{"id":1600,"date":"2008-04-18T09:22:49","date_gmt":"2008-04-18T16:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=1600"},"modified":"2008-04-18T09:22:49","modified_gmt":"2008-04-18T16:22:49","slug":"notes-from-iran-pt-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/18\/notes-from-iran-pt-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Iran, Pt. III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parts I and II can be found here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, respectively.<\/p>\n

Music: Beethoven – Symphony No. 6
\n12:17 pm Pacific Time
\nMarch 24 2008<\/p>\n

For the last couple of days, we begin our morning with Iranian noon, a sweet, almost buttery cheese, homemade quince jam, Persian tea and Peet’s Coffee. That’s right, Peet’s Coffee in Tehran. My father packed two pounds of French roast as a little comfort element for my mother whilst in unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n

Yesterday morning, after our breakfast ritual, we met our driver — I found out that his name is Morteza, and he’s the son-in-law of someone who used to work for my grandfather. Although my grandfather was out of work by 1953, and my grandmother never worked, it’s clear that our large family is connected to a number of people who are still here in Tehran.<\/p>\n

One of those people is Agha Mahmoud and his wife, whose name I never learned. They, along with their two (or is it three?) daughters, apparently are the caretakers of a house that our family owns in Darakeh. It turns out that Darakeh is not some mystical far-off village, the way that my father made it sound like, but rather a village that sits on the periphery of North Tehran. <\/p>\n

Morteza drove us up from the apartment blocks, past the nearby mosque that’s under construction (how is it that I’m in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and I’ve heard surprisingly few calls to prayer?) and up roads that became increasingly steep and narrow, like in a film set in the Italian countryside. All of a sudden, he stopped the car and we were told to get out and walk. I figured we’d have a bit more of a hike to go, but it turned out that he had dropped us just a few meters from the metal gate of our family property in Darakeh.
\n
\nA man older than my father with grey and black hair and a matching thin beard came down the stone steps to meet us at the gate. He led the way up to a patio that had been clearly prepared for us (and soon to arrive, the rest of our local clan). There was a bowl of fruit (tangerines, oranges, kiwis and cucumbers), and within a few minutes, glasses of tea were brought out for all of us. There were some patio chairs, but also a “poshti” had been set up with carpets and pillows along the large cement step adjacent to the house. My father grabbed a cucumber and happily settled into the poshti, admiring the view of the valley below and houses on the opposite side of the canyon. <\/p>\n

From the patio we could see upwards towards the Alborz Mountains, and their constant snow caps and downwards into the hazy mist of Tehran. My father explained that when he was a child, Darakeh really was a village, and was removed from the rest of Tehran. Today, it feels like a semi-rural extension of the nicer parts of town. Within the hour, more of the family members and various other guests that I didn’t know showed up, including one small girl who didn’t really pay attention to anyone besides her children’s book that was written in English. She lives in London, apparently. <\/p>\n

I was led on a couple of tours of the canyonside above the house, where up a few shorts of steps was a dirty reflecting pool, and a small trail that led past almond and persimmon trees towards the mountain side. Uncle Kamal-joon said that you could easily continue hiking up this trail for hours — it’s among the cheapest ways to get out of the smog-infused downtown. <\/p>\n

Once everyone had arrived, there was a feast set up for us in the sitting room, filled from end-to-end with rice, tadig, qormeh sabzi, ash-e reshteh, torshi, and fresh noon from the local bakery (the only one in town). After stuffing ourselves (our hosts were conspicuously absent from lunch), we migrated back to the patio and hung out, drank more tea and munched on a few sweets and a chocolate cake that Amir had brought from somewhere. <\/p>\n

While my Farsi has been incrementally improving over the last few days, I’m still quite a ways away from following an entire conversation between native speakers. So unless someone bothers to translate, basically I get no more than 20 percent of a conversation, usually just a few words here and there. So much of my time is spend silent, sitting on the sidelines, instead of being my usual gregarious and somehow loud, self. <\/p>\n

My newfound cousin, Maryam (she’s one of Amir’s sisters), has become one of my new favorite relatives. She’s 29, and works as a dietician and nutritionist for a private company here in Tehran. Her English is very good and she says that she’d like to live in Europe someday. She says that she reads blogs and is on the Internet every day. (Speaking of which, I still haven’t been online at all since I got here. Sheesh, when I got to Senegal five years ago, it took me merely a few hours before a I got online.) <\/p>\n

After a long leisurely lunch and the compulsory tea, sweets and cookies and endless chattering, we finally gathered our things and headed home. Instead of waiting for a car with my parents, I opted to walk down the hill with Amir, Azadeh (his wife), Maryam and a few others. The village, which I had only gotten a passing glance at through Morteza’s darting car, now came to life with specific places, like the baker, the mosque (where my grandfather’s funeral service was held), and assorted other small shops. Oddly, there was also a mini “Down with Israel” and “Down with USA” mural painted on one of the walls in English and Persian. <\/p>\n

As we reached the bottom, we lingered about in front of a few fruit stands that sold sour cherries, and pressed fruit rolls (like a Fruit-Roll-Up, but more traditional and natural). We asked around again for a SIM card — between Maryam and Amir, they’ve probably called half of Tehran trying to locate a SIM card for me. Apparently recharge cards are really easy to get, but a new line and a SIM card, not so much.<\/p>\n

We said our goodbyes, and I piled into Maryam’s Patrol — not exactly the car that you would expect a smallish hejab-wearing Iranian woman to be tearing through the streets of Tehran with, but there’s clearly a lot about this place that I don’t understand.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Tajrish is the uber-swanky neighborhood of Tehran, full of multi-story marble apartments for an extended family, that my father says are easily worth more than the most expensive places in Los Angeles. (Probably some of them own pads in both cities.) <\/p>\n

Uncle Madji-joon says that the biggest difference that he’s noticed between the Iran of today and the one that he grew up with is that there’s a much larger disparity between the rich and poor. The people are richer and poorer at the same time. As Karim, my cousin the Carnegie analyst has said that the real price of goods has gone up while real wages have gone down since the revolution. Your average Iranian couldn’t care less about the anti-Western and anti-Semetic rhetoric that gets so much play on CNN — they care about the price of meat, bread and onions. <\/p>\n

While my family doesn’t live in Tajrish, they do live in North Tehran, the world of fancy cars, fast clothes and big, secluded apartment blocks. In other words, I’m fully aware that I’m getting a very skewed view of Iranian life. That said, it’s only fitting that Tajrish also happens to be immediately adjacent to the Sa’ad Abad, for Shah’s “summer palace” — where we visited on Monday. <\/p>\n

Built on the foothills of the Alborz mountains with an ornate gate that serves as the only entrance to the collection of villas-turned-museums, this vast estate was where Reza Shah kept his “Green House” in the early 20th century, and then his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, kept the “White House.” Each are equally ridiculous in their splendor and pretense.<\/p>\n

The whole concept of monarchy is completely foreign to Americans, or at the very least, to me. The idea that someone, either recently or centuries ago decided that they had a divine mandate to rule absolutely over a population through charismatic gunpoint is truly bizarre. Further, the idea that such a monarchy was fully functioning barely three decades ago and was recognized and openly supported by the United States is even more absurd. Having seen a few chateaus (Versailles, for instance), I have this notion that monarchies are a thing of the past, something that exists in history books, and that no one alive remembers. <\/p>\n

But this, these vast dining rooms proclaiming the hosting of such honored guests as President Carter, Anwar Sadat and Charles de Gaulle, decorated with French china and English paintings, feel very much alive. (I wonder if Carter has any desire to return to Iran since his ill-fated trip here on New Year’s Eve of 1978, shortly before the Shah’s regime came suddently crashing down.) It’s almost as if Reza Shah’s grandson is going to come waltzing back in here any minute now, dismiss the throngs of Iranian tourists (I did hear a little bit of clearly American-accented English by a man who seemed to be visiting with his Iranian-American wife), and set up shop on his grandfather’s massive desk, and begin receiving the likes of Hu, Singh, and perhaps even Sarkozy. <\/p>\n

Given the zeal with which the Islamic Republic has established itself, and broken with much of the early 20th century past, I’m surprised that they’ve bothered to preserve these buildings and their contents — including Reza Shah’s pocketwatch, razor, and matches. I guess part of me expected that they would be stripped of their crystal, jewels and other ornatery and converted into government offices or something. <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

After asking high and low for SIM cards, my father called a cab and around 8 pm we headed for Hafez Street. It appears that the main drags in Tehran are named either after important literary figures (Ferdowsi Street, Saadi Street, et cetera), or after Islamic themes (Islamic Republic Street, Khomeini Street, et cetera). Apparently this is the main consumer electronics boulevard, and at 8 pm on a Monday, it was packed. Hafez Streets is loaded on both sides with shops selling all the latest Panasonic and Samsung flat-screens were on display, along with digital cameras, video cameras, and cell phones. <\/p>\n

My first exposure to a cell phone that could type in a different alphabet was my friend Fred, who showed me his Nokia that he bought in Syria — so he could send texts to his relatives across the world in Arabic. It makes perfect sense that there are phones that have software in all the major languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and even more minor ones like Persian, and I’m guessing Armahic and Thai as well. However, these multi-alphabet phones don’t seem to exist in the US, not even in the Korean neighborhood in Oakland, or the Russian neighborhood in Brighton Beach. (That being said, I don’t exactly hang out in those neighborhoods, nor have I asked around, but I’ve never seen one amongst my friends who are on the periphery of those cultural and linguistic communities.) <\/p>\n

The cabbie dropped us off in front of one electronics store, and we set out asking around for SIM cards. We were quickly directed to a small shopping center across the street, where after more directions, we came upon a lower-level shop that sold SIM cards for $15, which included $5 worth of credit. We were set. <\/p>\n

As we walked, leaving the shop, I explained to my father about how many phones that I’ve seen here, not surprisingly, can send text messages in Persian. Further, if he wanted to he, could get a phone for himself and another for my grandmother and that way they could send texts back and forth for a fraction of the cost of calling. (Zarijoun doesn’t use the Internet.) After popping into a few stores, we checked out a few models, including the Nokia 1200, which sold for $45 and seemed to be the simplest English\/Persian phone that we could find. Other models, including a tri-band Sony Ericsson model, which included a camera and a few other features, sold for about $90. <\/p>\n

My father normally isn’t the gadget-obsessed type at all. Sure, he carries a BlackBerry (a CDMA Verizon model, which is totally useless here) — but that’s only because it’s supplied by his law firm, and isn’t something that he would choose to get on his own. But for some reason, he seemed to revel in the fact that he could get a Persian-language cellphone. We went from shop to shop, and he chatted with the young men that ran them, and seemed genuinely fascinated by this new technology. <\/p>\n

On the way out of the electronics district to find a cab to take us home, my father pointed out Caf\u00e9 Naderi, a favorite hangout of my grandfather’s. Clearly, it had been long shuttered for the evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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