City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran

Muharram Month of mourning for Imam Hossein and the first month of the Islamic calendar


nazr A Shia tradition, a nazr prayer is a wish to God in return for helping the poor and needy. Prayers are usually made to God through one of the imams


Qajar The ruling dynasty of Iran from 1796 to 1925


regimey A supporter or member of the Islamic regime


roo-farshee Translates as ‘on the carpet’, meaning house shoes


sazman Organization. Also refers to the MEK

SOURCES

Whenever possible, I have used the characters’ own words and language; many conversations and episodes that have been recounted to me have been written verbatim. Where inner thoughts have been conveyed, these have been written as they were explained to me by the interviewees. Descriptions of characters are, obviously, my own viewpoint.

All quotations from the Koran are taken from The Holy Qur-an, English translation of the meanings and commentary (King Fahd Holy Qur-an Printing Complex).

Preface

Tehran’s population is from the University of Tehran website: www.ut.ac.ir/en/contents/About-tehran/About.Tehran.html

Prologue

The history of Vali Asr: Dariush Shabaazi, Bargh-hayee az Tareekh-e Tehran (Notes on the History of Tehran) (Saless, 2011), pp. 353–4. The destruction of trees on Vali Asr: World Cultural Heritage Voices, ‘Suspicious Removal of Trees on a Major Road of Tehran’, 24 July 2013.

Chapter One: Dariush

Dariush’s story is mostly based on my interviews with an ex-MEK member, who has spoken publicly of his MEK mission to Tehran to kill a former Tehran police chief. I have also used details provided by two other former MEK members living in Tehran and merged them with this man’s story. Interviews with these former members also provided the details of the arrival in the country, family background, the MEK handler and the gun-runner. I have changed a few details of Dariush’s assassination attempt. Descriptions of MEK meetings in the US are from current MEK supporters based outside Iran.
Current MEK members and some activists accuse the man on whose story this is based of being a regime spy, even though he left Iran after the protests of 2009
and has been granted asylum in another country.
Members of the MEK claim that since 2001 the group no longer sends its members for missions to Iran; instead they are chosen from an existing network already in the country. Between 2008 and 2013, five Iranians, said to be nuclear scientists, were executed on the streets of Tehran by assassins on motorbikes. The Iranian government says it is the work of the MEK with support from Israel. Camp Ashraf was stormed by Iraqi troops in 2011, killing at least thirty-six people. It has since been closed down and about 3,000 MEK members were relocated to Camp Liberty in north-eastern Baghdad. They have come under rocket attack several times; a leader of the Shia militia Mukhtar Army has
admitted responsibility.
The MEK was on the US list of terrorist organizations until September 2012, when it was delisted. There is talk within the MEK of re-establishing its military wing with a powerful army, recruiting from around the world.
For the MEK see Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin (Yale University Press, 1989), p. 1; on MEK weddings at Camp Ashraf, Masoud Banisadr, Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (Saqi, 2004), p. 311. The MEK bomb in Haft-e Tir is from Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi‘i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi‘ism (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 295.