The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (15 page)

President Ahmadinejad and his government deserve much of the scorn heaped on them if for no other reason than his and some of his officials’ singular and puerile obsession with the Holocaust, which most Iranians feel has nothing to do with them. But if Ahmadinejad is best known in the West for his outbursts on the Holocaust, Israel, and Iran’s more forceful defiance in pursuing a nuclear program, he represented far more to average Iranians the summer they elected him to the presidency.

On a hot night a few days after Ahmadinejad’s inauguration in August 2005, in a comfortably air-conditioned hired car in Tehran, I sat next to the college-educated driver, a clean-cut man in his late twenties who, with his impeccably clean car, manner, and dress, could easily be from the wealthy tree-lined neighborhood in the north of the city where I was headed. When I asked him about the elections that had brought Ahmadinejad to power, the subject of every conversation in Tehran at the time, he pointed to a group of girls in the car next to us: heavily made-up, on their cell phones, and with scarves barely covering their well-coiffed heads. “Some people,” he said, “think that freedom means men being able to wear shorts or women to go about without the hijab. Others think that freedom means having a full belly.” He paused for a moment. “There’s just more of the latter,” he said, forcefully changing gears as if to emphasize the point, which I took to mean that he had voted for the president. When we arrived at the slick apartment building that was my destination, I felt almost embarrassed that to him I must have represented one of the people who, with a stomach about to be made full, felt that freedom did indeed mean that people might dress as they please. But there was no tension in the car, and in fact he enthusiastically engaged in the most traditional form of ta’arouf, which in a taxi ride means having to sometimes beg the driver to take your money. “How much do I owe you?” I asked, fumbling with the thick stacks of well-worn Iranian money in my hands, all of which added up to less than thirty dollars.

“It’s unworthy” came the standard ta’arouf reply.

“No, please,” I insisted.

“Please, it’s nothing,” said the driver. Normally, at this stage one more “please” from me and the bill would be settled, usually to the driver’s advantage, but this young man was going for a bout of extreme ta’arouf.

“Please,” I implored him, counting out some bills.

“Absolutely not, you’re my guest,” he said.

“No, thanks very much, but really, I must pay you,” I insisted.

“I beg you,” he replied. For a moment I questioned whether this was not in fact classical ta’arouf but the more sinister form of the art that requires a decisive winner and loser in the verbal sparring, with the winner’s philosophical point having been acknowledged by the loser. Was he suggesting that he didn’t want to take my money because he was so scornful of the full bellies?

“Please,” I implored again, no longer caring if I appeared desperate or if I lost this round. “
Please
tell me how much the fare is.” That did it. He had made me really beg, and with a slightly scornful but not malicious smile he said, “Thirty-five hundred
tomans
” (about four dollars), and about five hundred more than the ride should have cost at the time. I paid him without disputing the amount and watched him turn his car around and leave, his smile, a little triumphant, not quite disappearing as he watched me through the window until he stepped heavily on the gas pedal, the car shrieking away down the narrow street.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had counted on my taxi driver’s definition of freedom, or really on the Iranian preoccupation with rights, or
haq,
which define that freedom, in his campaign for president in 2005. And later his history-challenged deputy foreign minister, at least in his encounter with me, seemed delighted in Iran’s apparent change of tact in international relations from an emphasis on ta’arouf to one on haq: from Khatami, the master of ta’arouf who had presented a benign image to the world, to Ahmadinejad, for whom ta’arouf cannot exist without a forceful, and unambiguous, defense of haq. Ta’arouf and the preoccupation with the issue of haq form two aspects of the Iranian character that are key to understanding Iran, but are often overlooked or misunderstood by non-Iranians. The concept of ta’arouf goes way back in Iranian history, and if it is true, as some historians maintain, that nations that fell to the Persian Empire were often happy collaborators with their conquerors, perhaps the Persians’ ta’arouf enhanced their reputation as benevolent rulers, as did their emphasis on rights (it was Cyrus the Great, after all, who had the world’s first declaration of human rights inscribed on a cylinder at Babylon).
⁵
If Persia later succumbed militarily to the Greeks, the Mongols, and the Arabs, but did not lose its identity as a nation and in fact became home to conquering armies, perhaps ta’arouf played a role in Iranian defense of its culture. Ta’arouf, which can often be employed to catch an opponent off guard, momentarily lulling him into believing he’s in the company of a like-minded friend, has been used by Iranians with varying degrees of success ever since.
“I’ve never felt as comfortable anywhere outside Iran as in America.”

Western observers often define ta’arouf as extreme Iranian hospitality, or as a Persian form of elaborate etiquette, but since Westerners naturally engage in ta’arouf too (as everyone who has ever complimented a host or hostess on what was actually a bad meal knows), it’s easy to miss its true significance and its implications in Persian culture. The white lies that good manners dictate we tell in the West and general polite banter or gracious hospitality cannot begin to describe what for Iranians is a cultural imperative that is about manners, yes, but is also about gaining advantage, politically, socially, or economically, as much as anything else. One might be tempted to think of ta’arouf as passive-aggressive behavior with a peculiarly Persian hue, but although it can be, it cannot be defined solely so. American businesses and businessmen are known to succeed with brashness, determination, and sometimes even a certain amount of ruthlessness; Iranian businessmen succeed rather more quietly with a good dose of ta’arouf and in such a way that doors are opened before the ones opening the doors realize they have done so. A friend in Tehran once told me at a dinner, after a frustrating business deal had not yet reached fruition, that “all business in Iran is like first-time sex: first there are the promises, then a little foreplay, followed by more promises and perhaps a little petting.” He had a disgusted look on his face. “At that stage, things get complicated—you’re not sure who’s the boy and who’s the girl, but what you do know is that if you continue, you might get fucked.” Another guest standing next to him nodded in agreement. “So you decide to proceed cautiously, touching here and touching there, showering the other party with compliments, and whispering an undying commitment, and then maybe, just maybe, it will all end in coitus, but it is rarely as satisfying for one party as it is for the other.”

Self-deprecation, a part of any businessman’s dance with another, is one aspect of ta’arouf, a central theme even, that fits nicely with Persians’ admiration of dervish asceticism and selflessness, but in common use is by nature linked with the Persian penchant for gholov, and very much an element in the power plays the two together incite. Purer self-deprecation, perhaps even its root in Persian culture, is evident in a tale told of the Sufi Farid od-Din Attar, one of Persia’s greatest poets, who lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and is reputed to have been killed during the Mongol invasion of Persia, specifically by a Mongol soldier who captured him and dragged him about the streets of his hometown of Nishapur. A common version of the story of his death tells us that as the Mongol was leading Attar through the streets, a man came up to him and offered him a bag of silver for the poet’s release.
⁶
Attar advised his captor not to accept, telling him that the price was surely not right. The Mongol, following Attar’s advice and encouraged by the apparently high value of his prisoner, refused to sell him and continued on his way, dragging Attar behind him. Soon thereafter, another man approached. He offered the Mongol a bag of straw in return for Attar, who this time advised the Mongol to accept. “Sell me now,” legend tells us he said, “for this is the right price and it is what I am worth.” Furious, the Mongol beheaded Attar and left his body on the street, aware of neither the lesson of selflessness that Attar had given him nor the ta’arouf that often takes self-deprecation to heights outsiders might consider farcical and absurd. Sufis would undoubtedly disagree with me if I were to claim that Attar was merely engaging in ta’arouf, for his spirituality and mysticism (which by necessity demand extreme modesty) were obvious, but his story nonetheless illustrates that some aspects of ta’arouf, the single defining characteristic of a people that struggles daily with notions of its own superiority or inferiority, have philosophical and spiritual roots.

The Persian form of self-deprecation, perhaps originally an acknowledgment of one’s irrelevance in the universe, may have spiritual roots (“Other than God, there was no One”), but it is more often used to flatter another with exaggeration than to make a philosophical point, and can also be a means to lower the guard of a rival or an opponent. It has its practical benefits too—in a country where manners and social intercourse still have a nineteenth-century air about them—when two people of the same class meet in the course of human interaction and ta’arouf requires that each make an effort to elevate the other’s rank at the expense of his own. “I am your servant,” one might say, and the other might reply, “I am your slave,” or “I’m your inferior,” both knowing full well that the exaggerations may be meaningless, but they bestow a level of respect on the recipient that may be the only kind of respect or acknowledgment he receives in the course of a day.

Iran was a kingdom for over twenty-five hundred years before becoming a theocracy, which is in itself more akin to a monarchy than any other political system, and was ruled by kings who were happy to make the point whenever they could that every subject was their servant. If a nobleman who had to genuflect and demean himself in the presence of royalty met a fellow nobleman, what better way for them to wash away the bitter taste of their servile behavior in their king’s presence, even while seeking some political advantage over a peer, than to engage in a little ta’arouf with each other? If a merchant met a fellow merchant, what better way for them to alleviate the humiliation of daily reminders that they were servants of the nobility? And if two street toughs, laats who’d never know what it was to have a servant, met, how better for them to forget their lowly rank than to engage each other in the art of ta’arouf? In recent times, the laat of Iran injected a vulgarity into self-deprecating ta’arouf that in its waggish artfulness could put literate men to shame. In the back-and-forth banter of self-deprecating ta’arouf, the one who gets the last word wins, even though he has lowered himself the most. In a prime example of lower-class extreme ta’arouf, a laat somewhere, sometime, put an end to rounds of greater and greater expressions of humility by declaring to his companion,
“Beshash sheerjeh beram!”—
“Piss, and I’ll dive in!” Gotcha!

Women, of course, also engage in ta’arouf, but theirs takes a slightly different form. Self-deprecation doesn’t descend to the depths that it does with men, but women’s same-sex banter also often involves expressions of extreme modesty and even unworthiness. Women outside the home, and they have been venturing outside the walls of their gardens for almost a century now, will engage in ta’arouf with men; however, they will generally not belittle themselves; rather, they may compliment the man and elevate his status, but not at their own expense. The ta’arouf that requires that someone providing goods or services always refuse payment at first—the implication, often stated explicitly, being that neither the goods nor the services are worthy—is practiced equally by men and women, as is the insistence by the purchaser that the payment is but a pittance and an unworthy sum for such grand goods or such superlative service. It makes even the trivial buying of a newspaper or a pack of gum a sometimes tiresome transaction when conducted in Farsi, but to Iranians such is the price of civilization.