Authors: Ramita Navai
‘She killed herself.’
Farideh clasped her neck with her hand. Alidad ran over to her and hugged her, kissing her on the forehead. ‘It happened tonight. She threw herself out of the apartment. And you know what, those bastards will be set free.’
After Delara had gone to hospital and then to the police station, all three boys had been arrested. But one of them had already escaped to Dubai. The remaining two had been sent to Evin. Their fathers were rich and closely connected to the regime. Nobody thought for a minute that they would be found guilty.
Alidad offered to stay home and look after Farideh, but she insisted he go to his party. She began to cry as he closed the front door behind him.
Alidad had been out in the streets celebrating when Rouhani had been elected President; he had told her that everything would change, that everything would be different; it would just take time. She had heard this talk before – as far as she was concerned, change would not happen fast enough to make a difference to her life in Tehran.
She ran up to her room and started packing her bags. It was not too late for her to enjoy normality, to live out the rest of her years somewhere she would feel secure and free. She would go to London. Since the revolution her close friend Marjaneh had tried to persuade her to start afresh there. Now was her chance. Not that she could travel – she would have to get a visa first – but a packed suitcase, ready and waiting, would comfort her.
The rich kids were out in strength on Fereshteh Street; lines of glittering fast cars costing over
100
per cent extra with import tax – BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, Porsches, Ferraris, Lexuses and a Maserati – wound along the kerb outside the cafés and restaurants making the road look like a luxury car showroom. Alidad used to cruise here when he was younger. Once, near this spot, a
basiji
had searched his car and found a crate of Efes beer in the boot. Before Alidad had managed to stammer out ‘I can explain…’ the
basiji
had slammed the boot shut. ‘Go on, get lost. And don’t drive around with that shit in future,’ was all he had said.
Alidad slowed past the gangs of gorgeous girls. A black Ferrari driven by a boy who could not be older than twenty sped past, zigzagging dangerously between the cars. A dervish was standing on the side of the road, bright green robe resting on his shoulders, long white hair flowing from a sapphire turban. In his right hand he was swinging a metal censer; white puffs of smoke from the burning of
esfand
, seeds of a weed, were rising out of it: spells to ward off the evil eye and expunge sorrow. The dervish’s left hand was held out in supplication. Even the beggars on Fereshteh were upmarket.
By the time he got to Ana’s house it was one o’clock in the morning; the party was pumping, Hot Chip was booming and everyone was dancing. Ana was single and in her late twenties, living on her own in a small apartment stuffed with retro shabby-chic furniture. She was one of the few Iranians who had kept the imperfect nose they had been born with, a handsome, strong, aquiline nose that had become her glory, a proud mark of her strength and individuality. Her nose would not be considered big in the West, but in Iran she had endured a lifetime of concerned relatives and family friends, even kindly strangers, cajoling her to have her nose carved into a more desirable shape, a more marriage-friendly shape – a narrow, pre-pubescent button nose, to be precise. She had refused. Ana was not one to conform. Growing up in the Islamic Republic had not impeded her dream of being a dancer. She trained in a studio in the city, where moves deemed too sexual by the Islamic Republic had to be scrapped. They could not even call what they did
dance
, but rather
movement
. Her troupe ended up touring Europe, working with celebrated choreographers in Madrid, Berlin and Paris. Now she designed jewellery.
Tonight Ana was dressed as a forties pin-up girl, hair in a quiff, shocking red lipstick on her pouty mouth. Beside her, a girl in a pair of brogues, pastel chequered trousers and a bow tie was smoking a skunk joint with a rock chick with a shaved undercut in a black jumpsuit. This was the trendy crowd, and they were the kind of girls who wore baggy, vintage-looking
manteaus
. They were surrounded by a gaggle of adoring gay boys. Ana was holding the party in honour of her friend Jamshid’s ‘coming out’ to his parents. During the protests in
2009
, Jamshid had been arrested out on the streets. He had been taken to Evin where he was held for three weeks and interrogated while blindfolded every day. His interrogators had forced him to give them his email and Facebook passwords; at that moment he had been petrified, thinking his life must be over. His inboxes were full of messages from ex-boyfriends and graphic photographs of himself that he had sent to lovers. But the interrogators never mentioned them. Finally, on the last day, one of them had whispered in his ear: ‘We know all about you and we know exactly how you like it. But we don’t give a shit about that. That’s your fucking problem. We just wanted to know you hadn’t been acting against the regime.’
In the bedroom, a group of boys were gossiping and drinking from a bottle of Mr Chavez Blended Special Whisky – Extra Special, an Iraqi brew. Jamshid’s new eighteen-year-old boyfriend had just got an exemption from military service by claiming he was a transsexual, a condition the regime viewed as an illness.
‘You know, he could have just told them he was gay, they think we’re mentally sick too. What could they do? It’s not illegal to
be
gay, only to have gay sex.’
‘Well that’s a good thing, cos then half the fucking city would be arrested.’
‘All of south Tehran would, that’s for sure.’
‘Oh God, I got to try me some south Tehran man, I love those strapping rough-and-ready barrow boys.’
‘You’ve seriously got to go south. If the middle classes are homosexuals,
all
the working-class boys are G-A-Y. Gay, gay, gay.’
‘Listen, it’s the same in any Muslim country, you can just clean up. It’s cos these poor bastards can’t get anywhere near pussy, that’s why we’re in business!’
The boys mostly met dates on the Internet. The Internet is the lifeblood of the gay scene in Tehran, specifically a gay social networking website called Manjam. Men all take risks – from webcam sex to picking up boys in Park-e Daneshjoo, cruising south Tehran and screwing in cars and alleys and public baths. The law on same-sex sodomy, which had just been amended, reflected the state’s twisted attitude towards homosexuality: if the sex is consensual and the man playing the active role is not married and a Muslim, he will be flogged
100
times, whereas the man who plays the passive role will be put to death (unless he is a kafir having sex with a Muslim, in which case they will both be killed). It is better to bugger than to be buggered.
In the kitchen a guy in high-top trainers was rapping Rumi poetry to a group of women who liked to joke that they were members of the militant underground group Lezbollah
.
Among them was one of Tehran’s most notorious lesbians, a hefty, butch woman who was startlingly successful at seducing straight marrieds. She had recently got married herself in San Francisco, to a blonde beauty who had left her husband – one of Tehran’s most desired catches – for her. Another two women were kissing in the hallway, evidently also affiliated to Lezbollah. The punishment for lesbianism,
mosahegheh
, is
100
lashes, but if lesbian acts are repeated four times, the death penality can be applied – although none of these women or any of their friends had ever been caught.
Alidad moved between the groups, downing tequila shots and getting stoned. He had grown up with this quixotic, eclectic group of friends; they were privileged but good people, non-judgemental and accepting. Even the ones who could afford a life abroad chose to stay. But they all knew the dancing and the partying were vital to their well-being, so they made sure they did it well.
A European diplomat friend helped push Farideh’s visa application through. A month later she was on a plane to London. The plan was to spend three months with Marjaneh while she looked for a small apartment to buy. She would then divide her time between Tehran and London, for as long as she was legally permitted to stay.
Alidad could not understand why Farideh thought she would be happier in the West. He had visited friends in London, LA, New York, Paris, Rome – all the usual places – and always looked forward to getting back home. He liked to dip his toe in, to party and pull exotic foreign girls, but his life was in Tehran. He embraced it all, the good and the bad.
Farideh’s first week in London was heavenly; Marjaneh took her to galleries, museums and restaurants, showing her everything she had been missing. Farideh was overcome with guilt that she had made her husband and her child endure Tehran when they could have had
this
: real freedom and all that came with it. But as the weeks wore on, she began to feel strangely disconnected from this new society around her. Life was more disparate and impersonal here. The gatherings and dinner parties were cold affairs, lacking in intensity. The bonds between Marjaneh and her friends were looser too; people had their own families and jobs to care about. Everyone watched the pennies. Cabs were extortionate. People were aggressive; they shouted and swore at each other in the streets, even in Marjaneh’s high-class area, something that rarely happened in north Tehran. When Farideh began to house-hunt, she realized how little her rials and tomans would buy her. Even if she sold everything and used up all her savings, she would only be able to buy a minuscule, dingy, one-bedroom apartment in Marjaneh’s neighbourhood. Otherwise she would have to live in suburban hell, rows and rows of identical houses with crude gas boilers and tiny, sorry splodges of grass as gardens. And the weather never changed; one cold, grey, wet, drizzly day morphed into another.
After just two months, Farideh was surprised to discover that all she really wanted was to go back home. To Tehran.
‘We had the first rain of the year last week. It was wonderful. Cleared up the pollution. You been away long?’
‘A few months. What have I missed?’
‘The same old – pardon my language madame – shit.’
Farideh laughed.
‘Bet you wished you stayed away, eh?’
‘Actually, I missed it here. Funny really.’
‘I know, sometimes I think I want to take the whole family away from all of this, but I don’t know if I’d be able to live anywhere else.’ The taxi driver looked at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘At least we’re all in it together.’
Farideh smiled at him. ‘Yes, you and I. Who would have thought.’
Now it was his turn to laugh.
The cab turned into Vali Asr. Two men were stripping a sheep’s carcass in front of the Mercedes Benz showroom. Farideh wound the window right down and leant her head out. She never thought she would be so relieved to be back; wrapped in Tehran’s mountains, protected under her startling blue sky and warmed by her sun, enveloped by her trees, licked by her breeze, bursts of umber, russet and ochre now bleeding out of the leaves. They drove past the fruit stalls filled with the autumnal yellows and oranges of lemons, quinces and persimmons, the jumble and the chaos and the clamour, the smoky smell of lamb on hot coals which rubbed against her cheeks, the mulberry trees and the jasmine, the layers of dust, the splutter of vans, the man selling puppies at the side of the road, the swarms of motorbikes criss-crossing between beautiful girls in defiant clothes, the juice stands, the gold shops, the ancient bazaars and tunnelled walkways, the chipped blue tiles on magnificent, crumbling manor houses and the hidden gardens.
Farideh closed her eyes to savour the moment.
The first snow of winter falls on a queue outside the
barbari
bread bakery on the north of Vali Asr – the price of a few pieces of bread is now the same as a hit of meth. The road is splashed with bursts of ruby red from the season’s pomegranates and beetroots. Two teenage boys with quiffs and ripped jeans dart between the cars, selling rap CDs and gum. On the pavement, an elegantly dressed woman with glasses sells cashmere headscarves; next to her an old man sits cross-legged, a pair of cracked scales in front of him. An eight-year-old girl on a piece of cardboard leans against a metal telephone exchange box, carefully writing in an exercise book as she takes a break from selling packets of tissues to do her homework.
Near Rah Ahan railway station, where Vali Asr begins its northbound ascent towards the mountains, thousands of mourners dressed in black stand in the cold outside a mosque. The crowd keeps swelling; part of Vali Asr has been closed off to traffic. An ambulance expels clouds of gritty black fumes as it waits beside the mourners. The mosque has opened its
hosseinieh
to cope with the numbers. Trays of dates,
halva
and herbed rice with lamb shanks are laid out on a table. After recitals from the Koran and the eulogy, the crowd outside parts as the body, covered in a sheet, is carried out on a stretcher and put in the back of the ambulance, which will make its way to Beheshteh Zahra cemetery where the body will be washed, wrapped in the white
kafan
shroud and placed in the earth.
‘That’s the end of the city as we know it. He won’t survive without her,’ says an old man in fingerless gloves as the doors of the van slam shut. He has taken a break from selling polyester socks on the corner of Vali Asr and Rah Ahan so he can pay his respects to the wife of Asghar the Brave, the toughest and most chivalrous
jahel
to have walked the streets of Tehran.
Two elderly women in chadors leave the crowd; one of them used to be a dancing girl with Pari. She limps from a bad hip. The women come across the stump of a sycamore tree. ‘It was in the news. They said they’re sick and they had to cut them down,’ says her companion. The old dancer shakes her head.
The government did not immediately respond to the controversial felling of Vali Asr’s sycamore trees. Now it says that the trees are diseased, that they are a danger to pedestrians. The women staring at the stump do not believe this. They have heard that the trees are obscuring police cameras, and that they are in the way of development plans.
But it is true. The sycamore trees are sick. They are slowly dying – mainly of thirst. A plan to pour concrete into the
joobs
went wrong; it prevented the water that ran down them from seeping through to the trees’ roots. Some say pollution is making matters worse, that like Tehran’s own residents the trees farther south of the city are choking. But everyone agrees on one thing: the trees were chopped down in the dead of night because the authorities knew there would be an outcry.
The women continue up Vali Asr, the gush of the water rushing down the
joobs
rising above the sound of car engines and horns. They walk under the dying trees, now grey, shimmering skeletons cloaked in a thin sheet of ice, stripped of their leaves by winter’s cold hand. Soon they will be clogged in snow, the water in the
joobs
hard as crystal before it will thaw with the first warm breeze that will breathe life into the green shoots and roots, encouraging them to sprout again. Buildings will be built and torn down, people will demonstrate and celebrate, cars will crash, citizens will be executed, lovers abandoned, police corrupted, political dissidents imprisoned and freed, presidents will come and go; but Vali Asr will remain, a constant, unchanged by wars, dictators and revolutions. With or without its sycamore trees.