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

Jomhouri Street, downtown Tehran, March 2013

It was dark by the time Amir got home. Without turning on the lights, he slumped on his sofa and stared at the shadows flickering on the wall.
‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all afternoon, I was so worried.’ Bahar’s gentle voice on his mobile.
‘I’m sorry darling. Something came up. I’ll tell you when I see you.’
She did not press him for more details. She was careful of what she said on the phone, especially since his meeting with ettela’at.
Amir fell in love with Bahar the instant he saw her. Within days they were making love. Within a month she was the only outsider who knew Amir’s secret. The only person who knew his lies.
Bahar Azimi wore no make-up, which made her all the more striking. She was short and curvy with glossy black curly hair. A warm, round face; big brown eyes, big mouth, big smile and big laugh. She read books; devoured them, one after another. She lived for the arts – theatre, films and music. She worked hard. Money and class did not impress her. She could be evasive but found it hard to lie. She loved to party and get drunk with her friends, she loved Metallica, Radiohead, Zero 7 and Zedbazi, an underground Iranian band that sang about drugs and sex (and who had all left the country). Her friends were relatively new, students she had met at the Islamic Azad University where she had studied art. At first her fellow students suspected she was a shahrestaan girl, small-town girl, who had left everything behind for the big smoke; her polite manner and humility did not seem to belong in the city. But soon they realized that she was too proud to be the kind of girl who was ashamed of her roots. And shahrestaan girls usually went one of two ways – either wild at their new-found freedom or creeping like mice across this frightening, vast landscape, fearful of stepping into its traps. Bahar Azimi was neither wild nor fearful. She was unexpectedly independent, which made some fearful of her. But the arts faculty attracted free spirits and beatniks, the kind of people who embraced Bahar and were intrigued by her individualism. For the first time, Bahar felt she belonged.
Bahar had grown up in a different world from the one which she now inhabited. To be precise, just over five miles farther south of the most southerly end of Vali Asr, on the very outskirts of the city. Shahr-e Rey was already a city when Tehran was just a collection of villages. Parts of it still look the same as
they did hundreds of years ago. It is a poor and fiercely conserv-ative place that has been gobbled up by south Tehran. Bahar’s parents were strict namaaz roozeh-ee, ‘prayer and fasting’ types, observant Muslims with traditional values. Nearly everyone in Bahar’s school came from families who wore the chador; Bahar’s parents expected her to wear it. But she refused. She battled with them for the smallest liberties: to sit in a coffee shop, which they deemed unbefitting of a young woman; to not wear hejab in front of her male relatives; to chat with ease with local boys. Her parents argued back with even more force: she was jeopardizing the family’s honour; what would the neighbours think? Her home life was miserable. A couple of other girls at school felt the same as she: none of them was sure where this defiance and independence came from; they were all too poor to have satellite televisions and laptops. It was just the way they had been born. And maybe Bahar would have been forced to conform, if it had not been for a liberal-minded teacher who, recognizing her spark, encouraged her, giving her books to read that revealed the world outside. Gabriel García Márquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude; George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Bahar had two dreams: to get out of Shahr-e Rey and to be financially independent so she would not have to depend on her parents and be forced to live by their rules. Bahar Azimi was a rare, strange creature in Tehran.
Amir had met Bahar at a film club. It was a weekly event held by a friend who had a projector and a dazzling collection of DVDs. They were delivered to him every month by a middle-aged film-fanatic hawker. He would turn up in a suit carrying a large black holdall stuffed with hundreds of films. Most Tehranis wanted comedy, but he had everything, from forties film noir to French art house. He always carried a stash of his two bestsellers that old and young alike requested: The Godfather and Dai Jan Napelon – ‘My Uncle Napoleon’ – a classic Iranian television series from the s that had been adapted from a book and was banned after the revolution. The premise of the story is a suspicious fart, and lines from the book and the series had worked their way into everyday vernacular, a favourite being ‘going to San Francisco’ – a euphemism for having sex. All the hawker’s films were 3,000 tomans – one dollar – each. He also sold the latest Hollywood releases, sometimes before they even made it to the cinemas in America and Europe. The copies came from China and Malaysia and were perfect, apart from those that had a FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION message that occasionally flicked up on the screen.
The first thing Bahar noticed about Amir was his smiling eyes above a big, strong nose. His face was soft and delicate, something he tried to disguise with a
goatee beard. That night, Amir and Bahar learnt that they seemed to agree on everything, even sharing their favourite film, The Double Life of Véronique. They thought Iranian films were overrated and pretentious, apart from Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, a gritty, realistic portrait of a disintegrating marriage and class conflicts in Tehran; they laughed at how Western critics were seduced by the heavy-handed symbolism in art house Iranian films.
For their first date they went to the Ta’atr-e Shahr, Tehran City Theatre, on Vali Asr and saw David Mamet’s Oleanna. It was a special place for Amir; it was one of the few clear memories he had of his father, and his first memory of Tehran. He was five years old and they had walked up Vali Asr, Amir in awe of its enormity. It was the most beautiful road Amir had ever seen, trees like giant soldiers standing to attention. Now the spines of the trees were crooked with age but Amir still felt small under their branches. After the theatre, Amir drove them to a coffee shop owned by the son of a Pole, one of over 100,000 starving Poles released from Soviet captivity and granted sanctuary in Iran during the Second World War. They had laughed when his white Pride, the country’s cheapest and best-selling car, would not start. They drank cappuccinos, ate cake and talked for hours. Tentatively they began to share simple truths about each other’s lives. They held hands and stared into each other’s eyes, unable to do more in public. Afterwards they drove into a dark side street where they kissed for hours.
Little had changed between them since then, even though life had not been easy. Amir had struggled to find a job after university. When times got hard, he worked as a taxi driver, relentlessly chugging through stagnant traffic for little more than blackened snot, aching lungs and a few dollars a day. He finally got a job as a photographer’s assistant. The pay was just enough to get by. Bahar worked as a graphic designer and freelanced as an English translator. She had moved straight from university halls of residence to her own apartment, which was unusual for a girl in her early twenties, especially for a girl from Shahr-e Rey. Her parents had been devastated, because women who live on their own have reputations. Few landlords would rent to a young, unmarried woman. Many advertisements in the newspapers specified: Will not rent to single women. She hated turning up to viewings, in case the landlord was male and would try his luck, which happened often. Some thought she must be a working girl. She now paid 700,000 tomans, just over 200 US dollars a month, for a one-bedroom flat near where Amir lived, in the centre of the city, just where Jomhouri Street is bisected by Vali Asr. Over time, Bahar’s parents came to accept their daughter had different ideas for her life; they visited, packing her fridge with never-
ending supplies of food. Amir had tried to convince her to live together, but it would have been too risky and a secret too difficult to keep from her parents; they had discussed marriage but Bahar said she was not ready.

Amir did not turn the lights on until Bahar arrived. He wanted to postpone reality for as long as he could. His mouth still felt dry. The old man’s face kept appearing in his head. He needed to tell Bahar everything, the only person he could talk to.

She stood at the door beaming. Her smile had a life of its own, as though it were about to burst off her face, her beautiful lips stretched from ear to ear.
‘I got it, I got it!’ she was squealing with joy. ‘Got what?’
‘The scholarship!’ Amir’s throat tightened. ‘You’re not even smiling.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s amazing.’ The scholarship to an American university had hung over them like a cloud for the past year.
‘Just…what does that mean for us?’
‘That you’ll come with me, stupid.’ Bahar grabbed his face in her hands. ‘I’ve told you, I’m not ready.’
She dropped her arms by her sides. ‘What do you mean you’re not ready? I just don’t understand. You say you hate it here, but you’re too scared to leave.’
‘Bahar, what will I do there? How the hell am I going to get a visa?’ ‘We can get married.’ Bahar’s voice was shrinking.
‘You’re living in a bubble. It’s impossible getting a visa these days. And I want to get married because we both want it, not for a visa.’
Bahar began to cry. ‘But I don’t want to lose you. I won’t go.’
‘No.’ He almost shouted it. Bahar was sobbing now. He held her tight.
‘This is your chance. What chance do we have here? I’ll come. I promise. I just need time, and I’ll save up and I’ll get a visa.’
The pizza deliveryman arrived. They barely ate. Bahar broke the silence.
‘You said you were going to tell me something…they haven’t called again have they?’ Amir paused. Bahar was already upset. His news would make her feel guilty. Anyway, what was the point? She was leaving.
‘No. Nothing happened. I went walking, up the mountains. I forgot my phone.
I just needed to get away.’ It was the first time he had lied to Bahar.