In getting to know her relatives, Maryam Abolfazli senses a shift in attitude, even among the staunchest supporters of the Islamic republic

In 2003, I went to Iran for the first and, so far, only time. I’d waited years to go with my mother since she hadn’t been back since the revolution, but then decided to stop waiting and just go by myself. I was living in Afghanistan at the time, and flew from Kabul to Mashhad on Mahan Air, and then to Tehran. On the first leg of the flight, as they started to serve rice with barberries and chicken, I put on my scarf. I wore it with a matching turquoise manteau that my room-mate, also Iranian, gave me. I was going to dress in modern hejab chic, signalling to everyone on the streets of Tehran that I was ready for the cool party scene I’d heard so much about.

My family, up to 20 of them, were waiting behind the glass partition when I arrived. And immediately, I realised they were not Tehran chic, and quite unlike the Iranian family I grew up in back in Tennessee. They weren’t overly expressive, or obsessively stylish like my family back home. Most everyone was covered from top to bottom in loose, dark coloured regime-appropriate attire. They clearly weren’t interested in keeping up with trends.

“Do you like Eminem?” my cousin asked me as I swooned over the gorgeous boys in faux hawk hairstyles walking past us on the street the following day.

“Yeah a lot,” I said.

“I hate him,” she responded.

This was the time when Iran’s youth were starting to peak in terms of coolness: ripped designer jeans, stylish edgy haircuts, underground music, parties with drugs, as captured a year later in the film Syriana. My room-mate would come back from Tehran with all of these stories about the fun she’d had. I wanted to experience it.

But I wouldn’t.

The trip’s itinerary, unbeknownst to me, was centred not around learning about the hip, vibrant, and youthful population I’d been hearing about, but visiting my father’s conservative family. There was no time to go to my family’s hometown of Shahroud, east of Tehran. Instead, each day, I visited a different aunt in Tehran.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The author arrives in Tehran. Photograph: Courtesy of author.

On the last day of tour de familia, I walked into an aunt’s apartment in Ekbatan, the US-designed housing blocks with hundreds of units built in the 1970s. The apartment was sparsely decorated: a brown couch, a chair, a coffee table, framed prayers and a picture of Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, on the wall. We took off our shoes and walked in. By then I had learned to keep my headscarf on, just as a precaution, even though I’d entered a family home. (In religious homes, only men who are closely related can see a woman uncovered.) The religious rule of keeping covered while being around the husband of my aunt was so different from what I knew about family dynamics back home. Around my mother’s family, we sat, played, and ate among aunts, uncles, and cousins as we would in our own home. The distinct boundary even among family members was new to me.

I sat on the chair and my aunt’s husband, an Iran-Iraq war veteran, and an enduring basiji, sat on the couch opposite me. He had that later-than five o’clock shadow beard that was so popular among the religious at the time. He was dressed in a shirt that didn’t have a collar, the kind that the Iranian government uses to distinguish their bureaucrats from western ones.

His back straight as he sipped on this tea, he explained to me that the project of the Islamic republic was now coming to fruition. “We’ve been working to become an independent economy, to build our own goods and services. And we are now getting there. We have so many factories producing things, we have so many engineers working on all of our infrastructure. God willing, we are becoming a fully independent and productive state and power.”

I nodded. I wasn’t entirely sure why we were talking about this, but I assumed it was because I was American. I had a million inclinations to push back on his ideas. What about the quality of products, services? What about the places that are producing products and infrastructure faster and with better quality? What about the general isolation? But this wasn’t a discussion. This was a proclamation. And I listened.

Making the case for Iranian tea Read more

Next, my aunt’s daughter appeared from the hallway. A slim and tall seven-year-old, her whole body was covered in a long sleeve shirt and pants, though it was summer and though she was inside her own home. She showed me her room and then my aunt entered. She wanted to discuss my gift to her daughter. I gave her the money she said she needed for the gift as I looked around at the modest bedroom with a bed, a dresser, and a few pictures. It was a distinct contrast from my cousins’ colourful rooms in the more affluent northern Tehran.

We finally left and they walked me to the apartment of my mother’s brother, her last family member in Iran. He lived in the same apartment complex. We walked down the street, my aunt and cousin, both in full black chador, and me in my bright turquoise top.

A tour of Tehran by Neighbourhood: Ekbatan - in pictures Read more

My aunt told me she always wanted to visit Germany. I told her she should. When we arrived, my uncle’s daughter, also seven at the time, answered the door in the shortest shorts and a bright yellow tank top. She looked practically naked to me. The sharp contrast between the two sides of my family was most apparent in that moment.

A change happened after the 2009 protests.

The same cousin that hated Eminem opened a coffee shop. And I started to see my cousins poking their heads on Facebook, even liking some of my posts. My dad went to Iran and explained that some family members had developed more nuanced views on the government, and that he could talk to some quite openly about the political problems. Others, he explained, were still quite devout and devoted to the regime.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Propaganda poster of the 1979 Revolution. Photograph: Christine Spengler/Christine Spengler/Sygma/Corbis

In trying to understand whether a nuclear deal will stick, or whether Iran will open up to the world, I always look to that side of my family as a litmus test. With over seven Iran-Iraq war veterans among them, a deep pride runs through them for the state they’ve helped build, as reflected by my uncle’s words that day in Ekbatan.

The day the deal was signed, our family group on the Telegram messaging application was silent. In between the stickers and jokes and prayers that are usually shared, I typed in the rare message, “Congratulations.” And my grandmother posted in response:

“Good luck isn’t found, it’s built.”

The following days, the rest of the messages were mainly not about the deal, but those that were, were all jokes.

“Dear beloved customer, in celebration of the nuclear deal, five thousand tomans will be withdrawn from your bank account. - Bank Melat”

(In lieu of subsidies, five thousand tomans were deposited into bank accounts during the Ahmadinejad administration.)

Or

“With Ahmadinejad we gained 20% enrichment, and we celebrated.

With Rouhani we lost 20% enrichment, and we celebrated.

We just like to celebrate!!”

One cousin that I didn’t meet in Iran but got to know recently over Telegram, works in technology and we often talk about products. When the P5 + 1 came to an interim agreement with Iran back in May she and I texted, emotionally, excited for what this meant for us - perhaps visits, frequently.

Then in July when the nuclear deal was dragging on, she got on Telegram and asked me what I thought. I was more honest than I’d ever been. “I don’t think Iran understands the global context. It is a country of 80 million negotiating and taking 20 days of the foreign minister of the most powerful country in the world,” I said, bluntly.

“I think Iran does understand this more than before,” she responded. “I think a few years ago they were really arrogant. But now they understand more. Even with the speeches you can see they’ve changed a lot.”

“I get the feeling that people in power don’t understand how the world works. Oil has helped them be unrealistic about their own successes,” I wrote.

“Yea but to be honest people don’t really like the oil money anymore because under the last president a lot of the money was stolen by the crooks in power. People now believe that the economy has to be built. They’ve seen that they are just a country in a larger world. You know, oil money is like inheritance money. Those that have it don’t feel like they have to do much to earn income because they know the inheritance is coming. People here have gotten more active relative to before, but still just a little bit.” She messaged her thoughts to me over multiple lines.

The afternoon after the deal was announced, Rouhani gave a speech with a kind of “don’t worry, we fooled them” tone. “They said Arak can stay, but no heavy water reactors. And that was unacceptable to us. And I can report that today we have negotiated the ability to keep heavy water reactors. About Fordow they said the name of Fordow is hard for us to hear, we don’t even want it to continue. No centrifuges at Fordow. And now let me tell you in summary, that today, we will have 1000 centrifuges in Fordow.” Everything was presented in terms of all that wasn’t conceded.

Rouhani was talking to people like my family, people who care less about global trends, people who are proud of Iran’s independence, people who still believe in a religious government, people who are concerned about being seen as equals to the US. Do these people want a fully globalized Iran with global values? I’d say no. While they may have become more open to seeking the latest trends in music, clothes, and technology, especially after 2009, they still hold onto their religious beliefs. Those beliefs guide them and define the type of jobs and resources they have access to, the way they raise their children, and their loyalty to the government. Even though these allegiances have changed among my conservative relatives, a faction still remains devoted to the religious government for these reasons.

Do they plan on dropping their national pride? No, given Iran’s influence in the region, it will be unlikely that they will ever believe that Iran needs to cower to the will of other states, regardless of its relatively small power. Iran will always try to punch a little above its weight. Do they have a slightly more subdued view of what Iran is capable of on its own? It seems like the answer is yes.

Given these perspectives, nothing about the implementation of the deal will be easy. The marginal humility is good in that it will ensure Iran will attempt to live by its promises, but the pride will make it such that there could be a game of chicken at each turn, with Iran trying to prevent its own humiliation at the hand of the US. The same sensitive and intelligent diplomacy that balanced these two aspects to achieve the deal will be needed in larger doses to sustain the deal over the next few years. As my cousin said at the end of our conversation, “I hope both sides keep their promises.”

Maryam Abolfazli is a writer based in DC