The Ayatollah Begs to Differ (22 page)

The Imam Jomeh spoke a few words on the importance of Ashura, and then a noheh singer, an older man, probably a local, sang the familiar story of the Battle of Karbala. The entire crowd vigorously and enthusiastically beat their chests on cue, arms raised high in the air, crossed over, and brought down heavily in perfect unison. From my vantage point it was a sea of black—black clothes, black hair, and black beards in the middle of what looked curiously like a Shia version of a synchronized-swimming performance. A passion play began at the far end of the square, too far for me to make out exactly what was going on, but I could see an actor on a white horse wearing a metal helmet circling a tent, and then suddenly, as the man behind the microphone let out a long
“Allahhhhhhh-hu-Akbarrrrr!,”
the chest beating stopped and the men, perhaps some three or four hundred of them, lifted the monstrously elephantine nakhl onto their shoulders and began running around the square to the encouragement of the onlookers, encouragement that was echoed by the women who threw white long-stemmed roses from the ramparts onto their heads as they passed by. An old man dressed in robes and with the green scarf of Islam around his neck stood on a platform on the nakhl and waved his hands, directing the men who were carrying him on their backs, while the singer continued the Muslim prayer
“Ashadu-allah.”
The seemingly endless supply of white roses continued to rain down indiscriminately on the crowd, men carrying the nakhl and those who pressed all around them trying to get as close to it as they could. When they finally stopped and lowered the symbolic coffin to the ground, Sadoughi’s guards quickly hustled us out of the square, pushing men out of their way for the Imam Jomeh but leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves behind him as best we could. I thought that I might be trapped and even crushed, but I fought my way through like the others by pushing and shoving as hard as I could with nary an “excuse me” or “sorry,” and I noticed one Revolutionary Guard had kept an eye on me, presumably ready to come to the rescue if I proved to be less than capable with Iranian skills in moving through a crowd.

I breathed easily once outside the square, and near the cars ready to take us home, a group of men, brown mud caking their hair and foreheads and spatters of it on their black shirts, walked past.
“Khak-bar-saram”
was their message—“Dirt upon my head”—the uniquely Persian expression of surprised disapproval, or, if the
khak
is described as upon another’s head, of wishing that person, well,
dead
. Dirt, dust, or the earth, all khak (and where the word “khaki” comes from), on any Muslim’s head means he or she is dead and buried, and these men, and others I had seen all week with similar mud stains, were proclaiming that they would die for Hossein, that they wished death for themselves rather than the grief Hossein’s predicament caused them, and that they
meant
it. Well, maybe not quite, for Allah rarely grants them their wish.

In a downtown Tehran shopping district, flags and banners in vivid hues are offered to mark the annual Moharram religious festival.

The author’s maternal grandfather was a noted Ayatollah and theologian who taught many of today’s Ayatollahs at the University of Tehran, pictured here in the mid-1960s.

The author’s maternal family (his mother is second from left) is pictured taking tea in their typically Persian walled garden in the late 1940s.

The author’s paternal great-great-grandfather, Majd-ol-Olama (center), in paisley robe and turban, is pictured with former President Khatami’s maternal grandfather on his right, in Ardakan, Yazd province, in the early twentieth century. The two families have been intertwined in marriage for generations.

Former President Mohammad Khatami in his offices in the compound of Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, North Tehran, 2007

A woman affects a personal style along with her mandatory hijab, Yazd, 2005.

Schoolchildren crossing the street, Yazd, 2007. Schools in Iran are gender-segregated and all girls over the age of nine are required to wear the strict hijab.

Teenagers in recognizably Western dress at an outdoor café in the hills north of Tehran, 2005. Although it is technically illegal for unmarried girls and boys to socialize, Tehran youth comfortably ignore such Islamic regulations, even under a staunchly conservative government like Ahmadinejad’s.

The “Bobby Sands Hamburger” stand in North Tehran, 2005. The irony of naming a hamburger stand after a famous hunger striker is lost on most Iranians.