Spenta
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829
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 Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 8:15 pm Post subject: "I Would Like to See the Shah Come Back" |
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I guess Jim Muir is back in Iran again:
| Quote: | But in the bus down, a man sitting with his wife volunteers: "I like the Shah. His policies for the world were very good. All the world loved Iran. With these people, everybody hates Iran. Their policies are wrong. I'd like to see him come back. So would many others."
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Bigger Picture
October 31, 2004
Times
Jim Muir
Uneasy street
If you want to understand modern life in Iran, take a trip up Tehran's most famous avenue. This is a place where rich meets poor, mosques mingle with motorbike shops, and devout Muslims walk among heroin addicts and prostitutes. Seamus Murphy's photographs reveal a thoroughfare of extremes.
A mid the early-morning people waiting for shared taxis on the corner at the bottom of Vali Asr avenue, Kianoush cuts an unlikely figure. His jet-black hair is gelled. Spiky sideburns point to a sharply trimmed goatee. He has gold earrings, studded black leather wristbands, and a skintight black T-shirt and jeans. He used to box, so he has pecs.
"I was at a party last night, and I'm just making my way back to work at my electronics shop," says Kianoush. "Dressing like this isn't a political statement, it's just me. I've been hassled by the basij (the Islamic militia) a few times, but never arrested." He doesn't seem to belong here at the lower end of Vali Asr, down by the railway station that kicks the avenue off and sends it snaking northwards all the way up through the city to the foothills of the soaring Alborz mountains. Vali Asr, still known to many people as Pahlavi, the name it bore before the 1979 Islamic revolution, has for 80 years been Tehran's backbone, the point of reference for the rest of the city. The Iranians say that it is the longest city street in the world, at 25 kilometres.
Much of Iran's recent history has been shaped or reflected at some point along its length.
Most of the people here at the southern end look poor. The younger men wear synthetic suits and carry cheap briefcases; older men are unshaven and wear traditional kolah namadi skullcaps. Women tend to favour the chador, the black shroud made famous by the 1979 Islamic revolution, but worn for centuries before. A huddle of poky teashops serves the day labourers who congregate here in search of work, and travellers from the station. It's a reminder that Iran is not just Tehran. There are accents from all over the country, and teasing remarks are made: people from Rasht in the north are cuckolds; from Tabriz they are stupid; from Esfahan, mean.
A very thin, grimy man with staring eyes lurches up, hand outstretched. He is obviously a junkie, desperate, and probably close to the end. In the side streets and small squares at this end of Vali Asr, such sights are common. Official figures say around 30 junkies are found dead on the streets of Tehran every day. Iran admits to around 1.2m addicts, most of them on opium and heroin from neighbouring Afghanistan. "You can get heroin here more easily than cigarettes," says Hassan, a down-at-heel tailor, in a nearby park. "It's about 30p for a day's hit. If they can see you're not an addict, they practically give you it for free, to get you hooked. The dealers come out in the corner of the park here after dark."
Down here, the other opiate of the masses is religion. Every Friday, people mourn Shi'ite martyrs of 13 centuries ago, especially the Imam Ali and his son Hussein, and give out free food to the poor. On the anniversaries of the martyrs' deaths, young men gather and work themselves into a frenzy, rhythmically thumping their chests and lashing their backs with metal flails.
As you move slowly north up the plane-tree-lined avenue with joubs (water channels) gushing on both sides, you are going both uphill and up-market. By Moniriyeh Square, cheap motorbike shops give way to a large number of sports outlets. Hassan Moqaddam has been here since before the revolution. "In the last 10 years, aerobics has become big, exercise bikes, body-building and rollerblading are in," he says. There are also the traditional mil zourkhaneh, heavy Indian clubs with which musclemen do exercises that would wrench most people's arms from their sockets. Each weighs up to 20 kilograms - your baggage allowance on an economy flight.
Outside on the pavement, a man is buying ration coupons for sugar, rice and oil from people unwilling to queue for hours. In a few places, people just sit on the pavement and beg. Times are hard for many, though the enterprising and those close to the regime can get rich. Vali Asr has them all. Reza Shah Pahlavi's Marble Palace was just north of here. He built Vali Asr in the 1930s to link it to his summer palaces at Saadabad, near Tajrish in the foothills to the north. The Marble Palace is now the Islamic Republic's presidential offices. The Shah's nearby Senate building is its parliament, scene of many confrontations recently between Islamic reformists and hardliners. History has been reflected in the avenue's changing name. First it was Pahlavi, in recognition of the Reza Shah's dynastic ambitions. It remained that until his son Mohammad Reza was ousted by the 1979 revolution. Briefly it was then called Mossadegh, after the nationalist prime minister overthrown by a CIA coup in 1953, but as Islamism won out over nationalism, it became Vali Asr.
Ali Anoushiravan, who is 80, saw it all. "In Reza Shah's day, there were just horses and carriages on the street," he says. "You could get from here up to Tajrish by carriage in about an hour." Now, it usually takes longer, because of Tehran's notorious traffic jams. A little further north, the City (Shahr) Theatre, set up by Mohammad Reza's queen, Farah Diba, has quietly survived the revolution. Among five or six plays showing recently were Athol Fugard's A Place with the Pigs, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Both are dark allegories reflecting a longing for deliverance, which seem to strike a chord in Iran today. The plays are translated into Farsi and have to pass scrutiny by the Ministry of Culture, whose net seems to have a wide mesh.
By midtown, the buildings get taller and newer. Shopping malls selling mobiles and computers, fast-food outlets, fancy shoe and handbag shops take over. The Nayeb restaurant has been in business for 80 years, but was recently revamped and is full of well-heeled businessmen, secular politicians and ladies who lunch. The waiters have new uniforms: pinstripe trousers, tail coats, starched shirts with black ties. "This place is incredibly busy," says a waiter, Ramin Alizadeh. "Come here on a Friday and the queue stretches way up the road." Like most Iranian restaurants, it is mainly kebabs and rice, but this is reputedly the best in town.
Iran may be at the vortex of international tensions, high on the hate list of the Bush administration, but you don't feel it on Vali Asr. People here are too busy trying to make a better life. Many have given up on politics, in disillusion with the reformists' failure to deliver.
"When the Americans first went into Iraq, some people here hoped it would go well, and Iran would be next," says Ali, a technician visiting the Paitakht computer mall. "But now they see the mess the Americans are bogged down in, and they know it would be even messier here."
It is on the upper reaches of Vali Asr avenue, around Park e Mellat, that the real struggle over social values is being quietly waged. This is where the young hang out, in coffee shops, fast-food outlets, shopping malls and on the street itself.
Siamak and his girlfriend are walking round the Safavid mall hand in hand, looking at the designer boutiques. She is dressed in north Tehran style: flimsy headscarf pushed to the back of the head, raised designer sunglasses, a light, tight, short overcoat, jeans rolled up to mid-calf, sneakers. This is "bad hejab": their clothes flout the Islamic dress code. They are officially frowned on but generally tolerated, though random arrests do occur. "We behave ourselves in public, and don't get hassled," says Siamak, a 25-year-old student. "If we go to parties, we try to be home by 11pm. You don't have all the freedom you might want in public, but if you're careful you can live the life you want. I think the authorities turn a blind eye to a lot of things."
Not always. Nearby, the Cafe Paris has its door sealed for the fourth time in two months, for allowing bad hejab and playing the wrong music: racy Iranian songs recorded by exiles in California. Up the road, two fast-food bazaars - the Jam e Jam food court and Superstar complex - are both closed periodically. Their owners refuse to speak. "It's just too sensitive," says one. Because so many young people gather here, there are sometimes skirmishes with security forces. Kerb-crawling and prostitution are rife in this area too. "The hookers often come in here - we know who they are - but we don't bother them unless they misbehave," says one cafe owner.
The last stretch of Vali Asr, up to Tajrish, is boring - scattered posh shops, institutes, banks - so we take a taxi with Sherine, a 24-year-old bank clerk. Her face is bandaged because she has just had a nose job. "I did it to make myself more attractive, so I can find a suitable husband," she says. "It cost 1.5m tomans (£1,000) but it's too early to say if it was worth it."
At the end of the line, Tajrish itself is an odd mixture of bad hejab and chador. Its bustling traditional bazaar abuts on one side the Imamzadeh Saleh, the ancient shrine of one of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, but on the other, a modern shopping mall. When bazaar merchants die, their coffins are carried through the narrow alleys so that their friends and competitors can bid farewell.
From Tajrish Square, a short avenue leads up to the Saadabad palaces. Up here, it is several degrees cooler. As you hike up through the gracious park, dotted with palaces turned museums, crickets chirr in the plane trees and pines. The mountains are so close, you can see every crag and cranny. At the top, the former residence of the Pahlavi Shahs, the Green Palace, is preserved as a curiosity, rooms cordoned off so visitors can admire the richly mirrored walls and ceilings, the ornate French furniture and the huge Tabrizi and Mashhadi carpets. Three cool-looking students are among the visitors. "We've come here because it's part of our heritage, but monarchy as a form of government is gone," says one. "The current system, for all its faults, at least holds out the hope of gradual evolution."
But in the bus down, a man sitting with his wife volunteers: "I like the Shah. His policies for the world were very good. All the world loved Iran. With these people, everybody hates Iran. Their policies are wrong. I'd like to see him come back. So would many others."
Outside the White Palace, a colossal bronze statue of Reza Shah used to look down over Tehran. From up here, it must have been easy to think you ruled the world. Now all that are left are the empty boots. |
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