City of Lies (29 page)

It was Black Friday 1978 when my mother, brother and I landed in Mehrabad airport in Tehran to join my father for a new life. Martial law had been announced and the military had opened fire on an anti-Shah protest, killing and injuring dozens of demonstrators. It was the first time the authorities had reacted to a protest with such force. It was the start of the revolution; it was the beginning of the end of Iran as we knew it. It was an inauspicious day to be returning to the country of my birth.

My memories of this time are vivid: the dancing and the street parties when the Shah finally left; the jubilant mood that filled the city; men and even children carrying guns stolen from the national armoury, now adorned with flowers poking from the barrels. Yet the streets felt safe, and the majority of Tehranis were united in a way they never had been before. It was a time of hope.

I was only a child, but I soon sensed a change in the atmosphere: the streets became quiet, adults started whispering. Standing on our balcony, we would watch the night sky streaked red by tracer rounds. I remember evenings when we sat in silence and darkness in our flat as armed groups roamed outside our front door, firing their guns.

Nine months later we were on a plane back to London. My father stayed behind for another four months, awaiting the acceptance of his resignation from the navy. He had not wanted to flee his country and sever ties with the land he loved.

My mother and father had met ten years earlier at a party in Earls Court. He was being trained by the British Navy at the time. The minute he saw her, he fell in love. Like me, my mother was born in Tehran but grew up in London. Her father moved his family there in 1960 in self-imposed exile. My grandfather was a military man and during Mossadegh’s term as Prime Minister, one of his jobs was to be head of army radio. He had been ordered by the Ministry of War to broadcast propaganda about Mohammad Reza Shah, who was in exile in Italy. My grand-father refused; he believed that the army was there to serve the people and should not interfere in politics. Mohammad Reza Shah soon returned when Mossadegh was ousted in a CIA- and British-backed coup. Word reached the Shah of my grandfather’s defiance and he was repeatedly passed over for promotion. A brilliant polymath renowned for his honesty, he worked his way up the ranks through his abilities rather than bribery, connections and loyalty to the regime, as was so often the way. When he was finally made a general, it was too late for him. He was tired of the sycophants and the corruption – it was said that no one dared to lie to the former king, Reza Shah, and no one dared to tell the truth to his son and successor, Mohammad Reza Shah. He was also keen to give his children a British education. He left Iran and vowed never to return.

My grandfather’s cousin, Hassan Ali Mansour, tried many times to persuade him to come back, but he would not be swayed. Mansour was appointed Prime Minister in 1964 and during the White Revolution he implemented the controversial and much-loathed ‘capitulation’ law. The law gave US citizens accused of crimes immunity from prosecution in Iran. Mansour told my grandfather that he himself had been forced to capitulate to the US’s demands; he had accepted the US’s terms in return for a loan of 200 million US dollars, money which the country desperately needed. But in the eyes of most Iranians, he had sold his country and the interests of his people to interfering imperialist powers. The capitulation law turned out to be a seminal moment in the country’s modern history. It was condemned by a little-known cleric called Ayatollah Khomeini, who also denounced the Shah and the United States. Khomeini was promptly sent into exile where he used the capitulation law as one of the rallying cries against the Shah. And so the rumblings of a revolution began. Just over two months after Khomeini was exiled, Mansour was assassinated. His killer was a seventeen-year-old who worked with two accomplices, members of the fundamentalist Fadayeen-e Islam group. All three were executed.

Twenty-six years after leaving Tehran, I went back to live there. Although I knew little of my family history, I had an overwhelming need to reconnect with my roots. It also seemed to be the perfect place to launch my career as a journalist.

It was the summer of 2004, when I was the Tehran corres-pondent for
The Times
, that the idea of this book first came about. My press card had been revoked by Ershad, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. This would occasionally happen to journalists living in Tehran. You would never be told what you had done to piss
them
off, but this time a particularly friendly official told me straight. ‘Miss Navai, you covered a notorious human rights case and you wrote about people laughing at mullahs. You know they don’t like attention on human rights. And as for jokes about mullahs…’ At this point the official started to laugh. He told me to sit tight and give it a few months, while
they
‘taught me a lesson’. At least I would have some respite from the periodic secret interrogation sessions with intelligence officers that I had come to dread, and which the Ministry claimed were not carried out by their people.

I knew immediately what I would do. I had written a feature about a school run by a charity for street kids in Shoosh, south Tehran. I was so moved by the children’s stories I wanted to help in some way.

I was asked to teach English in a school in the back alleys of Nasser Khosrow Street in the heart of downtown Tehran. The pupils here were paperless Afghans, gypsies and the illegitimate children of prostitutes; none of them had the right to an education. I loved my group of Afghan children, the most hard-working kids I have ever met. They fitted school and homework around paid work, toiling on building sites, in factories and shops. One of their favourite sessions was when I took my friend Angus to school; I had asked them to prepare a list of questions to ask the
Ingilisi
. Predictably, they were all about his romantic life. Angus happily answered. He was a hit.

Around the same time, I met a prostitute at a methadone clinic off Shoosh Street. Her once beautiful face had been pockmarked and clawed at by drugs and disease, but her intense green eyes still served to pull in the punters. We started meeting once a week for a tea. As I was an outsider yet still a Tehrani she could talk freely to me without feeling judged; our conversations were never guarded or censored. She took me around her stomping ground, among the pimps and the dealers, the madams and the working girls, through the crumbling alleys and needle-strewn parks where she hung out. Sometimes she would be too high to speak much; she had a serious heroin addiction and had just found out she was HIV-positive.

I was inhabiting two very different worlds. I would return home to north Tehran, telling my friends – born and bred Tehranis – of life in the south of the city, only a few miles away. They listened in wonder, as though I was talking about a different country. And yet we were all connected by one single long road – Vali Asr.

The more time I spent with people like the characters in these pages, the more I realized we were connected by so much more than that one street. We faced the same frustrations and limitations of life in the Islamic Republic: irrespective of class, wealth or profession, we were all required to hide aspects of our true selves.

When Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, he appointed a new minister to Ershad. His name was Mohammad-Hossein Saffar Harandi – his uncle was one of the boys who had killed my grandfather’s cousin, Hassan Ali Mansour.

I never stopped going to south Tehran, even when my press card was reinstated. Over the years, more people shared their secrets with me and I discovered more dark corners of Tehran. The stories I heard painted a very different picture from the one I saw reflected in the news, with all its twisted political intrigues. I hope they make for a more honest, intimate and true portrait of the city that I love. This city of lies.

aragh sagee
Home-brewed vodka, usually made of raisins. The name is a pun –
aragh
means vodka as well as sweat,
sag
is dog, so it is ‘dog’s sweat vodka’

Ashura
Anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hossein

ayatollah
Means ‘the sign of god’ and is the highest rank given to Shia clerics. To become an ayatollah, a cleric usually has to have gained a following and be considered an expert in religious, ethical, philosophical and legal matters by his peers. Ayatollahs do not exist in Sunni Islam. The next rank down is ‘hojjatoleslam’

azan
Call to prayer

bah-bah
Yum-yum

Basij
Paramilitary volunteer group

basiji
A member of the Basij

chador
Literally means ‘tent’. An open black cloak that covers the head and the entire body. Historians believe the chador was introduced not long before the eighteenth century. Reza Shah Pahlavi banned the chador and all
hejab
in 1936, in an effort to modernize Iran. The police would forcibly remove veils worn in the streets. This policy outraged clerics and many ordinary Iranians who felt that being in public without the chador or
hejab
was tantamount to being naked. The ban lasted for four years until Reza Shah’s son, Mohammad Reza Shah, came to power and women were once again allowed to cover up. Shortly after the revolution in 1979, the
hejab
was made compulsory

chadori
A woman who wears a chador. Also used as a value judgement, to suggest someone religious and/or working-class

chaharshanbeh souri
A fire festival celebrated on the last Tuesday night of the year; the name translates as the eve of red Wednesday. Bonfires are lit in the hope that fire and light will bring health and happiness

chapi
Leftist

dampaee
Slippers, which are usually plastic ‘slides’

erfan classes
Mysticism classes

esfand
Seeds of a weed that are burned to ward off the evil eye

estekhareh
Islamic divination

ettela’at
Intelligence, refers to the feared Ministry of Intelligence

fatwa
A religious edict issued by clerics

Haji
The name given to someone who has completed the Haj.Can also be used as a term of respect

hejab
A headscarf, or any garment used to cover the head and body in order to preserve modesty

Hezbollah
Party of God, a movement that was formed during the revolution to help Khomeini and his forces. The term
Hezbollahi
refers to those seen as zealous or fundamentalist; a
Hezbollahi
is an ardent defender of the regime and can be willing to resort to violence to defend the Islamic state

hosseinieh
A congregation hall used for gatherings and religious ceremonies

IRIB
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting

javanmardi
A code of conduct that has chivalry, magnanimity and altruism at its core

jendeh
Whore

joon/jan
Dear, also used as a polite formality at the end of a person’s first name

manteau
An overcoat that must be worn over clothes to hide the curves and shape of a woman’s body

MEK
Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (some other aliases: the MKO and the People’s Mojahedin of Iran). The largest Iranian opposition group, committed to overthrowing the Islamic Republic. It was formed in 1963 by leftist students and has Marxist/Islamist roots. The MEK played an integral role in the Islamic Revolution, but was brutally repressed by Ayatollah Khomeini. Its headquarters are in Paris, under the banner of the National Council of Resistance in Iran

Muharram
Month of mourning for Imam Hossein and the first month of the Islamic calendar

nazr
A Shia tradition, a
nazr
prayer is a wish to God in return for helping the poor and needy. Prayers are usually made to God through one of the imams

Qajar
The ruling dynasty of Iran from 1796 to 1925

regimey
A supporter or member of the Islamic regime

roo-farshee
Translates as ‘on the carpet’, meaning house shoes

sazman
Organization. Also refers to the MEK