Public Broadcasting published the
following article by one of its correspondents in Iran (5/22/12),
entitled "Iran Standard Time | 'Hitting the Turn'":
At a cursory glance, the Saadat Abad
main road looks much like any other in north Tehran: policemen in
starched white uniforms and reflective aviators marshal Iran Khodros,
Porsches, and everything else around Kaj Square and up the steep road
toward where the Alborz Mountains cut though the north of the city.
Look a little closer and you'll notice children at the traffic lights
clutching boxes of red roses, vying for the custom of the waiting
drivers. Closer still, and you'll see pairs of cars regularly slowing
down for their occupants to chat and exchange numbers.
Welcome to dore zadan (hitting the
turn), the way many young Iranians find a date. Though its utility
has diminished over the last decade with the loosening enforcement of
Iran's morality laws that officially bar unrelated people of the
opposite sex from holding hands in public, and everyone from playing
Western pop music at parties, wearing clothes that are too tight, and
so forth, the dore zadan is a mainstay of modern life for many young
Tehranis. Predominantly practiced in the capital by the middle
classes, it is an antidote to another boring weekend.
Having watched this automotive mating
dance from the confines of my friend's shop in Saadat Abad, I am a
bit apprehensive as I accept a friend's invitation to try it myself.
I meet Arash at a northern patogh, a rest stop with an ice-cream van
that serves as a pop-up meeting spot for young men and women. He sits
perched against the grill of his dad's petrol-blue BMW,
ostentatiously smoking a Bahman cigarette with his friend Reza,
waiting for his brother Kiarash to arrive. "You circle around
looking for cars of girls. If you like the look of them, you slow
down and take their numbers. The most important thing is that you get
lots of numbers," he explains sagaciously. "Most of the
girls are not doing it for real like us and only one in five will see
you after she gives her number. It's like nightclubs in the West; the
boy's priority is to get laid but the girls' is to have fun or to get
attention from the boys."
Kiarash arrives late and alights from a
friend's car. He is sporting a T-shirt that reads "G Funk Star"
and an oversized Golden State Warriors basketball cap, slanted at 90
degrees. "Let's go and find some bitchez!" he exclaims in
English, pulling what would look like an ironic gangster sign if he
were not dressed like Ice Cube, circa 1994.
The Iran Zamin is the most established
and popular circuit in Tehran but the Saadat Abad has the "classiest
girls," Arash explains. Saadat Abad is sometimes even closed by
police during the dore zadan rush hours -- Wednesday and Thursday
nights -- ostensibly due to maintenance, but it is widely seen as an
effort to curb practices that have become the Iranian equivalent of
the mating call. During summer months, when the Gasht-e Ershad
(Guidance Patrol -- the morality police) are out in force, the break
in the road on Iran Zamin is closed to stop cars from turning around,
taking the "dore" out of dore zadan.
It is time to head off and I am offered
the front seat after about three rounds of ta'rof. As we head toward
Iran Zamin, Arash expounds on the rules of dore zadan: if the girls
pull their windows down at the same time, they are too keen and not
to be pursued; if you can get away with it, you should invite them
all to your place there and then; and lastly, always have a few fake
numbers at hand, "so they don't become upset."
Reza, the youngest and quietest of the
group, is not sharing in the excitement of his two friends. "We
get bored. There's nowhere to go. You can't go to a bar, so you find
girls with your car," he says. "I don't like it. It's all
about money: you need a nice car and nice clothes to get any numbers,
but my parents are very strict and won't let me go to house parties
so I don't have a choice." Reza says his next-door neighbor
attends his university, but he cannot give her lifts because it would
arouse suspicion and impact her reputation when she's ready to get
married.
Kiarash is exploding with excitement,
banging his huge forearms against the front seats. He leans over to
plug in his iPhone and a ubiquitous track by Iranian pop stars
BaroBax and Gamno jolts on loudly. He grabs Reza's face and presents
it to me. "This guy," he triumphantly announces, "this
guy is a pimp!"
Joining the motorway, it does not take
long to spot what we are looking for. Several groups are surveying
one another in the thick traffic, checking their mirrors for any
prying Gasht-e Ershad. Arash slows down alongside a car with four
heavily made-up young women; designer sunglasses with dyed fringes
protrude from their colorful hejabs. The front passenger pulls down
her window and coquettishly smiles at Arash. "Azizam!" he
purrs -- my dear -- handing her a pre-prepared handwritten number.
Emboldened by the prospect of competition, Kiarash leans over Reza,
opens the back window, and scattershots at the girls' car, "You're
beautiful! I want to go around you!" Bemused, they speed off.
After two aborted attempts to make
another contact, Arash and Reza lower their windows to start up a
conversation with a group of girls. We slow down to a crawl, and the
driver of a white SUV honks his horn, impatiently edging forward,
trying to get by us. After some maneuvering, the apoplectic driver
races past and, to the boys' relief, our cars rejoin for Arash and
Reza to pick up where they left off. Numbers are exchanged. Reza
looks particularly happy with the result. "She was really nice.
I'll call her tonight and invite her to walk in the mountains."
He beams.
Having picked up a number myself, I
contact Sepideh to ask her about her experiences with dore zadan. "It
can be dangerous," she explains. "One time I was shouting
over the music and it cut out. I heard another motor -- a man on a
motorbike between our cars heard everything. We drove off though the
side streets and thought we'd lost him, but then there was a knock on
the window and it was the guy! He said, 'Do you have no respect for
yourselves, sisters? Stop playing this game and go to your homes.'"
Before the Revolution, Imam Khomeini
once declared, "Sexual vice has now reached such proportions
that it is destroying entire generations and corrupting our
youth...they are all rushing to enjoy the various forms of vice that
have become so freely available and so enthusiastically promoted."
I wonder what he would say of the Islamic Republic of 2012.
Copyright © 2012 Tehran Bureau
Read more:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2012/05/iran-standard-time-hitting-the-turn.html#ixzz1wJ3t0K8X
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