In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs - Christopher Bellaigue de

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promote virtue and prevent vice. It meant implementing Islamic law and practices, eradicating decadent ways of behaving. It meant starting at the bottom of society. He and the gang started hanging around parks and shopping centres. They would approach boys who were chatting to girls and ask, ‘What is your relationship? Is this woman your sister? Why are you talking to her?’ If they got an unsatisfactory answer, they’d hustle the boy away and tear off a few shirt buttons. They’d tell the girl: ‘Bleached jeans are a sign of American cultural corruption. Go home and put on Islamic clothes.’

      The ban on booze was hitting the alcoholics. Liquor prices had rocketed. Every morning, a park or a vacant lot yielded up a new body, full of petrol, turpentine, meths – anything they could get their hands on. Mr Zarif felt that society was being cleansed, spewing harmful matter. He was learning Arabic, the language of the Holy Qoran.

      Sometimes, he and his lads caught boys and girls flirting in shops, under the cover of deciding on a purchase. Mr Zarif and the gang would smash the windows of shops where such things went on and spoil some of the merchandise. If they saw girls flouncing in a park, they seized their handbags and tipped out the contents. ‘Who do you wear make-up for?’ they demanded. ‘What is that music cassette you’ve bought? Haven’t you heard what the Imam said about Western culture?’ If they came across a young man wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, they said: ‘Your hair is longer than Islam permits. Everyone should groom himself as the Prophet did. Here; let us cut it for you.’

      They would deliver serious offenders to the boys at the mosque. The boys would consult one of the mullahs and get a sentence passed. Whippings would be administered, in accordance with Islamic law. The gang’s effectiveness was enhanced by the recruitment of two middle-aged women with long nails; they seemed to enjoy scratching the faces of pretty girls who were resistant to the Islamic dress code.

      The doorbell rings. It’s the Zarifs. We’ve cooked Indian food, because we reckon that Mr and Mrs Zarif should be open to new experiences.

      Not too new. Bita is wearing her headscarf. She’s careful not to put out her hand to shake Mr Zarif’s. She helps Mrs Zarif get out of her black chador for outdoors, and into her colourful indoor chador. Mr and Mrs Zarif look around for indoor slippers to put on. But we don’t ask people to take off their shoes when they enter our house. There aren’t any slippers available. Mr and Mrs Zarif take off their shoes and walk on in their socks.

      ‘What a house!’ they both say it at the same time. They look at Bita. (She’s the interior designer.)

      The hall is burgundy. (My father-in-law says it looks like a nightclub.) There is a batik wall hanging depicting the Hindu goddess Durga, wearing a necklace of human skulls.

      The sitting room is two shades of tangerine. There’s a picture of a woman in a bright red dress and a challenging stare, standing next to an androgyne with diaphanous blue skin and yellow hair. There are red-backed chairs and an Indian sari turned into curtains, and a dark green sofa from the 1940s, and a green tribal tunic with red paisley lining put in a frame and attached to the wall. The bolsters are richly coloured and patterned. There are riotous Baktiari carpets, Armenian rugs.

      Mr Zarif is wearing a grey shirt, and grey trousers, and white socks. His house has white walls.

      As we sit down to eat, I wonder whether he ever threw acid in the face of a girl who had red on her lips, or hair escaping from her headscarf.

      Three examples:

      When the taxi driver offered us tea and cigarettes, and we refused, this was ta’aruf. He had no intention of giving us tea and cigarettes, and we reacted accordingly. A man may propose that his son marry the daughter of his impoverished younger brother without having any intention of permitting the match; the son is already engaged to the daughter of an ayatollah, and the brother’s daughter is a repulsive dwarf. But the quintessence of ta’aruf can be found in the behaviour of a mullah I once observed entering a Tehran hospital in the company of several other men. As the mullah crossed the threshold, he said to the men waiting behind him, ‘After you.’

      If, through some mistake or misunderstanding, an offer extended through ta’aruf is accepted, it will be retroactively countermanded. I remember reading somewhere of a foreigner who was arrested for theft after being denounced by a shopkeeper who had repeatedly refused to take his money.

       CHAPTER THREE A Sacred Calling

      One morning in the autumn I found myself in the back seat of a stationary taxi, facing due south, inhaling exhaust fumes. The authorities call this road an autobahn, because it’s meant to be quick and efficient. They have flanked it with lush verges on which they squander the city’s meagre water resources. I don’t think the former mayor, Ghollam-Hossein Karbaschi, who built this and most of Tehran’s other freeways, listened to foreign experts when he was drawing up his ideas on public transport. Had he done so, he would have learned that more asphalt does not lead to less traffic, but to more. Karbaschi’s urban arteries do not race. They loop clownishly. During the rush hour they atrophy.

      On the car radio, a woman greeted us. ‘To all you respected drivers and dear, dear bureaucrats, to you conscientious teachers and workmen, I say: Salaam and good morning! To all the beloved professors and students of the Islamic world, I say: Good morning!’

      According to the scientists, we in Tehran take in seven and a half times the amount of carbon monoxide that is considered safe. This information starts to mean something only after ten days or two weeks without rain, without wind. One morning, you look towards the Alborz Mountains and they’re not there. Rather, they’re impressionistically there. They’re lurking behind a haze that’s pink-grey, like the gills of an old fish. If you go out for long, you get cruel headaches for which lemon juice and olives are the recommended cures. Windless weekdays are said to carry away scores of old people, all of them poisoned. In the town centre, there’s a pollution meter whose optimistic readings, naturally, no one believes. The sunsets look like nuclear winters.

      The woman speaking on the radio sounded as if she was on LSD. She said: ‘I think it would be a good idea for us to perform some simple acts that enable us to start the day in fine fettle. If the window of the car you’re in is closed against the cool of the morning, start by asking the driver if he would mind winding it down. Actually, why don’t I ask him myself? “Mr Driver? Would you mind lowering your window a little?” And to all those housewives at home, I say: open the window a bit, the weather’s splendid!’

      Tehran has too many cars and not enough buses. There’s a plan to replace fifteen thousand elderly taxis. There’s a plan to give out loans so that taxi drivers

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