Report One, Part 3: Cultural Observations and a Meeting with the Iranian Vice President

 

FOR's Peacemaking Delegation to Iran: March 2007

 

 

Paul Kawika Martin: Conversations in the Street (March 3)

Saturday afternoon the delegation traveled to a shopping area where the women in the delegation shopped for scarves and manteaus to cover their heads as the law demands. I took a walk with two of my fellow delegates, Ross and Rudy, where we engaged in three conversations with Iranians.

Walking amongst the 14 million in Tehran, three young women walked by saying “hello.” As three tall white men, we stick out in a country with few westerners. The youngest, 17, and her two sisters, 21 and 23, exchanged short pleasantries with us perhaps because they wanted to practice their English. A few minutes later, Shiva came up to us, offering hot fava beans, a common, cool weather street food. After our thanks, she went back to her sisters. With curiosity as a motivation, Shiva found us again to find out why we traveled to her country. Impressed with our peace mission, she told us that she continues to study biology and her sister majors in agriculture.

All the while, Shiva’s sister would fix her hijab as it kept falling off her head. I felt a bit nervous because, although enforcement is becoming less strict, women are forbidden to be with males other than their husbands and family.

Shiva did most of the talking, maybe she spoke the best English, maybe she felt most comfortable pushing the envelope of Iranian law. Most of all, Shiva wanted us to tell people in the United States to love Islam and God and that often people hold misperceptions about Islam.

 

Margot Smith: Scarves in Iran

I knew we had to cover our heads in Iran, but the announcement over the airplane speaker, “All women must cover their heads upon leaving the aircraft,” really brought it home. I put on the scarf, (hijab) and immediately overheated. It didn’t stay on, and required fussing with. Nonetheless, I successfully left the airport and arrived at the hotel with covered head.

The women in our party had a variety of scarves and styles, patterns and colors. Some were successful in gracefully draping them, others managed to stay covered with slippage and squirm.

We went to a shop to buy clothes appropriate to Muslim dress and I found a ready-made black scarf that stayed on without tying. You turn the scarf inside out, put your head through the hole and throw the tails over your head. Without the knot, it stays in place. It is easy and modest. However, I am still too hot, cannot hear well, and since every woman is in scarf, friends are really hard to keep track of in a crowd – we all look alike – somewhat like nuns in wimples.

I try to understand the need for a scarf and assume it has to do with modesty. However, it is really hard to understand that given that all the clerks in the women’s clothing shop were men, even selling lingerie.

And separation of women and men pervades public space. Women had a separate entrance to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s home, and have a separate entrance and separate security facilities at the airport, and we see few women in public economic roles: sales clerks, occasionally staff.

There are some things that are easier. I don't have to worry about my hair or earrings. In Iran, I am in costume. When in Rome...

 

Terry Patten: Political and Spiritual Leaders (March 4)

On our third day, our bus pulled away from the hotel at 9 a.m. We drove by the former American Embassy, where we saw and photographed the revolutionary and anti-American murals on the walls that surround it.

We proceeded from there towards “Imam Khomeini house” – the house in Tehran from which Ayatollah Khomeini directed the government of Iran from the Islamic revolution in 1979 until his death in 1989.

The bus stopped alongside a military checkpoint, and we walked several blocks through the narrow streets of a humble middle-class neighborhood that was cordoned off from traffic and guarded by soldiers. Evidently, many people in the government, including, for example, former President Rafsanjani, live in that neighborhood. At the foot of a narrow street we passed another, inner security checkpoint, at which visitors are routinely searched and frisked. Most of the members of our delegation were waved through out of respect. 

We viewed the tiny, simple room (preserved just as it was during his lifetime) that served as Ayatollah Khomeini’s “White House” during the first decade of the Islamic Republic. There we were met by a very sweet man, who had served as the personal attendant of the Imam during those years. As he answered questions from members of the delegation, we got a sense of the devotional reverence many Iranians hold for the father of their country. We also viewed the Hosseiniyeh, or small meeting hall next door to Khomeini’s room, in which he frequently sat and spoke with large groups of people, and a gallery of photographs that told the visual story of Khomeini’s life, the Islamic revolution, and the founding of the Islamic Republic. In further conversations with the delegation, he offered to arrange for us to have introductions to religious leaders with whom we could meet in the seminaries of Qom.

We went immediately to the Shah’s palace. We walked through the beautiful grounds – like a very large park – and then toured his palace, frozen in time as it was in 1979, with signs describing each room and the last state dinners that were held in them (in two of them, the last events hosted Jimmy Carter and Prince Hussein of Jordan.) Glass cases displayed exquisite artwork and china. The high luxury offered a stark contrast to the austerity of Khomeini’s simple room. Then we walked to a restaurant on the grounds where we had lunch. In the process, we encountered throngs of enthusiastic schoolchildren who had come with their classes and teachers on school field trips. Again, our “Peace Advocate” buttons served us well, producing many very playful greetings, gifts, waves, calls of  “Hi,” “Hello! Hello!” and even “I love you” amid much laughter and many wonderful photographs.

Then our bus took us to a complex of government buildings. We entered early, and while we were waiting, we discovered several government employees on breaks, playing ping-pong. They invited a couple of us to play, and we had several rousing matches, and a delightful experience of bonding.

When it was time for our meeting with Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaee [also Mashai], we entered a large conference room where photographers began snapping pictures. Other staff, including junior ministers, assistants, and reporters were also present. Vice President Mashaee is a longtime close associate of President Ahamedinejad, and the vice president for cultural heritage and tourism. He has also been recommended as a possible nominee to be the next foreign minister. It was his office that had to approve the visas for our delegation to be allowed into Iran.

The vice president welcomed us. Then Monica Bernardo made an introductory statement, explaining that our delegation had come to Iran from the USA because of our concern about the state of relations between the Iranian and American governments. She described the Fellowship of Reconciliation and our mission of building peace through civilian diplomacy.

We asked a series of questions, beginning by asking what cultural initiatives excited him most. He spoke for quite a while, passionately expounding on the values, ideas, and philosophies of Shi’a Islam and the spirit of the Islamic Revolution. He is an animated and eloquent orator, and a passionate advocate for Islamic purity and the current regime.  He continued to speak in a wide-ranging way as he responded to questions about how we could reduce tensions between our countries, how we could create new delegations and exchanges to build communication and trust between our countries, about Iran’s decision to pursue nuclear energy despite its environmental disadvantages, and about creating contacts with Shi’a spiritual leaders. He paused frequently for our translators, but sometimes interrupted them to clarify nuances, so we would understand exactly what he meant. This offered us a glimpse into a very different, and uniquely Iranian, way of seeing the world.

At the end of the meeting, he declared his support for future civilian diplomacy delegations to Iran, and for meetings with Americans when he visits our country.

 

Andrew Zimmerman: Passport Line and Vice President’s Meeting

Approaching the passport lines at the Iranian airport, we were trying to figure out which was the right one for us: the four delegates who arrived on a flight different than the other 19.

“Oh, you can go anywhere. The signs don’t mean anything.” The English voice in the passport control line at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport startled us. A young woman, in smart manteau, perfect hair, and silk headscarf, had noticed our bleary-eyed confusion at 10 o’clock at night. Just ahead of us in the line, she turned and began conversing with us. We exchanged pleasantries, and explained our mission as FOR peace delegates to Iran.

“We are here to learn the real story of Iran,” we began. “Our media, and our government, portray your country in a not-always favorable light, and we decided to come to find out for ourselves.”

“Oh, but it’s all true!” she interrupted. “Iran is quite repressive and suffocating.”

“Then what would you want us to tell the people of the United States when we return?”

“Tell them to not come here. Everything they read is true.”

“Why do you come here, then?”

“Because of my mother,” she replied.

It turned out that the young woman was 17 years old, and lived in Tehran with her family. She was returning from a visit to friends in Hamburg. As we continued our conversation, the negativity of her answers did not change.

It was a surprising first contact with an Iranian: were our expectations to be shattered before we had cleared customs? But in retrospect, the young woman’s attitude should not have come as a shock. As a teenager, she has no real connection to the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. She thinks only of what she has been deprived of; thinks only about what she cannot have. Materially, culturally, she believes she is a decade (or two) behind her friends in Germany. To date, no one else we have talked to during the trip has expressed a sentiment anything like this.

But spiritually, Iran may be ahead of the West. I say this because a second Persian surprise awaited us a few days later, in a meeting with Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaee. I expected to hear polite anti-American sentiment. What I got was a spiritual challenge.

“Why are there people who choose animosity over friendship?” Mr. Mashaee asked us. “Who are the people who choose hate over love? Don’t they know that God’s plan is that all humans should know each other and use each other? There are many things we can achieve together that we cannot achieve as individuals. I believe this will happen one day; the question is, what will be our role in this?”

Mr. Mashaee’s words, directed as they were at nations such as the United States, could have passed us by. But I believe they will have more effect if each one of us in this delegation internalizes them, and then considers our choice of love or hate in every interaction with other human beings. Mr. Mashaee made me think that perhaps the Islamic Revolution, for all its faults, did imbue his generation of Iranians with a sense of purpose that is lacking in the current crop of Iranians. 

It’s unwise to generalize, of course, and the complexity of current Iranian society surely lies somewhere between the extremes of Mr. Mashaee’s religious certainty and the young woman’s self-centered complaints. But she would do well, I think, to pay less attention to her dreams of material enrichment, and more attention to Mr. Mashaee’s vision of unified humanity.

 

Conclusion by Ross MacDonald, Editor

This is our first report. We hope that it has given you a collection of images and impressions that allow you to be with us. In our hearts and minds, you are indeed with us, despite the geographic distance between us. 

©2005 Fellowship of Reconciliation