Reviewed by: Hossain Guilak
HONEYMOON IN TEHRAN
Two years of love and danger in Iran
By: Azadeh Moaveni
Published Random House publishing 2009
This is the second book by Azadeh Moaveni. Her first book Lipstick Jihad was published earlier.
She is Iranian-American, born and raised in California, and graduated from U.C. Santa Cruz. She received a Fulbright scholarship to the American University of Cairo. She was a reporter for Time Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times, and covered the Middle East, and Iraq wars
In Lipstick Jihad Moaveni wrote about her time in Iran in 2000, in the student uprising, and attempted to find her cultural identity.
Honeymoon in Tehran is about life before and after the election of Ahmadinejad as President of Islamic Republic of Iran. She spent 2 further years of her life in Iran, from 2005 to 2007, before leaving Iran, and she now resides in England.
The book is written from the eyes of a reporter and even though it recounts two years of her life in Iran, detailing her love and marriage and having a boy, one should not expect or confuse it as being introspective. It is fair to say that it touches the themes of romance, marriage, and child birth, but these are entwined with stories of other people in today’s Iran. She uses these events to give us a picture of Iranian society, and all the changes that happened from 1979 until 2000. She has succeeded in giving us a snapshot of the country between 2005 and 2007, and managed to contrast it with 2000. On top of this there are stories of hopes, fights, uprisings and death, combined with a cocktail of car racing, alcohol, drugs, and western music, which created and yearning style of life, and the longing to leave Iran.
Her descriptions of Iranian weddings, for example give us three types of settings. At one level, there is Shrooz, the wedding planner supreme, complete with Karaj gardens, sumptuous meals with music, and protection from Pasdaran. Then there is well connected government official wedding, in Farmanieh Club, segregated and very expensive, with private mixed gender reception after the wedding party. And then there is the government sponsored, all expenses paid wedding in the Ali Akbar auditorium, with party favors and cake, but also with a limit on mehrieh. The chapter on pregnancy and delivery is also amusing; from finding an obstetrician who can perform childbirth without doing a cesarean, to choosing a name for the child that conformed to government directives. Moaveni readily admits that her stories may reflect the way of life of the westernized fringes of Iranian society, but disputes that the rest of society is so different in that she ascertains that everyone in their own way is trying to “reach tacit accommodation with government”.
For Iranian Diaspora, and more specifically for the first generation, who were here before 1979, this book gives us a good description of lives and life itself, and struggle of our people in our homeland. They are going through life in extreme conditions courtesy of a theocratic dictatorship.
For me, this book was very informative. I have not seen my country for fifteen years, and lots of changes that were described are new to me. It is a book that is definitely worth reading.