“The landlord was [talking about] the prosperity the people of the Gulf have realised, having lived in poverty and backwardness. He was saying that Iran failed to achieve similar prosperity due to bad state management and also to the sanctions imposed on [his country]. He said, ‘Why do they want to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear programme?’ His was not a question but rather a statement of resentment. Most Iranians, including those who hated the [regime] of the Islamic Republic of Iran were in agreement with their country’s nuclear policy – for energy but not for arms.”
This snippet of a conversation with a Tehran landlord is one of the very few references to Iran’s nuclear programme that Nada Al-Azhari, the Francophone Syrian author of this book, includes in An Arab Woman in Iran: Iranians as We Have Not Known Them. A translator and film critic, Al-Azhari draws on first-person experience. Another reference comes from a chat she overhears while riding a communal taxi on the endlessly busy streets of the Iranian capital, when a young Iranian woman, otherwise no fan of the regime, says, “we too are entitled to go nuclear just as America, France and Israel did. Maybe not with this regime; but we are entitled to get there.”
Such snippets of ordinary, everyday-life conversations are the basis of the book. In her introduction to this unpretentious text, which does not promise to be an analysis of the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran or a detailed account of Iranians in the first decade of the 2000s, Al-Azhari states just that: the book is not a book about famous Iranians whose names are familiar nor is it about the politics or culture of Iran. Rather, it is a kind of irregular journal she kept for the duration of her four-year stay in Tehran, between 2006 and 2010, as well as on previous and later visits.
But by sharing her observations, Al-Azhari actually takes the reader on a compelling journey across a country that few Arabs know. She writes that her decision to publish this book was informed by the desire “to help with providing a better understanding Iranians for who they really are.” Her tale comes in 13 chapters, each of which has two titles: the author’s, and that of an Iranian film. The only exception is a chapter in which the second title is a quote from the 14th-century Persian poet Hafez Shriazi.
Al-Azahri begins with an account of who she is. A Syrian who was brought up in the early 1970s, when everyone in the country was aggressively indoctrinated in the Baathist, socialist, pan-Arab ideology; it meant that Persians were never looked on with admiration. For her generation of Syrians, whether in the official or unofficial lexicon, Iranians were most often referred to as “the Magi” who worshipped fire. In her history book at school, she recalls reading that “the penetration of the Persian element was among the key reasons that led to the fall of the Abbasids” after they ruled an extensive caliphate from the 13th century to the 16th century. Iran and Iraq were also engaged in an eight-year war that was devastating for both sides
Like other Arabs, Syrians, she argues, tolerated Iranians as fellow Muslims. Possibly more than other Arabs, Iraqis, some of who have Persian origin, assume that they are culturally superior, especially in the context of Iraqi-Iranian marriages, on the assumption that their language, Arabic, is the language of the Quran. Iranians, who take pride in their ancient Zoroastrian culture, with some of them still following the Zoroastrianism faith, do not agree. In fact the influence of Arabic on their language and culture remains a matter of contention despite their overwhelmingly Muslim affiliation. Al-Azhari’s admiration for Iranians suggests they have every right to be proud, too.
She acknowledges the Persian identity of many Abbasids and distances herself from Sunni-Shia conflict, quoting an Iranian who compares the difference between the two sects to the bras de fer of the Middle Ages. Whether between Sunnis and Shias or Arabs and Persians, ill feeling, she says, results from misunderstanding rather than animosity. Liberated from the baggage of her upbringing as she becomes a French citizen, Al-Azhari can celebrate the cultural and commercial pleasures of Tehran, Esfahan and other cities: haggling, generosity, and friendliness.
Al-Azhari also notes many parallels, including a celebrated cinema industry and rigid filming rules that would prohibit an actor from touching the actress even in a scene depicting the reunion of a mother and son.
Mandatory hair-and-body-covering are enforced, sometimes but not always too rigidly. In the meantime, women have considerable presence in education, the labour market and the culture scene. Actually, she writes, it was not at all hard to notice the many Iranian women, particularly younger and socially privileged ones, can adapt the hijab to an attractive modern look.
Aware of what she describes as Western media exaggeration, Al-Azhari explains that while hijab is mandatory, the chador is not. Women are generally relaxed about their hijab especially at shopping malls except when alerted to a scrutiny campaign from law enforcement. It is estimated that a good half of Muslim Iranian women would choose to abide by hijab even if it was not mandatory.
The Islamic identity of the country is belied by the fact that the most celebrated holiday in Iran is not of Eid Al-Fitr or Eid Al-Adha, or for that matter Ashoura, when the predominantly Shia population pay homage to Al-Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohamed, killed on that day in the seventh century during the Muslim Civil War in Karbala, Iraq. According to Al-Azhari account, the most important holiday is the Persian new year, Nowrouz (literally “new day” or “new beginning”), associated with the beginning of spring. “This,” she writes, “is a two-week national holiday when people celebrate with food, visits and spending time outdoors, in nature.” The rituals of Nowrouz, as Al-Azhari explains, are rooted in Zoroastrianism heritage: “In every house and every store, there is a table that serves seven things starting with the letter S in Persian: vegetable, inflorescence, coins, ghee, garlic, incense, and vinegar. Those are designed to promise prosperity, virility, richness, sweetness and the warding off of evil souls.”
It is not just the Nowrouz that the Islamic Republic of Iran succumbs to, Al-Azhari notes. It also succumbs to the affinity that Iranians have with Shirazi – and it even honours researchers who have worked on the poetry of Shirazi, including the French octogenarian Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, who headed the French Research Centre in Iran and has written extensively on the country from the inside. The case of de Fouchécour is itself one of the insights that Al-Azhari’s book generously offers, intentionally or unintentionally, because, in general, the book refers to the Iranian authorities’ hypersensitivity to foreigners, foreign presence and the influence of foreign media, to the extent that Iranians are not allowed to enroll in any of the 18 international schools in the country.
Al-Azhari’s book makes some references to politics, especially in the context of the 2009 presidential election and the regional hegemony to which Iran aspires, trying to bring about through a “presence-and-support” strategy in neighbouring Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. It has more references to Iran’s thriving film industry. At the end of the day, however, it is about the Iran the author saw and learned about. It is mostly about Tehran, where the streets suffer horrific traffic jams that last for hours but are dotted with flower stores and flower sellers. When one arrives at the Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, Al-Azhari writes, one cannot miss the scene of individuals carrying pretty flower bouquets to offer at the gates.
This book is very different from famous books on Iran like Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which appeared in New York in 2003, and is based on Nafisi’s personal experience as a literature connoisseur in Islamic Tehran and her eventual decision to leave Iran behind or Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, whose two volumes were published in Paris in 2000 and 2001, in which Satrapi shares her experience of growing up under the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq War. Al-Azhari’s book is liberated of the grievances of those Iranians who wanted one thing out of the 1979 Revolution and got something else.
Al-Azhari’s book is an eloquent, detailed and intellectual copy of Amr Badawy’s Mussafer Al-Kanaba fi Iran (A Couch Traveller in Iran), published in Cairo in 2015, in which the world traveller and online content creator shares his observations and encounters during a few weeks’ stay in the country.
Ultimately, Al-Azhari’s book is a unique contribution to an otherwise very politics- or history-focused area in Arabic letters.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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