Lipstick Jihad

Table of Contents

 

 

 

PRAISE FOR
LIPSTICK JIHAD

“[The] sense of being an outsider in two worlds may have made daily life difficult for Ms. Moaveni, but it also makes her a wonderfully acute observer, someone keenly attuned not only to the differences between American and Iranian cultures, but also to the ironies and contradictions of life today in Tehran.”

—Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times

 

“Moaveni has closed the cultural gulf between young America and young Iran by building a bridge of her own and personally escorting readers across. It's an invitation readers should accept.”

—
The Boston Globe

 

“[A] vivid memoir of . . . Moaveni's time as a journalist among the ‘lost generation' of young Iranians and their rebellion against the petty rules that symbolize the greater freedoms denied to them.

—
Los Angeles Times

 

“Moaveni writes unusually well and perceptively.”

—
New York Times Book Review

 

“[
Lipstick Jihad
] shows us what Iran looks like in spring and fall, with all those seasons' biting winds and unexpected days of sunshine.”

—
Washington Post Book World

 

“Moaveni suffuses her book with the rich detail and critical observation of a good reporter. . . . It is refreshing and astonishing to see what lies behind [Iran's] closed doors: real people who do yoga, drink exotic cocktails and are torn about whether the United States is their enemy or potential savior.”

—
Houston Chronicle

 

“The verdict: A moving memoir of identity. This finely written and thought-provoking memoir . . . will resonate with readers who have struggled to find themselves in the world, apart from geography or cultural mandates.”

—
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

“
Lipstick Jihad
. . . is as much personal as political, recounting [Moaveni's] efforts to find satisfaction in being Iranian, and to achieve a sense of belonging that eluded her in California. . . . The author's capacity to appreciate these moments and yet look critically at political and social problems in the country is a kind of integration of nostalgia and reality that sets her story apart from what could have been a predictable homecoming tale.”

—
The Nation

 

“Moaveni's memoir takes us nowhere we've been before, or even read about in the daily papers, with tales of young people whose hedonistic lifestyle behind closed doors helped push the pendulum so far in the other direction that they effected real change on the streets. . . . A must-read for anybody interested in taking a peek at the multifaceted human experiences that lie behind the headlines.”

—
Elle.com

 

“[A] deeply personal glimpse of Gen X Iranians in the United States and Iran. [Moaveni's] account . . . possesses an irresistible vitality.”

—
St. Petersburg Times

 

“Reading
Lipstick Jihad
is a bit like hearing someone's cell-phone conversation on the bus, only way better: Her words are interesting, and she's talking to you. The only frustration is that you can't talk back.”

—
Time Out New York

 

“[G]ripping. . . . Moaveni paints a damning picture of daily life in Tehran with a hundred fascinating, subtle details. . . . But much to [her] credit, she is able to find the redeeming aspects of what often reads like a sojourn in

one of the outer circles of hell.”

—
LA Weekly

 

“Moaveni's insider status . . . allowed her a particularly detailed and revealing view of Iranians, especially those of her generation, while her work as a journalist allowed her access and freedom of movement. For the reader, she is the ultimate guide. . . . Her portrait of Iran . . . is a fascinating, layered study.
Lipstick Jihad
offers a new and welcome understanding of a troubled country where daily life is infinitely more complicated than newspaper

headlines would lead us to believe.”

—
San Diego Union-Tribune

 

“American perceptions might be challenged by reading Moaveni's insider accounts of an Iran that includes private parties, presidential elections, plastic surgery, Weblogs, skiing, hamburgers and sushi bars, and watching
Ally McBeal
and
Sex in the City
via verboten but widespread satellite dishes.”

—
East Bay Express

 

“In recording her struggle to find and make a home in the world Moaveni joins other hyphenated Iranian writers like Marjane Satrapi (
Persepolis and Persepolis 2
), Gelareh Asayesh (
Saffron Sky
), and Azar Nafisi (
Reading Lolita in Tehran
). Moaveni's advantage is that she has both a private and public life in Tehran, and is willing to mine both for material.”

—
Chicago Reader

I was born in Palo Alto, California, into the lap of an Iranian diaspora community awash in nostalgia and longing for an Iran many thousands of miles away. As a girl, raised on the distorting myths of exile, I imagined myself a Persian princess, estranged from my homeland—a place of light, poetry, and nightingales—by a dark, evil force called the Revolution. I borrowed the plot from
Star Wars,
convinced it told Iran's story. Ayatollah Khomeini was Darth Vader. Tromping about suburban California, I lived out this fantasy. There must be some supernatural explanation, I reasoned, for the space landing of thousands of Tehranis to a world of vegan smoothies and Volvos, chakras, and Tupak.

Growing up, I had no doubt that I was Persian. Persian like a fluffy cat, a silky carpet—a vaguely Oriental notion belonging to history, untraceable on a map. It was the term we insisted on using at the time, embarrassed by any association with Iran, the modern country, the hostage-taking Death Star. Living a myth, a fantasy, made it easier to be Iranian in America.

As life took its course, as I grew up and went to college, discovered myself, and charted a career, my Iranian sense of self remained intact. But when I moved to Tehran in 2000—pleased with my pluckiness, and eager to prove myself as a young journalist—it, along with the fantasies, dissolved. Iran, as it turned out, was not the Death Star, but a country where people voted, picked their noses, and ate French fries. Being a Persian girl in California, it turned out, was like, a totally different thing than being a young Iranian woman in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In hindsight, these
two points seem startlingly obvious, but no one ever pointed them out, probably because if you need them pointed out, you clearly have problems. So I learned for myself, as I endured a second, equally fraught coming of age—this time as a Californian in Iran. I never intended my Iranian odyssey as a search for self, but a very different me emerged at its end. I went looking for modern Iran, especially the generation of the revolution, the lost generation as it is sometimes called. The generation I would have belonged to, had I not grown up outside.

For two years, I worked as a journalist for
Time
magazine, reporting on the twists and turns of Iranian society, through high politics and ordinary life. Since 1998, the revolutionary regime's experiments with political reform—a brief flirtation with democracy—had captured the world's attention. The cultural rebellion of Iranian youth against the rigid, traditionalist system fizzed with unknown potential. As a journalist, I arrived during these times with urgent questions. Was Iran really becoming more democratic? What did young people want, exactly? Did demographics (two-thirds of the 70 million population is under thirty) make change inevitable? Would there be another revolution, or did Iranians prefer this regime to secularize? Were Iranians really pro-American, or just anti-clerical? Often there was more than one answer, maddeningly contradictory, equally correct.

I came to see Iranian society as culturally confused, politically deadlocked, and emotionally anguished. While the vast majority of Iranians despised the clerics and dreamed of a secular government, no easy path to that destination presented itself. In the meanwhile, revolutionary ideology was drawing its last, gasping breaths. Its imminent death was everywhere on display. You saw it when
Basiji
kids, the regime's thug-fundamentalist militia, stopped a car for playing banned music, confiscated the tapes, and then popped them into their own car stereo. You saw it when the children of senior clerics showed up at parties and on the ski slopes, dressed in Western clothes and alienated from their parents' radical legacy. It was there outside the courthouse on Vozara Street, where young people laughed and joked as they awaited their trials and lashings, before brushing them off and going on to the next party.