Let me start off by saying I never thought I would go to
Iran.
When my
Iranian boyfriend first put the idea into my head last summer it sounded like a
nice enough idea in the sense that it seemed like such a distant possibility,
predicated on a lot of political change, that I felt safe in wondering what it
would be like without taking the actual trip seriously. That is until I found myself facing two weeks
alone in wintery Istanbul during a school holiday with nothing to do and an
itching for travel crawling its way into my skin.
At this point my boyfriend, Hamid,
and I had only been dating for a little over three months and were still very
much at the stage of getting to know and trust each other. Though I thought I
was “in love” I was still unsure—still guarded, afraid that any type of serious
commitment would force me to abandon my love for the road and subjugate me to a
boring life of domestic gendered expectations.
Getting married has been far off my
radar ever since I first stepped foot on an international flight and became
honest with myself about my insatiable thirst for travel. And yet, despite
rebelling from my religious roots and pressure to marry young, friends and
family kept on calling and asking me on skype.
“Is he the
one?” they’d ask all giggly, thinking the “wild” child with the insatiable
appetite for travel had finally found the antidote to her addiction and would
settle down. Though I imagined their inquiries to ring with more of an “I told
you so” tone than any sort of genuine desire for my wedded happiness. Not that
I didn’t eventually see myself married, I just never imagined it would happen
in some clichéd way.
Usually when girls think of their
wedding, they imagine the big white dress, the dark handsome groom, the
flowers, the cake, the presents, the romance. So imagine my surprise when I
found myself sitting across from my 3 month boyfriend in an Iranian Shia mosque
in the shadows of the Hagia Sofia, claiming allegiance to the 12 imams,
choosing my new Muslim name, and promising to be faithful to my future
temporary husband.
Temporary marriages, or “sigheh,”
are actually not that uncommon in the Middle East thanks to Islamic ethical
loop holes. Usually used for the sole purpose of being able to copulate without
the religious after guilt, the tradition gives a man permission to temporarily
take another wife for either a specified period of time, or until they each
repeat they do not want to be married anymore three times (beetlejuice,
beetlejuice, beetlejuice mentality).
When Hamid first came home and told
me he thought we should get married to go to Iran, my heart almost fell out of
my ass I was so taken aback.
“Look, it’s simple. We get
temporarily married and you don’t have to go through all the bull shit of
booking a tour guide and paying all this extra money. You can stay with my
family, I can show you around. It will be better this way.” He looked so calm.
Though I was still struggling to
find words and create a laid back unassuming air, he continued on.
“This is the way it works in Iran,
going around the rules. It seems scary, but it’s not. Trust me.”
Trust. Trust.
Up
until this moment I never realized how hollow my perception of this word
actually was.
Though I knew myself enough to know that notions of the
“axis of evil” contained more propaganda than truth, something inside me was
still afraid to commit. After all, this wasn’t planning a trip to France. This
was Iran. A whole new ball park.
However slowly, over the next couple of days of research, Hamid’s
logic began to seep in. This was my ticket, this was my moment. This was the
opportunity of a lifetime. And I was taking it.
Throwing caution to the wind, I was
going to trust.
Two weeks later and I’m starting to
reconsider my decision. As I’m sitting there, asking the imam again and again
to repeat the sound of that word so I can repeat it back to him, I imagine my
American Christian mother’s cries to echo that of the wind. Her fists throwing
wet punches on the window just outside the room as she yells at me to stop what
I’m doing THIS INSTANT and come back home. And for a moment part of my “flight”
mentality is tempted. Though we both know it’s far too late for that, my
curiosity has taken me too far down the rabbit hole to see any type of outside guiding
light. Instead, I drown out the thoughts of her and the life that has lead me
up to this with the routine summoning of the call to prayer singing from the
minarets above.
“Where was she born?” the imam asks
in lethargic Persian, looking up expectedly at my now-husband while filling in
the bureaucratic paperwork.
“Long Beach, California” he
replies, still trying to suppress a laugh at the serious and unperturbed tone
with which I just converted from Christianity to Islam.
An outspoken atheist, I’m afraid
any type of mocking smile on his part will “out” us as pretenders, therein
putting an end to my trip. It couldn’t happen—I’d already just finished doing
the unthinkable. I’d already finished my performance, all that was left was for
me to graciously accept my Oscar and join the after party.
Despite several clarifications the
imam still writes Long Peach and proceeds to take another painful hour filling
out my conversion sheet as a newly minted “Miriam,” the name I’ve chosen like a
garment to carry me into this adventurous new life.
It’s in this moment, as my mother’s
tapping at the mosque window increases that I’m left to wonder how I begin
wondering for the first time how I’m ever going to be able to explain this
situation to the one who originally named me. Especially considering for a
period it was my mother’s worst fear that I was going to marry an Iranian man
and take our babies to visit his family back home, only to find his true colors
had changed and I no longer had custody of my children according to Shia law. A
random, ridiculous, and unfounded fear to have I told her immediately at the
time.
“It could happen Sydney, I read
about it in a book once!”
She cautioned me long before I’d
ever expressed any interest in travelling to the Middle East. My apprehension
in telling her was therefore twofold, as I had to tell her not only was I going into the access of evil but that I
was doing so as a married woman.
Luckily for me, about a week after
the “deed” was done I got a skype call from my newly independent, unmarried
19-year old sister with a piece of news even more shocking than mine.
“I’m pregnant” she stated simply,
“and I’m keeping it.”
Thank God my birth control knocked
that third requirement right out of the realm of possibilities, or the third
big piece of news in our family that year might have been a heart attack.
While I didn’t plan on my sister’s
pregnancy, it did make telling my mom about our marriage pale in comparison. Or
made telling her and causing even more stress seem kind of cruel on my part--a
justification I decided to cling more to than confession. My mother then, I
decided, wouldn’t find out until everyone else when I was safe back at home in
Istanbul two weeks later.
Up until 6 months ago, I’d never
even met an Iranian and now--here I was. Trustingly adding my signature next to
his and planning a trip right into the heart of what I hopes wouldn’t be the
future location of my government’s search party. This was either going to be
the greatest trip of my life, or the worst. Either way, I’d get my story.
The Islamic Republic of Iran wasn’t
always so Islamic. In fact, as most people have come to find out in face of
overwhelming media coverage about the Geneva nuclear program talks, it’s only
been within the last 40 years that Iran has assumed this “other” extremist
mentality. Up until then, they were what we might call in the west as
“progressive” and interactive people. My boyfriend is obsessed with the
American-Iranian comedian Moz Jobrani and is constantly quoting his barrier
breaking sets when we meet Westerners who might still cling to some of those
negative Iranian stereotypes.
“We are not scary. We are Persian,
like the cat” he winks, “MEOW!”
However even in spite of our
relationship and the Iranian culture I found myself slowly being introduced to
day-by-day, I was still hesitant to jump full in and commit to immersion. I
mean, sure, there had to be some Iranians who loved America. I’d even come to
meet and befriend a few of them while living in Istanbul. But they were the
minority, right? Overall they hated us, yeah?
Years of government and media
propaganda had lead me to believe that a trip to Iran was basically a free for
all death trap. The US State Department’s travel warning website stresses over
and over again that the situation in Iran is “hostile” and that “should you
decide to travel to Iran despite the travel warning…the US government does not
have diplomatic or consular relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran and
therefore cannot provide protection or routine consular services o US citizens
in Iran.” Basically, should I be stupid enough to disobey the United States’
warning and travel into the heart of one of our biggest enemies, I was alone in
a country notorious for hating us. And
though I knew the government was far from being above manipulating Middle East
stereotypes for political capital, I had also seen Argo. So I thought I knew
what was up when I finally stepped off the plane into Imam Khomeini
International Airport at 3am, nervously clutching my Iranian visa and preparing
for the worst.
My boyfriend, Hamid, was there to
pick me up as promised at the passport control. While I stood by like some
little helpless puppy being handed off in transit, Hamid explained our
situation and they swept us off to another small room for fingerprinting. Here
we go, I thought.
The man doing my prints turns to
Hamid as he types in my passport information, a blank expression on his face.
For sometimes over-expressive Americans, the minute facial expressions and use
of body language in Middle Eastern culture takes a bit of getting used to.
Though at this moment, I took it at face value—there was a problem.
Hamid laughs and looks
reassuringly over at me.
“He is apologizing for taking your
fingerprints. He says they only do it because you do it to us when we come to
the US.”
I smile and exhale audibly.
Alright, I’m in.
