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By Kian Tajbakhsh
(Source:
The Middle East Institute)
Ten years ago, in the summer of
1998, I arrived in Tehran after an absence of more than two decades. Three
vignettes describe some of what I experienced and why I decided to stay.
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The Iranian Revolution at 30
Source: The Middle East Institute
www.mideasti.org
This wide-ranging mega-collection of more than 50 original
essays is the first of a series of six similar publications
commemorating the events of 1979.
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The
Mayor. I am in a shared taxi with an architect friend who is pointing out
some recent developments in the city. We are squeezed in the front passenger
seat, three men in the back. The taxi's radio is on, and all are listening
intently to the live broadcast of the trial of Tehran's high profile and dynamic
mayor, Gholamhosein Karbaschi, the Robert Moses of Tehran, was on trial on thin
charges of embezzlement, although most believed it was political retribution for
contributing to Muhammad Khatami's 1996 presidential election victory. Judge:
"Is it not true that you controlled a number of personal accounts and moved
money around them thereby violating financial laws?" Taxi Driver breaks in:
"Agghhh! That Karbaschi! He's lining his pockets just like all the others. What
has he done for this city all these years? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"
We break through some gnarled traffic
and enter a wide urban highway winding down around several hillocks, all bright
green, full of flowerbeds, sprinklers busy, a big clock sculpted into the face
in rocks and plants. My architect friend: "This is a brand new road system
opened only a few months ago. It has finally connected two parts of the city and
eased the flow from the west to the north of the city. The landscaping? Oh
that's standard for almost all urban redevelopment." On hearing this, the Taxi
Driver broke in again: "Are you kidding me? (so to speak). That Karbaschi is a
genius! I should know. I drive all day. Before him this city was a mess, it was
unlivable. All these new roads are great and the city has turned a new leaf."
Later when I had decided to write a book on urban policy and local government in
Iran I always reminded myself that pinning down what ordinary people thought
about their city would not be straightforward!
The
Park. An old friend calls at about 10 pm: "want to go for a spin? You'll see
something of the city too." "Well, ye s... but isn't it late?" Friend arrives at
11:30. By midnight we are at Park-e Mellat (the People's Park) the largest in
the city. With difficulty we find a parking space, the entire area is jammed
with cars and people. "We're going into the park now?" (Anyone who lived
in New York in the 1980s would understand the incredulity.) But of course we
entered - like the hundreds, yes hundreds of large extended families with small
children carrying blankets, gas cookers, huge pots of food, canisters of tea.
The weather is superb. Families are laying around, children playing ball or
badminton, boys and girls easily straying from their parents, each feeling safe
enough with all the "eyes on the street." The night is warm. Young couples are
holding hands on benches slightly out of sight, in the row boats on the little
artificial lake. And me? My mouth wide open in disbelief at this idyllic urban
scene: a public space supplied by a conscientious municipality and dedicated
designers, used civilly and politely by huge numbers of people from many
classes. Many, judging by their chadors and rougher clothes, were from the
poorer parts of the city - this was a family outing, perhaps the next day was a
holiday. "But when - in fact how - would they go to work?" I ask. The city is
dotted with smaller parks, just as much used.
People
have nothing else to do! We decide to see the movie everyone is talking
about, Tahmineh Milani's Two Women. But every theater we try is sold out.
We have to wait two weeks to get a ticket. "This is amazing," I say, "such a
vibrant cultural life." "Oh," M replies, "because of the government restrictions
people don't have anything else to do, so they all pour into the cinemas." (mardom
tafrih-e digeh nadarand.) (I do finally see the film - it is powerful and
important.) It is suggested instead that we go to the traditional local
restaurants in the foothills of Darband. The description seems too good to be
true: Persian carpets spread among trees and running streams in a mountain
village 20 minutes north of the city, serving Persian food and tea amidst the
cool mountain air; elegant women reclining on large cushions and so on. The
orientalist in me thoroughly (and unashamedly) awakened, we head off ... to a
traffic jam about a mile long. The road entering the village is backed up with
cars, some ordinary, some expensive. We hear that restaurants have waits of over
an hour. (The New Yorker in me groans "not here too?") Defeated we turn back. "I
would never have imagined anything like this," I say. "Oh," M replies, "it's
because people don't have any other opportunities for recreation." Next: the
theater. Only a friend who has connections can swing, with great difficulty,
some tickets for the first of Mirbagheri's play cycle. The stately City Theater
is full of people who have come to see the plays, some also to see and be seen,
a perfectly acceptable objective. I want a ticket for the next play, but we have
to join a long waiting list and may not make it. (We don't in fact succeed.)
"That's the way it is, unfortunately," M observes, "people just don't have any
other distractions, so they have to come to the theater."
At this point I fall in love with the
city. I decide to find a way to come back and, if possible, stay. So I did move
to Tehran, first and foremost for personal reasons. I studied Persian classical
music, met my current wife - we now have a little baby girl. I made many deep
and meaningful friendships, which means, when we converse I feel that it is
about something. At the same time, the conversation is always embedded in
very human relations, about the interaction in ways I never learned in
New York. I soon became involved in intellectual debates raging during the
reform period, and once or twice got into trouble with the authorities.
Professionally, for the last ten
years I have been working, teaching, and researching the newly emerging world of
Iranian cities and local governments. Unlikely though it sounds, elected city
councils several years ago emerged as a key battleground for new visions for
society and governance. I quickly became involved in the work of newly
established councils, worked on the laws, was asked for advice (occasionally, I
was able to give some), engaged in international public diplomacy, organizing
several exchanges between European and Iranian mayors. Most fulfilling was
learning about Iran's cities and towns and peoples through traveling to dozens
of cities across the country. Only now, ten years on, do I feel I have something
to say about the hopes for local democracy that were part of the reform agenda -
arguably the most important institutional legacy of the reform period.
Ten years later, the "Long Tehran
Spring" is over. What I initially thought was the beginning of the "Spring" when
I arrived to stay in 2001, was, in retrospect, the downturn towards its end.
What I didn't realize at the time was that the Tehran that I experienced
represented for another group of Iranians a negative and unwelcome image of
social life. By 1990, with the grueling war with Iraq over, reconstruction was
underway. Every Tehrani will tell you that Karbaschi transformed the capital
from a morbid monument to the war dead - in the somber idiom of Shi'a martyrdom
- into a city in which life was affirmed through parks full of flowers and
entertainment, where young couples could, discretely, entwine fingers and feel
the pleasures of being alive, bookshops were accessible where one could browse
the books, music cassettes, and CDs unavailable in the previous decade; a city
which tried to be a more efficient and user friendly place for getting to work,
for producing goods and services of everyday and banal use; in which brand new
street lights would be efficient as well as a boost to the morale of residents,
who could feel that that they were no longer living in a war-affected place. All
this was desperately needed, especially by young middle class Tehranis who had
lived through a decade of war and were now young university students and wanted
to stretch their legs in a city connected to global currents and excitements.
But then millions of others had been
involved directly in fighting the war, and tens of thousands of poor, mostly
rural, families had counted their children among the war dead. They also came to
Tehran, because after all, it was also their city. They brought with them a more
burdened conscience; conservative, small town beliefs and values; sometimes
Puritan morality as a means of honoring the memory of those who had died as well
as their own experience; most of those who had volunteered, often without pay,
to fight to defend their families, friends and country - and survived - they had
suffered a decade of lost education, material progress, and savings.
These two groups - the young urban
middle class and the lower-class war veterans - clashed on the streets of Tehran
in the 1990s. The former wanted to put the war behind them; the latter surely
could not so soon. Besides the memories, there was the sense on one side that
the veterans deserved help in return for protecting the country and thus
providing the tranquility that it appeared some younger Tehranis now took for
granted. On the other side, there emerged a sense of resentment against the
affirmative action for the families of veterans, who some viewed as cynically
exploiting their status to cash in on free refrigerators and guaranteed college
admission. This conflict was daringly portrayed in the film
Glass Agency.
Complicating matters, hostility and resentment latched easily onto the matter of
sexuality, especially in public, and particularly around women. By the end of
the post-war decade, the second group had obtained their degrees, gained
professional experience in the bureaucracy, and was finally able to demand a
seat at the table. Of course, some want the table itself, and are even making a
bid for all the other chairs!
So the capital city is one, perhaps
the arena in which an important set of challenges for the future of Iran is
being played out. The Tehran municipality has been a disappointment, as have all
elected local governments, who with the waning of national reform energies, have
settled into being another sub-office of the governmental bureaucracy. With
significant and ostensibly non-governmental resources, it has missed a chance to
be the forum for Tehran's residents. This challenge is at bottom a cultural and
a national one - what will be the values that define the nation, who will we be?
As yet, the city contains multitudes only numerically. The challenge is to
transform the city from the battleground it often feels like, to a canvass on
which a moral vision that can accept the conflicting values can form themselves
into some kind of pattern that all, or at least most, can recognize and
understand. We still occasionally go to the movies, the theater, and the hills.
But more and more time is spent inside our homes. What the city needs most is
the élan I felt that summer ten years ago.
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Kian Tajbakhsh works as an
international consultant in the areas of local government reform,
urban planning, social policy, and social science research. Dr.
Tajbakhsh has consulted for several international organizations such
as the World Bank, the Netherlands Association of Municipalities (VNG-Int.)
and the Open Society Institute. He received his M.A. from University
College, London in 1984, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University, New
York City in 1993.
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