Madrasseh

In a bus packed with first-graders a little boy with a high-pitched voice asked, "Where are you from?" I said, "America." His eyes-widened, he screamed, and spread the news. In the back of the bus five little boys began the chant: "Death To America! Death to America!"

Twenty-five first graders in neon-green summer program t-shirts prayed in formation in an open-ended warehouse. An older student stood in front, mic in hand, echo set to high chanting the Qur'anic Arabic in his prepubescent voice. A hand tapped my shoulder as I watched, a fully bearded man with a draped button-up shirt and slacks beckoned me over to a corner of the room for an interview.

Being The American made me a celebrity figure brinking between fame and infamy. In the bus to the summer camp I autographed the students' notepads, wrote my phone number on the bill of one's cap and incited screams by flashing a dollar bill. But, not being one to bite my tongue, when asked if I believed that Allah was God I said No.

I was tactful though, I never said I was an unbeliever, but a searcher, which didn't make me one bound to go to hell, but with my prior readings and future aspirations one to become not just a cultured Muslim, but a Muslim with powerful conviction.

Nonetheless, the video camera was zoomed in on my face for an uncomfortable two-minutes prior to prayer, and when I declined the invite to pray was taken into a corner of the room.

The interview began.

- You've read the Bible, so you think Yahweh is God?
- I've read Harry Potter, and unfortunately magic isn't real.

- Then, do you believe Allah is God?
- Until I see Allah, I won't believe. Until I sense Him, I won't believe. Until I feel he's helped me, I won't believe.

- Then who created you?
- My mother and my father.

- Don't you think 19 years is enough time to find God?
- Some math problems have taken lifetimes to be solved and understood. Should the question of whether there is or isn't a God be easier than a small question for us humans?

Worried that I would never come back, he was told to shut the camera off, and I was led to the principal's desk in the corner of the prayer room. Around it were a group of teacher's, the principal as well as my uncle, who admired my inquisitiveness and willingness to strengthen the reasoning behind the words of the Qur'an.

A morbidly obese man with a goatee breathed heavily as he took humorously small sips of his tea, and on learning that I wasn't a Muslim picked up a hammer and facetiously readied to swing it at my head. After sitting down next to me I noticed his eyes shooting glares in my direction and in quick Farsi he asked my Uncle if I was cut. Once it was settled that I was circumcised, the conversation could be carried on.

The men at the table were interested in bolstering their own reasoning with my Devil's Advocate play. And the topic at hand was the seegheh, a temporary bind between a male and a female who want to have sex ending with a payment to the women. (See Prostitution.)

One of the men began.

- The Americans are sinning when they get girlfriends and boyfriends and freely have sex with no time set and no idea of what faithfulness truly means.

- After a month of having a seegheh can I sign myself up for another month?

- Yes.

- Can I do so for an indefinite amount of time?

- If the girl gets pregnant, no, but until then, yes.

- And I can jump around from one women to the next, having a seegheh two weeks with one girl, two weeks with another, etc.?

- Of course.

- Then how does that make Americans less faithful, and how is that not prostitution?

The men began to argue that they were faithful to their wives and to mitigate the antagonism that was beginning to build I began to carry a conversation about their families, the fun they have, and they shared with smiles on their face.

I asked one what his fondest memory is with his wife, and he said, "Honestly, the wedding night."

One of the men segwayed by calling one of his friend's the Iranian equivalent of "faggot" and the topic of homosexuality was set forth. Unfortunately, the conversation was cut short, but the direction it was going was that, aside from what scientists are saying, there are things that science has not yet learned, somehow making homosexuality a sin. And all I had to retort was by making them agree that the acts of Jesus Christ were reflections of the act of God, and stating that history tells us his friends were those that they are verbally smiting. They said history was skewed, and that a true messenger of God would not do such a thing. Later, another said that Jesus' purity is like an ocean and those sinners like specks of dust, and that though Jesus could remain pure, "I would not be able to stay unchanged."

A few of the men came swimming with me and my uncle and they spoke fondly of their pasts, one saying that the happiest they had ever been was "the moment that Ayatollah Khomeini walked down the steps of the airplane" marking the end of the revolution and the beginning of the Islamic republic. With a blunt 180 in the conversation I asked if they would partake in an act of jihad and they replied that if God wills it, they would gladly do so.

While swimming alone one of the kids doggy-paddled up and asked me if I prayed. When I said No his eyes widened and he said, "There is a God, Allah, and he wants you to pray to him, and if you don't you'll go to hell, a fiery place, with fires so furious." He called my Uncle over to to describe hell to me.

The day ended and my Uncle and I made our way to a friends house where we were to meet the rest of my family, and on the way there he taught me bits of poetry and spoke to me about the conversations he had heard me having today, about how the first step to strengthening faith is questioning it. I honestly was curious to see what he thought of me because I refused to fork my tongue and say I was something I wasn't. But, my uncle was both understanding and hopeful that my future would set me on the correct path.

The night ended with a get-together at an old friend's house. Prior to my mother and co.'s arrival I was speaking with Habib, a very devout Muslim, who critiqued me for reading the New York Times and for having it as my predominant news source. I asked him if he though Iran's sedition acts were fair, and he agreed. I pointed out the hypocrisy in his last two statements and he slowly pulled the conversation away.

When my mother and co. arrived Habib immediately stiffened up, hands behind his back, staring at the television out of some fear that if he stared at my sister and my cousin he would become impure. I'm not sure if that is his reasoning, but he sat alone away from the party. The night ended with the host awkwardly approaching my mother with a sheet of cloth and covered her arms. My mother tore it off when she could and the night dredged on like a horrible hangover.

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."