Tehran , A City Of Surprises

[Aratta-Kingdom]

Payvand, Iran

Feb 16 2007

 

 

Tehran, a city of surprises

 

By Fatima Bhutto

First published by Pakistan's The News International

 

I began my day in Tehran on the subway. The Tehran Metro is, if you

will pardon my overzealous language, an absolute wonder. Situated in

central parts of the city, it runs on three lines. I bought a ticket

on the Imam Khomeini line, the red line, and queued up with Tehranis

on their way to work at the Hafte Tir station to embark on some

sightseeing.

 

"Do we have to sit in the women's only cabins?" I asked my

interpreter Samira as we waited on the platform equipped with TV

screens announcing the arrival of the next trains. She waved her

hands, "If you like". The grey subway announced its arrival with some

music, which was conveniently replayed at every single stop

accompanied by the station's name. We hopped on and I felt like I was

on the London tube. Samira had to push me off the subway; I was quite

willing to hang on to my seat for the rest of the day.

 

We walked to Sarkis Cathedral on Karim Khan-e-Zand Street, an

Armenian Orthodox church built in the late 1960s. Unlike the gothic

churches hidden away in Saddar and under heavy Ranger protection,

Sarkis Cathedral was a prominent landmark in Tehran. It is said to be

the most visible non-Islamic building in the city; just in case you

miss it, across the street painted on a large building is a mural of

the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms, angels sprinkled

around their halos. I asked Samira (whose name is pronounced

saam-ee-raah, which I kept butchering by not properly elongating my

vowels) if religious minorities felt safe practicing their religion

in an Islamic Republic. "They are the same as all of us, they speak

Farsi, we look the same, we have the same names - there's no way of

telling us apart". "Except that they speak Armenian" I ventured.

Samira waved her hands again. She spoke a little Armenian too.

 

There is so much to discover in this megalopolis of 14 million

people; it even makes Karachi look quaint and small. The landscape of

Iran is said to have been continuously inhabited by a single nation

of people longer than any other part of land the world over. Single

nation of people sounds difficult to stomach in an age where

nationalism, identity, and ethnicity dominate much of our politics,

but Aryans aside, Iran is home to Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Lors (said to

be descendants of those single nation people) and Balochis. Safak

Pavey, a Turkish woman who heads the United Nations High Commission

for Refugee's external relations office, told me that in the early

1990s, after the Gulf War (part one) Iran was home to 4.5 millions

refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan. "Iran should receive thanks for

that; can you imagine a European country giving 4.5 million refugees

asylum?" While the number of Iraqis and Afghani refugees is slowly

decreasing with repatriation projects UNHCR and the Iranian

government are initiating, Iran remains a veritable melting pot.

Tehran itself is composed of a diverse and unusual mix of

ethnicities, nationalities, and religions and those people -including

Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians - live safely and comfortably

alongside Muslims and have done so for thousands of years. In Tarjish

Square there is even a Little Pakistan where immigrants have set up a

small bazaar of Pakistani made textiles, embroideries, and shoes.

What can't you find in Tehran?

 

My rigorous sightseeing program continued with a stop at the Sa'd

Abad Palace, once a summer home for the last Pahlevi Shah. It was a

summer home the size of Malir and everything inside, except for the

carpets, was French. Marie Antoinette looks down at you from every

lamp, every table top, and every chest of drawers. It was a bit much.

We toured the offices where Pahlevi senior is said to have plotted

the CIA sponsored coup against the populist and democratically

elected Mohammad Mossadegh, who nationalized Iran's oil, took

photographs by the boots of Pahlevi junior's statue (the only

remaining part, it was cemented to the ground and couldn't be torn

off with the rest of his monstrous bronze image) and marveled at the

fully equipped dentist's chair installed in the Shah's Niyavaran

Palace, feet away from his bedroom, just in case such an emergency

would arise. It's a miracle the Pahlevis left in one piece, so

opulent was their grandeur.

 

I met with Mitra, a journalist, later in the day still disturbed by

the ostentatious lifestyle of Iran's monarchs. How can these two very

extreme histories, Western and Islamic, exist in one country? "Look,"

she explained "Instead of instinctively bashing the post

revolutionary period, we should be able to acknowledge the positive

gains brought by the Revolution. The Revolution helped spur on

today's feminist movement - in the Shah's days only affluent families

would send their daughters to universities for higher education. The

poorer classes did not. This," she gestured tugging at her head scarf

"made it more acceptable for women to attend large co-ed universities

and pursue higher learning. It doesn't have to be celebrated - it's

not an ideal situation - but it needs to be acknowledged. Today 65%

of university students in Iran are women".

 

Mitra is an elegant and professional woman, the weekend before

Muharram she was wearing red; I wouldn't have pegged her as having

Revolutionary sympathies. And she didn't necessarily, but like most

Iranians she was willing to balance the difficult and sometimes

frustrating changes of the Revolution with its benefits. It is

impossible to essentialize in Iran, impossible to paint things black

or white - or red - there are so many facets to life in this country.

Those diametric opposites do share the same space in Iran and its

people, and perhaps Mitra, are examples of its dynamism.

 

Mitra continued "Did you know that at government health centers you

can receive free contraceptives? Or that the topic of birth control

is spoken about openly?" I didn't. Women in mosques are permitted to

discuss reproductive rights, there are no taboos surrounding it, and

in recent years counseling dealing with sexual and physical health

has become compulsory for couples before marriage. Before receiving a

marriage license, couples have to attend not only a counseling

session but must also pass a university class centering on sexual

health, HIV, and addiction.

 

There was more that deserved acknowledgement and I struggled to write

as quickly as Mitra continued down the list. Government health

centers are setting up rehabilitation centers for the country's large

number of heroin addicts, even offering needle exchanges and

methadone doses to those in need. Female circumcision was banned by

Khameini years ago, and while practiced dangerously in neighboring

African and Arab countries, it is virtually non-existent in Iran.

Religious minorities now receive the same amount of blood money in

the case of bereavement that Muslims do, whereas before the

Revolution they were only offered half the amount that Muslims could

claim.

 

Mitra told me incredulously that sex change operations are legal in

Iran. Though the procedures are sanctioned as a way of warding off

homosexuality, a major crime in the country, it was the Imam Khomeini

who gave his approval to gender reassignment while in exile in Iraq.

This was light-years before the very topic became acceptable, and

even fashionable, in Western countries. If Mitra and I had not spent

the previous hour discussing the freedom of the press and Marxist

blogs (very popular in Iran) I would have thought I was being taken

for a ride. Even my liberal bearings could not absorb this last piece

of information. "You can't be serious" I said, half expecting her to

tell me she was just having a go at a foreign journalist for fun.

"No, I am absolutely serious" Mitra insisted, amused at my look of

utter disbelief. After medical and psychological evaluations, he or

she is given a temporary permit which allows them to dress as the

gender they will soon become without any fear of punishment. "Once

the operation is done, sometimes in government hospitals, he or she

can legally get married and live officially as the gender they have

chosen for themselves". Gender reassignment is not as openly

discussed as birth control, Mitra went on, ignoring my stumped look,

but you can see interviews with such people in the newspapers and

even advertisements sometimes. Does any of this happen in Pakistan?

She reasonably asked since I hadn't stopped talking about Iran and

Pakistan's similarities from the moment we sat down. "Not exactly..."

 

 

Before Mitra and I parted ways I thanked her for her time and for

opening up new windows to Iran for me. Every hour spent in Tehran is

an education; ideas are debated freely and openly, past and present

shared without prejudice, politics and gender reassignment equal

fodder for conversation.

 

This is so much more than the Iran of my imagination. I cannot wait

for tomorrow's lesson.

 

 

About the author: Fatima Bhutto is a 24 year old Pakistani woman. She

graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern and Asian

Cultures and Languages from Columbia University and received a

Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in South

Asian Government and Politics. Fatima comes from a political

background, her father Mir Murtaza Bhutto - an elected member of

Pakistan's parliament - was assassinated by state police in 1996. His

sister, Benazir Bhutto, was Prime Minister at the time of his

killing. Fatima is the author of two books, a volume of poetry

published when she was 15 years old in her father's memory a year

after his death called 'Whispers of the Desert' and a collection of

first hand survivor's accounts from the October 8, 2005 earthquake in

Pakistan entitled 8:50 am. Both were published by Oxford University

Press. The proceeds from '8:50 am' will be given back to child

survivors of the quake. Fatima currently writes a weekly column for

Pakistan's largest Urdu daily newspaper, Daily Jang, and its English

sister paper, The News International. Her diary from Tehran is the

second the papers printed; Fatima also wrote a weekly diary from

Lebanon this past summer during the Israeli invasion.

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

Iranpour, did you ever have a chance to read Avesta? Edited February 19, 2007 by ArmoArmeN