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

aragh sagee, vodka moonshine that he had bought from his black-market booze
seller Edvin, a ponytailed Armenian with muscly arms from years of lugging around boxes of bottles. Edvin did excellent business. He sold to everyone from civil servants to rich kids, and sales of wine in north Tehran had rocketed; most of it was the ubiquitous François Dulac plonk, but once a year he would sell some of his uncle’s delicious home-made wine. Making it was not risky for them, as being Armenian they are Christians, and so are allowed to produce alcohol for their own consumption.
Amir poured the drinks and they all started taking out the batteries of their mobile phones, having heard that their conversations can be tapped even when phones are turned off. Fereshteh, one of the journalists, read a text message she had been sent by Ershad, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance: WE REMIND ALL JOURNALISTS THAT SPIES ARE IN OUR MIDST, AND THOSE FRATERNIZING WITH THE BRITISH WILL BE CONSIDERED SPIES.
‘They’ve been going into overdrive with their messages recently. Our editor gets a phone call every day, either from intelligence or from the Ministry,’ said Bita, who worked as a reporter on a reformist newspaper that had been shut down countless times over the years. Recently, the papers had been receiving faxes and phone calls almost nightly with instructions on what was to be censored. Bita said intelligence was checking the entire contents of the paper before it was published.
‘Nourizad’s written another letter. Here we go again. When is he going to give up, they don’t even care about his letters any more,’ said Behzad, a civil engineer by day, blogger by night and Amir’s closest friend.
Mohammad Nourizad, an established film-maker and former journalist for the staunchly conservative regime mouthpiece, the Kayhan newspaper (whose director is appointed by Khamenei, the Supreme Leader), was once a favoured lackey of the Supreme Leader, his unctuous fawning causing some dissidents to snigger that he was a member of the Leader’s inner harem. But the protests changed everything; he wrote an outrageously brave, scathing letter to Khamenei, daring to criticize him and urging him to apologize to his people. Seventy days in solitary confinement did not manage to shut him up. Neither did interrogations and abuse. After 170 days in prison, he came out fighting, the only way he knew how: writing letters. No matter how much pressure the government put on him, he kept bouncing back. The letters never stopped, despite death threats. So the regime had taken to ignoring him. It was a good tactic, even if it was not meant as one, for soon people lost interest in his letters, frustrated at their lack of reaction. It was just another letter that would not change a thing.
‘And Khazali’s on another hunger strike, we’ve had a really hard time getting to him,’ said Mana, the human rights lawyer, who had seen several of her colleagues imprisoned in the last two years.
Mehdi Khazali was one of the government’s most ardent critics. A mild- mannered ophthalmologist who attended writing clubs and poetry readings, he was also an Islamic scholar and a committed blogger. Most controversially, he happened to be the son of one of the most right-wing, powerful and faithful clerics of the regime. Ayatollah Khazali had the exalted honour of being a member of the Assembly of Experts, a group of clerics charged with monitoring the Supreme Leader, and with the authority to dismiss him. The Ayatollah publicly denounced his son, who was sucked into a cycle of beatings and imprisonment. Meanwhile the Ayatollah’s younger son released a pop video. Such is life in Tehran.
Mana updated the group on another round of arrests of Baha’is, a religious minority in Iran that the state considers heretics. Despite the government declaring that Baha’is are not discriminated against, they are excluded from much of public life, including not being able to go to university, to have government jobs or be involved in politics.
The friends drank and talked and shared information until the early hours. Bahar arrived halfway through. She was not political, but she loved the idea of resistance, and always wanted to hear the group’s news. She had noticed that meetings were different now. More serious and contained, not like the ones they had at university when they would finish their sessions with riotous parties dancing to techno and popping ecstasy pills into their mouths.