The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran by Hooman Majd
Authors: Hooman Majd
Tags: General, Social Science, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, International Relations
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pride. He refused to appeal or challenge the verdict against him, refused to hire an attorney and press his case that he deserved his pension, if not his good name back, because pride toldhim he mustn’t demean himself. Pride told him that somehow his inquisitors would be embarrassed by his refusal to challenge them; they would realize by his silence that they had been mistaken in their treatment of him and would eventually come around and offer their apologies along with all his back pay. Of course, that was never to happen; nor did anyone at the Foreign Ministry give a damn at the time, or even now.
But I do sometimes wonder, more than twenty years into the sulk, if my father hadn’t been right all along. For every time I’ve had a meeting at the ministry, the older diplomats—and even some younger ones who have studied the history of Iran’s diplomacy—praise my father for his impeccable reputation and even his honor. I remind them that he lives in a small flat in London and hasn’t been paid in over thirty years; the only response, as is not atypical in Iran, is an awkward, even uncomfortable smile—one that would have given my father great satisfaction in his sulk, if he had ever seen it.
The various forms of sulking have always been a part of the Iranian national character. In my own family, which I’ve hardly ever thought of as dysfunctional, sulks have been plentiful—one or another members of my extended family, especially those in Iran, aren’t speaking to some other member at any given time—and it’s often hard to keep track of who is not speaking to whom, over what particular slight. But sulking is also common among friends, in business, and of course at the highest levels in politics, since way before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eleven-day public fit of pique.
Mohammad Mossadeq, the oil-nationalizing prime minister who was famously overthrown in a CIA-MI6 coup in 1953, was given to fits of pique, too, and was often portrayed in the West, particularly in the British papers, as an emotionally unstable person who would faint, retreat to his bed in pajamas, and generally appear to act likea stubborn child if he didn’t get his way or if he wanted to make a point. Time magazine even said, in a report published in 1951, “Better than most modern statesmen, Iran’s Premier Mohammed Mossadegh knows the value of the childlike tantrum.” Time editors understood the value of a tantrum, or a sulk, but surely didn’t understand its part in the Iranian character. Years before his tenure as prime minister and on the world stage, in 1919, he had sulked all the way to self-imposed exile in Switzerland, so offended was he that Iran had agreed to a treaty with Great Britain that gave the colonial empire control over his country’s finances and armed forces. He returned home only after the Majles, the parliament, rejected the treaty, something he had worked feverishly against while abroad. But Mossadeq’s behavior was never a shock to Iranians, who understand the value of a good sulk, not even to the shah, who fled to Rome before returning to reclaim his throne almost reluctantly, and whose criticisms of Mossadeq, before and after the coup, didn’t include questioning his rival’s proclivity to petulance.
Yes, the big sulk that attracted the world’s attention in 2011 had been preceded by Iranian sulks of all kinds, but none greater than the sulk by the Islamic Revolution itself, directed at the United States. No one has really thought of it as a sulk, but the strained relationship, or lack of relationship, between the United States and Iran fits with the Iranian temperament. In a sulk, usually the sulking party wants the other to come to admit its offense, its mistakes, and to correct its behavior. By sulking, the Iranian party also presumes that the other party needs, and will miss, it more than it needs the other. That has been Iran’s position vis-à-vis the United States ever since the hostage crisis of
But I do sometimes wonder, more than twenty years into the sulk, if my father hadn’t been right all along. For every time I’ve had a meeting at the ministry, the older diplomats—and even some younger ones who have studied the history of Iran’s diplomacy—praise my father for his impeccable reputation and even his honor. I remind them that he lives in a small flat in London and hasn’t been paid in over thirty years; the only response, as is not atypical in Iran, is an awkward, even uncomfortable smile—one that would have given my father great satisfaction in his sulk, if he had ever seen it.
The various forms of sulking have always been a part of the Iranian national character. In my own family, which I’ve hardly ever thought of as dysfunctional, sulks have been plentiful—one or another members of my extended family, especially those in Iran, aren’t speaking to some other member at any given time—and it’s often hard to keep track of who is not speaking to whom, over what particular slight. But sulking is also common among friends, in business, and of course at the highest levels in politics, since way before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eleven-day public fit of pique.
Mohammad Mossadeq, the oil-nationalizing prime minister who was famously overthrown in a CIA-MI6 coup in 1953, was given to fits of pique, too, and was often portrayed in the West, particularly in the British papers, as an emotionally unstable person who would faint, retreat to his bed in pajamas, and generally appear to act likea stubborn child if he didn’t get his way or if he wanted to make a point. Time magazine even said, in a report published in 1951, “Better than most modern statesmen, Iran’s Premier Mohammed Mossadegh knows the value of the childlike tantrum.” Time editors understood the value of a tantrum, or a sulk, but surely didn’t understand its part in the Iranian character. Years before his tenure as prime minister and on the world stage, in 1919, he had sulked all the way to self-imposed exile in Switzerland, so offended was he that Iran had agreed to a treaty with Great Britain that gave the colonial empire control over his country’s finances and armed forces. He returned home only after the Majles, the parliament, rejected the treaty, something he had worked feverishly against while abroad. But Mossadeq’s behavior was never a shock to Iranians, who understand the value of a good sulk, not even to the shah, who fled to Rome before returning to reclaim his throne almost reluctantly, and whose criticisms of Mossadeq, before and after the coup, didn’t include questioning his rival’s proclivity to petulance.
Yes, the big sulk that attracted the world’s attention in 2011 had been preceded by Iranian sulks of all kinds, but none greater than the sulk by the Islamic Revolution itself, directed at the United States. No one has really thought of it as a sulk, but the strained relationship, or lack of relationship, between the United States and Iran fits with the Iranian temperament. In a sulk, usually the sulking party wants the other to come to admit its offense, its mistakes, and to correct its behavior. By sulking, the Iranian party also presumes that the other party needs, and will miss, it more than it needs the other. That has been Iran’s position vis-à-vis the United States ever since the hostage crisis of
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