Loving Republic of Iran

Love is universal, they say — but every people does it in its own way. Courtship, the first kiss, foreplay, sex, going steady, meeting her friends, his friends, both sets of parents… all the way to the fateful threshold of marriage. In Italy, this laborious ritual — exceptionally well codified — has become the unbreakable norm by which couples are formed. Fine. Now set all of that aside: we are about to land in Iran.

“In Iran, having a girlfriend is forbidden,” Ali Reza tells me. He’s an energy engineering student I met last summer in Mashhad. “Only official engagement is allowed. And right after that, marriage.”

The ruling Islamic regime, he explains, seems terrified of what it calls “moral corruption”: kisses, caresses, displays of affection exchanged in public squares or outside the bonds prescribed and regulated by state law. It rigidly enforces the — in themselves flexible — precepts of sharia and has filled the streets with auxiliary officers. Their job, alongside keeping order and security, is to enforce “public decency”: making sure women wear their veils properly, or scolding couples who walk hand in hand. Fortunately you don’t see many of those: apparently there are fines to be risked.

Ali Reza jokes about it as he tells me all this, though; it doesn’t seem to be a subject that troubles him much. We became friends on an improbable journey from Tehran to Mashhad — twelve hours by bus. I had just arrived in Iran for a language course, and at that moment his English was what saved me.

“Do you have a wife?” he asks me at one point, catching me off guard. His brother, 23, got married a few days earlier. I’m a little shocked. I’m 20, I tell him, and I have a girlfriend, but marriage is a thought that doesn’t even cross my mind. “Couldn’t agree more,” he says, then adds with a chuckle: “You know, I’m seeing a girl too, but it’s a relationship I have to keep secret. Only a few friends know.”

His breezy manner is his way of signalling that he’s talking about serious things. A hidden relationship! It strikes me as the finest revolt against every regime in the world. Shameless, brazen love — the most invincible weapon for ridiculing power and bringing it down. I ask him whether these pirate romances are common: “You’re not supposed to,” he says, “but everyone has a girlfriend.”

“At what age do people get married in Europe?” my friend Mohammad asks me a few days later, almost in a whisper, during a car ride. “I’m 30. Is that late, in your opinion?” I try to reassure him, and the conversation drifts to past relationships. “I was with a girl I cared about a lot,” he tells me, “but it ended a few months ago — look there.” And he points to a little heart-shaped toy on the dashboard. I LOVE YOU, it reads, stitched in white letters.

Mohammad is a handsome young man, very sensitive; what people call a good person. I tell him so. You’ll find a girl soon, I say. But he seems reluctant to believe me. Iran is not Europe. Being 30 and still living with your parents, still studying, without a well-paid job — these can be heavier handicaps than any physical or personal flaw.

I correct myself: Iran, in the end, is not so far from Europe after all.

“I wouldn’t even know how to find someone to fall in love with.” In a monstrously large city like Mashhad it’s easy to be isolated, especially for young people, who have no places to gather. “Everywhere in the world there are bars, pubs, clubs,” he goes on. “Here all of that is frowned upon. Western music isn’t allowed, and there haven’t been public parties since before the Revolution. The only pastime we’re granted is eating — inviting friends and relatives to dinner and being invited in turn. That’s it. What will happen is that we’ll all get heart disease and die at 50. That’s what our government wants.”

Like many young people, Mohammad is nostalgic for the Shah and sees the current religious establishment as the cause of virtually every national problem, social ones included. Two tendencies emerge from his words — confirmed by other young men and by experience — typical of contemporary Iran: A. People mostly marry colleagues, university classmates, or relatives. B. The dinner invitation is standard. Always. And Iran ranks among the world’s highest for the percentage of people with diabetes.

The mutual isolation of men and women is pursued by the government in Tehran in every possible way. From kindergarten to high school, classes are divided into male and female; in parks, on buses, on the metro there are sections reserved exclusively for women; in hotels, couples are required to show a marriage certificate to get a double room; and even in the street, as we have seen, a certain restraint is expected.

“Every now and then we go out together to the park,” says Ahmad, for instance — a 26-year-old Iraqi, speaking of his Iranian girlfriend — “and when we’re sure no one can see us, I take her hand, and we stroll along like that and chat for a while.”

In a society where a woman showing her hair or a bare neck is considered by some a provocative gesture, the value of simple physical contact is decidedly higher than in Europe — let alone sex.

“A woman who marries when she’s not a virgin,” Ahmad continues, “is worth nothing; she’s regarded as no better than a prostitute.” Then he adds: “The same goes for men. But in our case it’s harder to tell.” Ahmad is a very gentle young man. He speaks softly, often looks at the ground, never slips into vulgarity, and always weighs his words. He has been with his girlfriend for about a year and a half. “So far we’ve exchanged five, maybe six kisses — on the lips, I mean.” In the room where it’s just the two of us, his tone suddenly turns confessional. “You know,” he tells me, “once we found ourselves alone in a room. We had plenty of time to ourselves, so we decided to go a little further.” Ahmad now looks distinctly embarrassed. “You can imagine what happened — we didn’t do it, obviously, but… almost.” And, still shaken, he tells me about his discoveries on the difference in pleasure between men and women: “A man,” he says, “feels immediately fulfilled after orgasm. He can get up and leave. In a woman, though, pleasure” — Ahmad maintains — “fades more slowly after reaching its peak. She still needs kisses, embraces.” And he concludes with a theory of his own: “The biggest difference is this: boys give affection in exchange for sex; girls have sex in search of affection.”

Yet it seems that Ahmad’s affection and gentleness are not enough. His relationship is faltering, he confides. “Part of the problem is that I’m Iraqi.” Racism in Iran is stark. Stereotypes are widespread, and the groups hit hardest are Afghans (deemed bigoted and backward) and Arabs (vulgar, mercenary, intellectually inferior) — a category that fully includes Iraqis, despite their shared Shia faith. One more demonstration that in Iran, religion only ever counts up to a point. “Her parents wouldn’t look kindly on me,” Ahmad says, “and besides, my work requires me to travel, but Neda, my girlfriend, doesn’t want that. She wants to keep living near her mother; she wants to stay in Mashhad.” Familiar talk, common to every world and every era. Liking each other is not enough. In lasting relationships a thousand other factors come into play, more or less legitimate — family, social background, career, ethnicity… — which have nothing to do with love, and which have fed a great deal of the literature of every culture.

But there is no shortage of those who have no interest whatsoever in lasting relationships.

“I’ve had about 25 girlfriends,” says Matin, a 22-year-old Kurd studying medicine in Tehran, “most of whom didn’t last more than two weeks.” I expect his stories to be different — he comes from modern Tehran, as opposed to the pious air one breathes in religious Mashhad. “We laughed, we joked, kisses and hugs… but after a while I’d get bored. And I’d leave them.” He goes on: “Only with one girl did the relationship last longer. Almost two months. She was the one I gave my first and only kiss on the lips.” It is among the greatest declarations of love, he explains; only someone truly in love would feel able to kiss a girl that way. The final scenes of Cinema Paradiso immediately run through my mind — the protagonist screening, all at once, every kiss cut by years and years of censorship. The contact between two lips is at once so simple and so powerful. In Italy, as everywhere in the Western world, it is decidedly undervalued, accustomed as we are to the spectacle of sex, explicit or more often implicit. A slow, delicate kiss, trembling like all first kisses, is worth a hundred times more than any hit-and-run fling.

But Matin quickly deflates my lyrical swerves. “Don’t go thinking we’re puritans here. Among young men, of course,” he continues, “masturbation is extremely common.” People are the same the world over, one is tempted to say. Pornography in Iran appears to be widespread, and even sex tourism, in defiance of Islam. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are the most coveted destinations. Cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi… apparently there are quite a few prostitutes there who can speak Persian.

But these are not experiences that tempt Matin, who says: “A year ago I decided to stop chasing girls. I rediscovered Islam, which I had drifted away from. I understood that these precepts about love, however hard to follow, are the better way.”

“You see,” he explains, “when you discover sex together with a girl, and you’re both doing it for the first time, and you’re husband and wife, it remains something that belongs to you alone. You haven’t tried other girls; you don’t even feel the temptation to do it with other girls. If you can do everything with everyone, why stay with one woman? Following the precepts of our religion gives families more stability and produces a better society.”

Or so Matin maintains, at least.