Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran (26 page)

I
n planning a traditional wedding, Iranian women face the same daunting rituals as brides in the West: the nearly impossible search for the perfect long, white dress; the pushy caterers who charge per head, per table, and per canapé; and the pressure from event professionals to include skywriting, images projected on the surface of the pool, and anything else that will produce a reception unrivaled in spectacle and expense. In Iranian tradition, however, the bride undertakes this harrowing journey in the company of her mother-in-law. The bride’s family covers the
jaheziyeh,
which is not unlike a dowry and involves outfitting an entire apartment, including flatware, light fixtures, appliances, and curtains. The cost of the wedding, including a set of jewelry for the bride, falls to the groom’s parents.

These arrangements only aggravate everyone’s anxieties about the impending union. Generally, a bride-to-be is already uneasy in her mother-in-law’s company. Having to plan a wedding with her—a process that requires everyone to be frank in matters of taste and expense—only intensifies this anxiety. The groom’s family, for its part, must judge whether the
jaheziyeh
being assembled is commensurate with its own expenditures. The whole dynamic is intentionally fraught, an early test to ensure that the two families can accept each other’s class standing and social position. Over and over again, the
question is asked: Are they good enough for
us?
Or, are they spending as much as we are?

The morning when Arash’s mother and I headed down to the wedding district on Berlin Street, I faced a classic bout of Iranian daughter-in-law nerves. I had always wanted a traditional Iranian wedding, and was excited to begin making preparations. I was relieved that my pregnancy still did not show, but with the end of my first trimester I had begun suffering migraines. I knew three hours in congested central Tehran would trigger one. I privately wished we could delegate such errands to a wedding coordinator, but I worried that would come across as the bourgeois demand of an over-westernized Iranian, so instead I tucked ibuprofen in my purse and went along gamely.

Among Iranian mothers-in-law, Eshrat khanoum was a rarity. She never nagged us with requests to visit extended family, and tended to us devotedly without expecting anything in return. She looked especially beautiful that day, impeccably dressed in a black poncho-style manteau that suited her fair complexion and petite figure. As we shopped, she posed every last wedding detail as a question, so that I might express my true taste without needing to defer to hers. Our task that day on Berlin Street involved buying all the various accessories required for the
sofreh-ye aghd,
the traditional Iranian wedding array. During the ceremony, the bride and groom sit on a bench before an elaborate array of items laid out on white satin or chiffon. The components are meant to augur good fortune for the couple’s marriage—walnuts for fertility, bread for prosperity,
esfand
(rue seeds) to ward away the evil eye, and candles and a mirror to represent the light and energy of the sun. The array has its roots in Zoroastrian tradition, and it accommodates Islam only in that it is situated facing the direction of Mecca.

Each of the
sofrek’s
numerous accoutrements must be decorated and served in its own unique vessel, and we ducked in and out of the stores buying yards of lacy ribbon, miniature blossoms, and sugar cones. As we shopped, I noticed the defensively folded arms and pursed lips of the other bride-to-be/mother-in-law pairs. One duo seemed especially at odds, exchanging snarky comments about each other’s taste in ribbons. The modern notion of the wedding day—as a
chance for a young woman to express her individual taste before friends and family—conflicted with the behavior expected from a proper daughter-in-law in Iran. The mother-in-law often expected deference to her own taste and sensibilities—submission to her authority, really—especially since she was paying. The daughter-in-law could certainly express a hatred for gilt or insist on the expensive imported tulle, but in doing so she risked being whispered about as pushy or tasteless for the next several years. Everywhere we shopped, male shopkeepers tried to lighten the women’s tension with flattery and jovial bargaining.

Berlin Street abuts Lalezar Avenue, which before the revolution was synonymous with pleasure, teeming with cinemas and cabarets. Notably, it was in a Lalezar Avenue café that the legendary singer Mahvash captivated audiences with her seductive glances. We turned south onto the street, its many shops now selling light fixtures that reflected nothing of the boulevard’s former glory.

Back when you could drink cocktails in the cabarets of Lalezar, Iranian weddings were intimate events held at home in the presence of about fifty guests. These days many weddings were elaborate productions, opportunities for families to display their financial status and exercise their class aspirations. This behavior—in Farsi,
cheshm ham chesmi
—is condemned by Iranians from Los Angeles to Tehran, even as they commission colossal ice palaces, lay on buffets with sushi chefs and authentic stone ovens, and send out invitations to five-hundred-person engagement parties. Although the Shah’s Iran is remembered for decadent, wealthy Iranians flaunting their cash, the consumption habits of that era were Amish by comparison with the widespread materialism of Iran today. Forty years before, Eshrat khanoum had sewn her own wedding dress, and my mother had cooked dinner for her guests.

A few days before our shopping trip, Maria, the Armenian woman who waxed my legs, asked how many guests I was inviting. “Four hundred? Five? Since you didn’t have an engagement party, I doubt the parents will let you dip below four hundred.” Maria had married off her twenty-seven-year-old son the previous year, and recounted the details with peacockish enthusiasm. When we first met in 1999,
she was waxing clients on her dining room table and sharing the apartment’s single bedroom with her husband and two children. Since then they had managed to move to a two-bedroom flat; with the second bedroom as work space she could keep the wax and hair out of the eating area, but everyone still occupied one room. Her income, combined with her taxi driver husband’s, could scarcely have been more than 350,000 tomans (around $300) a month. But when it came time for their son to marry, they planned his wedding with the liberality of a family several shades more affluent.

“Take these,” she said, stuffing into my purse some DVDs bearing a picture of the slow-dancing couple on the cover. Her daughter-in-law’s dress, inspired by a frothy, hooped affair in a French bridal magazine, had cost $400, Maria told me, her makeup at least half that. “Everyone talked about the wedding for months,” Maria said, the girlish delight softening the lines around her eyes. “They would call me and ask, ‘Maria, where did the bride get her dress? Give me the name of the tailor,’ and I would just say, ‘She had it designed out of a magazine.’”

It was entirely normal for the average Iranian bride to spend at least $300 on a dress, while upper-middle-class women frequented seamstresses who charged $1,200 for a basic sheath, each trim of lace, line of sequins, or other embellishment added à la carte, at considerable charge (bear in mind the average monthly salary in Tehran ranges from $300 to $450). Each night, as I regaled Arash with tales of the predatory Iranian bridal industry, I leafed through the bridal magazines spread out across the kitchen table. I carefully marked the pages with elements I wished to re-create: a chocolate mint fondant cake trimmed with satin ribbon, a patterned bouquet dense with spring foliage, and a tousled chignon threaded with orange blossoms. Before moving back to Iran, I had never aspired to such bridal fripperies. Apart from the slinky dress I could now not wear, I had never imagined a particular sort of cake or veil. But people’s excitement about such details was infectious, and I too found myself pondering whether the cake knife required its own corsage.

Having fought our way home through traffic, we typically ended our days exhausted on the couch, too tired to contemplate cooking.
Often we phoned upstairs to see if Eshrat khanoum could send down some of whatever she had on her stove. This was a habit of Iranian couples who lived in the same buildings as their families, one that had at first struck me as another abrogation of adult independence but now just seemed convenient. We found no one at home that evening, and decided to walk instead to a tiny deli in Qeytarieh famous for its old-style sandwiches with parsley and onion chutney. Most people drove to the deli, which had no seating, and ate in their parked cars, permanently jamming traffic on the street. Inside the cramped shop, the staff and handful of customers all craned their heads to watch a tiny television screen hung above the soda refrigerator.

The broadcaster on the nine o’clock news was reading aloud the text of an eighteen-page letter Ahmadinejad had recently sent to George W. Bush. It was the first letter dispatched by an Iranian head of state to an American president in nearly three decades. Undermining its own historic significance, the letter rambled on in a curious manner about American hypocrisy. More a lecture than a genuine attempt to engage, it seemed designed to enhance Ahmadinejad’s popularity in the Arab and Islamic world, and indeed in any part of the world where people had grievances about America and its policies. The newscaster intoned the letter with dramatic flourishes: “‘All prophets speak of peace and tranquillity—based on mono theism, justice, and respect for human dignity. Do you not think that if all of us abide by these principles, we can overcome the world’s problems? Will you not accept this invitation?’”

Everyone in the sandwich shop shook their head in disbelief, from the customers to the cook poking a skewer into the roasting sausages to the elderly man taking orders, the deli’s owner. “Who does he think he is?” muttered the cook.

Iranians, by and large, disliked George W Bush, for all the same reasons as much of the rest of the world did: his administration’s failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, its arrogant manner of addressing the world, and its inflexible rejection of Iran’s right to nuclear power. Iranians disliked Bush as much as they had admired Bill Clinton, who had managed to charm them (he publicly called Iran “one of the most wonderful places in all of human history”) without taking real steps
to undo the two countries’ long enmity. Clinton had presided over an America Iranians had wished to befriend; a poll taken in the middle of his presidency found the majority of the country supported reestablishing ties. That cozy regard had evaporated under President Bush, but even so no one appreciated Ahmadinejad’s partly ridiculous, partly insulting letter. It was embarrassing to Iran, and Iranians, like most people, were averse to humiliating themselves before the world.

W
hereas in the West, weddings are often planned a year in advance, Iranian brides typically coordinate their receptions the month before. Desirable venues and photographers might be booked further ahead, but most of the party details—the flowers, the catering, the cake, the waiters—are decided on the cusp of the event. Each industry has its own reason for this. The florist, for example, said he could inform me about what imported flowers he had available only in the very week of the wedding. The bakery said the cake staff might lose track of the order if it came in too early. This last-minute approach frustrated me greatly, as I was reporting an important story that month and needed to get my bridal tasks out of the way.

For months, I had been discussing with my editors a profile of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader. We agreed it would be a great story, and I expected to take up the assignment after the wedding. But that spring, the United Nations Security Council was considering sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, the contested aspect of its nuclear program. The escalating clash between Iran and the West made the story especially timely. If the president’s powers were indeed constrained by the Islamic Republic’s legal structure, so that Ayatollah Khamenei was the man setting Iran’s course, then there was no better moment to profile his leadership. My editors had asked me to press ahead with my reporting, and I had agreed.

Khamenei was reclusive and notoriously difficult to write about. His office granted virtually no access to foreign journalists, and his closest advisers tended to shun the press as well, so I needed all my creativity and my best sources if I was to assemble original information.
Khamenei hailed from Mashad, my father’s hometown, so I sought out relatives who knew his family. I spent many evenings with a family friend who worked closely with one of the ayatollah’s most senior, trusted advisers. In the end, what I learned confirmed the impression of Khamenei I had developed over the years. He had all the qualities of a political mullah—ascetic, suspicious of the West, and keen to preserve Iran’s austere revolutionary traditions. At the same time, his sensibilities were more modern than most clerics’; he hiked in jeans, read poetry, and played an Iranian string instrument. Those who knew him well considered him conservative to a fault and said he wished neither to reconcile with the West nor to court full-fledged confrontation. This was borne out by Khamenei’s record—he clearly believed in Iran’s right to nuclear power, but also sought to avoid punishments that could cripple Iran and shake the state’s hold on power. I wove this thesis into my story, which slowly took shape in the hours between calls to the florist and visits to the seamstress. I felt a lingering unease over not having contacted Mr. X, to brief him on my reporting for such a significant story. But I could not have disclosed what he would naturally have wanted to know. Most of my sources were relatives, family friends, or officials who had expressly wished to remain anonymous—in short, people whose privacy I was obligated to protect. I had a long-standing policy of not informing Mr. X about such sources, so it seemed prudent to keep quiet about the story altogether. To contact him only to say I could disclose nothing about my reporting seemed unnecessarily provocative. He would likely be upset when he read the article in translation and discovered he had been kept unaware. But I saw no better way of handling the situation, and decided not to worry myself about it in the meantime. If the story was well received by Khamenei’s associates, perhaps their approval would quell his irritation. I hoped for the best, and once I finished the story I turned my full attention to the wedding I had scarcely a month to plan.