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

Chapter Two: Somayeh

Somayeh’s story is based on that of a woman who wishes to remain anonymous; her relationship, from marriage to divorce, is as she explained it to me, including descriptions of her physical appearance and her dress. Conversations between Somayeh and her friends are conversations heard between girls of the same age group and from the same conservative families as Somayeh, or they are conversations recounted by Somayeh. Political conversations between the men were conversations I listened to in her area as well as conversations in a mahzar notary office shortly after Rouhani’s election victory. I also interviewed several women in their fifties from conservative families for a full picture of Somayeh’s mother, Fatemeh, and Fatemeh’s friends.
Somayeh is currently living with her parents and her daughter. She told me she does feel lust from time to time, but she fights it hard, the only way she knows how, with fasting and prayers. Suitors come for her, but her neighbours and family were all right about one thing: none of them have been prepared to accept Somayeh with her little girl. Somayeh has said another nazr prayer, asking for a good husband who will love her daughter. She believes God and
Imam Zaman will come good, as they have always done. She believes she is in store for another miracle.
Number of satellite television receivers in Iran: Asr Iran news website, quoting Javad Arianmanesh, 24 November 2008. Mullah condemns 3G mobile Internet service: ISNA (Iranian Students’ News Agency), 10 February 2013. For social history after the revolution, see Ervand Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 180. The cleric discussing virgins in paradise on television was quoted on the IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) 3, Samteh Khodah (Towards God) programme. The Supreme Leader’s response to the question about masturbation is from his website, question number 786: farsi.khamenei.ir/. Dubbing actors arrested: ISNA, 18 December 2012. Number of marriages ending in divorce: Etemaad newspaper, 29 April 2013, p. 13.