THE ROVING EYE Travels in
Ahmadinejadland By Pepe
Escobar
TEHRAN - Imagine the photo
opportunity: US President George W Bush and
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad meeting
face-to-face in New York. But it won't happen.
Blame the public relations machine in Washington
and the Islamic guidance handlers in
Tehran.
Yet it would be so much easier if the two
leaders would talk.
Ahmadinejad, just
weeks into his new job, enters the world stage
with a bang this week, telling the United Nations
General Assembly of his new proposals to try to
resolve the Iranian nuclear controversy. In
Tehran, he kissed a copy of the Holy Koran before
boarding his flight to New York and said that
nuclear energy "was a gift from God" available to
all of humanity. As Bush claims to have a direct
line to the "Man Upstairs", surely both presidents
cannot fail to find common ground.
Instead, the world is served the standard
confrontation menu. While Bush has strongly
lobbied Chinese President Hu Jintao
against Iran, Tehran is
lobbying nations of the Non-Aligned Movement. The
all-important showdown remains the crucial board
meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency
next Monday in Vienna. After this, Iran's case
could be sent to the UN Security Council, where
China's veto would be critical in any US-inspired
move to impose sanctions on Tehran.
A
pious man If Bush is a president spiraling
down to lame-duckhood, Ahmadinejad is surely
ascending to sainthood. His reservoir of popular
goodwill - or "political capital", according to
Bush - is tremendous. He started with all the
right moves. A pious Shi'ite Muslim, his first
cabinet meeting was in the Imam Reza Shrine in
Mashhad. No ostentation: he ordered all the
splendid Persian carpets at the presidential
palace to be removed. Equality rules: he promised
to fight against the huge salary gap between
managers and ordinary people.
The heart of
Ahmadinejadland is Tehran's lower middle-class
neighborhood of Narmak. It's a leafy area
pinpointed by about 100 small squares. Off the
72nd square, there it is, in Hedayat Alley, 90
square meters, a two-storey house on the right
side: Ahmadinejad house. The president lives - or
used to live - on the first floor, with his family
(he has two sons, one 19 and the other in his
early 20s). The second floor is for his father, a
former blacksmith. Ahmadinejad was practically
forced by state security to relocate to more
palatial surroundings.
Only a five-minute
walk from his house, on Samangan Avenue, one finds
Jami mosque. His mosque. Right in front of it,
imprinted on the asphalt, urban graffiti to defy
anything that ever came out of the New York Bronx:
three giant, colored flags, American, British and
Israeli. Traffic steadily rolls over them. They
were painted three years ago by the mosque and
have been there on the asphalt ever since. Every
once in a while, they are repainted.
Inside the mosque, a resident says
Ahmadinejad usually came for the evening prayer,
by himself. A man named Karami, principal's
assistant at Danishmand High School, says
Ahmadinejad was "a good student since his
childhood. He was admitted to Sharif University,
this is something very difficult."
In the
ante room, under a tapestry of a gorgeous Imam
Hussein Muzzaffar Salak ("people call me Ali"),
the mosque's caretaker for the past 38 years
remembers young Ahmadinejad coming to prayers with
his father, and the grown up Ahmadinejad coming to
prayers with both his sons. It's a very active
mosque - usually 600 people during evening
prayers. "Three of the prayer leaders were
martyred during the Iran-Iraq war [of the 1980s]."
Ali is a member of the bassijis
(Islamic vigilantes) - just like Ahmadinejad. He
lists the three main tenets of the
bassijis: study hard; be a good sportsman
(daily exercise is a must); and exercise religion,
which is the same as being a good Muslim. The
president carries an identity card issued by the
mosque. On both presidential polling days last
June, Ali was beside the president. His
expectation is the standard response from the
average Tehrani: he wants cheap goods and hopes
the social situation calms down. "Tehran is very
expensive."
What is Ahmadinejad's secret?
"They mostly like him because he's honest. And a
simple man. Everybody likes him because he looks
after the poor." It's also "very important that he
keeps coming back to the mosque." Like most people
in the neighborhood, Ali does not follow the
nuclear controversy. "The president said we need
it for peaceful purposes." So the government's
incessant message is definitely coming across.
Ali's foreign policy views are typical of Narmak:
"We don't accept Israel. And Britain and America
is the same thing."
A shrine for the
new saint Navab, in south Tehran, is full
of low-rise apartment blocks selling for US$50,000
a piece, with 30 years to pay. That's lower middle
class, and once again, Ahmadinejad territory.
The Ahmadinejad-worshipping working class
congregates at the spectacular, 13th-century
Abdulazim Shrine, which used to be very small,
with an annex cemetery; now, to have a family
member buried there, one must spend at least
$50,000. The shrine is at the heart of Ray city,
which used to be physically separated from Tehran
and is now incorporated into the urban sprawl.
Shi'ite pilgrims to Iran inevitably must visit the
triumvirate of Mashhad, Qom and Ray. Historically,
Ray has been a business entrepot. There are
countless warehouses in the area. When the Taliban
were in power in Afghanistan, plenty of Afghan
exiles were hired as construction workers.
The shrine with the inevitable bazaar
annexed beams with communal life. After prayers,
whole families go shopping or eating
falodeh - a shredded white pudding soaked
in lemon juice. The men retire to Abdullah's
teahouse to smoke their ghelyan - the
Iranian hookah pipe. The teahouse is protected by
the Cultural Heritage Organization of Iran.
A 100-year-old woman from Zanjan province
sits down for her glass of tea. Her figure cuts an
interrogation mark, but she's healthy. Her mother
died at 115. She voted Ahmadinejad, of course.
"He's an honest man." The teahouse patrons agree:
"He's not rich, he's not corrupt, he doesn't spend
money for self-promotion," which in Tehran means
he's not billionaire Hashemi Rafsanjani, who even
hired Hashemi cheerleaders - "without their
hejab [veils]" - to distribute pamphlets to
unsuspecting motorists. Rafsanjani still lost in a
second-round runoff with Ahmadinejad. "He'll do
something for poor people," they add. "After 25
years of revolution [actually 26], we are still
poor. But now this is the first really Islamic
government."
At a huge, "international"
carpet exhibition - a cluster of hangars dripping
with rugs - the Islamic republic's relative
cultural isolation is more than evident. The
atmosphere is not exactly international - apart
from Iranian firms based in Hamburg or Istanbul.
There's hardly a foreigner and practically nobody
speaks a language other than Persian.
Instead, we have upper-middle class Tehran
involved in a favored ritual - family carpet
buying. This means a whole family sitting on a
pile of carpets eating kebab out of plastic boxes
and watching two men unravel another pile of
carpets. Prices are steep - $3,000 for a standard
silk Qom. Bazaaris say, optimistically, that 10%
of the Iranian population - roughly 7 million
people - can afford to buy silk carpets, personal
computers and travel abroad. Virtually everybody -
buyers and sellers alike - voted Ahmadinejad. The
explanation is always the same: "We're tired of
corruption, and he's an honest man." In the middle
of all the haggling, Fariba Bloorieh glides by.
Her older sister graduated in carpet design - a
traditional profession for women - in Kerman, in
the best school in Iran. Fariba went one step
ahead, graduated in English literature and wants
to pursue her master's in England ("but it's so
expensive!") She voted for a reformist in the
first round and Ahmadinejad in the second round.
"We want our rights," she says. "We want more
convenience in our daily lives. We are tired of
paying up for everything, and nothing works." She
had plenty of hopes during the eight years of
previous president Mohammad Khatami. Those were
not fulfilled. "I will hope for four more years."
'Westoxication' Ahmadinejad and
his followers would likely not be amused if they
visited the Gandhi area in north Tehran: a
two-storey mini-mall filled with smart coffee
shops and businesses selling chic, made-in-Turkey
or made-in-China counterfeit Zara, Mango and Gap.
Here is the reign of "Westoxication" and pretty in
Persia - the absolute antithesis of the Abdulazim
Shrine.
Most sales girls bear the signs of
the indispensable nose job - $1,200 at least - and
sport a casual, ultra-colorful made-in-India scarf
as hejab. Liposuction and breast
enhancements are also on the menu; Abdullah
Abbasi, the "must" plastic surgeon in Tehran, has
performed no less than 14,000 operations in the
past nine years. Fashion icons are J Lo and
Britney, and of course the unbeatable Angelina
Jolie.
Guys hang out drinking melon juice
- alcohol is strictly forbidden - and listening to
The Doors. Girls stop at the coffee shops to
gossip, but basically to be able to smoke in
public and to play the seduction game - which in
Iran in 2005 is not a bit as racy as in
mid-America in the 1950s.
A gorgeous
Azerbaijani girl selling Buddhas in an art shop
wearing a scarf from Goa trembles because of
Ahmadinejad and the new hardliners at the Ministry
of Islamic Guidance: girls have already been
ordered to wear a tight-fitting scarf, and the
order to wear a full black chador may not
be too far ahead. The juice guys agree: "This
atmosphere of freedom could end soon. We are
expecting a crackdown." The answer is to plan the
next escape to Antalya, in Turkey, which the
regime sees as a Mecca of sin. The regime
cancelled direct Iran Air flights, so Turkish
Airlines was quick to corner the extremely
profitable market.
There are no fewer than
60 flights a week between Tehran and Dubai -
Iran's Hong Kong. That's where Iranian businessmen
park billions of dollars and control a substantial
part of the retailing business. And that's where
the girls in upscale Eliyaeh neighborhood buy
their Hermes scarves, Dolce and Gabbbana
sunglasses and tons of Mac maquillage, which they
later display at private parties where navel
visibility is high and the consumption of Absolut
vodka rivals Russian standards. The effect is
somewhat bizarre: many 18-year-old girls look like
Cher in her big-hair 1980s phase.
Meet
'the chicken' "The chicken". This is how
Mr Shiravi, on the other - upscale - side of
Ahmadinejadland defines the president. And that's
somewhat deferential. When Ahmadinejad became a
media phenomenon, the running joke in Tehran was
that he looked like the yellow monkey featured in
the pack of the Iranian version of Cheetos (cheese
snacks). The company had to pull out their TV ad
because of the avalanche of jokes.
Shiravi, cultured, sophisticated,
US-educated, very well connected, is the
quintessential upper middle-class Tehrani. Unlike
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Islamists in Iran
have never thought of liquidating their elites.
But they had to be kept under control. They had to
be politically framed. Shiravi - unlike many of
his peers who controlled the economy and the
administration during the Shah - decided not to
leave Iran. But he also decided not to be framed
and speak his mind, which in Iran means being very
careful not to say anything controversial in
public, while letting rip in private.
Shiravi's comfortable apartment in Eliyaeh
is surrounded by a mushroom forest of - still
illegal - satellite dishes. A whole set - dish
plus receiver - retails for about $150. The cheap
sets now come - of all places - from "liberated"
Iraq. In rural villages police still confiscate
them.
Shiravi - like most of Tehran's
secular elite - is terrified of Ahmadinejad's
godfather, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi in Qom, who
"believes he can convert all of America to
Shi'ism" and who issued a fatwa ordering
all of the alleged 20 million bassijis to
vote for Ahmadinejad. Mesbah is Ahmadinejad's
marja'a (source of imitation). He's above
all the grandmaster of the isolationist Hojjatieh
sect (something he always denies), which was
pushed out of government by Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini in the early stages of the revolutionary
government. Shiravi does not believe Ahmadinejad
will be able to complete his four-year
presidential term, because Mesbah will keep on
pushing the ultra-hardline envelope.
Shiravi reflects current consensus among
Western diplomatic circles in Tehran that the
presidential election was a silent coup - carried
by the Revolutionary Guard and the Hojjatieh, with
support from bassijis - the so-called "army
of 20 million". The new intelligence minister,
Hojjatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehyi, is a
graduate from the Haqqani hawza - founded
by the Hojjatieh. Same for new Interior Minister
Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who the guys and girls in
Gandhi are beginning to call "the Taliban".
Tehran's secular upper middle class is
terrified of these muttehajar (literally
"fanatics" or "those who want to go back to the
Stone Age"), whom they identify as
people-brainwashing mullahs who oppose anything
modern - TV, cinema, parties. Rafsanjani, on the
other hand, is defined by Shiravi as "clever and
well-connected", which does not mean an
endorsement. Shiravi laments that reformists are
now "a silent majority in parliament".
Mullah's got a brand new bag How to
sell Ahmadinejad - and this new regime - to the
rest of the world? Maybe the answer lies with
Ahmad Haneef, a swingin' black Canadian now
studying Islamic sciences in a hawza in
Qom. Haneef was a "seriously radical"
Marx-meets-Guevara student in Toronto at the time
of the Islamic revolution in 1979, after which he
was "illuminated" by the Koran, converted to
Shi'ism and moved to Iran. Any day now he can
become a hojjatoleslam - "doesn't matter when,
it's up to you to decide when you are worthy to
wear a turban".
Haneef is a certified hit
every time he appears on Iranian TV. "I blow the
mullahs out of the floor." If the ayatollahs in
Qom and the politicians in Tehran had any flair
for a global public relations blitz, they would
promote Haneef as the new face of Shi'ism - a
cool, bright, extremely articulate black man both
in English and Persian. The James Brown of
Shi'ism. This would be an absolute smash in the
US. Unfortunately, it won't happen. Unlike Memphis
soul legend Rufus Thomas, nobody will ever see
pious Ahmadinejad do the funky chicken.
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