A factor which could potentially precipitate the disintegration and eventual downfall of Iranian society is its current exaggerated emphasis on the “piety” of Iranian women. This may sound extraordinary, but it is true. Iranians have traditionally regarded “piety” as indicative of the honor of women, an indispensable quality that makes them worthy and dignified. Here, “piety” encompasses many meanings which include chastity, humility, devotion to husband, and behaving according to Islamic codes. A young woman should remain a virgin before marriage; this has been an established norm in society. Even before the 1979 Revolution, this idea was so entrenched in the minds of Iranian women that the sight of spinsters going about their daily lives was a familiar vision. But the truth lies elsewhere. Not all women inflict such self-restraint on themselves and many of them lose their virginity at a young age. Militant Islamic society has found a solution for these “impious” women: The acceptance of indignity and loneliness – or prostitution.

 

Our traditional society’s conception of women is characterized by extremes, and, as such, women are classified as either “pious” or “impious.” When a traditional, “pious” woman who is uneducated and has never worked, loses her husband, she usually ends up having to work as a laundry washer, housekeeper, bathhouse attendant, matchmaker, or in other low-level jobs in order to make ends meet. Of course, this problem is even worse in India, where widowed women are burned along with their deceased husbands. This ghastly tradition has largely been eliminated in recent years. I have seen women from Calcutta who had migrated to Verndaban (the capital of Krishna, the God of Love.) These women were widows who, according to custom, were to be burned along with their dead husbands. But their refusal to be the victims of this inhuman practice led to their exile. They were considered “sinners” by society just because they had chosen to stay alive. That is why they were driven to Verndaban as a place where “sinners” can at least have the comfort of not being ostracized.

 

Although widowed women in Iran are not burned along with their husbands, too many undeniably live out the rest of their days miserable, as they face a number of insurmountable obstacles. Most often, married women do not like widows because the latter’s poverty frequently forces them into cheap temporary marriages (sighe) with married men. To remain “undefiled,” a young and “pious” widow, who also has sexual needs, only has one option: marriage, or, at least, temporary marriage. The probability of the first alternative is unlikely because men, with their traditional attitudes, rarely show any interest in widowed women as wives. In fact, they often prefer virgins. But the second alternative is quite probable. It becomes understandable why married women frequently avoid widows. When traditions keep these widows from engaging in normal relationships with others in society, only two options exist for them. She either accepts that she is an outcast and can only interact in a limited group of women, or she becomes a prostitute.

 

In this article, I am not concerned with “impious” women; they will be the subject of another study. Instead, I will focus on “pious” women. The prevalent assumption holds that these women acquiesce to only one kind of relationship with men: legal marriage. At the same time, I base my argument on the assumption that they also avoid lesbian relationships, because this kind of relationship is considered “sinful” by the law of Shari’a. What remains is the third form of sexual satisfaction which is acquired through masturbation. From the perspective of Shari’a, this is also an appalling sin and it seems natural that unmarried women refuse to engage in such acts.

 

 

My discussion is concerned with girls or women who have normal sexual needs, as they are defined by society, but remain “chaste” and do not enter into any kind of relationship with men unless it is sanctioned by marriage and religion. Evidently, our religious society lauds women and girls who abide by such norms. A comparison between two films from before and after the Revolution will illuminate this point. The Fellow Traveler (Hamsafar) recounts the story of Azadeh (Googoosh), a young woman whose chastity has been sullied by an illegitimate relationship with a man, Mohsen. Azadeh longs for marriage with Mohsen, but he refuses to make any commitments to a woman whom he considers a “slut.” Ironically, she is a “slut,” in his view, precisely because she has had sexual relationship with him. When we first see Azadeh, she is in her car feverishly driving to the northern seashore of Iran to force Mohsen into marriage. Azadeh’s wealthy father sends Ali (Behrouz Vosoughi) to find her. Meanwhile, the young woman tracked down the fugitive Mohsen, but he will not agree to marriage under any circumstances. Azadeh is not pregnant so at least this is not a concern. Nevertheless, the despairing Azadeh attempts to drown herself a few times, no doubt a ploy to maintain the pace and intensity of the drama. Luckily, Ali shows up just in time to save her on all these occasions. As the film drags on, Ali discovers that Azadeh is actually an innately shy, decent, and virtuous woman, and the film, like many fairy tales, ends with a marriage between a wealthy and beautiful young woman and her impoverished heroic inferior.

 

Unlike The Fellow Traveler, Café Transit, a recent film by Kambozia Partovi which is one of the most beautiful Iranian films, focuses on the story of Reyhan (Fereshte Sadr Orafaie). Reyhan is a truly “virtuous” woman who is at the same time quite strong and independent. When the film begins, the heroine’s husband has just died and, according to existing traditions, she has to marry her brother-in-law, Naser (Parviz Parastui.) The latter is, of course, married, and it is, interestingly enough, his wife who asks for Reyhan’s hand. Reyhan delicately rejects the offer of marriage and, instead, decides to reopen her husband’s café. The film weaves its drama through the story of Reyhan’s resistance to the pressures of Naser and her inconsequential romantic adventure with a Greek truck driver.

 

In both The Fellow Traveler and Café Transit, which were made before and after the Revolution respectively, the assertion of one point is quite clear: a woman should remain chaste, quiet, polite, humble, shy, self-restrained, and ashamed. In the pre-revolutionary The Fellow Traveler, Azadeh is always ashamed and, as a consequence, frequently on the verge of committing suicide. In the post-revolutionary Café Transit, although Reyhan has not perpetrated any “sin,” she imprisons herself in her café’s kitchen and cooking is just about the only thing she does. The story of her love for the Greek driver is also composed in such a way that it can never be fulfilled. In fact, it is Reyhan who rejects the Greek driver’s offer of love, but her rejection is clearly spurred by the pressures of prevailing traditional norms and culture. If, in the first film, Googoosh as Azadeh had not tried to commit suicide and had instead remained indifferent, she would have lost the empathy of the audience completely. The same is true of the Café Transit, because if Reyhan had responded positively to the Greek driver’s proposal, she would have been condemned by the audience. A “pious” woman should always say “no” to the love of a strange man.

 

These are, of course, only films. But what about real life? I knew a woman, Parvaneh, who was so “chaste” that she finally gave into marriage at 33, a rather late age for marriage by Iranian standards. Her uncompromising sense of “chasteness” made her consider her husband’s kisses and caresses as an act of lovemaking, a fact that struck her with an overwhelming feeling of disgust and indecency. Her exaggerated “chasteness” was so powerful that she considered even sexual intercourse legitimized by the Shari’a as a “sin.” Of course, she later divorced her husband who was a drug addict and began a life of loneliness. In her final years, she was haunted by the paranoia that others were laughing at her. I sometimes thought she had probably suffered from an absence of a normal sexual life, a pressure that might had forced her to resort to masturbation as a means of alleviating her natural sexual needs. Her paranoia, therefore, resulted from a crisis of conscience and a sense of shame, as if everyone had caught her in the act of committing her “sin.” This was a common tendency in society, because women were often burdened with the fear of being watched, as if an ubiquitous eye were always gazing at their lower bodies to ensure purity. I personally have experienced this feeling quite intensely.

 

A “virtuous” girl or woman who feels sexual yearning considers herself a “dirty slut.” I remember a young woman in prison who had not, like so many other prisoners, turned “penitent” by recanting her beliefs and ideology. And yet, she was, like the “penitents,” full of shame and regret. Once she confessed to other inmates that she felt like her body was nothing but a piece of rotten, stinking slime and she had to reform herself. Under the pressures of the prison’s director, who insisted that all political prisoners, men or women, were “lecherous animals,” another girl was forced to confess that what attracted her to a particular political organization was the fact that it enabled her to mingle with boys. This “horrifying confession” created a commotion among the other women prisoners. After she returned to her ward, she was harassed so much by the others that she soon committed suicide.

 

 

Let us look at the Islamic Revolution and its political struggles from an unconventional perspective. Why were thousands of girls and young women executed from 1981 to 1988? I believe that their exaggerated “piety” was the reason behind their attraction to different political organizations. They had been repressed by narrow-minded religious norms for too long. Thus, they reacted by embracing the different ideologies that they thought would give them an opportunity to live more freely. Of course, this dramatic swerve left catastrophic consequences in its wake as many of these women fell victim to the tyranny of a ruthless theocratic regime. It was only after the mass executions of Khomeini’s era that “the pious woman” in its new sense emerged in Iran.

 

The mandatory unveiling or hejab ban imposed by Reza Shah, along with the permission for girls to enter schools and universities, suddenly changed the traditional definition of womanhood. Now a woman could study and work. A large number of women began to go to work in offices and factories. Many of these young women remained unmarried because societal norms did not tolerate a woman who worked outside of the home. But many of them also married and thus form the core of a new kind of family which was unmistakably different from the traditional one. This new breed, were women who intermingled with men, went to the seashore, wore swimsuits, went to Europe, attended dance parties, and began a new “Westernized” lifestyle – without being considered “impious.”

 

We must consider three major factors which defined the Islamic Revolution. First, the Islamic nature of this movement rose out of a kind of ignorant mentality that considered modern women working in various offices and institutions as “sluts.” It also viewed modern professionals, such as the directors of various firms, engineers and doctors who usually wore ties, as decadent. Let us not forget the charge leveled against Mrs. Farokhru Parsa, the first female minister during Pahlavi’s reign, by the Islamic revolutionaries: attempting “to corrupt girls.” Parsa, who was the Shah’s Minister of Education, was executed by Islamic fanatics for this.  

 

Second, most leftist groups, especially the Tudeh Party (Iran’s Pro-Soviet Communist Party), supported the Islamic Revolution. The Tudeh Party which, according to its ideology should have regarded the Shah’s technocrat regime as much more progressive than a clerical dictatorship, took a huge risk and acted against its own ideological precepts by supporting the reactionary mullahs. Since there was no sign of a coherent and organized proletarian force at that historical juncture, the leftists, deceived by Khomeini’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, aimed their resentment at “the comprador bourgeoisie” – the nascent bourgeoisie which was dependent on the West – which they thought should be destroyed along with all its cultural and intellectual traces.

 

Though many other factors defined the Revolution, a third crucial trend emerged: “pious” women stepped out of their homes, and as such, wielded awesome influence. These women who were part of religious factions had long ago realized that their lives were full of pain. They were not allowed to attend school or university because these educational institutions were viewed by their families as the centers of corruption. Under such circumstances, they were also kept out of most workplaces such as offices and factories. Of course, the men of this social group were not much better off; they were worn down by backbreaking work. Although the new industrial order had given rise to smaller families, men with radical religious beliefs usually had to sustain quite large families on meager wages. That is why this group was finally forced to succumb to the notion that women can also study and work to assist the family – provided that religious people are in charge and not the Shah. Although Iranian women have always been kept from engaging directly in social activities, they have worked as hard as men throughout history. And yet the new urgency surrounding that acceptance of women in the workforce, alongside men, presented the religious class with a baffling predicament.

 

The life of Mother Mosana and its devastating social and political consequences are paradigmatic of this group of women. I have recounted the story of her life in my prison memoirs and it is important to mention it here as well. The fate of Mother Mosana is representative of a large segment of Iranian women. Although Mother Mosana’s father sent his sons to school, he did not allow his daughter to even attend primary school. To keep her “chaste,” her family married her off at the age of nine to Mr. Mosana, in whose house she subsequently became a prisoner. She gave birth to her first of six children when she was only thirteen. Mr. Mosana was extremely suspicious of his wife. Driven by a kind of paranoia, he would sometimes come home unexpectedly to check on her. He would look in every room to make sure that no one had been in the house during his absence. He would take Mother Mosana to visit their relatives once a month, but on their way back home, he would shout at her for smiling or looking at other passengers in the taxi. Mother Mosana had an inherently “virtuous” character but she finally reached the end of her rope. Her pain, though psychological, manifested itself in the form of asthma. She was taken to a doctor who tried to examine her, but her husband recoiled in horror at the thought of another man touching his wife. The doctor then suggested that they should return some other time when Mr. Mosana would be willing to allow him to examine his wife. On his return home, Mr. Mosana expressed his wish for the existence of female doctors, in which case the “virtue” of his wife would remain intact. One of his sons used this opportunity to persuade his father to do the unthinkable: to agree that one of his daughters study medicine; she could then cure their mother. Mr. Mosana exploded with anger at this suggestion and began to slap his son so savagely that his face swelled.  

 

 

As chance had it, Mr. Mosana died and left the “consecrated realm” he had called his house to Mother Mosana. Now she had to manage her family on the inadequate pension of her deceased husband. Her sons had opposed the Shah’s regime and ended up in jail. This forced Mother Mosana to linger around the prison without knowing what to do to help her imprisoned children. The number of those opposing the Shah’s regime increased rapidly and eventually the Revolution took hold. Mother Mosana was joyful and joined the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization. During this period, although she was quite active as a political agitator, she still remained a traditional “pious” woman. Of course, after the crackdown on dissenting political organizations, Mother Mosana, along with many other members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, was arrested. While in prison, she spoke often about parts of her life. She once told me that she used to become fearful when her daughter-in-law came home late. Her son’s explanation that his wife was an independent and free individual and could choose to come home late struck her as unbearably shocking.

 

I met Mother Mosana when three or four of her sons had already been executed by the Islamic Republic. This is the bitter fate of a “pious” woman who, without even knowing or wishing it, had raised dissatisfied and rebellious children. Mother Mosana represents numerous other women who revolted against the Shah only to realize that Khomeini was far worse. Many of these women lost their lives in the hands of the Islamic Republic during the first few years of the Revolution. Of those that remained, many shrewder ones joined the new system to replace the modern and educated women who had been dismissed from their work. Of course, what emerged was the creation of an extremely complicated and inefficient bureaucratic system. A decade went by and a new generation emerged which, without declaring war against “piety,” did not tolerate “prison,” either in the home or in society.

                                                                                                     

 

Something interesting happened to me yesterday in L.A. On my way to the gym around 11:30 in the morning, I noticed some workers had dug a large hole in the road to repair a broken water pipe. To prevent a flood, the workers were using a machine that was greedily sucking the water that the broken pipe was spouting. In the gym you could see the sign “water is cut off” on all doors. I left the gym at 1:30 in the afternoon. Curiosity prompted me to revisit the hole and the broken pipe on my way back home to see how much progress the workers had made; I could not find any trace of them. Apparently, they had repaired the pipe, filled the hole and covered it with asphalt. I thought to myself, this is how a society that does not claim to be “pious” accomplishes a task. In Iran, on the other hand, religious fanatics stone to death an adulterous woman and encourage others to consent to temporary marriage. They define women as weaklings who should sit in a corner at home breastfeeding their infants while tears trickle down their cheeks. In that society, the “holes” which are dug remain uncovered for months and years. They are not just physical “holes,” but also “holes” in our very psyches.

 

The war that is waged in Iranian society today and is destroying its foundation is, in fact, the war of the “pious” women like Mother Mosana, who become progressively conscious of their social condition, against repressive religious patriarchal men. This is an excruciating war whose casualties increase every day. It is both the war of modernity against tradition and a war within us. This is the war of unfilled psychological holes that the assaults of “piety” have left in our minds. This is the war of girls who intentionally lose their virginity to challenge a patriarchal system. We should then accept that the ideological force of the concept of the “pious woman” is waning in Iran. The small jails guarded by traditional men, in which “pious” women were kept prisoners, were not tolerable any longer and the war of modernity with tradition contributed to the creation of an environment where the prisoners of “piety” could break out of their cells and broaden their social relations. Yet, all of these elements: work, education, and social interactions, in defiance of existing constraints and limitations, will bring about change. It seems that, this time, Iranian women will be the catalysts of change once again, and this change is, of course, going to be guided by another perspective in a new direction.