[Reader-list] Iran: Beyond the Media Image

[Yogi Sikand]

 Iran: Beyond the Media Image


Yoginder Sikand


Flying over vast stretches of barren mountains and sandy wastelands for
almost three hours, the plane began descending towards Tehran. I peered out
of the window eagerly, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tehran's suburbs, but
all I could see were large uncultivated mounds that rolled on without
interruption far into the horizon. The Imam Khomeini International Airport
looked desolate and abandoned from inside the aircraft when we landed. There
was little apparent movement. Just two planes—both Iranian—were parked on
the vast tarmac. I was disconcerted.



Five minutes later, we were inside the terminal building. Contrary to what I
had feared, it was, by Indian standards, swank and immaculate and bubbling
with activity. I had expected to be greeted with swarms of somber-looking *
burkha* clad women and grave-faced men sporting bushy beards—for that is
what the media effectively reduces Iran to—but I was in for a pleasant
shock. A friendly woman guard, neatly dressed in a blue coat and a matching
hair covering, greeted me as I passed through Customs. 'Welcome to Iran',
she said with a cheerful smile.



Beyond the visitors' gate, I saw men, all dressed in Western attire, and
women, only a few in all-enveloping black chadors but clearly outnumbered by
those in Western-style knee-length coats, with colourful scarves tied
loosely around their heads, excitedly waving at their friends and relatives
whom they had come to receive. Huge billboards, decorated with neon lights,
covered vast stretches of walls, imploring prospective customers to purchase
the latest foreign gadgets. In just five minutes the image that I had built
in my mind about Iran, based on what I had read in the newspapers and what
television stations consistently spew out, was completely shattered.



I was in Tehran at the invitation of a Shia religious organization to attend
a conference on the notion of messianism in different religions. A cardinal
tenet of the Shia form of Islam, to which the vast majority of Iranians
adhere, is belief in a messiah, known as the Mahdi, who is said to have
entered a cave while an infant many centuries ago and who is expected to
reppear to herald the end of the world. I had heard of the conference
through the Internet, and although I am no expert in messianism, I decided
to apply for it, hardly expecting my application to be approved. But, to my
surprise, it was, and the organizers had even been so gracious as to send me
the tickets and to arrange for me to stay, along with the other
participants, in a fancy hotel in Tehran's posh northern district.



My hosts had sent a car to pick me up at the airport. Ali, a student at a
Shia seminary, was at the exit to receive me. Like most other Iranians, Ali
knew little English, but we managed a minimal conversation by using words
common to both Farsi and Urdu. 'Maqam-e Imam', Ali announced to me as the
car sped down the smooth six-lane road towards Tehran, located almost eighty
kilometers away from the airport.



'Ayatollah Khomeini', he explained when I asked him what that meant.



I still had no clue as to where we were heading.



Twenty minutes later a massive building stretching almost a kilometer from
one end to the other emerged into view. As we grew closer, I noticed its
five massive gilded domes, several slender minarets, and literally hundreds
of rooms that were built around its several vast courtyards. An exchange of
a few Urdu-Farsi words with Ali thereupon informed me that we had arrived at
the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini.



For many Iranians, this mausoleum, which, seventeen years after work on it
began, has yet to be completed, is a major centre of pilgrimage. Families
stretched on patches of grass under trees and in the vast square at the
entrance of the shrine, sipping tea, counting beads, reading books or
sleeping oblivious to the din around. Boys and girls played hide-and-seek,
shrieking with delight. It was hardly the gloomy graveyard I thought it
might be.



Inside, soft woolen Persian carpets stretched from one end of a stadium-like
building to the other. It was crowded with pilgrims, men and women,
clutching the silver grills of the mausoleum and offering blessings on the
soul of the departed Ayatollah. There were separate sections for men and
women, but these were not hermetically sealed off, and both could see each
other from either side of a low curtain. The Ayatollah's grave was simple
and modest, reflecting his own austere lifestyle. Next to it was the equally
modest grave of his son Mustafa. The graves were covered by a silver canopy
on top and by green glass windows on all sides. Currency notes lay strewn in
piles inside along the windows, the gift of pious pilgrims.



Ali finished his prayers and then beckoned me back to the car. It took us
barely half an hour to reach the hotel, located more than forty kilometers
away. The broad road was as smooth as an airport tarmac, and the traffic
impressively organized. The wastelands abruptly gave way to a forest of
buildings as we passed through a toll-gate. This, explained Ali, was south
Tehran, where most of the poor of this megapolis of more than 14 million
people live. Yet, it struck me as remarkably middle-class by Indian
standards, with no evident sign of desperate poverty. The buildings here
were modest but neat, the roads wide, and the numerous gardens we passed by
well manicured. People seemed well-dressed and well-fed, too. As we drove
towards north Tehran, the buildings grew progressively taller, bigger and
more 'modern'. Brightly-decorated shops and boutiques ran along streets
lined with majestic Chinar trees. Residential areas appeared that hosted
massive bungalows guarded by high walls. This could have been any European
city.





The plush five-star Estaghlal Hotel were we had been put up was an enormous
structure, many floors high. Hung on the wall at the entrance to greet
visitors was a framed poster that announced in clumsy English, 'Dear Guest,
In order to observe the Iranian and Islamic values, it will be pleased to
follow the Islamic *hijab* and moralities'. This slogan appeared below an
image of a demure young woman with a black *hijab* or head scarf draped
around her head but leaving her face showing, with a crimson setting sun in
the background. Presumably, the poster addressed itself to women, who were
expected to wear 'Islamic *hijab*', although Islam requires that men, too,
be dressed modestly, which is what the Islamic concept of *hijab* is about.



Accordingly, at the Hotel Estaghlal, as everywhere else in Iran, women were
required to wear 'Islamic *hijab'*, but no such strictures seemed to apply
to men, all of whom, with the exception of religious clerics and a few Kurds
whom I saw in their traditional baggy trousers, wore Western dress. But even
here, the women are free to interpret the stricture about 'Islamic dress'
within broad limits. Women from the poorer classes or from more pious
families are more likely to be dressed in the full *chador* than are other
women. Of the former sort, only a few were visible at the Hotel Esteghlal.
Most of the women guests and visitors in the hotel, obviously from rich
families, had made their own innovations in the 'Islamic *hijab'* that the
law requires, draping their heads loosely with colourful scarves and wearing
fashionable pastel hued coats and stilettos. Some, obviously seeking to
circumvent the law altogether, had streaked their hair golden and let it
provocatively fall well below their scarves onto their faces. Others wore
such tight fitting coats that they miserably (and probably deliberately)
failed to perform their supposed function of concealing the outline of the
body. Not a few sat at tables in the lobby heavily powdered and their
eyebrows neatly plucked, puffing away at slender cigarettes along with their
male companions. Sombre pictures of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khameini and
pious quotations from the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali slung on the walls
of the opulently decorated lobby made for a surreal contrast.



I headed for my well-appointed room. The mellifluous call to prayer floated
up from a mosque below.  I traced a line of men heading towards the mosque.
But, even at prayer time, there were others who were loitering on the
streets, speeding in their fancy cars or sipping tea at roadside cafés.
Contrary to what I had imagined, there were no vigilantes rounding up people
who failed to attend mosque services on time. In this, and in so many other
respects, Iran was clearly not quite what the media had made me expect it to
be.














-- 
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye

The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping