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

Chapter Four: Bijan

Bijan’s character and details of his family life are based on one man. Details of crimes and criminal operations are based on the testimonies of several men introduced to me by Bijan. For obvious reasons, all locations have been changed. Nearly all conversations in this chapter are as I heard them spoken between Bijan and his group of friends and local gangsters, apart from conversations with the police chief – to be clear, the police chief was never present. The figure of one million US dollars’ ransom money is from a friend of a friend who was kidnapped – this amount was paid by his family for his release.
On Iranians in Japan see Roger Goodman, Ceri Peach, Ayumi Takenaka, Paul White, Global Japan: The Experience of Japan’s New Immigrant and Overseas
Communities (Routledge, 2009), pp. 12, 161.
On drugs: the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) report, Transnational Organised Crime in East Asia and the Pacific, A Threat Assessment, April 2013, p. 68, states that in 2010 the Islamic Republic of Iran ranked fourth in the world for licit pseudoephedrine imports (www.unodc.org/documents/southeastasiaandpacific//Publications/2013/TOCTA
); Iran as fifth-highest consumer of crystal meth in the world, Tabnak news website, quoting Saeed Safaeeyan, 1 October 2013; champion wrestler tested positive for D-methamphetamine, Donya-e Eqtesad newspaper, article naming Alireza Gharibi, 23 June 2006. The figures for crystal meth labs in Tehran are from Hamshahri Online, quoting Morteza Tamadon, Tehran governor, 1 August 2013 (referring to 2012 and the first three months of 2013); popularity of sheesheh, Fars news agency, 5 March 2013 and Khabar Online, 5 February 2012; government claim to arrest thirty drug dealers and addicts every hour, Mehr news agency, 1 April 2013 and Bahar newspaper, 13 January 2013.
‘This is Tehran / A city that tempts you till it saps your soul / And makes you see you were always meant to be / Nothing more than dirt’, translated into English from ‘Ekhtelaf’ from the album ‘Jangale Asfalt’ (‘Asphalt Jungle’) by Iranian rapper Hichkas.
Special treatment for Basij students: Mehr news agency, 18 May 2010 and Hamshahri Online, 9 July 2008, article by Mina Shahni, quoting Reza Sahrai, Director of Higher Education, Martyrs’ Foundation.