Letter from Iran: voices from the streets.

Thornton, Christopher

ESFAHAN--SOMETHING WAS BREWING. Metal scaffolding was being erected in front of the Imam Mosque on the north end of Esfahan Square, the second largest public square in the world after Beijing's Tianammen. The semblance of a stage was beginning to appear and security checkpoints were going up in front of the souvenir shops, all of which had been ordered shut the following morning.

"Our president is coming," said Mohammed, a rug seller, in a dull voice that radiated little enthusiasm. And he was. The next morning, the rest of the trappings of a presidential visit were in place. Red banners draped from the roof of the square read, "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." At the gated entrances, members of the Revolutionary Guard were handing out posters bearing the image of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sometimes separately, sometimes in tandem, but always in poses and bearing befitting the leader of the Islamic Revolution.

I passed through the checkpoint after the most cursory of patdowns from one of the Guards and managed to squeeze within four rows of the metal barrier surrounding the stage, where more Guardsmen had been posted to provide a margin of security between the president and his faithful. At one in the afternoon the ten o'clock rally had still not started. Ahmadinejad was running on Bill Clinton time. Government organizers mounted the stage to mouth Revolutionary slogans and keep the margins of the crowd from growing thinner. We waited.

"What are you doing here?" a young man beside me asked.

"Curious," I said, which was true. I had been travelling in Iran for a week, eager to hear the opinions of ordinary Iranians, the common folk walking the streets and shopping in the bazaars of cities small and large, unfiltered through the voices of pundits who appear on satellite news channels, few of whom had ever set foot in the country. About two o'clock, Ahmadinejad's motorcade finally rolled into the square. The president was standing through the roof of an SUV, leaning over to shake the hands of followers who ran to it across the spacious lawns.

Once Ahmadinejad took to the stage he voiced his usual denunciations of the West and claimed his nation's right to develop nuclear power. Cheers erupted at the scripted applause lines. Chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" broke out on cue, but a little lackluster. It was a poor showing. Less than half the square was filled, and most of the supporters had been bused in from surrounding villages. Twenty-five dollars was the going rate, I was told, paid to anyone willing to spend part of the day shouting government slogans. This time the organizers had thrown in cookies and lemonade.

As the crowd dispersed I met Mehrad, a graduate student in chemistry at Esfahan University. He knew nothing of the rally and had only stumbled on it by chance. But had he gotten wind it of it, he probably wouldn't have shown up. "All the politicians in this country are idiots," he said, as he led me to his grandfather's workshop down an alley off the square. The old man had mastered the art of textile painting, so while he labored under the glow of a high-intensity light I chatted with Aydin, Mehrad's brother, who had operated an Internet blog until government authorities "advised" him to shut it down. I asked him what would have happened if he refused. He drew his finger across his throat.

"They control everything here," he said. "They run the economy, the military, the legal system. They've gained so much power. There's no way around them."

"When will things change?" I asked.

His answer was quick: "When the U.S. invades."

I had been in Tehran a few months earlier, just days after the widely discredited presidential elections. Then the mood on the streets was high that the 30-year-old theocracy could finally be reformed--or overthrown. Early one evening a cordon of silent protesters walked the length of Enqelab Avenue, which was splashed with green--the signature color of the reform movement--some of the marchers carrying calendars as a symbol of a political countdown, and tiny flames protected by paper shields to keep them from being snuffed by the evening breeze. The silence was more expressive than any shouted political slogan, but in the months that followed, the brutal crackdown, with its waves of arrests and accompanying tales of rape and torture, was enough to blunt the confidence of the most optimistic of reformers.

Now, all around the square, buses were idling, waiting to gather up the supporters to ferry them back to the countryside.

"Did you see our president?"

The voice belonged to a young woman in a black chador, standing beside a friend still holding one of the colored posters portraying an ethereal President Ahmadinejad surrounded by clouds. The faces of the young women glowed, misty-eyed, like teenagers at a '60s pop concert.

"He is a true global leader," Nagar said.

"He wants to reach out to everyone," added Shirin. "It's not his fault if he's refused."

Ahmadinejad has recently shown up in South America glad-handing Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, Brazil's Lula Da Silva, and Evo Morales of Bolivia. He had also been chatting up Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan and Bashir Al Assad of Syria. To Nagar and Shirin, this was global diplomacy par excellence.

Then a young man appeared, about r8. His name was Amir and he was also from a village near Esfahan. He was fresh-faced and innocent looking, without the practiced look of so many of Iran's youth who strut the streets of Tehran in silver-studded black belts and kooky haircuts--rebels with a cause but almost no way to express it.

"Of course the government is honest," Amir replied when I asked whether the regime's obfuscations over its nuclear program were only cover for a nuclear weapons program. "Our country is based on the principles of Islam, and according to Islam one must tell the truth." Amir's naivete would have been touching if it wasn't so troubling, but he wished me a very pleasant stay in Iran and asked for my e-mail address before making his way over to the buses along with Nagar and Shirin.

Then I crossed Iran's political divide. I walked down the street to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, a cluster of buildings set behind a gated entrance, surrounded by a rectangular pool that reflected a stand of cypress trees. On the ground floor, six rooms were hung with portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini: Khomeini surrounded by angels, Khomeini staring into an unknown distance with the visionary gaze of Che Guevara, Khomeini standing on a cloud. "Remembrance of a Friend: Artworks on the Occasion of Imam Khomeini's Heavenly Departure," read the sign at the gate.

Watching over the exhibit was a team of art students from the nearby academy--young women wearing monteaux that hung just far enough down their thighs and veils that concealed just enough hair not to draw the attention of the morals police. One asked where I was from. I answered, and the others crowded around. Their dream was to attend art school in the U.S., but with visas almost impossible to obtain they were looking elsewhere--Australia, England, Canada--anywhere but Iran.

"This is a dead country," said Golnaz, looking out the window at the still water in the pool and the cypresses hanging overhead. Since an arts degree offered no possible way out of Iran, like many young, educated Iranians they were studying English translation as a way of improving their chances of emigrating.

"Funny, isn't it?" said Golnaz. "You have been trying to come to Iran for such a long time and we only want to go to America."

Later that evening I walked back to the square. Workmen had almost finished pulling down the main stage and some of the souvenir shops were still open, trying to recoup some of the day's losses. Handmade silk scarves and tapestries were draped over racks outside vendors' stalls, and enameled tissue boxes and chess sets were displayed in the shop windows. The cerulean blue domes of the Imam and Sheikh Lotfollah mosques glowed in the beams of the surrounding floodlights. The evening chill had driven away all but a few of the nighttime strollers. A few months earlier the lawns had been filled with families enjoying picnics spread out on the grass in the balmy air of the summer evening. Children had jetted around the concourses on skateboards and roller blades, their ears wired to iPods and MP3 players. But now, unlike the setting sun, the political heat that the day had generated had not cooled.

A young man approached and, of course, asked where I was from. I told him and he asked if the impression most people had of Iran was true. I asked him what that impression was.

"That they're terrorists. That they only want to cause trouble in the world."

I asked him if I would be here if I thought that way.

"The world sees a lot of bad images of our country," Hossein continued. "All the shouting, the demonstrations. They don't see the real people."

I wish I had one Iranian rial for every time I was asked: What do you think of Iran? Iranians? The Internet and satellite IV, when they're not blocked, have connected Iranians to the rest of the world, and so they have a clear view of the world and opinions about it, but little idea of what the world thinks of them. World opinion of Iran has been mainly shaped by the image of its government, and many Iranians regard the government as a deep embarrassment, like a crazy relative who has blackened the family name, or a woman at a party with a run in her stocking but who cannot hide it and hopes the other guests won't think badly of her.

I asked him what he thought of President Ahmadinejad.

"He's a good man. He cares about the people, but the rest of the world doesn't see any of that. What they see is propaganda, to make Iran look bad."

Other opinions were not so generous.

"What a jackass!"

Again, the topic was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I had run into Reza, a man in his forties sitting beside Esfahan's rectangular pool and fountains spurting jets of water. No, he had not attended the day's rally. He had only come to the square for a stroll once he'd heard that it was over. For the past 12 years he had worked for an architectural firm in liberal Dubai but shuttled back and forth to visit family members several times a year.

"You know what it is?" he said when I asked why the rally had been held that day, if it had any purpose other than to rally regime support. "The dam has cracked, and the government knows the crack is there so they have to patch it up. But it only keeps breaking, and next they'll try to pour some concrete in it. But the dam is breaking."

"And what should the rest of the world do?" I asked.

"The U.S., Israel--forget about military strikes. Cut off the money. The government would fall tomorrow. You think any of the people here believe in it? The basij are paid three hundred dollars a day when they're called out on the streets." He was referring to the voluntary paramilitary force used to crush the post-election protests and generally quell dissent. It serves as another tentacle of the security apparatus that reaches nearly every town and village. A conservative estimate put the size of the force, men and women, at over one million.

"If the government was about to fall, the Revolutionary Guards would throw away their uniforms and shave off their beards the next day and support whoever was taking power."

Reza had firsthand experience with Iran's security services. When he was 22 he was riding his bicycle home one day when the police arrested him for aiding a violent demonstration. Unknown to him, a few blocks away an explosion had gone off. He tried reason: "If I had planted a bomb would I be running away on a bicycle?" He got nowhere. He was held for two weeks but finally freed along with a group of men who had been picked up when the investigation went nowhere. But instead of simply opening the jailhouse door and giving the young men a kick in the pants, the police drove them to the remote countryside about 35 miles from Tehran and left them there.

"We have to make you pay some way," said the commanding officer as the van pulled away. "After all, we fed you for two weeks."

HAMADAN--IN THE MIDDLE of the traffic circle in the center of Hamadan, 200 miles southwest of Tehran, there is a relief sculpture of Ayatollah Khomeini hammered on a circular bronze panel. Images of Khomeini appear in almost every city and village, usually on posters, often with his successor, Ayatollah Khameini, accompanied by birds, clouds, and other images representing the glory and sanctity of the Revolution. Since the June elections many of the posters have been defaced. Usually eyes are scratched out, sometimes teeth are blackened--but the bronze Khomeini in the middle of the traffic circle watches the cars pass unscathed. Occasionally flowers are left on the ground beneath his chin, but few of the pedestrians crossing the circle pay him any notice.

Hamadan is a university town, and was therefore prime staging ground for clashes between students and security forces following the June election. When I was there a few days later the violence had cooled, mainly due to the government's brutal show of force. All around the large square near the university, troop carriers were parked and dozens of black-helmeted basij eyed the passersby with an odd mixture of fear and intimidation. That had been the odd dynamic of most encounters between protesters and police: the grunts charged with maintaining order gathered in clusters, seeking security in reassurance, if not safety in numbers. The female basij also traveled in packs: on the way into town we passed a earful driving slowly, eyes darting, on the lookout for any sign of threat to the Revolution. This was a people's revolution, after all, but the militiamen and women were confronting the people.

In the shady park outside the mausoleum of Avicenna, the 10th-century scientist and philosopher, I met Shaheen, a journalism student. I asked him if he could write whatever he wanted in the paper he worked for at the university.

"Oh, yes--anything that is factual," he replied, as though he believed it.

I asked him what impact the fraudulent polls would have on society.

"It's too bad," he said, carefully, diplomatically, searching for words that were "factual." "Everyone suffers."

On a balmy summer evening, Ganjnameh is the place where the people of Hamadan go to cool off. Twenty-five miles from the city, the narrow cleft in the mountains is part public park, part archaeological site, part open-air cafe, part walking and hiking ground, and full-time escapist haven from the heated world of politics. A gentle, sloping walkway leads up the valley past a row of takhts, the rug-covered sitting platforms where strollers can rest, sipping fruit-flavored nonalcoholic beer, a picnic area for snacking and smoking hookah pipes, or ghalyoons, as they are called in Iran, and then climbs over a boulder field to end at a mountain pool fed by a waterfall. But nowhere in Iran can one escape the reminders of its long history. The real attraction at Ganjnameh is not the solace it offers on summer evenings or the cool evening breezes that blow down from the waterfall, but the rock inscriptions left by Alexander the Great when he passed through in 323 B.C.--the first of many invasions the country has seen. In 651 A.D. Arab armies attacked from the south, imposing Islam and the Arabic script and all but eradicating Zoroastrianism, Iran's historic faith. Mongol hordes poured down from the north in the 13th century. Toward the end of World War II, British and American troops seized control of Iran's northern oil fields, and the thirst for oil sparked Saddam Hussein's invasion that ignited a war that left half a million Iranians dead. Many villages near the Iraqi border were nearly emptied of their male population, and few are without a mural somewhere near the center displaying the portraits of those martyred in the eight-year war.

While children frolicked in the pool I chatted with Arash and Niloofar, both professional tour guides, down on their luck since the post-election riots had chased almost all the foreign tourists away. Arash was fluent in English, Niloofar in German, so when times were good they could serve a wide swath of the tourist trade. In the middle of one of Hamadan's parks is another reminder of Alexander's trek across ancient Persia--the statue of a lion kneeling on all fours that the Greek forces had left behind. I asked Arash if this was a mark of shame, or maybe a premonition, and reason to guard against invading armies--American warships or Israeli long-range bombers.

"It's a fact of our history," Arash said. "We have been invaded for centuries, so if the Israelis or the Americans come, it won't be the first time." I asked him if this history might have something to do with Iran's desire to develop a nuclear weapons program, as the West believed. He squirmed, trying to reconcile conflicting impulses. "Nobody wants nuclear weapons, but we do want the power of self-defense. During the Iraq War we were invaded and even attacked with chemical weapons but no one came to our aid. We were alone."

Niloofar asked if there were many German speakers in the U.S. She had heard that more Americans were of German blood than any other nationality. I told her that few Americans of German descent spoke the language of their ancestors, and she looked disappointed. I asked why.

"We want to emigrate, and to the U.S.," Arash said.

"But don't you make a good living here, serving foreign tourists?"

"There is more to living than a livelihood," he replied. "The way this country is going, there will be no future here."

An hour later I was circling one of Hamadan's roundabouts in search of a place for dinner, not an easy task in Iran. A thirty-year ban on alcohol has killed any opportunity for fine dining, and continuing restrictions of all sorts--on haircuts, dress, and so many other aspects of public behavior--has driven almost all social life behind closed doors, where Iranians are free to indulge in Western music and movies, alcohol, the mixed company of men and women, and everything else denied them in public life. The result is a country with fewer restaurants than I have seen anywhere in the world. Fortunately I didn't have to look very hard. A young man saw me scanning the nearby storefronts as I weaved among the nighttime crowds and asked what I was looking for. A few minutes later we were sitting in the basement level of a traditional Persian restaurant facing platefuls of chicken kabobs and saffron rice.

"All of this trouble has been very good," said Javad, a student at Hamadan University. "We have never gotten this much attention and now the whole world will know that we don't support the regime."

I asked him what the future held. He paused. "It will take some time but eventually this government will go," he said, with the starry-eyed optimism of the young revolutionary. "The biggest problem is our president. The things that he says give the rest of the world a very bad image of Iran. All the attacks on the West make Iran look very foolish, and we're well educated people.... Would you like a knife?"

I was still not used to eating Iranian style--using the edges of a fork and spoon to tear apart chunks of meat--but Javad was enjoying playing host. He had a lot of frustration to vent, and what better way to do it than bend the ear of a visiting American?

"Don't let the government fool you," he said once he had settled back in his chair. "Everything in this country is all appearances. Iranians aren't that religious. Islam was brought here by the Arabs. It was never a part of our culture. It doesn't draw the people together like it does in the Arab world."

I asked, what then, was the "glue" that bound society, that made all Iranians--Azeris and Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis, Turkmens and Persians--feel Iranian.

"Our language. It isn't spoken by others. Our poetry. Music. Literature. You know why there's all this trouble now? These leaders try to tell us what to do, how to behave. But our own culture tells us to think for ourselves, to decide what to accept and reject, not to be dictated to from above."

A week in Iran was enough to give credence to Javad's claims. This was not the Arab world. The mullahs in Qom and Esfahan walked the streets with the direct, purposeful stride that projects clear, uncompromising certainty, but other Iranians would mosey about, or saunter, guided by the whim of an inner mood. But the most noticeable difference was in the behavior of women. Unused to the pressure of gender segregation so common in the Arab world, women felt no inhibition in approaching me to ask where I was from, why I had come to Iran, what I thought about ... Trying to find my way out of the back alleys of Yazd, an old woman swathed in a black chador and face-covering niqab greeted me with her eyes and mumbled, "Salaam ..."

"You know, I really love the U.S.," Javad said, after we had paid for our kebabs and were back out on the street. It was closing in on midnight but traffic was still circling the roundabout. Lights burned in the windows of the sweet shops, while men and women alike hurried home clutching gift-wrapped boxes of saffron cookies and gaz, a toffee-like sweet filled with nuts.

"I'm glad I had a chance to have this talk," Javad continued. "It will help people to understand that we don't support the regime."

After Javad and I parted, I walked back up to the square near the university, and two truckloads of riot police were still parked on the edge of the eerily darkened square. Hamadan doesn't offer much in the way of nightlife, but then no Iranian cities do. An hour later I found myself back at the hotel, sitting at the keyboard of the computer made available for guest use, waiting for the Internet server to open. It was the only doorway to the outside world. Up in my room, the BBC broadcast nothing but scrambled colored cubes onto the screen. France-based Euronews managed to transmit unfiltered pictures, but without a soundtrack.

Adnan, the night clerk, tried to work a little cyber magic to get the server to open up. Like any night clerk working the graveyard shift, the tedium and loneliness of the late hours made him loose-lipped.

"No freedom," he said as he shut down the computer.

I asked him what should be done about it, what action the people should take if they disliked the government so much. The riot police at the square were making their presence felt, even though not everyone was so easily cowed. "They are so powerful," Adnan said. "We say anything, they will kill us, torture us ..."

Earlier in the day the gatekeeper of Hegmataneh Hill, an archaeological site on the edge of the city, swapped politics with my guide while I toured the ancient ruins on the edge of Hamedan. He was at least 70, with a grizzled beard and face weathered from too many long afternoons baking under Hamadan's relentless heat. "We should have no fear," he said. "Whatever they try to impose on us, we shouldn't feel that we have to accept it."

Sitting across from me in one of the lobby chairs in his ill-fitting suit, Adnan hardly looked ready to storm the barricades. Much younger than the gatekeeper and with the hope of a life still ahead of him, he had far more to lose. But leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he projected confidence. "The Iranian people don't want this conflict with other countries," he said, "but this president doesn't care about the people want. He doesn't care about his country. We have a lot of wealth. We should use it to help Iran."

Wouldn't the development of nuclear power help Iran, I asked. Adnan scoffed. "He's using it to help himself, not the people. He just wants to show off, to say to the world, 'Look what we can do.' If he really cared about his country he wouldn't cause so many problems with others."

According to Adnan there was a problem of perception, and it wasn't just Iran's problem. "The American people, they're afraid of us," he continued. "They think we're like the Afghans--primitive -but we're not. We're civilized people. The Americans see all these demonstrations and people shouting, 'Death to America,' and don't think they could have anything in common with us, but we identify very much with Americans."

I wondered why someone who regularly dealt with people from all over the world, but very few Americans, would have a special affinity for people had had rarely seen. "We also know what's like to be a superpower," Adnan explained, "and we're also a very complex society, with people from all backgrounds and ethnic groups. We also want a democratic society. I like Americans. They're very simple, down-to-earth people. They wouldn't want to see their leaders bragging and causing all this trouble in the world."

The phone at the reception desk rang, summoning Adnan back to duty. The computer was still frozen. But there was another night-owl killing time in the hotel lobby, Ojan, a young man in his 20s. His English was touch-and-go, but with a little practice and help from the map in my guidebook, I learned that he was from Abadan, on the Persian Gulf, and worked as a shepherd, and that he had come to Hamadan to visit relatives. The rest of his family was still enjoying what nightlife was to be had in Hamadan--at a private party in a private home out of eyesight of watchful authorities.

"This is not a country to have fun," he said. He took out his mobile phone, scanned through. There were photographs of green hills and blue skies near Abadan. Finally he found some shots of the demonstrations in Tehran. One photo showed a female basij frisking another woman spread out over the hood of a car. Her left hand was reaching under the woman's monteaux; the other held a pistol. There were more pictures of demonstrations, men and women being manhandled by the police and basij, men and women.

Just then from between the pages of my guidebook fell a small card, a little bigger than a business card, that I had been using as a bookmark. On one side were quotations in Farsi and on the other a photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini, again, surrounded by clouds. It had been given to me by the ticket taker at Khomeini's house in Tehran when I visited it a few days before.

"Where did you get that?" Ojan asked.

I didn't have the nerve to tell him.

Tehran--Stretching 30 miles from the edge of Tehran's suburbs to the apron of the Alborz Mountains to the north, Vali Asr Street is both the city's wall and bridge. Running as straight as a compass arrow, it cuts through the conservative, working-class southern half of the city, bypasses the Tehran bazaar, the crossroads for nearly all of Tehran, and then begins a long, sleepy climb toward the mountains and the neighborhoods of the North Tehran "elites," center of the green movement and all that rankles the government. Crackdowns on "un-Islamic" dress and haircuts usually occur at the beginning of the summer, but for a few mouths after the post-election riots the morals police almost vanished. The Islamic regime is nothing if not pragmatic, and so it refrained from taking any risks that might drive the people back into the streets.

One night I had a roasted vegetable pizza at Bix, an upscale eatery in the Gandhi Street Shopping Center, a complex of restaurants and cafes that also includes a music shop where the staff will burn a copy of any "banned" CD they don't have on hand. Bix's menu advertises "California-Mediterranean cuisine," and many of the patrons appeared to have been plucked off the boardwalk at Malibu or Nice. A few of the waiters struggled with marginal English, and most of the women wore colorful, form-fitting monteaux and tapered designer jeans.

I was waiting to pay my bill when I met Parviz and his wife. For 20 years they had lived in Tennessee, where Parviz ran a real estate business. Long ago he had become an American citizen but retained his Iranian citizenship and each year spent several months back in Iran so his 10-year-old daughter wouldn't grow up wholly ignorant of her parents' ancestry. The price was her experience in the Iranian school system.

"There's so much brainwashing," Parviz said. "They distort the whole history of the Revolution to suit their needs. Some people are fooled, but now there's so many ways to get information that most people aren't. But I still have reteach my daughter half of what she learns."

I told him about the rally I had attended and the appearance of Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard captains surrounding the stage platform in their green caps and military fatigues.

"Some are real believers in the regime and everything it stands for, but most are bought and paid for."

I asked him if Mir Hussein Mousavi, Mohammed Khatami, and Ayatollah Rafsanjani didn't represent a real threat to the regime. Mousavi had been the likely victor in the elections, if all the ballots had been accurately totaled; Khatami led the government prior to Ahmedinejad's election and attempted radical reforms; Rafsanjani had switched from government loyalist to gadfly. Even his daughter had been arrested attending anti-government protests.

"Same shit, different shade," Parviz replied. "They've all served the same rotten system. But Mousavi could have been a turning point. There could have been changes in the parliament, more power to the secularists."

So was nothing gained in the elections?"

Hassan forced a thin smile. "The people have finally seen that there's nothing inside these leaders," he said. "And the leaders have learned that the people are willing to fight them."

The next day I left my guide to take a walk in the mountains. But I wasn't alone. I was chaperoned by Rashani, a calligraphic artist I had met at the opening of an art exhibit where several of her works were on display. In a roomful of art aficionados and gallery hoppers, she was comfortable enough to pass along her contact number to a visiting American but not enough at ease to talk politics. That was reserved for a mountainside trail where hundreds of other Tehranis go on weekends to stroll and set up makeshift barbecues in order to escape the social and political tension of the city.

I asked her view of the country's leaders. Her answer was succinct: "They can go to hell! We deserve better," she went on. "All this talk of nuclear energy and arguments with the West is a way of keeping people distracted. That's what they want, for everyone to be passive--no, frightened--but Iranian people are not like that."

What are they like, I asked. What did they want, if not the current government?

"I guess we don't really know. I'm not sure I know what I want. But we do know we don't want all this religion in government."

I was reminded of a joke I had once heard about the difference between the mosques in Saudi Arabia and Iran: The mosques in Saudi Arabia are ugly heaps of rubble but filled on Fridays; the mosques in Iran are magnificent works of art but empty on Fridays.

The next morning I was led around Golestan Palace in central Tehran by my guide, Sohrab. The tour almost didn't come off. The access road to the entrance gate passed through two government buildings and the police had blocked it--tensions were simmering once again and nervous leaders do not take risks. When we pulled up to the barrier Sohrab waved a manila envelope out the window and shouted, "We're from the foreign ministry." The policeman drew the barrier aside. The envelope contained nothing more than the papers from the tour agency stating he had been assigned to be my overseer during my stay in Iran.

"They push, you have to push back," Sohrab said, after he had bought my entrance ticket. He had lived in the U.S. for 10 years, first in Florida, where he earned a degree in business and computer technology at Florida State University, and then in San Jose, California, working in the IT industry and riding his Harley-Davidson through the hills of Silicon Valley. "Illegal" CDs--John Coltrane, Chet Baker in Tokyo--now rattled in the side-door pocket of his Peugeot. Against a backdrop of Qajar-era mosaics, he was more animated by the troubles of the present than the glories of the past.

"Everything that has happened in the past 30 years is very alien to our society," he said. "We haven't always had good leaders and political freedom but at least we had social freedom. That son of a bitch back there?" He gestured toward the gate. "Nothing in our culture tells us to accept that kind of authority. Look at the words of our poets--Fedrosi, Saadi, Hafez--they tell us to push back at authority, that the people are supposed to guide the direction of society, not the rulers. We are not the kind of people to do what we're told just because someone says so."

Evidence for his claim was written on the palace walls, which were arrayed with blue-and-yellow tile paintings portraying elegant peacocks and hunting scenes in swirling rococo curves. Such images were common in Persian art but unthinkable in traditional Islamic painting, which forbids the portrayal of any living creature.

"In Iran religion isn't a cultural unifier like it is in the Arab world," Sohrab continued. "When the Arabs brought Islam here in the seventh century we took from it what we wanted, beliefs like the importance of thinking for oneself, and so it became more of a philosophy of life, not the kind of rules associated with religion. Our challenge now is to get back to the true character of our society."

That night I got a glimpse of the secular Iran Sohrab was talking about. I ate dinner at the Armenian Club--a nondescript building with a yellow awning and garish lamplight tucked into a narrow side street a few blocks from my hotel. Formally, it serves as a social center for the county's Armenian Christian minority, but the restaurant welcomes anyone who walks in off the street. Stepping past the wooden door was like walking into a 1920s speakeasy. The coat rack in the hallway was heavy with women's monteaux and headscarves--and a sign of the liberal dress code that existed beyond the door. A man seated at a kiosk window pointed me to the brightly lit dining room, where women wore sleeveless tank tops and their hair fell unrestrained to their shoulders. At a nearby table an elderly man made a request to the waiter. A glass of ice appeared, a flask emerged from his pocket, and a splash of whiskey doused the cubes.

All through the meal I was eyed by a couple from across the room, eating with a larger group--family, no doubt. When they got up to leave the woman--Ehsan--came over to my table. Then came the questions: Is this your first trip to Iran? What do you think of Iranians? Where are you from? We chatted, and I got around to asking her if she supported the government. Her answer was emphatic: "Oh, no!" I asked Baraz, who turned out to be her brother, what he thought of Ahmadinejad. No, he didn't like him. I asked why. They both fell silent. The social code of the Islamic regime had been checked at the door, but fear, its main instrument of control, still seeped through.

KASHAN/ABYANEH--ABYANEH IS WHERE SOME TEHRANIS ESCAPE the congestion and political tension of the city. This tiny village nestled in the mountains a little over an hour from Kashan is crisscrossed with narrow lanes lined with rough, brick-colored houses that are almost indistinguishable from the surrounding cliffs. From a distance it resembles a phalanx of chess pieces growing out of the rock.

Walking beside the stream that cuts through the village I met Mohammed and his sister, Nassim. They were both university students in Tehran who had come to the family's ancestral village for the funeral of their grandmother. They invited me into the family house and onto the rooftop terrace that offered a panoramic view of the adjoining valley and ruins of the ancient fort that once guarded the entrance to the mountains. Despite the distractions, the conversation quickly turned to politics.

"We should have the right to develop nuclear energy," Mohammed said.

"And missiles?" I prodded.

"No! No weapons!" he said. "Iran should reach out to other countries, make friends ..."

I asked him what he thought of President Ahmadinejad and he translated the question to his sister, who pulled back as though she had caught a foul smell. "He talks too big," Nassim said, through her brother. "All this is to impress the world, when he should do more for the people." Then she added, in a few words of English: "Make war. Like Bush. Talk big. Just make war."

Later that night I sat out on a takht in the courtyard of the front entrance outside Abyaneh's only hotel, nursing a pot of mint tea under a dome of stars as brilliant as the ceiling of the dome of Esfahan's Imam Mosque. Weekenders filled all the other takhts, sipping coffee and puffing on ghalyoons. I caught the attention of two young couples a couple of takhts away, and soon came the customary icebreaker: "Where are you from?"

Shahpur worked in IT for an Italian company in Tehran, Neda as an accountant for the National Iranian Oil Company. Afshin had just returned from Brussels, where she had spent two years studying languages. Naveed was an account supervisor for Bank Melli, one of Iran's largest banks. For many young Iranians, talking to an American means talking about movies, and Iranians love movies. Shahpur was a fan of Robert Altman. Afshin favored Martin Scorsese, especially Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. Neda wondered if I was familiar with Iranian directors Majid Majidi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. That I was not only familiar with them but had seen some of their films surprised her more than the fact that she would be talking cinema with a visiting American sitting on a takht under the stars in Abyaneh. But movie talk soon dissolved into other questions: What did I think of Iran? Iranians? The green movement?

"Ahmadinejad has become the public face of this country," Naveed said. "But he doesn't really represent the people."

"He's an idiot, but a dangerous idiot," Shahpur added. "He can connect with the common people, the people in the countryside, especially if they have no education, so the leaders who are so out of touch with the people use him for that."

Nearby Kashan was an Ahmadinejad stronghold. Women did not appear on the streets in colorful headscarves or monteaux that traced the lines of their figures. Pro-government campaign posters left hanging from the elections were not scrawled with graffiti, and Ahmadinejad's eyes were not scratched out, as in Tehran and Esfahan. I asked how a religious government could have taken control if Iranians themselves were not particularly religious, and how it could stay in power if there was so much opposition to it.

Naveed offered an explanation: "Thirty years ago the people had had enough of the shah, but they were not very sophisticated, politically. They woidd accept anything. No one thought about the consequences. But these leaders have been in power so long they've gotten arrogant. They think that they can control us, that they can control everything, even the Western countries, like their reaction to the riots after the elections."

Afshin cut in: "They want to take our ..." She paused, searched for words, then placed her right hand over her heart.

"They aren't in control anymore," Shahpur said. "They really underestimated the people's reaction to the elections. They thought we were stupid, that we would accept anything they told us."

"But why are they still in power?" I asked.

Neda, who was shy about her command of English, whispered something to Arash.

"She says they wouldn't be if the U.S. would help us."

"In what way?"

"Militarily."

"How, send in the marines to take over the country?"

"No, just kill all the leaders and leave."

"We just try to live our lives," Afshin added, "ignore the government as much as possible. Till we can leave."

"To where?"

"We all want to go to the U.S., but if not, then Canada, Europe, Australia ..."

I asked if the country wasn't afraid of a brain drain, all the best-educated Iranians leaving and taking their skills and their futures with them.

"They don't care," Shahpur replied. "Fewer of us to bother them."

SHIRAZ--EVERY NIGHT ABOUT NINE O'CLOCK the shops along Zand Street, Shiraz's main boulevard, close up, but the trading doesn't stop--it only gets started. One by one, black-market vendors appear, setting up card tables and laying down swaths of cardboard and plastic sheeting. And then music banned from Iranian airwaves and movies that will never be shown in Iranian cinemas can be had for fire-sale prices. I bought The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for one dollar. There are many more titles on offer, crammed into cardboard boxes for the strollers to pore through. No police appear, and the hawkers do business with what-me-worry aplomb.

Equally serious bargaining takes place about half a mile away, in the covered lanes of the Shiraz bazaar, but as the metal shutters are pulled down over the vendors' stalls, the shoppers retreat to Sharzeh, a two-tier restaurant with a stage set up in the central courtyard and a rare nightspot on Iran's social scene. Local musicians play traditional Persian classics to diners who join in, clapping hands and stomping feet. It was here I met Jamshid, a biology professor at Shiraz University.

Jamshid had grown up on a farm near Shiraz, where his father grew barley and wheat. It was not hard to imagine him hauling buckets of feed off the back of a horse cart--he had thick hands and arms and his girth was another sign of his former athleticism: he had been a champion heavyweight wrestler, winning bronze and silver medals in regional competitions. But his metaphors for the state of Iranian politics were drawn from the world of business rather than sports.

"We need better management," he said. "Like the Catholic Church a thousand years ago, we're in the Dark Ages."

Mixed metaphors aside, I asked him what he meant: the blocked Internet sites? The state control of the media? The number of banned films and other entertainment?

"It's everything. Why is everyone here? Because there are so few places where we can experience our own culture, where we can enjoy something the government doesn't want us to."

He had a chance to stage his own protest on a recent trip to Persepolis, the ruins of the administrative center of the ancient Persian Empire about an hour from Shiraz. He was leading a group of visiting relatives around the site, and President Ahmadinejad was scheduled to deliver a speech in front of the grand staircase the same day. "I told the others that they could listen if they wanted to, but I just walked away. I went back to the parking lot and waited in the car. Everybody knew what he was going to say. I didn't have to hear it."

The next day I was out at Persepolis, poking among the towering blocks of stone under a searing sun. Outside the Persepolis Museum, I was spotted by a group of young men. The bold ones shot curious glances. I walked over to the water cooler under the shade of the museum awning where they had gathered, and one mustered the courage to introduce himself. Mahmoud was the most talkative of the group--or the one with the best English. It was the perfect setting to find out how they felt about their country--the troubles of the present measured against the glories of the past.

"Doesn't being out here make you proud?" I asked.

"No!" Mahmoud almost shouted, and it was soon apparent that his perceptions of his country had been shaped by the 30 years of the Revolution. The 3,000 years that had come before were a hazy shadow which had faded into a distant dream.

"We're not proud of anything," he continued. His friends nodded in agreement. "Not the politics, and that's all we have. Our art and culture, and science, that's all part of the past. These leaders talk about the greatness of Iran, but Iran is not meaningful today. Your country is powerful and very meaningful, even if it is very young."

It was sad that such cynicism and feelings of shame had taken root in someone so young. And it was all the more troubling when one considers that 60 percent of the Iranian population is under 35, with no meaningful memory of life before the Islamic Revolution, an event that effectively severed the young from their own identity and history.

I asked--with a glint of hope--what would make him look at his country differently.

"We want more freedom," Mahmoud said, and again the heads around him nodded. I asked him what he meant by freedom. "We want more social life, places to go where we can meet people. For people our age it's normal. There shouldn't be all these restrictions."

I asked how many of them had been Mousavi supporters in the last election. Hands went up. Heads nodded.

"If there was different leadership, things would be less strict," Mahmoud said.

Heads kept nodding. For a moment the long shadow of the past receded a bit and the faintest glimmer of a more promising future shone.

That night I paid a visit to the tomb of Hafez, the 14th-century poet and custodian of Iran's literary history. The setting suggested more shrine than tomb. The stone-pillared monument capped with a dome stands in the middle of quiet, park-like grounds. Beneath the dome lies the marble tomb of Hafez. Iranians approach it slowly, as they would an altar, and stand around it, reverentially, in silence. Some reach out to place a finger, sometimes two, on the marble, and withdraw their hand only reluctantly

The grounds were lit with indirect lamps that surrounded the stone columns. The sound of classical Persian strings floated through the air from speakers mounted in the trees. I was stopped on the steps by three young women, chemistry students at Shiraz University.

Again: "Where are you from?"

I replied.

"Oh, we love America!" one cooed.

I asked her what she liked about it. Whenever I asked young Iranians why they found the U.S. so appealing, responses were short and vague, suggesting that this magical El Dorado was still only an image, a blank screen on which they projected the fruits of their imaginations. The crackdowns on dissent had only made the image glow brighter.

"Everything!" one exclaimed.

"The freedom!" another said.

"What kind?" I pressed.

One girl fingered the edge of her veil. "From this!"

In a country with none of the traditional nightspots for young people to gather, the parks and even the tombs of the great cultural giants have become rendezvous points for random meetings and clandestine trysts. Couples huddled in the niches in the stone walls surrounding the grounds, and the tinny strains of the Persian santour became a suitable serenade.

At the back of the grounds I met Mirza and Parisa. Mirza was an engineer working in eco-agriculture. Parisa had a degree in Internet technology.

"There are no jobs in this country," Mirza said. "You get an advanced degree but then there are no opportunities."

I asked him if U.N. sanctions were having a devastating effect on the economy, as some claimed. He didn't know or care. He wasn't about to blame the U.N., or the West, any more than Hafez, lying cold in his tomb, for Iran's troubles. Times were tough. Jobs were hard to find. It was that simple. The dynamics of global politics seemed like a distant abstraction, alien to the frustrated career aspirations of Iran's young professionals. It was even hard to believe that Iran had that much impact on the world, and the world on it.

"Why is there so much talk about Iran?" Parisa asked. But it was hard to explain the reason for the global focus on Iran to a generation of Iranians whose constant aim in life was to shut the government out of their lives. Instead, I expressed surprise that the tomb was so crowded--it was already after ten--and yet the grounds were filled with strolling families and each wall niche held cuddling couples and clusters of young Iranians.

"We appreciate our history," Parisa said, "especially now."

I asked what she meant by now.

"We come to places like this ..." and she paused, hunting for words. "They're good for ..." and she touched the side of her head.

The next day I left Shiraz and Iran. The day before the maid in the hotel had asked me, "Where are you ...?" When I answered, her eyes glowed. This time, when I emerged from my room, her broken English resonated from the end of the hall: "Good morning ...!"

Shiraz airport was unusually crowded and all the flights were running a little behind. The security inspection was backed up, with dozens of teenage boys dressed in neatly pressed slacks and white shirts, with combed hair. They were bound for Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on a pilgrimage, but they resembled a group of prep school graduates on their way to collect scholastic awards. Once we passed through the security checks and passport control there was another long wait. With time to kill, one of the group sat down next to me in the departure lounge. He had an English exercise book and asked, politely, if he could use me for language practice, but soon we began conversing on subjects not covered in an Iranian English-language textbook: the recent elections, the frustrations in Iranian society. He edged a little closer, out of earshot of the rest of the group.

Then he said a little softly, "You know, it's not possible to talk freely in Iran ..."

I nodded, said nothing.

"You know, we don't want all these troubles with other countries, the U.S. What we want is more freedom."

I asked what kind.

"To say what we want, not all these restrictions ..."

"Hey, no politics--"

Another member of the group had sidled close and spoken quietly but firmly. His words were more caution than warning, one friend looking out for another because they had long learned that unwanted ears could be anywhere. And it had its effect. The kid clammed up, but by then a half dozen others had gathered around, and then came the questions: What had I seen in Iran? What did I think of Iranians? Would I come back?

It soon emerged that one of the group, Davood, was a member of the basij. Tall and lanky, and without his black helmet, riot shield, and truncheon, he looked more like the captain of a volleyball team than a member of the feared security police. The rest of the group joked about it, like the revelation of an embarrassing secret. I asked Davood why he had joined. Did he believe in the principles of the Revolution? Was he a supporter of the Islamic regime and the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Davood drew a blank. "This way it's easier to get into a university. There aren't many opportunities in Iran," he went on, "and many of them are controlled by the government."

The flight to Mecca was called for boarding, and the boys grabbed their carry-ons and headed for the gate.

There is something sinister and unnerving about a state that corrupts its own youth, like a plant that poisons its own roots, but there is still much reason for hope in Iran. One evening in Esfahan I was at Si-yo-Se Pol, the 17th-century bridge that is one of the country's most vivid symbols of its Persian heritage. This was a week after the June elections; a prolonged drought had left the riverbed dusty and dry. The arches beneath the stone walkway are customarily a place for singing traditional songs, drawn from the verses of Persian poetry. A group of young men had gathered under one of the arches--it is illegal for women to sing in public in Iran--and their voices carried out over the warm evening air as a crowd had gathered to listen: "Life is full of the good and the bad,

I can laugh at the wind and the sea,

Because I can tolerate anything ..."