The Consequence of a Handshake

The more I speak with the youth here the more I learn about the perks of an Islamic Republic. Today I was speaking with a friend of mine about the trafficking of illegal substances and "girl play" in Iran. Though prohibition is enacted in Iran, if one has the right connections one can have any alcoholic substance of their choice delivered to their door. My cynical friend also stated that the government is the one importing marijuana, hashish, opium, etc. into the nation and making a profit from prices inflated because of the illegality, but I'm not sure how much to believe him. And as far as "girl play" went he told me that since flirting is a punishable act, a male needs only to slip the girl of his choice a phone number, and the game begins when she calls him. He joked, "They make the difficult part illegal, so you can just take her straight home." If anything, according to my friend, the police can be paid off for most crimes. Friends of his had been caught in the act with a girl, but fifty dollars later the police was nowhere to be seen. That conversation was in the evening, though.

An odd sleep schedule had me awake at 6:15 A.M. and the day creeped slowly by from there. The majority of my time was spent with my aunt and my mother in government offices trying to finish some of my paperwork so that I can come and go as I please in Iran.

The organization of the office I was in, the Iranian equivalent of a DMV, was extremely unorganized. One women was sitting behind a desk with a crowd of twenty-five to thirty veiled women hollering questions out for her to answer. The women was unusually blase in demeanor, quietly sipping her tea and occasionally putting a sugar cube in her mouth, singling out a woman among the veiled storm that didn't damper her day and answering the enquirers question. Priority was given to males and I exploited that, I pushed myself through a crowd throwing a platitude out to tactfully abate the awkwardness and, picking up on the answerer's name, screamed it out and my request was immediately received. She quickly looked down with an occasional adjustment of her hijab, writing down the steps I would have to take to achieve the task at hand. I told her in my distorted Farsi that I was impressed by her calmness, and she broke out in laughter and began gloating about being Employee of the Month.

My Uncle's house is in an upper-class region of Tehran, his apartment had a large flat-screen television, persian rugs that covered the carpet, and a predominant antiquated Persian embellishment with a gaudy gold finish. Each of us sitting down on a separate chair the wife quickly brought us a sweetened drink, what could be described as a syrupy orange juice, and a small pastry, later she gave each of us a plateful of peaches, cherries, and other assorted fruits. The initial silence was a tad bit awkward as my uncle spoke to my mother about me in the third person saying how much I'd grown, etc.

Roughly ten minutes into the forced conversation a knock came to the door, the wife quickly went to the door and opened it. A women walked in, a relative of the household, her hijab wrapped tightly around her head covering every strand of hair, she compulsively adjusted it every minute or so, shared a coy smile with the new guests as she circled the room giving the customary introduction, the hellos, the how-are-yous, and the repetitition had ingrained itself in my natural reflexes. As she got to me, the only foreign male in the room, my idle hand impulsively extended itself beckoning for a handshake. As my hand shot outward my Aunt behind her immediately began to wave her arms like a victim on a sinking shape trying to get the attention of a passing vessel, her arms were vigorously moving about and she was mouthing the words, "NO! NO! NO!" My mother yelled at me to put my hand down, and I immediately reached for the sky and apologized over and over again, but the whole room, besides the women in front of me, began to laugh wildly.

I eventually began to talk with Farzad, a cousin, essentially, and his genuine cynicism, his lackadaisical perception of life and its meaning, and his agressive anti-Islamic Republic character traits were fascinating. He explained his days as a yawn. Having majored in Civil Engineering, he works as a construction worker making a mere three dollars an hour, to finish the day with a short sleep, and waking up to renew the cycle. But it was he who told me about the copious influx of alcohol and drugs, the partying, the girls. For him marriage, especially with an Iranian girl, would be a hassle. So his contentment came with a life of work and satiation.

His view of women, though, rang with the chauvinistic ideologies of the state. The jokes he made spoke of women solely as an object of obsession, women were moreso a hard-to-acquire-drug to be used and thrown away. He said the state made it easy for the men too, a man can get a seegheh, which is a short-term marriage, often lasting for a month, for the purpose of legalizing lewd and lascivious acts. In the smaller villages men get seegheh's that are nine-years old, not having even met the age of puberty.

Nonetheless, I've yet to meet someone my age who actually likes it in Iran. Most of the youth can't handle the government. Farzad said, "A human will always be a human, everyone drinks, everyone has sex, these things will happen whether the government makes it illegal or not."