Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (12 page)

The final group of regime supporters in the military is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Special Qods Force wing of the organization. Trained in the old United States Embassy, the Revolutionary Guards can be considered an elite military parallel to the traditional Iranian military. The youth of these two organizations join for the same reasons as those who join Ansar-e Hezbollah and the Basij, except this group represents the elite of the impoverished, ambitious, and deeply ideological youth who support the regime but are not in the inner circle of the ruling elite families.

C
ontingents of each of these
proregime factions can be found among the youth at the various universities, but the interactions these members of the ideological minority have with their fellow students illustrate their marginal place among the larger masses of young Iranians. In one of the many conversations I had with Gita, one of the sisters who had first shown me the youth’s view of Iran, I asked of the proregime youth, “What were they like in school socially and in the classroom?”

She hated these types of questions. “Once I saw one of these boys and girls were talking together, but with a two-meter distance and they refused to look at each other,” she said, describing proregime students. She laughed in the middle of her story. “Everybody laughed at them and thought they were crazy and that they would always stay crazy.”

“What do you mean crazy?” I asked.

“These girls do not have clean faces, they don’t have woman faces,” she replied.

I really didn’t follow so I asked her to explain further.

She tried again. “I mean they don’t go to salons, they don’t do their eyebrows, and they don’t manicure their nails. They don’t take care of themselves or care about looking nice. It is the same with the men; they just grow beards and wear the same clothes every day.”

I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did.

I asked her what the teachers and other students feel about their presence on campus.

Again, she became energized with disgust, explaining that “the only people who like them are those that are just the same as them.”

“Do they do well in school?” I inquired with curiosity.

Unfortunately, these kids do well in school. Gita reminded me that the universities are government-run, so they tend to favor those who support the regime. This complaint of proregime favoritism is even shared by some faculty, one of whom explained to me that the standards of the universities have been lowered so that those who support the regime can graduate with better grades. He told me that critical thinking has been slowly squeezed out of the curriculum and professors who have been there for twenty years cannot get promotions, yet hard-line conservative professors can be promoted after just two years.

I pressed Gita further. “Do the students who support the regime ever try to impose their beliefs on others?”

“Oh!” She jumped at this question as if she had forgotten to touch on this. “Yes, a lot they do! They always try to criticize other students and make the universities more Islamic.”

I asked how they do this.

“From time to time they have some announcements and have some gatherings.”

“What kind of announcements?” I inquired.

“For example, when they see that some boys or girls wear the modern clothes or more Western clothes, they will try to humiliate them in public. But this is difficult, because most of us like wearing these clothes so we just ignore them.”

“How many people at your university would you say support the regime?”

“I don’t think it can be more than five percent. You know, they think everything against their will is corruption.”

Fortunately, those who chant “Death to America” are only a fragment of the population. Despite the loyalty that they appeared to have for the regime, I saw this loyalty as relatively fragile. Despite the fact that the regime attracts most of its supporters by exchanging money for ideological enthusiasm, the regime cannot actually afford to subsidize a massive support base. Since much of the regime’s loyalty is tied to what it financially provides for that support base, the loyalty is precarious at best.

G
iven the constraints
of intelligence services, time, and traffic jams, I saw as much of Iran as I could have. When Shapour drove me to the airport on my last day, I still couldn’t stand him but I had a big smile on my face, because he really had no idea what I had been doing while he wasn’t around. When he left me at night, when he left for the afternoons, when he arrived to meet me after lunch, or when he let me be for the day, I had been learning about his country from the very people he didn’t want me to meet.

I arrived at the airport five hours ahead of time for a flight that left in the middle of the night. I really didn’t anticipate I would have any problems. My experience in Iran had been turbulent, but my new Iranian friends had helped me get through what would have otherwise been a difficult experience. They opened up a new world to me and showed me the important distinction between appearance and reality in Iran.

While I waited on line to get my boarding pass, I was approached by two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. They gestured me to come with them. What could they do now? I just wanted to get on the plane without any hassle. I assumed this was a routine check. It wasn’t.

They asked me what I had in my bags. I told them there were books, clothes, and some artifacts that I had bought. It didn’t matter what I said or what the content of my bags were; they wanted something. I stared blankly and was gestured to follow them into a room. They told me to leave my bags behind.

I spent the next four hours in the room, where I was given coffee and biscuits. Nobody spoke to me for the first thirty minutes as I sat there alone on a tattered yellow couch.

The door creaked open and a slender Revolutionary Guard, who looked to be around twenty-eight, sat down next to me. He informed me that if I wanted to leave Iran, I would need to pay a thousand dollars. Was he crazy?! I didn’t have that kind of money and even if I did, I certainly didn’t see why I should have to give it to him. I had done nothing wrong. But this was not how he saw it. Each time I asked what the fee was for, he would ask me to wait a minute and then disappear for another thirty minutes.

Several hours went by; I still sat in the same room on the same tattered couch. My mood began to change; I had become fed up with these antics. Another hour of this charade went by. It was now just one hour before my flight and I started to realize that there was a decent chance I would not be allowed to leave Iran. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do; I didn’t have the money they asked for.

Just thirty minutes before my flight, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps came into the room and once again demanded money. I pulled out my wallet, opened it up, and showed that I had five hundred dollars in there. He looked at it, pulled it out of my wallet, and counted it in front of me. After nodding his head in satisfaction, he then presented me with my boarding pass and allowed me to check my luggage.

As I boarded the plane and looked out the window while it took off, I felt a huge burden lifted off of me. It was as if I could think my own thoughts again and feel comfortable again. But I was also grateful for the hospitality and openness showed to me by some of the Iranian youth.

As the plane reached cruising altitude, I remembered an experience that will always remind me of just how many wonderful surprises Iran had held for me and of the encouraging reality that lurks beneath the surface of a repressive regime.

I
t was my first Saturday
in the country, and though I rarely spent the Jewish Sabbath in any form of religious observance, I was looking for a synagogue. I had run into some trouble: I didn’t know how to say either “Jewish” or “synagogue” in Farsi. I was also hesitant to ask anybody for help, assuming that most Iranians shared the anti-Semitic sentiments of the government and afraid of the reactions my questions might provoke.

Knowing that I would never find a synagogue without asking somebody, I tentatively approached three or four people. They were all cordial, but had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. Just when I was ready to quit, I spotted a young person, a student by his appearance. He looked to be about my age; he was clean-shaven, with his long hair tied into a ponytail. He wore a leather jacket and was listening to a Walkman when I approached him.

I introduced myself, and he told me that he was an engineering student at Polytechnic University in Tehran.

“Do you know if there is a synagogue in Tehran?” I asked him in English.

“Synagogue? Is it a hotel?” he answered, perplexed.

I tried to explain, still in English, “I am looking for the place of the Jewish people.”

His face showed no sign of recognition, but he seemed committed to helping me find whatever it was that I was looking for.

I pulled out a piece of paper, and drew two hands pushed together in prayer. He didn’t seem to understand. I then drew my best approximation of a map of Israel and he just shook his head.

“Mosque for Israel?” I finally ventured.

He seemed to understand immediately, exclaiming,
“Bale, Kaneeba Haim!”

I didn’t know what the “Kaneeba Haim” was, but I wondered if this young man still didn’t understand what I was looking for. After all, I might have been looking for a synagogue that didn’t exist. For the convenience of my search, I had decided to assume that there must be Jews in Iran, but I didn’t yet know if they practiced publicly in synagogues or worshipped only in private, fearful of an unfriendly regime.

I thanked the young engineer and was on my way. I got into a taxi and told the driver my destination, Kaneeba Haim. I was curious what this “mosque for Israel” would turn out to be, though I doubted that it was in fact a synagogue.

But after a fifteen-minute ride to a section of Tehran I’d not yet visited, a synagogue is exactly what I saw—or at the very least, what appeared to have once been a synagogue. As we pulled up, I saw a four-paneled metal gate, with a turquoise sign. Written in Hebrew, Farsi, and English, a sign above the entrance read: “Synagogue Haim Iran.” The synagogue looked closed—perhaps permanently—and the neighborhood seemed dead. But when I gave the metal door a nudge, it swung open, revealing the largest Jewish compound in Tehran.

These compounds—many with multiple synagogues—can be found in various parts of Tehran and other Iranian cities. I had assumed—logically, I thought—that whatever small Jewish community remained practiced in secrecy. After all, Iran is a country that gave the Israeli Embassy to the Palestinians; the roundabout circling the building is called Palestine Square. In the center of the square is a large metallic statue of “Palestine,” with sculptures representing Palestinian guerrilla militants. All throughout Iran’s cities, the government has erected signs and billboards that read “Down with Israel” and “Death to Israel.” The government of Iran has for decades provided funds to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Palestinian militant groups committed to the destruction of Israel. Officially, Iran is about as anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic a country as exists in the world today.

The capital city of Tehran, however, is home to eleven fully functional synagogues, each one catering to an active congregation. There are even two kosher restaurants. Further, in some parts of Tehran, one can find a Muslim mosque, a Zoroastrian temple, a Christian church, and a Jewish synagogue, all within blocks of each other. Having spent time in these neighborhoods, I still don’t know what’s more remarkable: the religious diversity or the total lack of tension one might imagine such diversity would create in a country like Iran.

As I wandered aimlessly through the courtyard of the compound, I was spotted by the curious eyes of children, all of whom bore the distinctively distracted expressions of young escapees from a tedious religious service. Surprised and excited by my appearance, one of the young boys grabbed me by the hand and brought me inside; the others covered their mouths and laughed. I suddenly found myself in the vestibule of a small but crowded synagogue. There was an altar, an ark holding a Torah, and two rows of benches. The men sat on one side and the women sat on the other. The synagogue itself was not large, but boasted a congregation of about fifty men and women, most of whom appeared to be in attendance for Shabbat services. The only indication that I was still in Iran was the fact that all the women still wore the hejab, the head scarves required by Islamic law. It was a bit strange seeing observant Jewish women in traditional Muslim attire.

It took only a moment for everyone to notice a stranger in their congregation. The service abruptly stopped and all eyes turned on me. I could only imagine what they were thinking. Fortunately, one of the teenagers there spoke English. I explained that I was Jewish and wanted to attend services. The blank stares were immediately transformed into welcoming smiles. Within a minute of revealing myself as a Jew looking for a place of worship, I was embraced by the rabbi, surrounded by young worshippers, adorned with a tallis and yarmulke, and led to a seat on one of the benches.

“Shabbat shalom,”
the elderly Iranian rabbi said as he reached out to embrace me. His curly hair stuck out from underneath his yarmulke and his face was wrinkled and kind. I smiled back at him, thrilled to be attending Shabbat services in the Islamic Republic of Iran. After days of being tailed by menacing intelligence agents and struggling to keep my fear and anxiety in check, I was overcome with relief and joy to find myself in a situation that was even remotely familiar. The irony, of course, was that the worshippers at this particular synagogue were far more observant than I had ever been; I had difficulty simply following along with the service. The very existence of this synagogue and the vibrancy of the place was yet another indicator that things in Iran weren’t always as they seemed.