Tehran: Why I Live Here

I walk out of the front door of the house and into the garden, stopping for a moment to smell a hot pink rose standing tall and proud next to her multi-colored sisters. The fragrance reminds me of my grandmother’s tea cookies, the ones that are dyed with bright yellow saffron. I continue on, opening the gate hinged on the high wall surrounding the house, a throwback to the days before the Revolution, before all the houses were commandeered by the Regime.  

I walk down the street, smiling at the brightly dressed teenage girls and the other women, the ones who look like black masses gliding slowly along the pavement. When I turn the corner, I am greeted by the bustling bazaar. Coteries of bazaar shopkeepers sell their wares, everything from squirrels in cages to fresh fruit to gold and silver bangles and everything in between. They yell jovially, “Look at my melons, my melons are the freshest,” or “Lady, do you need a new scarf? I have the loveliest colors!” The horns of the nearby Mosque start to sound and men and women alike flock to the entrance to pray. Although I don’t consider myself a Muslim, I like to stop and reflect for a moment while the masses move around me. I look up and stare at the snow-capped mountain that rises up above the city, benevolent Damavand smiling down at his city. This is Tehran.  

I’ve lived in Tehran, Iran sporadically throughout my life, often spending whole summers there visiting my grandparents and recapturing the forgotten Farsi skills I’d picked up the previous visit. Not only did I relish the opportunity to catch up with my family, but being in Tehran was like being at home—the warmest, fuzziest home one can imagine, complete with warm tea, soft rugs, and your grandma’s stories.  

Food was a major part of life in Tehran. At my grandparents’ house, every meal was elaborate and different from the previous day. Breakfast was a smorgasbord of sangak (a thin bread made in a stone oven that I bought fresh and warm every day from the local baker down the street), honey, feta cheese, yogurt, grapefruit, melon, and tea. Always tea. Endless cups of tea in tiny glasses with intricately decorated saucers. The tradition was to pour the hot tea into the saucer to let it cool, put a sugar cube in your mouth and sip the tea out of the saucer letting the cube melt in your mouth. Somehow, this detailed ceremony made the tea taste better.  

Lunch and dinner were always prepared by the cook who lived in the small house adjoining my grandparents within the walls of our home. Although I always felt strange about someone serving me, and the practice of employing people from the countryside and the lower classes as cooks, servers, and drivers seemed antiquated, it was part of the tradition of Iran. Our cook, Narges, was Afghan and beloved by the family. She prepared elaborate dishes with vibrant meats and vegetables that had been purchased earlier in the day at the bazaar. My grandfather refused to eat leftover food because he swore it was unhealthy (he lived to be 104), so everything had to be fresh. The delightful stinging of my favorite dish, khoresh bademjoon (eggplant stew with tomato and rice) still lingers in my mouth. I try to make it here in the States, but somehow it doesn’t taste the same.

Hiking in the mountains was one of my favorite things to do. I would walk up the street from my house and continue climbing uphill until the city dropped away and the scenery changed to trees, rocks, and cliffs. In the afternoon, I enjoyed hanging out in the mall with other young people and shopping for knockoffs at stores called “Guchi” and “Adeedas.” It always amazed me that the fundamentalist government could not stop the ebullient public life of the city’s youth (75 percent of Iran’s population is under age thirty), although government officials certainly spent plenty of time and effort trying. There was defiance in the air in Tehran and there wasn’t much anyone could do to stop the women from wearing lipstick and the couples from strolling hand-in-hand.  

I spent a lot of my time in Tehran learning about my ancestry and the culture from which I had sprung. I visited museums and old palaces with their beautiful gardens and turquoise mosaics; one, Saad Abad, was only a few blocks from my house. Since I was there during the summer, I did not attend formal school, but did take Farsi lessons with the elders of my family who had time to teach me vocabulary and reading. I often took long walks around the neighborhood, down the bustling tree-lined avenue of Vali-e-Asr Street, which was called Pahlavi Street before the Revolution. Everything was qualified in those terms: before the Revolution, during the Revolution, after the Revolution.  

When I was older, I became interested in the politics, which was bound to happen growing up in a household where my mom bought me Che Guevara t-shirts and sang the praises of Marx and Lenin all in the backdrop of a famous grandfather who had been the Prime Minister’s lawyer during the Coup d’Etat in 1953. I would walk by the old American Embassy and take pictures, wondering what it would feel like to be held hostage. I also sneaked pictures of Evin Prison, where many of my family members had been held during the Revolution. It was all part of the history of the city, the history of the country, and I felt my own family’s history so closely intertwined. It made me feel epic and tragic and proud.

Once, when I was very young, I was visiting a family member who lived in an apartment near my home. I was playing with a cousin of mine on the balcony overlooking the pool that belonged to the family on the first floor. There was a toddler sitting by the pool with his mother watching him. My cousin and I heard their phone ring and watched as the mother went into the house and the toddler fall into the pool. We screamed as loudly as we could until the mother came and shrieked in horror as she pulled her blue baby from the water. All the noise and commotion attracted passerby and neighbors and many climbed the wall surrounding the building to see the horrific sight. One of the climbers happened to be a doctor who performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and revived the toddler, who sputtered up water and gasped for air. The dozens of people who had stopped to aid the poor woman cheered and praised Allah.

That night, the entire neighborhood and all the people who had been present at the almost-tragedy gathered for a huge feast, which included the killing of a goat to give as alms to the poor in praise and gratitude to Allah. There was dancing and revelry and joy and humbleness and eating as strangers, relatives, passersby, neighbors, and friends celebrated like one big family.

When I remember my days in Tehran, I smell mint. I hear bazaari’s; I taste rosewater, and I see a sprawling city encircled by an imposing mountain range permeated with the kindness, intelligence, and culture of wonderful men and women.