had actually earned his moniker of
Haji
by completing the pilgrimage to Mecca, people treated Fatemeh differently too. She was now
Haj Khanoum
, Mrs Haj. His trips accumulated spiritual chips, the only currency in Iran that never devalued, and which in Meydan-e Khorasan commanded deference and respect. Soon Haj Agha had been on more pilgrimages than the local mullah, and it was not uncommon for neighbours to come round to seek his advice on all matters, from the ethereal to more earthly affairs, such as nagging wives and children who talked back. He would receive his guests crouched, leaning against cushions as Fatemeh served them platters of fruit and piping-hot tea. He would suck the tea through lumps of sugar wedged in his cheek as he ruminated. His answers were brief and practical, and he would almost always end with a line that nobody really understood: ‘You can only be true to God if you are true to yourself.’
*
The sun dipped past the suburbs of west Tehran and the city lights blinked into the descending darkness. The moon was big and fat and tinged ginger. It had just started its ascent when Haj Agha’s family, friends and neighbours began to arrive, laden with pastries and cakes.
The women hovered together near the kitchen – a flock of crows, clasping black chadors that radiated wafts of sweaty perfume and hot, smoky city air. The men braced themselves on chairs against the wall, sipping the sweet-sour iced mint and vinegar cordial,
sekanjabin
,
that Fatemeh served the guests. After the customary and laboriously detailed questioning of relatives’ health and well-being, the two groups launched themselves into the favourite subject of most Tehranis: politics.
Politics invades conversations in every corner of the city. Even the crack addicts in south Tehran can turn political pundit in moments of cognizance. It is impossible to take a taxi without the driver delivering his verdict on the latest scandals and power battles. Talk of politics allows people to feel they have a stake in their future, that they are not powerless spectators. Behind the confines of walls and hidden in cars, most ordinary Iranians are surprisingly free in venting frustrations. For those who are not monitored, few subjects are off-limits. Internal mud-slinging and accusations traded between politicians and panjandrums give ordinary citizens freedom to do the same. Some say that verbal freedom is greater now than under the Shah, when people had been too scared to badmouth the king even in private.
Many religious and working-class families flourished after the revolution, including those in Meydan-e Khorasan. The Islamic Revolution had been the making of men like Haj Agha. The poorer members of society enjoyed a sudden rush of financial benefits laid on by the regime. Factory workers were given a minimum wage. Working hours were eased. And with the onset of war, as rations kicked in, basic items like bread, cheese, sugar and cooking oil were subsidized. But it was not just a matter of economic welfare. It was also a matter of respect. The residents of Meydan-e Khorasan had felt they were being slowly pushed to the fringes of the new, modern Tehran that the Shah was building, caught in limbo between development and tradition. The Shah had been impatient for change, dragging Iran into the First World; they had been fearful of a world with which they did not identify. Even though, unlike his father, the Shah did not ban the
hejab
and the chador, wearing it marked you out as from the lower classes. But under the Islamic regime, the people of the Meydan now felt a part of society. In government offices, they were no longer strangers in their own land. The way they worshipped and the way they lived their lives not only had the state’s seal of approval, their lifestyle was now paraded as an exemplar of living. They felt close to this state, whose religious language they understood. Most had never been very political, but this integration provoked passionate support for the regime. It worked both ways. Their godliness proved useful, especially when the absolute rule of a spiritual leader was enshrined in the law, after Khomeini introduced the concept of
velayat-e-faqih
, rule of the Islamic jurist, a concept that gave him ultimate and unchallenged political authority over his subjects. With a God-ordained regime on their side, many in the Meydan had no need to question its authority.
Somayeh’s neighbours shared common values, such as the importance of a woman’s virginity before marriage and of modest
hejab
. Even though they varied in degrees of religiosity, their attitudes towards their faith were similar. But when it came to politics, they were divided. It was not a polarization of views, nor a simple division between those who supported the regime and those who did not; there were countless variations. ‘So you’re not still going to vote for that monkey,
Ahmagh-
inejad?’ was the ice-breaker from next-door neighbour Masoud, who had inserted the word
ahmagh
– stupid – in place of
Ahmad
.
‘At least he’s not letting
Amrika
bully us.’
‘At least he’s not a mullah,’ added Masoud, scooping up a handful of pistachios. Masoud not only prayed every day; he had also been to Mecca. Yet he despised mullahs. He blamed them for everything, from the bad state of the economy to corruption. Being from a
sonati –
traditional – family or a dutifully observant Muslim did not mean automatic support for the regime. Masoud believed in a separation between the state and religion. He did not support the absolute rule of the Supreme Leader. While the Islamic Revolution suited most of Masoud’s neighbours, his life had remained unchanged. Fatemeh shouted from the kitchen that mullahs were blameless and it was the politicians who were bad.
‘We’re in this mess because of those sly foxes, the English,’ said Abbas, the local greengrocer.
Engelestan
always got a bad rap, and the British were held accountable by Iranians of all political persuasions for a long list of crimes, including backing a coup in
1953
that ousted popular Prime Minister Mossadegh, and a widely held conspiracy theory that BBC radio helped bring about the downfall of the Shah.
‘It’s all of them, they’re all rotten to the core and Ahmadinejad’s the worst one of the lot. He knows nothing about economics and he’s going to be the ruin of us,’ said Ali, a
bazaari
trader of electrical goods whose wife and daughters wore the chador, yet who believed that
hejab
should not be enforced.
‘Ahmadinejad’s the best thing that’s happened to the country in a long time. The price of oil keeps going up, he’s straight-talking and he understands what normal people like us want,’ said Haj Agha. A group of women shouted out their agreement from the kitchen.
The conversation ran a familiar course, from politics to the economy to the sharing of personal misfortunes. Somayeh, like her mother Fatemeh, was indifferent to politics; but they were both devoted to the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Whatever the Supreme Leader would say, they would follow. Sometimes when they watched him on television they would be so moved by his words they would break down crying. The Supreme Leader was a saint; a representative of God and as sacred as the imams. Through his divine body the word of Allah was channelled. He was not sullied by dirty politics, for his role on this earth was pure: simply to ensure the law and practice of Islam. The Supreme Leader had taken over the mantel from Khomeini, who had rescued the country from moral corruption and who had saved the country’s poor. These two old men were Somayeh’s heroes and she could not abide criticism of them.
The women soon drifted out of the political discussions, partly because of the physical separation of the sexes, and partly because they had their own news to share. After twenty years of marriage, Batool Khanoum had got a divorce, the first woman aged over fifty to do so in the neighbourhood. Nobody knew the reasons for the divorce, but it was a scandal. ‘What’s the point?’ said Fatemeh. ‘After all those years, I just don’t understand it. How could she do that to her children? They have to live with the shame.’
Batool Khanoum had been encouraged to divorce her husband by her own children. They had all had enough of his crippling opium habit and his abusive behaviour. Women can only divorce husbands with their permission, unless they can prove that a man has failed to fulfil his marital duties (which includes impotency and insanity), so Batool’s daughter had helped her by secretly filming her father hitting Batool Khanoum and smoking opium. When the judge saw the grainy footage on Batool’s mobile phone, he granted her a divorce on the spot. Batool Khanoum had already experienced the fallout of a divorce in the Meydan, for a divorcee was considered to have loose morals. Unbeknown to the women now disdainfully discussing her divorce, several of their husbands had already tried their luck with her. Batool Khanoum had slapped each of them across the face. Apart from Ozra’s husband, who was attractive and rich.
‘Getting a divorce is failing yourself and God,’ said Somayeh.
‘Everyone’s getting divorced these days and the whole of society’s falling apart. It’s the government’s fault for making a divorce easier than opening a bank account!’ said Hamideh, not knowing that her best friend Akram had been begging her husband for a divorce for over a decade, but he refused to give it to her. Even though Hamideh tried to keep her opium addiction quiet, she thought it far more socially acceptable than a divorce.
Opium has been part of the culture for centuries. It is a classless drug smoked the length and breadth of Vali Asr and beyond, a panacea for everything from aches to boredom to joblessness.
The heaps of food being laid on the table were enough to distract the hungry guests from politics and divorce. At that moment too the entryphone buzzed. It was Fatemeh’s sister Zahra, whom she had not seen for five years. The falling-out had been about money, as falling-outs in the city so often are. Fatemeh had asked to borrow some and Zahra said they had none to lend. It was a brazen lie. Zahra had married into a family of wealthy carpet traders and her husband Mohammad had already started the upward climb to a glitzier lifestyle. Zahra had not invited Fatemeh to their new home, scared that in the profusion of silverware and the Italian leather furniture the truth would be revealed – which was that Zahra’s family were now richer than everyone they had left behind in the Meydan. Mohammad and Haj Agha kept out of it. They had tried to intervene between the competing sisters’ feuds in the past and both had emerged as injured parties, heads and tongues bitten off by jealous rage. Recently word had reached Fatemeh that Zahra was repentant, and more importantly that she was ill with acute diabetes. When Zahra heard Fatemeh’s voice on the phone she had cried, and when Fatemeh had invited her older sister to Haj Agha’s pilgrimage party she had cried some more. It helped matters that Haj Agha was now self-sufficient. It reassured Zahra that a rapprochement would not mean having to part with cash.
Zahra looked better with diabetes. Her fatter face had plumped out her wrinkles. Standing beside her was her husband Mohammad and their two sons, now grown up and one with a new wife in tow. The unmistakable smell of money emanated from all of them. Ambergris and musk. Velvet-smooth nappa leather. Chador of softest silk. Fingers and lobes laden with gold. Mohammad was hugging a gigantic casket of clashing-coloured flowers bound with pastel ribbons, a generous gift given the high price of flowers these days. The two sons wore sharp Western-looking suits, which meant that they fitted properly and were not made from polyester. The three men were clean-shaven. They were a modern,
sonati
family and when they entered the room, Haj Agha felt a stab of jealousy. They were what he wanted to be.
Mohammad had heard of his brother-in-law Haj Agha’s new-found religious zeal and was struck with respect. Mohammad was so busy making money, he did not have time for spiritual pursuits. As he congratulated Haj Agha on his latest holy jaunt, the sisters embraced and immediately retreated into the kitchen.
Zahra’s oldest son, Amir-Ali, had done everything possible to get out of coming to the party. But when he walked into the flat, he saw that he had a reason for staying: Somayeh. Amir-Ali was taken aback by her transformation from unattractive little girl to alluring teenager. She had hazel eyes and, below a handsome straight nose, red lips sculpted in a defined Cupid’s bow. Her skin was flawless and her make-up subtle. Her
roo-farshee
house shoes were black sequinned ballet pumps, not the usual ugly plastic slip-on
dampaee
slippers that most girls in the neighbourhood wore at home. When she loosened her grip on her chador, an earlobe studded with three earrings peaked out from under wisps of highlighted hair. This surprised Amir-Ali; he had not expected his poor cousins from Meydan-e Khorasan to know about multiple piercings. These were details that mattered to him. Details that told him she would understand his world.