Fast Times in Tehran

By Azadeh Moaveni

On my first night back in Tehran, I met some friends for drinks. It was a hazy night, and we convened at an intersection of a major expressway. I assumed we would head to someone's house, but my friends had something else in mind. In four cars, we took off down the highway, going 60 miles an hour, swerving to get close enough so I could pass a cocktail made of whiskey with mulberry nectar out the passenger-side window of our Korean hatchback to a friend in one of the other cars. Our stereo screeched Shaggy's Hey Sexy Lady; theirs, insipid Lebanese pop. Tehran, with its murals of suicide bombers, Versace billboards and rickety buses adorned with portraits of Shi'ite saints, slid by in a smoggy blur. We careered past police, who didn't blink. The driver of my car frowned as I flung out my arm to grab another drink. "You can't do this properly," she said, "if you keep closing your eyes."

In today's Tehran, a land where political expression can be lethal and thrills hard to come by, dangerous pastimes have a special appeal. Young people are constantly drawn to activities that are extraordinarily outrageous--and very now. When we tired of the bar on wheels, we stopped at a pomegranate-juice stand that stays open until 4 a.m. for anyone who needs a late fix. "Sorbet? Juice? Something else?" asked the juiceman, arching a brow. Ecstasy, the leisure drug of elite Iranians, used to be smuggled into Iran from Europe. Now garage chemists produce the tablets locally, and a hit costs about $2. I slunk low in the car seat and muttered to my Iranian friend, "Aren't we too old for this?" What I really wanted to ask was, When will you stop considering this freedom? When will you care again about what's happening in the world?

When I left Tehran in 2002, after spending two years in the country my parents had left behind in the 1970s for the U.S., life was different. In many ways it was worse. After the U.S. Administration declared Iran part of an "axis of evil," the ruling clerics lashed out at home, enforcing social strictures with such vigor that we wouldn't leave parties without first chewing several pieces of gum to conceal the alcohol on our breath, in case we encountered a checkpoint run by Islamic paramilitaries. When the rhetoric cooled, the system turned its sights back to its angry young people and essentially decided to stanch their discontent by buying them off. While continuing to brutally suppress all political dissent, the mullahs boosted subsidies on gas and household commodities. But most significant, they began loosening control over the lifestyle choices of the 48 million Iranians under the age of 30, who make up more than two-thirds of the population.

Judging by what I saw on a 10-day trip to Iran last month, the strategy has worked. Today young Iranians despair of political change. Resigned to the rule of autocratic mullahs, they have turned inward, settling for the opportunity to make a little more money and have a little more fun. Gone are dreams of Che Guevara and a quick, painless revolution, replaced by the allure of pyramid schemes and cheap trips to India. Although it's too late to buy the love of Iran's youth, the mullahs seem happy to settle for torpor. "You have a situation," says my friend Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst in Tehran for the International Crisis Group, "where the majority of Iranians have neither the luxury to risk their livelihoods waging political protest nor the nothing-to-lose desperation and rage that result from penury."

The great buy-off may prove to be a temporary fix, given that the government's beneficence is tied to surplus funds engendered by high oil prices. Polls show that 50% of Iranians plan to vote in next week's presidential election, compared with 66% in 2001. Lower turnout matters in a system that cares about public opinion, but that has long stopped being a concern of the Islamic republic. The regime is cunning enough to dispense new social liberties carefully, with periodic perfunctory raids reminding young people that they are being given freedom and shouldn't confuse it with a right or an accomplishment. But young Iranians probably can't be bought off indefinitely. The hedonism and greed of the moment mask a profound frustration that could still boil over. The question is, Will anyone notice until it does?

The day after surviving the cocktail hour from hell, I attended a practice session of 127, Iran's hottest underground rock band. Because the regime still pretends to oppose the toxic culture of the West, rock music is semi-taboo, so the band rehearses in a soundproof bunker inside an abandoned greenhouse in a low-rise complex of concrete apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city. The band members compare themselves with writers in Soviet Russia--miserably creative, creatively miserable. They sing in English and dress in the uniform of global grunge: long sideburns, faded Converse sneakers and plaid shirts. The band is beloved by young Iranians because its music communicates a despair that has few avenues for expression.

For my benefit they play My Sweet Little Terrorist Song, a sly lament about Iran's inclusion in President George W. Bush's "axis of evil": "I just wanna watch Dylan live./ I won't fly into the Pentagon alive." Some of their songs can be read as cries for political change, but like everything else here, they are ambiguous enough to be easily defendable in a courtroom, should it come to that. As I sat in 127's practice bunker, I caught myself wondering, Where were you when I lived here? As recently as three years ago, it was still somewhat risque to turn music up really loud or wear Capri pants in certain parts of town. Now music like 127's, which offers an artful expression of a dark, complex reality, helps make living in Iran more bearable. Even the murals around Tehran of scowling ayatullahs have been repainted to give them toothy smiles.

The social mores are relaxed enough to accommodate even women like Laleh Seddigh, 28, a race-car driver who is the Iranian version of Danica Patrick. Seddigh wears bright pink veils, designer sunglasses and has won a race or two on Iran's racing circuit. State television has refused to broadcast her standing on the podium to receive her prize, but that has allowed Seddigh--in the manner of 127--to protect her radical chic. It's a win-win arrangement: she gets her fast cars and fast lifestyle, and the regime gets a poster girl for its new tolerance. "Women haven't gone after many of their rights here," she tells me. "If they pursue them, so much is possible." She pauses, perhaps realizing she sounds like one of the regime's chador-clad apologists. "Not that it's easy."

Ten years ago, the cultural and material poverty of life in Iran would have sent a privileged young woman like her fleeing to London or Los Angeles. Today Seddigh drives a silver BMW, drinks authentic Red Bull, wears Puma shoes and travels regularly to Europe. Her middle-class friends can afford real Coca-Cola as well as trips to Goa and Malaysia. (It's generally cheaper to travel east.) They meet friends online through the networking website Orkut.com and feel connected through the things they buy, the Internet they're addicted to and their ability to travel to a global community larger than their own. Will they vote? Mostly no. Do they despise the Islamic republic? Pretty much. But their inclination to do anything about it has never been so weak and the distractions never so plentiful. It's easier to lower your expectations when the only life you have known seems to be getting better.

The main reason for that improvement is simple. Thanks to soaring oil prices, there is plenty of money sloshing around. On a Saturday afternoon, I went to lunch at the gleaming kabob palace Nayeb, which is where you go in Tehran to see and be seen--while eating lots of grilled meat. The prices had tripled in my absence, and so had the line for a table. As we wait, I chat with a waiter named Vali Joodi, who tells me he wakes up at 5 a.m. each day to commute from the working-class suburb of Shahriar. Four years ago, he asked his girlfriend to marry him. Once he started tallying what they would need for rent, food and a ceremony, however, he realized he didn't earn enough to support two. Then he discovered that the government offers low-interest marriage loans that can be paid back over a long period. Billboards in Tehran advertise various forms of government loans, all with low interest rates. Agricultural loans go for 11% interest and can be invested in a bank for an 18% return.

Those sorts of handouts buy the state grudging acquiescence even from low-income workers like Joodi. When he married in 2001, the loan was $700; today it's approaching $1,300. Joodi is far from content. He tells me, "I work from 6 a.m. to midnight, come home exhausted and see my family for half an hour before I pass out." But the loan clearly mattered in his life, allowing him to marry at once, which could mean the difference between his continuing to tolerate the Islamic system and revolting against it.

Of course, the mullahs still resort to heavy-handed means of suppressing disgruntlement. About two years ago, I watched as an unmarked Iranian Paykan drove up to the curb outside a meeting of student activists. Plainclothes agents of the hard-line judiciary jumped out and dived at the organizers standing outside. In broad daylight, in front of journalists, the agents dragged the students along the ground, tearing their clothes and bloodying their faces. The agents dumped the activists in an idling car and then peeled away. It took about five minutes for the students to disappear into the recesses of the system. On this trip, I went to a fashionable cafe to see Amir Balali, a former student activist who had spent time in prison for his organizing. In the middle of the afternoon, young couples are bent over banana splits while the speakers purr French lounge music. Balali, 25, is an urbane young man wearing an Umbro shirt and jeans and carrying a Nokia digital camera phone. In 2002 he was arrested. While in prison, he says, he was kept standing--sleepless, facing a wall--for 72 hours straight and was beaten.

Balali describes Iranian society as "an utter catastrophe" and explains that his peers have become used to behaving as though the unresponsive regime doesn't exist, bypassing it entirely to solve their problems. He considered organizing a protest around a candidate for next week's election but then realized that no one was particularly worked up, including him. "No one is interested in coalescing around anything beyond themselves," he says with a shrug. "Their idols aren't Che Guevara anymore. They're Bill Gates and Angelina Jolie." He predicts that the Islamic republic will eventually crumble and that change here will be chaotic and painful. "The lawful, peaceful approach didn't work," says Balali. "Young people can only tolerate this for so long."

When you try to view the future through the eyes of a young Iranian, it seems clear that there is no easy route to a new Iran. The government of outgoing President Mohammed Khatami initially raised hopes for political change but didn't deliver. For many young Iranians fed up with clerical rule, the possibility of U.S.-sponsored regime change in Iran once offered the distant hope of a simple and quick solution, but with an insurgency boiling next door in Iraq, it's now clear that that would be neither a solution nor pain-free.

Among the dwindling number of progressive intellectuals and writers who remain politically active, some have joined the Establishment, which at least offers better computers and shinier offices than the independent media start-ups that the judiciary routinely shutters. Some are even working for Shargh, a newspaper widely believed to be controlled by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is favored to win next week's presidential election. Kambiz Tavana, a voluble reporter in his early 30s, joined me at Cafe Mint in midtown Tehran to make the case for his journey to the Rafsanjani camp. He described the reform era as "a flailing moment, not a movement" and said its legacy was to illustrate the clerical regime's insurmountable power structure. Rafsanjani, Tavana said, is a player within the system and a powerful pragmatist and can be more effective than the current President, who holds lofty ideals but has been reduced to a lame-duck opposition figure. I asked Tavana whether he felt conflicted about working for Rafsanjani, who has been criticized by human-rights activists for allegedly ignoring the killing of dissidents in Europe. He assessed Rafsanjani and his newspaper in the same breath: "They're both just a little better than the rest."

On my last night in Iran, I caught the kickoff of the Rafsanjani campaign blitz, appropriately staged on Fereshteh Street, one of Tehran's high-end thoroughfares and a cruising route for the young. The 70-year-old cleric's grinning face was plastered on a new-model Mercedes-Benz, and dandyish young men and pretty young women in snug, bright tunics leaped into traffic to slap stickers on passing cars. Some drivers swerved to avoid them, with expressions that seemed to say, This is all a lie. Others stared, as if they were taking in a strange exhibit at the zoo. You can see the uncertainty on their faces, as they drive into the night, chased by the gorgeous sticker-wielding Rafsanjani girls. If the moment had an anthem, it would surely belong to 127: "As the new sky's falling, no one's running. No one's running but me."

AZADEH MOAVENI wrote Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran (Public Affairs)