Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino: Review
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Ira Lapidus, Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino: Review, bahai-library.com.
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Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino:

Review

Ira Lapidus

published in New York Times

2000-09-27

Review of: Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran

Written by: Elaine Sciolino

Published by: The Free Press, 2001

Review by: Ira Lapidus

Review published in: New York Times (2000-09)

Finding the Seeds of Hope in a Society of Paradoxes

By IRA LAPIDUS

For many Americans, Iran conjures up the hostage crisis, terrorism,
the crowds chanting "death to America" and the fierce Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini denouncing the United States and Israel.

Elaine Sciolino shows a different Iran. More than 20 years of visits,
interviews, encounters and analyses have given Ms. Sciolino, a senior
correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, her
deep and wide-ranging insights. Her perceptive book "Persian Mirrors:
The Elusive Face of Iran" conveys the diversity of Iranians and the
subtleties, dilemmas and contradictions of their society today. Iran
is not easy to know well, but Ms. Sciolino knows it intimately. Its
people are warm and welcoming, but do not reveal themselves readily.
Conversation, she reports, is full of politeness, self-abnegation,
hypocrisy and lying, all to avoid offense and loss of face. What
happens can be accepted, but talking about it is taboo if it strips
away dignity and honor. Ms. Sciolino succeeds because she has
unraveled a difficult code of cultural expectations.

She is particularly sensitive to Iranian women. "There is an unspoken
bond among us that transcends culture, history, nationality and
language," she writes. She shows both their helplessness and their
power. In public life Iran's women must not be visible. Their heads
and bodies must be covered. They may be beaten for violations of
these rules. In private and family matters, Islamic law puts them at
a disadvantage. Although it is easy for a man to obtain a divorce, a
woman can get one only in extreme circumstances, and the husband is
given custody of all but the youngest children. Husbands can also
take second wives or arrange "temporary marriages," which are
religiously acceptable. Nonetheless, women fill almost all the roles
of a modern society. More than half of Iranian university students
are women. Women work, drive, own property, have access to birth
control and vote. Moreover, the book notes, women "are experts in
finding ways around the constraints of the male-dominated system."
Ms. Sciolino found everything from gender-segregated parties to
beauty salons to a woman who ran a gambling business in her
apartment, where women in low-cut dresses drank and danced to
heavy-metal music.

This activity is very dangerous. There is always the possibility of
an unexpected intrusion by the morals police, perhaps just to extort
a bribe, perhaps to arrest the participants. The insecurity is deeply
resented.

Women also show extraordinary courage in fighting the system. Azam
Taleghani, the publisher of the weekly newspaper Payam-e Hajar, is
committed to Islam and the revolution but challenges clerical ideas
of male supremacy and promotes a more feminist interpretation of the
Koran. Another activist, Faezeh Hashemi, published a newspaper until
it was banned and now promotes sports programs to combat depression
among women and to encourage them to fight for their rights.

Minorities do not fare well at all, but are nonetheless loyal to the
Iran of their ideals. Zoroastrians and Christians are barely
tolerated. Jews are accepted in business, medicine, engineering and
law, but anti-Semitism is widespread, and the government maintains
incessant anti-Israeli propaganda. Bahá'ís are persecuted
relentlessly. Their marriages are not recognized by the state. Their
property has been confiscated. They have been expelled from the
universities and many have been executed. But even under this
pressure, the religious minorities are loyal. Jews — Persian is their
native language — feel profoundly, truly Iranian. And a Bahá'í
engineer says: "I am Iranian. I love this country."

Courage and love are essential because the authorities are powerful
and oppressive. The clerical establishment, headed by the supreme
leader, now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, controls the judiciary and large
sectors of the economy. A vast apparatus of military, police,
intelligence officers, morals enforcers and organized vigilantes is
used to crush drugs, gambling, homosexuality, prostitution, rape,
murder, spying, counter-revolutionary activities and "sowing
corruption on earth." Above all, it punishes women for being
improperly dressed in public. Recently Iranian journalists and
students have been beaten and killed.

Still, the authorities have not been able to check the demand for a
transformation of the Islamic Republic into an Islamic democracy.
There is a vigorous though embattled press. Guardedly, young people,
women and intellectuals, including many liberal clerics, struggle for
the future. Recent elections gave 70 percent of the seats in
parliament to liberals, but they are still paralyzed by the powers of
the conservatives, and it is not yet clear who will win. Although the
struggle is sometimes framed as a conflict between Persian and
Islamic identities, religion and popular culture, clerical rule and
freedom, dictatorship and democracy, in this supple and sophisticated
country even liberals accept the Islamic state. Looking beneath the
surface, Ms. Sciolino makes us aware of deeper currents flowing
toward political compromise and synthesis.

Iranians, she points out, have a love-hate relationship with the
United States. In politics it is the Satan that opposed Iran in the
war with Iraq, shot down a civilian airliner, orchestrated an embargo
and sides with Israel. Yet America, avidly consumed on television,
audio and videocassettes and computer software, is the country of
Iranian dreams. It embodies their fantasies of a good life. American
relations with this fascinating nation hold unanticipated
possibilities.

Through the eyes of Ms. Sciolino, we see a culture of paradoxes: a
nation that is open and welcoming but remains hidden and mysterious;
a clerical dictatorship but one of the Middle East's liveliest
democracies; a puritanical regime but a people who love everyday
life; a severe orthodoxy but an expressive cinema and an
argumentative press; a state that makes control of women its first
concern but whose women are powerful as personalities and even
subversive; a revolution that has rejected secularism but a nation
heading toward a fusion of Islamic and Persian identities.
First and foremost, Ms. Sciolino shows Iranians as human beings
trying to cope with an unusual and very difficult situation. For this
wise perspective the reader is grateful.

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-- Persian Mirrors, by Elaine Sciolino: Review (Used by permission of the curator)