present inhabitants are an uncouth upper class. They have done well in recent years out of high oil prices. They inhabit marble-clad apartments in escapist blocks and enjoy the view during the rare instances when smog hasn’t settled in the lap of the Alborz Mountains. Many of them have residence rights and property abroad – the Revolution taught them that it pays to keep your options open.
It’s difficult to ascertain exactly where their money comes from. Knowing the right people has a lot to do with it. They are terrific name-droppers. Having access to commodities beyond the reach of the common man – foreign currency at preferential rates, import licences – is also important. Their skill is acquiring what exists in artificially small quantities and selling it at a price reflective of this scarcity. Their wives take lovers and visit a French-educated psychologist downtown.
Their teenage daughters, matchsticks marinated in Chanel, are yanking up their coats; in recent years, hems have drifted above the knee for the first time since the Revolution. Their favourite activities are having nose jobs – there is one model: retroussé – buying illegally imported Italian shoes and rearranging their headscarves in public, by mistake on purpose exhibiting their hair.
The daughters gather on a Thursday night, outside pizza parlours and coffee shops, discharging arch glances and pollinating scents. They’re treading water while their parents find them a mate. (Likely as not, he will be their first cousin – the families know each other, and the mehriyeh, a kind of pre-nup, will not be prohibitive.)
They are courted, if the word is applicable, by boys who wear a minimalist variant on the goatee, driving Pop’s sedan. A chance meeting in a coffee shop; a telephone number flung into a passing car – such are the first moves. Oral sex is, of necessity, popular; there will be a great to-do if the girl doesn’t bloody her wedding bed. In case of penetration, however, all is not lost. A discreet doctor can usually be found to sew up the offending hymen.
There’s a hollow thrill to be got from bettering the morals police. (They cruise Elahiyeh in their Land Cruisers, looking for miscreants to shake down for a few dollars, smelling breath for alcohol, rummaging through handbags for condoms.) For the rich kids, it’s the best way of getting back at the state, at parents, at the predictability of life.
In a strange way, Elahiyeh’s social vacuum suits us, too. We like the traditional notion of an Iranian community, but are not sure we could inhabit one. Unlike almost everywhere else, you can live in Elahiyeh as you can in a Western city: in peace and anonymity.
Before 1979, Bita’s parents had nice ministry positions; both regarded a deputy ministership or another senior bureaucratic post as their due. Bita and her younger brother – a second brother was born on the eve of the Revolution – led blameless, privileged lives.
There were three choices when it came to educating your children: the French school, the German school and the American school. (You didn’t send your child willingly to an Iranian school; foreign languages and contacts were indispensable aids to getting on in the world.) The trouble with the American school was that its graduates spoke Persian with an American accent. There was no German connection in Bita’s family. Her mother, on the other hand, had studied law in Paris, so Bita was sent to the French school. It was run by nuns. Each year, on the anniversary of her martyrdom, the school commemorated the exemplary life of Joan of Arc.
Bita wore a dark-blue collarless tutu over a white T-shirt. In winter, she wore a roll neck jumper over the T-shirt. If the driver was late collecting her after school, she would wander down nearby Lalehzar, Tehran’s Pigalle, where there were whores and the smell of alcohol, and ornate cinemas with putti on the ceilings. In the summer evenings, when her parents were out, she would go swimming in pools that belonged to the parents of her friends. She and her friends danced to Googoosh, Iran’s answer to Shirley Bassey.
They admired Farah, the Shah’s third wife. It’s arguable that Farah was not as exquisite as wife number two, an Isfahani whom the Shah abandoned for failing to sire. But, she was tall, wore fabulous clothes and had an artistic eye. She was an alumna of the French school and came to visit.
In 1978, there were riots and atrocities. Bita got used to the sounds of firing and being sent home early from school – and the worried look on the face of Ma Soeur Louise. She didn’t realize that she and her friends, and Farah and the Shah and the whores of Lalehzar, were the reason for the hatred.
And so the Shah left. An old man with frightening eyes came. The French school was closed. (Of course it was; it was named after a Roman Catholic saint!) A lot of the girls, including Bita, were removed to an Iranian school where French was taught. Friends started leaving. First, the foreigners and the Jews, and the Bahais – members of a religious sect, originally an offshoot of Islam, that had been favoured by the Shah. One day, little Ziba would come to school. The next, she’d be gone. A few weeks later, her family would surface in Orange County, California.
It seemed to Bita that everything had been turned upside down. The people who were now giving orders looked like the people who had taken orders before. In the past, her mother and father had been on top. Now, they were at the bottom. If they wanted to get something done, they had to flatter coarse men with beards and rosaries. In the past, Bita had associated beards with building workers and dervishes. Now, everyone was growing them; you had to, if you wanted to get on.
A few months into the Revolution, Bita’s new school was closed and she went to another. They didn’t teach French at the new school. Arabic, the language of the Holy Qoran, was compulsory. The girls had to wear headscarves and long coats. They were told to despise the wearing of ribbons in hair, and bare ankles. In the streets, there were Hezbollahis patrolling, checking peoples’ adherence to Islamic rules concerning dress and behaviour. They threw acid in the faces of women who were inappropriately made up.
Bita had lived for colour. It was as important to her as the sun. The Revolution had killed colour, declared it to be evil.
Mr Zarif had delivered his school to the Revolution; in the precincts, he was unchallengeable. He turned his attention to a Qoranic injunction that Muslims promote virtue and prevent vice. It meant implementing Islamic law and practices, eradicating decadent ways of behaving. It meant starting at the bottom of society. He and the gang started hanging around parks and shopping centres. They would approach boys who were chatting to girls and ask, ‘What is your relationship? Is this woman your sister? Why are you talking to her?’ If they got an unsatisfactory answer, they’d hustle the boy away and tear off a few shirt buttons. They’d tell the girl: ‘Bleached jeans are a sign of American cultural corruption. Go home and put on Islamic clothes.’
The ban on booze was hitting the alcoholics. Liquor prices had rocketed. Every morning, a park or a vacant lot yielded up a new body, full of petrol, turpentine, meths – anything they could get their hands on. Mr Zarif felt that society was being cleansed, spewing harmful matter. He was learning Arabic, the language of the Holy Qoran.
Sometimes, he and his lads caught boys and girls flirting in shops, under the cover of deciding on a purchase. Mr Zarif and the gang would smash the windows of shops where such things went on and spoil some of the merchandise. If they saw girls flouncing in a park, they seized their handbags and tipped out the contents. ‘Who do you wear make-up for?’ they demanded. ‘What is that music cassette you’ve bought? Haven’t you heard what the Imam said about Western culture?’ If they came across a young man wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, they said: ‘Your hair is longer than Islam permits. Everyone should groom himself as the Prophet did. Here; let us cut it for you.’
They would deliver serious offenders to the boys at the mosque. The boys would consult one of the mullahs and get a sentence passed. Whippings would be administered, in accordance with Islamic law. The gang’s effectiveness was enhanced by the recruitment of two
