Revolutionary Islam Reporter's Notebook:
Michael Goldfarb
The old saying that "Journalism is the first rough draft
of history" has always struck me as being more of a moral
call than a statement of fact. I fear the aftermath of September
11th proves the point. Over the years journalism has become
too reductive to offer much of a blueprint to historians. The
perpetual deadline created by 24-hour television news means
that the most basic facts are frequently incorrectly reported.
Estimated body counts are almost never accurate in the first
instance. Misquotations take on the currency of spoken truth.
The corrections of these errors never reach the public consciousness
with the same impact as the initial mistakes.
In an international crisis, the reductive tendency creates
misapprehension. It's common now for reporters to write or say
things like, "The Brits support us," or "the
Pakistanis are against this," as if a nation's political
systems were monoliths with one opinion. It's a kind of diplomatic
shorthand, a useful discourse in memo's from embassies back
to the State Department or at cocktail parties at the Council
on Foreign Relations but I'm not sure it has much value at this
time to a general audience. It would be so much more informative
and accurate to say "Britain's Labour Government thinks
this or that." The phrase "Britain's Labour Government"
implies multi-party politics which in turn suggests to the reader
or viewer that there isn't a monolithic view in British society.
As, indeed, there is not. Journalism tries to pack a lot into
a small space. Nuance is not a priority. But Accuracy always
is. When reporters reduce a complex situation too far then accuracy
goes out the window.
Anyway, it's noble to think that we journalists are writing
the first rough draft of history but I think that at best we
are just blind men describing an elephant. After spending a
month in Egypt and Iran this is what my bit of the elephant
looked like.
*
My first night in Tehran my translator and I went out to dinner.
We were joined by a friend of his. Like many upper-middle class
people in this city she had lived in Tehr-angeles (L.A. to you
and me) and wanted to talk about America. She suggested we go
to Tehran's best sushi restaurant. Yes, you can get good sushi
in Tehran. But as I had only just arrived in the Islamic Republic
of Iran I wanted to have real Persian food with real Persian
people. We went to a restaurant downtown that offered this prospect.
It was the kind of establishment that if Iran had a tourist
trade would be filled with package tourists getting a taste
of the "real" Persia. But in the absence of tourists
the natives were visiting a Kitsch version of their past.
The place was packed. A wedding supper was underway in one
part of the room, in another, a group was celebrating someone's
return from the Hajj, the trip to Mecca that all Muslims are
supposed to undertake once in a lifetime.
There was entertainment. An actor got up and recited Poetry.
Iranians love their poetry. They memorize Persian geniuses like
Omar Khayam and Hafez. Some of the diners recited the verses
along with the performer. The walls of the dining room were
painted with murals of comely maidens feeding grapes to a handsome
Persian prince. There was music. It was wonderfully rhythmic
stuff. But no one got up to dance. It's not allowed in public.
Although that doesn't mean that the music doesn't make people
move. At one table a dozen women were gently rolling their shoulders
to the beat. Their chadors moving like black waves on a wind-ruffled
lake.
The Islamic Revolution may have imposed puritanism on Iran's
public spaces but clearly in the Persian soul there was a sensuality
that could not be extinguished.
*
Tehran was a constant surprise. Before going there I had spent
two weeks in the Arab Republic of Egypt and assumed that the
Islamic Republic of Iran would be even more constrained by religion.
It wasn't. Tehran was as modern a place as I've visited in the
Middle East. The city is physically modern: plenty of high rise
buildings under construction and the roads are in better condition
than the roads in my current hometown of London. Under the chador,
it is in many respects socially modern as well.
Cairo is different. It is wonderful, but it is a wreck. Even
the wealthy neighborhoods seem to be decrepit. The city must
have been beautiful once, but now, like an attractive woman
in late middle age whose bone structure is all that remains
of her youthful loveliness, Cairo looks best in the half-light
of sunset or dawn. During the day, this city of 16 million is
choked by auto pollution mingled with sand from the Sahara and
stubble burning from the peasant farms that occupy the narrow
strips of arable land between the city's sprawl and the desert.
You can eat the air with a spoon.
While people in Iran are subtly throwing off the Revolution's
puritanism from within, in Egypt they seem to be trying to impose
those very principles on the society. I got to Cairo just after
midnight on a wonderfully warm October evening. I sat in the
courtyard of my hotel with a colleague from London who had been
born and lived in Alexandria until he was 16. My friend was
telling me about the changes in the country since he was growing
up. "The biggest change is Islamism by stealth," he
said. Just then, a waiter came up and asked us if we would like
something to drink. We both ordered beers and my colleague then
engaged the waiter in a fairly lengthy Arabic conversation.
I asked him what he was talking about. Apparently the waiter
had asked him if he was Egyptian. None of your business, had
been my friend's reply. Well, if you are Egyptian I won't serve
you a beer, the waiter said. Because tomorrow is a Muslim holiday
and Egyptians shouldn't drink.
Islamism by stealth, indeed.
*
Another difference between Iran and Egypt is in religious esthetics.
The Persian Muezzins sing the call to prayer and chant the Koran
with exquisite musical feeling. Egypt muezzins are increasingly
trained in Saudi Arabia where the style is much more austere,
practically un-musical. The Mosques in Iran are absolutely magnificent,
those in Egypt are by and large not very interesting. Even Cairo's
ancient al-Azhar mosque lacks the domed grandeur we associate
with classic Islamic architecture.
The shrine of Imam Reza in Iran's Holy City of Mashad is a
bit of heaven on earth. The shrine is Iran's Lourdes, a place
of pilgrimage. Sooner or later all Iranians come here, whether
they pray five times a day, or not at all. People come to pray
for health, young married couples come to pray for fertility,
women fly to Mashad to give birth in the holy city.
The thousand year old shrine is a series of courtyards built
around a central space between two domed chapels. One dome is
sky blue, the other is covered in pure gold. To get to this
inner sanctum you go through a series of courtyards. In the
center of each courtyard is a fountain. The walls of the courtyards
are covered in intricate blue and gold mosaics like the patterns
on a Persian carpet.
The sarcophagus of Imam Reza nestles under the Golden Dome
inside a massive box made of golden lattice-work. To get into
the chamber you have to pass through twenty foot high doors
made of finely-worked gold. Hundreds press through the massive
doors while thousands pray outside waiting their turn. Fathers
pass their sons over people's heads to slide money and messages
inside the sarcophagus's grill. Murmured prayers fill the room
with a sound like an unseen waterfall heard from somewhere deep
in a forest.
You sit on a carpet in the open-space between the two domes
listening to the waterfall of prayer. Occasionally snow-white
doves fly from one dome to the other. Even an infidel feels
transported here, in Omar Khayyam's phrase "heaven were
near enow."
*
My last night in Tehran I was invited to a party and found the
answer to the central mystery confronting a first time visitor
to Iran. What do women wear under their chadors? The answer
is they wear some pretty terrific clothes. The young women at
this gathering wore some stunning variations on the little black
cocktail dress. To my way of thinking they were slightly overdressed
for a get together at someone's house.
They were decked for a major scene at the hippest place in town.
But, of course, there is no hip and happening bar in Tehran
and even if there were women can't dress like this in public.
But if a girl's got it she should flaunt it wherever she can.
And these young women were showing their style and their moves.
There was music and dancing, really wonderful dancing. The dancers
movements combined what you would see 20-somethings doing at
any dance party in America with hand gestures that imitated
classic poses from Persian art. There was also the same shoulder
rolling I noted at the restaurant my first night in town. But
it looked less like a wave when the shoulder was naked than
when it was covered by a chador.
*
Anyway, the next time you read a report from one of these
countries that includes the reductive language I was complaining
about at the start -- "The Iranians are against this,"
or "The Egyptians demand that" -- perhaps you'll remember
these little blind man's observations and think that both countries
are more complex than the reporter is telling you.
