Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (4 page)

I just got a glimpse of it. Iranians deal with Big Brother watching them on a daily basis. I truly sympathized with their situation. I tried to reflect on this as much as possible. In some ways it made things easier for me. As hard as things got, I could always find some kind of comfort in my departure date, the much awaited moment when things would return to normal. Most Iranians don’t have this luxury. Without an escape, they simply find ways to coexist.

It was my weakest moment. I was alone in one of the most repressive countries in the entire world, and I had just broken down in front of a hostile intelligence agent. There was no sympathy from his end. Up until that point, I had considered myself strong. After all, I had snuck into the Congolese civil war under a pile of bananas, had stood face-to-face with perpetrators of the Rwanda genocide, and had met child soldiers in Africa hopped up on so many drugs that they easily could have viewed their guns as toys, not weapons, and ended my life right then and there. While these experiences were reckless, they did not even compare to the fear and helplessness I felt when I had been stripped of my freedom in Iran. It nearly broke me.

As if things couldn’t have gotten worse, I realized then that I was out of money. Nobody had told me that I wouldn’t be able to access my bank from Iran; I was told that Iran had ATMs and that even if my debit card didn’t work, I would be able to take withdrawals off of a credit card or have money transferred to an Iranian bank. None of this was possible. Iran did have ATMs, but they only accepted Iranian credit cards (and most of them didn’t even work for that). Because of economic sanctions, no American bank could transfer money into Iran. For the same reason, Iranian banks could also only give cash advances on Iranian credit cards.

I owed my guides and the appointed intelligence service money. I owed my hotel money. I had entered Iran with a combination of dollars, euros, and British pounds that amounted to no more than seven hundred dollars. Tehran is not a place to be broke and in debt, especially when I had already been threatened several times with imprisonment for nonexistent crimes.

The unfriendly faces grew less friendly still. My escort and the hotel manager both wanted me to pay them for the privilege of being intimidated and harassed, and I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain.

I tried calling my family, but my phone would cut out every few minutes or random voices would come onto the phone and make it impossible to speak. My family and I had decided that if I got myself in some trouble and was in physical danger, I would ask her if my sister had heard from one of her ex-boyfriends. This was our code.

My financial situation did not place me in physical harm and didn’t warrant my drawing on the code, but the situation was nonetheless immediate. I connected with my mother down in Florida, where they were for Hanukkah. It took five days for me to get the money my parents sent. The transfers were complex and involved banks in London and random Iranian businessmen. Later I learned if you go to the central city of Esfahan and purchase a Persian carpet, you can route a credit card transaction through Dubai and get a cash advance off your credit card. For some reason, this transaction can only be made when buying carpets and only when they are purchased in Esfahan.

O
n the third day,
Shapour once again greeted me in the lobby of my hotel and informed me that we were taking yet another trip to see Mr. Sorush. Mr. Sorush again threatened me and informed me that he had spoken to the ministry about me. He then advised me to spend the rest of the day at the hotel.

Would I be returning to the hotel to await arrest? If I were jailed in Iran, I could be held indefinitely, tortured, or worse. But that wasn’t what scared me the most. If I were arrested in Tehran, there’d be no American Embassy to call and no diplomatic relationship to cite. I was totally alone.

Shapour put me in a taxi and told me not to leave my hotel. What a disaster this trip had been: I had run out of money, my research—which would rely on my ability to interview as many as fifty Iranian government officials—had failed within the first week of my trip, and now it appeared that I was about to be arrested for unauthorized journalism. After another emotional outburst, I was put in a taxi and told to return to my hotel. I would no longer be able to leave for any reason.

T
he taxi ride
back to my hotel was the turning point of my time in Iran.

In the backseat, certain that I was being delivered to a fate whose terror I could hardly begin to imagine, I listened to the driver trying to make small talk. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to chat, and I certainly wasn’t in the mood for the elaborate game of charades that would break our language barrier. This young man, probably no older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, was persistent and very interested in talking to me.

As we drove, I looked out my window and saw a gigantic picture of Ayatollah Khomeini on the side of one of the buildings. Willing to humor the driver’s talkativeness, if not necessarily indulge his desire for conversation, I pointed to it and said simply, “Khomeini.”

“Khomeini is very bad,” he said.

“Well, what do you think about Rafsanjani?”

“He is very, very bad.”

“Jannati?” I asked. Ayatollah Jannati is the cleric who notoriously declares “Down with USA, God willing,” during his Friday prayer sermons.

“Very, very, very bad.”

“What about President Khatami?”

“Medium bad.”

It went on like this as I ticked through at least ten members of the Iranian leadership. Finally, I asked him what he thought of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, the country’s spiritual leader and the most powerful man in theocratic Iran.

He turned around to look at me. “He is like animal,” he said.

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. Had the harsh censorship and threats of the regime bypassed this candid, honest young man?

Out of curiosity, I asked him about the American leadership. I wasn’t expecting anything positive

“What do you think of Condoleezza Rice?”

He smiled, “She helps us, very good.”

“What do you think of George Bush?” I asked.

He looked at me with an air of pride and said, “He is like real man.”

His hatred for Khamanei and admiration for George Bush slightly stunned me, but also excited me. I’d only heard the government line since arriving in Iran, but this young taxi driver gave me confidence that there was more to hear. When we arrived back at my hotel, I wanted to embrace the driver.

“How much do I owe you for the taxi?”

“Where are you from?”

It didn’t appear that he had understood my question, but I answered his anyway.

I extended my arm to give him four ten-thousand rial bills (roughly four dollars) but he pushed my hand back ever so gently. I thought this was my second experience with what Iranians call
taroof
, a concept I had first learned of after I graciously accepted the free biscuits from the children in Behesht-e Zahra.
Taroof
involves offering something as a gift to demonstrate courtesy, when in actuality money is expected. There is usually a charade that follows, whereby three or four offers and refusals take place.
Taroof
is sometimes looked at as a cultural characteristic of saying one thing and meaning another. While some will argue this is the essence of this cultural tradition, most Iranians suggest that it is a politeness and a courtesy that they extend to one another.

After six or seven offers it became clear that either I was missing the signals, or this wasn’t
taroof
, the Iranian custom of polite refusal. I finally asked him, “Is this
taroof
?” He assured me that it wasn’t and that he simply loved Americans.

I took another twenty thousand rials out of my wallet and tried to give him more money. He again pushed my hand away. “You are American. I will never charge an American.”

Despite my run-ins with Shapour and Mr. Sorush and the walls they placed before me, the taxi driver made me realize that all the real information was right in front of me. The vast majority of the Iranian population is under the age of thirty and these young people proved not only eager to talk to me, but also to be forthright in their displeasure for the Iranian regime. To this day, the Iranian people are some of the most pro-American people I have met in the entire world. The vast majority of Iranians—especially the youth—have a strong affinity for American culture, products, and entertainment and a substantial portion has at least an element of appreciation for the American government’s unwillingness to pander to the Iranian regime.

I
was not arrested that night,
so I completely changed my objectives. Instead of seeking officials, I would learn about Iran by seeking out my peers throughout the country. The taxi ride without Shapour was evidence that the intelligence services in Iran were so preoccupied with preventing me from meeting with officials that they might not concern themselves with my new interest in the youth.

With a newfound sense of purpose, my confidence returned and with it came the ability to see the threats of Sorush and Shapour for the cheap intimidation tactics that they were.

Like so much else in Iran, my relationship with my guides became a charade: I asked to meet with officials, expressed frustration over the stagnation of my research, and complained almost incessantly about the problems the escorts were causing me. We would typically then have some kind of a disagreement or verbal argument, after which I would return to the hotel, playing the part of the defeated student. Certain that I was sufficiently terrified, my escort would head home.

It was at this point that I would begin my work for the day.

IRAN, 2004

M
aking friends in Iran was surprisingly easy. When the vast majority of the country despises the regime, there is no shortage of opinionated youth. The leadership has deprived Iran’s young population of a stable economy, civil liberties, and full access to an increasingly modernized and globally interdependent world. Students in Iran openly lash out at the regime and often preemptively vent to whoever will listen. I had seen subtle hints of this anger in my first four days in Iran, but it was not until the fifth day that I began to really take note of the anger and resentment among the youth.

That morning, I spoke to two Iranian academics I had become close with in the States. A paranoid e-mail I had sent them led to two phone calls very early in the morning. Hearing their voices and assurances was a relief. One of my contacts gave me the names and phone numbers of several individuals who, he assured me, would be able to help. He had been in touch with an influential official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who, because of a past history together, was willing to call Mr. Sorush and arrange for me to have some autonomy from the escorts.

After Mr. Sorush and Shapour received that phone call from the ministry, I felt that my fortunes had been reversed. Up until that point, I’d only seen what the Iranian government wanted me to see, but now, Shapour asked me where
I
wanted to go for the day. It was a truly liberating moment for me when I told him I wouldn’t be requiring his “assistance.”

“I’m going to the university,” I told him. “I don’t need you to come with me.”

The tables had really turned. It had taken five days for me to break free from Shapour, Sorush, and the rest, and though I knew that covert agents would still be following me around, my newfound independence was significant—psychologically and otherwise.

I turned my eye toward the universities. Historically, universities in Iran have served as notorious venues for student resistance. In 1999, students at the University of Tehran rioted in large numbers after conservative hard-liners closed a respected reformist newspaper. In response, the government—predominantly comprised of conservatives who want a more nonsecular and autocratic society—unleashed two of its militant forces—the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Ansar-e Hezbollah—on the student dormitories. The brutality of this notorious crackdown continues to haunt Iranians each time they consider taking to the streets. During the crackdown, some students disappeared, others were injured, and some were killed. Ever since 1999, the regime in Iran has kept a close eye on the university; the intelligence services have even recruited a network of spies within the student body to report on their classmates.

The gates at the University of Tehran were heavily guarded by armed soldiers and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Revolutionary Guards, intimidating in appearance, wore dark green uniforms and held their guns firmly. Alongside the conservative clerics, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is one of the most representative features of the Islamic Revolution. Trained in the old American embassy, now called the “Den of Spies,” these soldiers are the very embodiment of the regime’s ruthlessness. They are a fearsome sight; to get past them, I used a trick I’d learned as a freshman in college. In those days before I turned twenty-one, I had learned to maximize the effectiveness of my fake ID by pretending to talk on a cell phone while trying to enter a bar or club. After I was denied entry at the main gate of the University of Tehran, I simply walked to another entrance, started an imaginary conversation on my cell phone, and walked right in.

The campus didn’t look much different from an American university, with the notable exception of a Friday-prayer venue, several small mosques, and numerous pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini hanging on the sides of buildings. Students sat in scattered circular formations throughout the grass courtyards of the university. Other students crowded onto the stairs of buildings, perfectly situated for optimal people watching. Tired of sightseeing and eager to speak with students, I turned to enter the first building I saw. It was a three-story cement structure decorated with elaborate columns in front and preceded by a large staircase. On the front face of the building hung imposing portraits of both Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khamanei, and the hero of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini. Above all of this waved the flag of the Islamic Republic.

Inside, students were running wild, dashing in different directions, and forming pockets of loud, chattering social groups in every square inch of the lobby. Others ran to the cafeteria to get a sandwich or muffin before their next class. There were even some who I saw taking a nap on the floor. It reminded me of the period in between classes in an American high school, where students make use of those few minutes of liberation from the classroom.

As I weaved through the crowd of university students, I looked for one who might seem willing to help me. I had never found it difficult to meet people in another country. Having traveled to Africa about a dozen times, I had become accustomed to traveling alone. It didn’t feel strange to approach random people or even go out in the evenings to a club by myself. It didn’t bother me. Traveling extensively on my own has actually created a sense of curiosity about other people that has filtered into my everyday life. Wherever I am—whether it is New York, Oxford, or Kenya—I am always striking up conversations with strangers. Sometimes they think it is weird and suspicious, but to me it feels normal. Iran was no different. In fact, my initial reasons for going to the University of Tehran were selfish. I wanted to meet people I could talk to and some who could help me stay sane while in Iran. I needed people to explain to me the dynamics of what was happening and how to keep myself out of trouble. Given the misery of the first four days, much of which was due to my indiscretion in that first night’s ride from the airport, I clearly had no idea how to fly under the radar screen in a police state.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a female student standing in the middle of the room. She wore a long black chador, void of any individual characteristics; she looked like a silhouette. Her arms and legs were completely covered, as was her head. But when she turned around, I noticed her eyes right away. They were elaborately painted with blue mascara, eyeliner, and as it seemed, any other makeup product that one could possibly fathom using. Her cheeks were red and her lips covered in a noticeable light pink lipstick. Wearing elaborate makeup is just another way for women to reject the harsh dress codes imposed upon them.

Everyone else seemed as if they were in a rush, oblivious to what was going on around them and determined to get to their next class. She stood there looking in my direction and when it became clear that she was not going to approach me, I walked over to her. “Excuse me, do you know where Dr. Rezai’s office is?” I felt slightly awkward asking this question because Dr. Rezai was a name I had created in a shameless effort to make friends.

She looked at me puzzled. “I am not sure of Dr. Rezai, are you sure he teaches here at the law school?”

I told her, “Oh, maybe I have the name wrong. You see, I have just arrived from the United States and I am hoping to talk to somebody about Iran and—”

She didn’t let me finish; instead, she took me by the arm and guided me out to the courtyard. As I’d learn, Iranian women are not shy and are often extremely confident. Over a year later, she would tell me in an online instant-messaging conversation that she thinks I came up to her because she is more beautiful than the other girls. I couldn’t deny this.

She smiled at me and said, “Wait right here. I have to meet with my law professor and then I shall answer all of your questions. You don’t worry.” Almost immediately after she returned, she extended her hand and introduced herself.

“I am Gita. What is your name?” She spoke with such a confidence and there was something incredibly engaging about this.

“I am Jared.”

“Jrrrd?” she said as she tried to pronounce it.

“Ja-red,” I said slowly in response.

“OK, Jrrrd, please don’t go anywhere, I want to see if I can help.”

I found a bench in the middle of the courtyard. Over the next forty-five minutes, I felt like an exotic creature on display in a foreign land. Random groups of students kept approaching me and asking where I was from. They all wanted to know the same thing: What do people in America think of Iran? There we were, citizens of two countries that are sworn enemies, all experiencing the same curiosity and eagerness to speak to one another. After about fifteen students had gathered around, one of the female students spoke up.

“We watched what happened on September eleventh. We saw it on the television.” I hadn’t even noticed her, but I began to notice a pattern. The female Iranians love to talk and take charge; hardly the image I had of women in a country ruled by Islamic law. She was kneeling behind the bench I was sitting on. She was a petite girl wrapped in her black chador as if it were a blanket keeping her warm. Her face was tiny and she had glasses that hung down on her nose. I was not sure what she was insinuating with her comment, so I responded with something benign.

“Yes, that was a tragic day for my country.”

She nodded her head and adjusted her hejab slightly before tenderly offering her condolences. “You know on that day, all of Iran wept for America. We felt like our brothers and our sisters were suffering and we really wept.”

I looked around the circle of students that had gathered around me and saw heads nodding up and down. And this touched me. The previous year there had been an earthquake in the ancient Iranian city of Bam, claiming the lives of more than twenty thousand Iranians. While Americans who watch the news likely registered this as a tragedy, I would imagine that few Americans wept on behalf of their Iranian brothers and sisters and I felt guilty that I had not previously offered my condolences for their losses.

Another female student spoke. She had very distinct features and glamorous eyes. Like so many other women in Iran, she had elaborately painted her eyes with dark mascara and artistically done her nails in dark pink polish. She had a completely different way of carrying herself than the other girl who had spoken. She sat comfortably and spoke with a confident and almost aggressive tone. “What do people think of Iran in America? Who do they think we are?” I thought about her question, as it seemed more rhetorical than anything else, as if she already knew the answer.

“I am not sure what you mean,” I responded.

“Well, do they know we are not terrorists?” she demanded to know. “We are Muslim and we are proud of our religion, but that does not mean we are terrorists. Do people in your country know this?” She inched closer to me from her sitting position. “You must also know that just because we are Muslim and this is an Islamic republic, that does not mean that we like the mullahs or want this as our government. We hate them! They try to ruin our lives.”

I wasn’t sure how to contribute. I attempted to fill the silence. “I think part of the problem is that—”

She interrupted me before I could finish: “When you go back you must tell people that the Iranians have no problems with the Americans. Please tell them what you see here and tell them the truth. Tell them we love America and we really feel when America suffers. Make them know that we are not the same as our government and that we want to have America as friends.” Her pleas rapidly evolved into a tirade on her disgust for the regime. She complained that the economy was growing worse by the day and instead of helping the people, the ruling elite simply pocketed the money from the country’s oil. “They are all the same,” she said, “they steal while we suffer. We are proud people and there is no opportunity for us. Sometimes we question what will be our future. We did not choose this government, but they still tell us how we must live and they give us nothing.”

Gita returned with her sister. She seemed to think it was funny that I was surrounded by students, although I think I noticed a hint of jealousy. I thanked the students who were sitting with me and I turned my attention back to the sisters. Gita laughed and said, “I think you have made some friends.” She laughed again. “You should get used to this. We don’t see very many Americans. Everyone is going to want to tell you things.” I laughed and invited the two sisters for lunch, but told them that because I didn’t know Tehran, they would have to choose the place.

We broke the ice quickly when they saw how truly terrified I was to cross the street. They thought my trepidation was funny, but it was not without good reason. In Iran crossing the street is a challenge in and of itself. The traffic is atrocious, bumper-to-bumper at all moments of the day. Cars drive on whatever part of the road offers space, and it is therefore not uncommon to see vehicles of various shapes and sizes driving on the wrong side of the road. Iran is well-equipped with walkways that stretch over the road, but people seem to prefer throwing themselves in front of traffic to ensuring their safety. There are no emissions standards and as a result, clouds of black smoke hover over the traffic and filter into the street. The pollution is so bad that it occasionally even leads to the closure of schools. Women seem to cover more of their faces when walking near the road; using their hejab to keep smoke out of their mouths.

The sisters sensed my fear and Gita, who laughed as if this was the funniest thing she had ever seen, grabbed my arm and said, “Careful, my baby, come with us.” She would jokingly repeat this every time we crossed the street for the next month. In Iran, it is often considered rude to use somebody’s name, so direct addresses are often qualified with “my baby” or “my dear.”

We arrived at a restaurant that the sisters assured me would be a typical Persian experience. A few paces inside, we descended a flight of stairs and I could smell the aroma of the cuisine. We walked along beautiful and intricately designed Persian carpets and were escorted to a corner table. The smell of saffron and cinnamon competed with a mixed aroma of mint and diced lime. My eyes searched the surrounding tables for the source of the delicious scent that filled the room. The tables were filled with lamb and chicken kebabs, rice dishes with vegetables, white yogurt, and beef dishes. I didn’t know what they were called, so I would have to describe what I wanted to the sisters. Hopefully, I could try a little bit of everything during my stay in Iran.