The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran by Hooman Majd Page A
Authors: Hooman Majd
Tags: General, Social Science, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, International Relations
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1979, if not from the moment Ayatollah Khomeini set foot in Tehran nine months before.
Certainly many Iranians harbor a deep-rooted antagonism towardthe United States, which they view as the successor to the British Empire in the Middle East, especially since the 1953 coup removed the democratically elected prime minister, Mossadeq, in favor of the shah, who then, with the full backing of the United States, built a security state and a secret police that tortured and jailed many of the revolutionaries in power today. But those very same revolutionaries also feel a tremendous admiration for America and American values. And I think that this admiration—this sense of desire for a relationship—is necessary to give a sulk a raison d’être. Iranians’ litany of complaints against their former patron, a country whose values they admit in private that they admire, might be collected in a book entitled Why We Sulk . Iran has been waiting for more than thirty years to hear that America—and only America, the world’s sole true superpower, matters to Iran—will respect her, that she can be an independent, sovereign state with the full ability to chart her own destiny without interference from any power, something that has not been the case for the past two hundred years.
Only when Iran is convinced that America sincerely accepts her as she is, not as what the United States wants her to be, may the thirty-plus-year sulk come to an end. Meanwhile, the sulk baffles many Westerners and makes them think the ayatollahs and revolutionaries who rule Iran are simply impossible, just as Westerners once thought Mossadeq impossible. The pain Iran has suffered—U.S. sanctions have meant, for example, that since 1979 it can’t upgrade even its civilian Boeing aircraft fleet, resulting in a scandalously high airplane accident rate—has also made her strong in many ways. It has forced Iran to seek more reliable and less politically fraught—European and Asian—alternatives to U.S. technology and even to boost its indigenous industry, lending credence to the opinion that it is the United States that is losing out in its long-standing grudge match with Iran. That may be the case in some aspects of geopolitics, but from the perspective of an American family trying to live in Tehran, the Iranian sulk, and the U.S. response to it, is highly inconvenient and attimes downright stupid, even as the sulk, because it is not what most Americans think—an instinctive hatred for Americans—allows for Americans to visit Iran without the real possibility that they may come to harm. Ghahr, ghahr, ta roozeh ghiamat, ghahr . Judgment day can’t come soon enough, and certainly not for American Iranians and Iranian Americans.
5
FARDA
Waiting for the day that Iran normalizes its relationship with the United States and therefore with the rest of the West has become for many Iranians, real-life Estragons and Vladimirs, an absurdist play. While waiting and hoping that things will change, some sulk. Many Iranian youth have been in a sort of collective political sulk since 2009, when an intolerant regime dashed their hopes for a better future, and they have virtually withdrawn from civil society, waiting to join the millions of Iranians who have emigrated, or else retreating to their homes—often their parents’ homes—waiting for an invitation to do something semiexciting in a republic where excitement, at least of the public sort, is effectively banned. Older Iranians, whether onetime revolutionaries, proponents or opponents of the nezam , or merely apolitical, often wait for something else, and it’s usually a business deal, or a court date over some disputed property seizure, or an appeal of a court decision, or really anything that has to do with money.
Outwardly Iran is economically not very different from Europe or the United States, at least in terms of busy shops, Western and Asian consumer goods aplenty, billboards advertising the latest
Certainly many Iranians harbor a deep-rooted antagonism towardthe United States, which they view as the successor to the British Empire in the Middle East, especially since the 1953 coup removed the democratically elected prime minister, Mossadeq, in favor of the shah, who then, with the full backing of the United States, built a security state and a secret police that tortured and jailed many of the revolutionaries in power today. But those very same revolutionaries also feel a tremendous admiration for America and American values. And I think that this admiration—this sense of desire for a relationship—is necessary to give a sulk a raison d’être. Iranians’ litany of complaints against their former patron, a country whose values they admit in private that they admire, might be collected in a book entitled Why We Sulk . Iran has been waiting for more than thirty years to hear that America—and only America, the world’s sole true superpower, matters to Iran—will respect her, that she can be an independent, sovereign state with the full ability to chart her own destiny without interference from any power, something that has not been the case for the past two hundred years.
Only when Iran is convinced that America sincerely accepts her as she is, not as what the United States wants her to be, may the thirty-plus-year sulk come to an end. Meanwhile, the sulk baffles many Westerners and makes them think the ayatollahs and revolutionaries who rule Iran are simply impossible, just as Westerners once thought Mossadeq impossible. The pain Iran has suffered—U.S. sanctions have meant, for example, that since 1979 it can’t upgrade even its civilian Boeing aircraft fleet, resulting in a scandalously high airplane accident rate—has also made her strong in many ways. It has forced Iran to seek more reliable and less politically fraught—European and Asian—alternatives to U.S. technology and even to boost its indigenous industry, lending credence to the opinion that it is the United States that is losing out in its long-standing grudge match with Iran. That may be the case in some aspects of geopolitics, but from the perspective of an American family trying to live in Tehran, the Iranian sulk, and the U.S. response to it, is highly inconvenient and attimes downright stupid, even as the sulk, because it is not what most Americans think—an instinctive hatred for Americans—allows for Americans to visit Iran without the real possibility that they may come to harm. Ghahr, ghahr, ta roozeh ghiamat, ghahr . Judgment day can’t come soon enough, and certainly not for American Iranians and Iranian Americans.
5
FARDA
Waiting for the day that Iran normalizes its relationship with the United States and therefore with the rest of the West has become for many Iranians, real-life Estragons and Vladimirs, an absurdist play. While waiting and hoping that things will change, some sulk. Many Iranian youth have been in a sort of collective political sulk since 2009, when an intolerant regime dashed their hopes for a better future, and they have virtually withdrawn from civil society, waiting to join the millions of Iranians who have emigrated, or else retreating to their homes—often their parents’ homes—waiting for an invitation to do something semiexciting in a republic where excitement, at least of the public sort, is effectively banned. Older Iranians, whether onetime revolutionaries, proponents or opponents of the nezam , or merely apolitical, often wait for something else, and it’s usually a business deal, or a court date over some disputed property seizure, or an appeal of a court decision, or really anything that has to do with money.
Outwardly Iran is economically not very different from Europe or the United States, at least in terms of busy shops, Western and Asian consumer goods aplenty, billboards advertising the latest
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