On a chilly day in the mist-shrouded foothills of the Elborz Mountains, Darius Mehrjui, one of Iran’s most distinguished directors, is shooting a scene for his new film, his next contribution to the dramatic revival of the nation’s long-suppressed movie industry.
Back in Tehran, the capital, theaters are featuring a popular Mehrjui film called “Layla.” It tells the story of a young wife who is unable to bear children. Her husband, urged by his mother, decides to take a second wife–an accepted practice in Islam. In the beginning, the first wife is supportive, but by the end of the film, she revolts.
“Some feminists are angry. They say the film is against women. Others say it is very pro-woman,” said Mehrjui, sipping tea during a break in the shooting. “For me, this split personality is a very natural part of our psyche. I’m not sure I know how to interpret it, but I am comfortable with it.”
Iran is like that. Unlike America, this country is not an open book. There is no Iranian equivalent of Oprah Winfrey, no national couch where every aspect of the national psyche is laid bare for all to probe and poke. Iran does not easily yield itself to outsiders.
When foreign journalists visit, they often write about the contrast between the public and private lives of ordinary Iranians. Public Iran is shrouded in veils. Men and women move in separate orbits that scarcely intersect. There are separate entrances at the airport, separate sections in the cinema, separate schools for boys and girls.
There are no venues for public merriment. No discos, no bars (no alcohol, of course). Even the coffeehouses clearly aiming for Tehran’s up-market yuppie crowd post warnings that women insufficiently veiled are not welcome.
In the privacy of Iranian homes, the veils part.
The contrast is particularly jolting among the wealthy and educated. At a dinner party in affluent north Tehran, the head scarfs and shapeless raincoats are left at the door. The women are wearing Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. In an odd transposition of what Americans would consider the norm, designer finery is purchased by Iranian women to be worn inside the home, never outside.
The host might offer a Johnnie Walker. With foreigners present, the chitchat inevitably drifts to politics. Iranians, it seems, are not sure what to make of themselves.
“In Iran, there has never been any peace between the people and the government,” said one man, a professional working for an international agency. “This society has never come to terms with itself. We are constantly in some kind of transition.”
Last May’s presidential election was a small earthquake. Ninety percent of Iran’s eligible voters turned out, and they voted overwhelmingly for a smiling cleric named Mohammed Khatami who promised to bring change.
Khatami, a former culture minister who was chased from that job by religious conservatives because of his relatively liberal ideas on which books and movies were suitable for the Iranian public, was a long shot when the campaign started.
He ended up trouncing the favorite, the speaker of the parliament who was the hand-picked candidate of the religious establishment.
There was a temptation in the West to read this as a repudiation of the 1978 revolution–a proposition few Iranians would accept.
“It’s actually an affirmation of the revolution,” Mehrjui said. “Twenty million people voted for a cleric to be their president. They completely accept the idea of an Islamic republic, of a government by clergy, but at the same time, they are asking for more freedoms.”
Mostly, they seem to be asking the government for a little more leeway in the conduct of their private lives.
The komitehs, the self-appointed guardians of public morality who crash private parties when they suspect guests might be enjoying forbidden Western music, are deeply resented. So too are government restrictions on access to satellite TV and the Internet– those twin purveyors of un-Islamic notions.
In general, Iranians accept the conservative religion-based nature of their society. They see it as necessary to protect their culture and values against the onslaught of the West’s, particularly America’s–a culture that repels and attracts and endlessly fascinates Iranians.
“I would like to visit Los Angeles,” admitted Javad Baraty, 32, a provincial school teacher in Isfahan. “But I tell my students, `Don’t watch TV. All of these satellites and videos–this is a cultural invasion. Protect your own culture. We have a rich culture. We have no need to adopt a foreign culture.’ “
The chador is another manifestation of religious armor. The head-to-toe covering for women stands in Western minds as a metaphor for everything that is dark and oppressive about Iran, but it is seen by most Iranian women as perfectly normal.
Those women who are more Westernized and would happily do without raincoats and scarfs say they see the inconvenience as relatively minor.
What really matters to them are issues related to the personal status of women: divorce and child-custody laws heavily skewed in favor of men, legal and social strictures that make it almost impossible for women to escape from abusive family situations.
Massoumeh Ebtekar, the highest-ranking woman in the Iranian government, opens her interviews with an invocation of the Almighty: “In the name of God, the merciful,” she begins.
The 37-year-old professor of immunology was named by Khatami to head Iran’s Environmental Ministry, but her appointment to a highly visible Cabinet post is clearly intended to send a message above and beyond concern for the natural environment.
“Many problems stem from oppression in the family,” Ebtekar said. She blames this on deeply ingrained cultural attitudes that she says have nothing to do with Islam.
“Imam Khomeini didn’t want to put women back in the home. On the contrary,” she contended, “he wanted women to have a determining role in the affairs of the country.”
According to Ebtekar, the election of Khatami, who was strongly supported by women’s votes, is a demand “for more serious participation by the people in civil society.”
In a smoky Tehran coffee shop frequented by actors, writers and others involved in Iran’s quirky but vibrant film industry, the mood these days is upbeat. There is an eager anticipation of the changed political climate and what it might mean for artistic expression in a country where, for the last few years, censors have rejected three of every four screenplays.
But even here, the limits are understood.
“Before the revolution, we didn’t have an intellectual cinema. What we had was really trashy,” said Fatemeh Motamedaria, one of Iran’s most popular actresses.
“A female could have a role if she had a nice body. Her identity was to be in bed with a man,” she explained.
“Now, I think, the Iranian cinema is something really very special. The limitations make us better artists,” she said as she readjusted the head scarf that seemed to slip every 45 seconds. She is in her 30s and wears no makeup.
“Maybe to the eyes of a foreigner this seems strange, but this is how we have chosen to live,” she said. “I have agreed to live in this country. I accept the rules. I do not consider these rules to be obstacles or burdens.”
Yet, like so many others, she hopes that the new regime of Khatami will be a little easier to live with.
Khatami is a hojatoleslam, a notch below the clerical rank of ayatollah. Nonetheless, he wears the black turban that signifies direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad. His pedigree suggests that he will not stray too far from the basic religious underpinnings of the Iranian state, but at the same time, it may give him the protective cover needed to introduce the promised reforms.
Since taking office in August, Khatami’s government has moved decisively on the international front, patching up relations with most of its Persian Gulf neighbors, establishing itself as a player in the Central Asia oil rush and, to the chagrin of the United States, signing a $2 billion deal with a French-led consortium to develop gas and oil fields in southern Iran.
Maneuvering on the domestic front will be trickier. As president, Khatami is answerable to Iran’s spiritual leader and supreme guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In addition, Khatami’s predecessor, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has made clear that he will retain great influence as head of a newly expanded Expediency Council, a kind of shadow government.
“Khatami has a huge power base. Seventy percent of the electorate voted for him–and expect change,” said a Western diplomat in Tehran. “The problem is that Khatami is basically a cog in a system where power is widely dispersed. As president, he’s not a negligible quantity, but so far, he hasn’t found much leeway in introducing his policies.”
Militant conservatives recently orchestrated disturbances at a pro-Khatami religious seminary in the holy city of Qom–a signal of their determination to thwart his plans for liberal reforms.
The militants ransacked the seminary after its director, one of the country’s leading ayatollahs, suggested that on questions of everyday governance, the supreme guide should defer to the president elected by the people.
Back in Abali, in foothills of the Elborz Mountains, Mehrjui seems a million miles away from the political tumult of Tehran as he explains his coming film.
The plot features a famous author suffering from writer’s block. The author returns to his childhood home to seek inspiration and, instead, finds that the gardener wants to put a pear tree on trial.
The tree’s crime? It refuses to bear fruit.
True story, says Mehrjui. Gardeners sometimes put unproductive trees on trial in Iran.
