Living in Isfahan in 1977
Iran was like living in the twilight zone where everything is upside down and backwards. The Iranian culture defies western logic. I have tried to explain some of the logic defying habits and customs that I encountered in Iran in the paragraphs that follow. I feel that I must give you some assurance that what I am writing about Iran is not a joke. I lived there and worked there for a year and this is what I observed in my day-by-day interaction with Iranians.
Traffic Rules
Automobiles and Busses
Drivers only paid attention to stop lights if a policeman were standing under it.
Stop signs were not to be obeyed at any time for any reason. Whoever got to the intersection first had the right-of-way.
One-way streets were only one-way if all lanes were full; however, if the sidewalk was not full, it was perfectly acceptable to go down the one-way street (the wrong way) on the sidewalk.
Any city bus was free to go down a one-way street the wrong way at any time even if the street was full. Busses were not obligated to use the sidewalk as a detour.
A traffic circle had to be used as a traffic circle if you were going less than ¾ the way around. If you had to go ¾ the way around, you could take the short cut and go the wrong way for ¼ of the circle on the outside lane or, if the circle was full, on the side walk.
Motorcycles
Motorcycles and motorbikes were not obligated to follow any traffic rules what so ever. They did not have to stop for a traffic light (even if a police officer were present) if the police officer was not looking at them.
Public Works
City engineers, after digging a hole in the street or sidewalk, were under no obligation to block street traffic or sidewalk traffic from entering the area after dark. The only thing they felt compelled to do was to lay a board across the hole and place a tin can on the board.
Personal Habits
An Iranian's idea of a public toilet is to seek relief in a side street. However, they had to be careful not to urinate towards Mecca or to urinate on a wall. It is against Islamic law to urinate towards Mecca or to urinate on a wall. To insure that they did not urinate towards Mecca, many Iranian men had a device that always told them the direction to Mecca. And, to avoid urinating on a wall they would get down on their knees and urinate into the crack between the wall and the pavement (if the street were paved). If urinating in a back street that was not paved they still performed the same maneuver and don't ask me how they did it without getting their knees wet.
Brides and Bridegrooms
An Iranian bride is expected to be a virgin and therefore, to bleed like a stuck pig on her wedding night as proof that she was a virgin. The family of the groom would wait in the courtyard below the bedroom window to see proof of this in the form of a blood soaked cloth thrown from the window after the bride had been de-flowered. A brother or uncle would pick up the blood soaked cloth and wave it around to show everyone that the groom had performed his duty and had indeed married a virgin.
If the couple had had sex before being married, and he still thought enough of her to marry her, the groom would kill a cat and soak the cloth with the cat's blood. This would cover up the sins of the bride and allow the groom to hold her up as a trophy before his family.
Sex and the Single Male
I was a test pilot for Bell Helicopter in Isfahan Iran. One day as I was pre-flighting a helicopter on the flight line, an American who also worked for Bell called me to look at something located in the brush just off the flight line. The item of interest was a lean-to that some Iranians troops had constructed as a place to hide during the day to get out of work.
I told the man that showed me the lean-to that soldiers all over the world were the same, if they could get out of work some way they would do it. "No, no!" He said, "You are missing the point!" He told me that I should get down and look inside. I got down and looked inside. "So," I said, "I don't see anything!" Then he told me to lay down and look up. Then I saw what he was talking about. Attached to the roof of the lean-to was a life-size picture of a naked man.
I found out that homosexuality is rampant in Iran and I think the problem can be traced to two basic causes: nature and Islam. Nature contributes her part by releasing a flood of hormones when a boy reaches a certain age. This rush of hormones compels him to seek a mate and to try and reproduce; so, the boy starts looking for a female. Then Islamic law, in all of its infinite wisdom, contributes its input to the tragedy. Islam not only hides the female, it forbids looking at, touching, smelling or talking to a female. So, where can all this sexual energy go? Where can this irresistible and natural force be directed? Where else but towards other boys.
However, if a boy should find a female who is alone and cooperative (or not cooperative), then the female is punished (possibly killed by her relatives) for the encounter tarnishes the family name. The boy is not punished. In order for the boy to be punished there must be three male witnesses to the encounter (or rape).
Islamic Holly Days
During Islam's holly days it is customary to beat oneself bloody with some type of whipping device (i.e., chain, wire rope, rope imbedded with glass) that will rip the skin from your body and make you bleed. The more you bleed the more favorably Allah looks upon you and the more the observing crowd is impressed with your dedication to Islam.
During this time of purifying yourself it is encouraged to help purify any young woman who is caught without a black sheet over her head by beating her until she is either dead or unconscious.
The Muslims I knew believed that Allah derived great pleasure form these acts of self-purification and in participating in the purification of someone else, whether or not that person wanted the help.
Woman's Emergency Kit
During one of the Islamic self-flagellating holly days I was riding in an open civilian jeep with my Iranian girlfriend, her older sister and her male nephew. We were on our way to the police station to get a permit to have a party at my house. All gatherings were banned unless you had a permit and even if you got a permit it was always good practice to invite one of the police officers to attend the party, for a price of course. On our way to the police station we encountered a mob of hundreds of bloody Iranians walking down the street towards us, each one beating himself with a chain. There were no side streets to escape into so we would have to drive right through the middle of the mob to get through. My girlfriend's older sister put her hand down into a large bag that she always carried and pulled out two black sheets. She gave one to my girlfriend and one to me. "Put this on!" she said. "And, maybe we can get through this without any one getting flogged or killed." I asked her what she was going to use and she told me that she was an old lady and that no one would pay any attention to her. She and her son were in the front seats and my girlfriend and I were in the back. She was right about the crowd; they paid no attention to us as we plowed right through the middle of the mob. My girlfriend and I kept our heads down and did not look up until we were clear of the area.
Dogs
One of the most bazaar sites I saw in Isfahan was an old man dragging a dead dog behind his bicycle. He was waving and smiling at anyone who would look at him. He acted like he was the subject of a big parade created to honor a hero who had slain a great enemy of the state. Upon questioning a Muslim friend, I was informed that some Muslims believe that dogs are somehow emissaries of the devil.
Multiple Wives
My neighbor was a rich man who owned an appliance store in Isfahan. One evening, when we were both on the roof together watching the sun go down, I asked him if he was married. He told me that he had three wives and ten children. I asked him why I never saw anyone accept him at the house. "Oh", he said, "I don't live with any of them". So I asked him where they lived and he told me that each of his three wives had there own house and that he would visit them regularly during the week. I asked him why he didn't take turns living with each of them instead of having his own place. "Too much trouble!" he answered. "When I married my second wife I took her home to my first wife. I learned quickly that you can't' have two women living in the same house. Now, except for special occasions, I keep all of them separated because they are not together very long before the women start fighting and then the children start fighting."
Bribing Officials
If you do any type of business in Isfahan, you pay someone a bribe. After the landlord had some work done on the plumbing in my house I was informed that it would take two or three days for an inspector to come around to inspect the work and, until it was inspected, the water could not be turned back on. Twenty American dollars got the inspection completed within hours and another twenty dollars got the water turned on at the same time.
I needed to get a permit to drive in Iran. The person at the state office said that it would take a few weeks to get all my papers checked and the forms completed. Fifty American dollars got me a permit within four hours.
Bribes in Iran are like a hidden 100% to 200% tax on whatever business you are conducting. If you wanted to ship some large item (i.e., an Oriental rug) back home to the States and the shipping cost was $30.00, for another $30.00 you could make sure that it actually got there.
Infidels
You, if you are not a Muslim, are an infidel. My neighbor, an Iranian banker who was educated in the United States, told me that most "base intellect Muslims" as he referred to them, do not consider infidels as real people and as such can't be sinned against. What that means is, he told me, if a Muslim steals something from an infidel it is not a crime in the eyes of Allah. And, he added, if a Muslim kills an infidel it may be a crime in the eyes of the civil law but it is not a crime in the eyes of Allah. "There are those individuals", he told me, "that think Allah takes joy in the killing of infidels and that infidels that you kill become your slaves in the after life."
If Allah calls me, I will go!
Most Iranians I worked with were not safe pilots. The pilots I knew were great at memorizing emergency procedures; however, they were not very good at performing them in a timely manner. During in-flight emergency drills they would have to stop and go through the list they had memorized point-by-point until they got to the appropriate action. We kept telling them that they must associate an emergency with a corrective action because there are emergencies in a helicopter that require corrective action within 1.5 seconds. Their reply was always "It does not matter. If Allah calls me, I will go!"
Well, Allah called eight Iranian pilots during the year I was there. They had in-flight emergencies while on solo flights and did not take corrective action soon enough. During my time in Iran I refused to fly as a passenger on an aircraft piloted by an Iranian if an American was not on the controls with him.
Required Prayers
One big problem with doing anything in Iran was the requirement that they perform five formal prayers to Allah every day. To pray to Allah you must be clean. So they put on a clean shirt, wash their hands and face, then kneel on a prayer rug facing Mecca. The prayer must not be too short or they can be looked upon as not sincere. They can't make love to a woman or touch a pregnant woman and then pray to Allah; so, they must schedule their love life to insure that enough time has passed to enable them to perform their prayers with a clean body (not soiled by touching a woman). They only pray between sunup and sundown, so you can see the problem. According to how long the daylight lasts they could be praying every two and one half-hours. Considering the time it takes them to get ready and the time necessary for the prayer, they can only work in two-hour increments throughout the day. But wait, they don't work from 2:30 to 4pm because that is a recognized traditional rest period in Iran (started because it is too hot to work during that part of the day). And we wonder why their technology is still back in the 13th century!
Building a House
As I was leaving my house one morning I noticed a wagon across the street unloading what looked like a very large load of manure. That evening when I returned home I could tell that it was indeed manure. Someone, during the day had also delivered a load of straw and a load of soil. The next morning another wagon was there unloading what looked like one-foot square boxes that were about six inches deep. The boxes however had no tops or bottoms.
That evening when I returned home I saw an old man and a young boy mixing the straw, soil and manure with water and scooping it up to fill the boxes that were spread around the lot. They were making building blocks.
The blocks baked in the Iranian sun for about a week before the next crew showed up to start building the house. Each day a wagon would show up with a load of Straw, soil and manure to be mixed and used as the mortar to bind the blocks together. After a wall was completed a mixture of this mortar was applied by hand to each side to give the wall a smooth finish.
I asked my neighbor about the construction and he told me that it was normal and that the house I was living in was made the same way.
