THE MINISTRY OF GUIDANCE INVITES YOU TO NOT STAY
An American Family in Iran
Hooman Majd
Doubleday
252 pages; $26.95
To write about one's country while living in another is to invite questions about loyalty. Why are you writing this? And for whom? The questions can take an ominous tone: what is your agenda? The journalist Hooman Majd faced such suspicions on one of his trips to Tehran, when an employee from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance told him bluntly: "Just because you have an Iranian passport doesn't mean you can come here and write whatever you want when you leave."
It was partly in an attempt to gain a wider perspective on the country of his birth that Mr Majd, who lives in Brooklyn, took his American wife and infant son to live in Tehran for one year. "The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay" is a memoir of 2011, spent reconnecting with the homeland he left as a baby, when his father, then a career diplomat, was posted abroad. With the help of friends and family, Mr Majd and his wife, Karri, a yoga instructor, quickly find an apartment, set up an internet connection, hire a nanny, shop for organic products and generally settle into a middle-class life.
That life is constrained by the political and societal restrictions of the Islamic Republic. Mr Majd does not feel free to work or write critically about Iran during his stay, especially given his familial ties (by marriage) to former President Mohammad Khatami. He receives a warning from the gasht-e-ershad, Iran's morality squad, because his wife is in a short, loosefitting shirt instead of a manteau, an opaque coat. The economic sanctions imposed by the United States, Europe and the United Nations add another set of limitations. A flight from Tehran to Yazd for a short holiday is not advisable, he writes, because Iran has been "largely unable to upgrade its fleet of civilian aircraft since the revolution". In addition, there is a shortage of imported medications, and their prices remain well above the purchasing power of most Iranians.
But Iranians demonstrate a high level of resistance to religious rules, as well as a proud resilience under international sanctions. If the Islamic Republic bans the sale of alcohol to Muslims, then Muslims buy it under the table from their Christian and Jewish compatriots. If the mullahs force women to wear manteaus, then women turn manteaus into fashionable and form-fitting garments. If the prospect of air travel on old planes is daunting, then Mr Majd and his family go on a road trip instead.
As interesting as Mr Majd's anecdotes about life in Tehran are, they remain just that - anecdotes. He struggles to find a narrative thread that will bind them into a satisfying story, with vivid characters and unifying themes. His encounters with ordinary Iranians, whether at cafes, in shops or on public transportation, are used to draw wide cultural and political implications that no individual experience could possibly sustain.
Perhaps one reason for this is that Mr Majd has not given enough consideration to whether his book is intended for the novice or the expert. Simple religious terms such as halal and Ramadan, which are now common in English, are defined for the reader, yet more nebulous political terms, such as reformist, are not. What does it mean, in the context of Iran, to refer to a politician as a "notoriously liberal reformist"? Similarly, Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose shooting during post-election protests in 2009 galvanised the Green Movement, is not properly introduced for readers who may be unfamiliar with her name or her transformation into a political icon.
Still, Mr Majd is a keen and intelligent observer of political life in Iran, and his memoir resonates with nostalgia for the country of his birth, a country he clearly loves but in which he still feels, at times, like an interloper.
©2013 The New York Times News Service
