By Livleen Bhagat
My husband Arun Bhagat’s job took us to places. Iran is one of them. We lived in Tehran for four years till 1984. It was an eventful stay.
I’m curious. And curiosity doesn't always kill the cat, often leads to adventure, is the cause of learning and experiencing new cultures in its varied dimensions. And there’s always a lot to learn.
The dynamics of socio-cultural practices with overarching religious influence has shaped the conditions of living in Iran. For some strange set of reasons this rather radical and extreme way of life has flourished for generations.
I narrate some episodes that has had a deep imprint on me and have stayed with me for more than 40 years like it happened yesterday.
.1.
I’m an outgoing woman, in case you didn’t already realise, and remained so while in Tehran. We four friends were a gang of adventurous foreigner women who ventured out of their comfort zone to experience Iran. We would be out burkha clad hiding all identifiable features that we weren’t natives.
Felicity was my Irish counterpart. Martha Glaza was married to the ambassador of Belgium. I don’t remember the name of my English friend who was married to a German diplomat posted in Iran. We were quite a team and curious enough to stick our neck out to experience the life of a native in Iran.
Gender segregation was practised in all public functions, big or small. And of so many public events we attended, indistinguishable from local women, this one stands out: the public execution of an alleged adulterous woman by stoning. Men are also subjected to a similar treatment, but such instances are far more rare.
We hired a cab, and paid extra so that the cab remained on the standby in case we had to dash off. This mediaeval practice was to be held downtown. A large crowd had gathered around the venue for stoning to death. We joined the ranks of women covered head to toe, we were scared acting brave.
It was late in the afternoon. There were a dozen mullahs performing, if I may say, the last rites stood out from the crowd. A group of women escorted the so called adulterous woman out in the open. The latter offered no resistance as she walked shakily to her death. “She is stoned,” one of us concluded, for she seemed so indifferent to her imminent and rather painful end by stoning.
The crowd started to jeer loudly on sighting her, both men and women were equally vocal. Followed religious sloganeering to celebrate the end of a blasphemous life. A pit was waiting for her. She was buried standing bosom-deep. She couldn’t move; her head and face left exposed for stoning and to die blow by blow.
Not a stone was to be seen till this point. A brief ceremony was performed by mullahs. And then people were encouraged to pelt stones at her. Suddenly hundreds of stones appeared from nowhere, and started to rain on the woman. The people hurled stones and abuses at her as they started marching forward, and the circle of people closed in on her from all directions. The stones were raining havoc is we couldn’t bear it any more and made a quick exit. It took us a while, but we managed to find our cab and went back home.
I'm reminded of the Hindi song ‘koi pathar se na maare mere deewane ko' and the image of this hapless woman resurrects.
.2.
There's a popular Iranian proverb in Persian: As soon as a man gets new trousers, he thinks about a new wife.
Between May and September of 1983, I was in Delhi to secure admission of my eldest son to a school, also to attend to my ailing mother and a host of other existential issues that required me to be here in person.
Which meant that my dearest husband, Arun, was on his own for four long months. I’m sure he was enjoying his solitude for a change. But a Mullah, known to us, from the most prestigious shrine in Tehran, had another idea. Mullah empathised with what he construed as Arun’s “loneliness", which, according to him, is a "bad thing for a man.” He offered a way out.
There's a custom of temporary wives as a stopgap to deal with such phases of loneliness in Iran, called Sigheh or in nikah mut‘ah in Arabic. This practice has a religious sanction and, therefore, there's a ready supply of willing temporary wives to help men escape bouts of loneliness. They are wives and not prostitutes and there’s no confusion about it. Any woman (read girls) 13 years or above is eligible to be a sigheh wife of a man 15 years of age or older.
In this convenient arrangement, men are allowed to leave a sigheh wife without consequences. Tradition dictates that a virgin girl needs permission from their father to marry permanently or temporarily, but according to the Iranian Civil Law Articles 1043 and 1044, girls can obtain permission to become a sigheh wife by simply identifying a man as prospective husband and furnishing details about the length of the marriage and the proposed value of the mehrieh (dowry).
Arun confronted a phase of loneliness when I was away attending to weightier family issues back home in Delhi. It’s abominable in Iran for men to have live without a comforting company of a woman. And there are women who specialise in being a sigheh wife. It’s good for both the man and the woman to sample variety and be happy. But the loneliness of a woman is not a matter of concern in Iran.
My husband told me about the offer on my return. And I didn't hazard a guess as to what his response to the offer was.
.3.
This is the summer of 1982. The Iran–Iraq War was in its early stages. My husband and I were catching a flight from Isfahan. That’s when we came across a couple of dozen teenage boys, all injured, some with amputated limbs, others on wheelchairs, some got away with a few gashes here and there.
There was a striking similarity in the boys–14 to 18 years of age, apart from the fact that they were all injured and seemed to be returning from war. They all had a golden key–an inch and half long–dangling on their neck in a gold chain.
If they die in the service of the motherland, I was told, they can use the golden key to unlock the doors of heaven.
Some of them, who were not badly injured, seemed to be in a jovial mood, chatting with each other, and happy to get back home alive. And not having had to use the golden key.
They were just kids who grew under the shadow of death, destruction and war–this thought haunted me for a long time.
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