Wedding Party in Shahr-e Rey
A View from the Men’s Section

People love to say Tehran is chaotic, vulgar, and generally repulsive. What they mean is that Tehran is a good example of present-day metropolitan sprawl, and that it’s a bit of a mess. But besides the fact that there are things to be said for Tehran’s lack of refinement, a big exception to the above rule is the division between balaye shahr and paiine shahr, North and South, which symbolizes the partition between the haves and have-nots. From this point of view, Tehran is actually nicely organized and quaint.

I was taken to a wedding in Shahr-e rey, way down South, past the train station, deep into the depths of the working-class neighborhoods, where geeky online reporters emsale bande do not set foot, unless they’re doing a survey for MERIP, or presenting "historical Tehran" to nervous tourists. The suburb of Shahr-e Rey is so paiine shahr that for Northerners, it’s rather abstract. It’s a blurb at the bottom of your city map, or, at best, the capital’s "historical foothold". Rey was already a town when Tehran, still a village, became the Iranian capital just over two centuries ago.

I didn’t know the bride, nor the groom, only the friend who was offering to take me along. I was grateful for the invitation, for it was certain to be very different to the inebriated, trashy disco nights that passed for wedding parties up North.

The party was to be held at the Talar-e Ayeneh ("Hall of Mirrors"). From outside, the ballroom is marked by a shop window full of voguish bouquets of artificial flowers, and neon lights spelling Talar-e Ayeneh in searing orange. You take the entrance, go up two flights of stairs, and you get to a corridor, which is where, if a member of the female sex, you take a left, into the women’s section. If not, you go straight ahead, and enter an enormous room awash with neon light, and filled with rows and rows of men, all munching on cucumbers and tangerines. In a spirit of decency and modesty, the excesses of the bachelor party are hidden from the women by a wall reaching almost to the ceiling.

Having arrived with my friend, who is well acquainted, or so it seems, with every single guest in the room, I follow him up and down countless rows of men and boys, shaking hands and smiling what I hope is a likable, thoughtful sort of smile that doesn’t look too apologetic (khoshbakhtam, khoshbakhtam), and beaming an especially likable, thoughtful, apologetic sort of smile whenever I’m introduced by name, "Mr. Zolghadr, who just came from abroad". I feel like insisting, look, I’ve been here for over a year now, but I don’t.

I take a seat between my very popular friend and his wife’s cousin. Doing as everyone does, I first have a cucumber, then go for the tangerines. I feel completely alienated from the men around me. After a lifetime of telling people abroad that I was "Iranian", in a smug and stubborn sort of way, I’m sitting here feeling oddly xenophobic.

As my acquaintance leaves for the prayer room, and I get into a conversation with the wife’s cousin, I learn that he’s writing a thesis on "chess in Persian literature". I catch myself feeling better. Perhaps it’s the sheer delight of chancing upon a citizen of the république des lettres (god forbid). Or perhaps I simply realize I’d been letting my sullen, European sense of imagination get away with me. Europe aside, the class thing gets to you in Tehran. You start sizing people up by the way they have their tea, or the way they pluck their eyebrows. It’s worse than London.

From the women’s section, one hears the happy sounds of people shouting, clapping, and leaping up and down. I reach for an apple, then change my mind and have another tangerine. The men here look bored, but relaxed; they chat quietly, or peacefully stare at their napkins. Even when the designated male-section entertainer takes the stage, they hardly blink.

The entertainer is the type of middle-aged Iranian that looks like Al Pacino. Slow, deliberate movements, sad, drooping eyes, and arched eyebrows giving off a permanently disbelieving expression. He goes into a long spiel on the religious status of clapping. "I know there’s a lot of mullahs out there in the audience tonight", he croons, "and we know they reeeeally don’t like the idea of clapping". He begins a long chain of anecdotes, cracks, and proverbs, the culmination of which is a passionate appeal to the audience: "Come on, let’s give the groom a hand — clap, everyone, CLAP". So people chuckle, put down their cucumbers, and clap. By now, the shrieking, stomping, whooping and clapping from the women’s section is all but deafening, and it’s hard to understand what the man is saying, but he continues, and starts cracking jokes.

"A plane crash-lands on a cannibal island. Papa cannibal and his son are watching the passengers stumble out of the aircraft. ‘Let’s eat that woman!’ says the son. ‘No, son, she’s too scrawny’, says papa cannibal. ‘Then let’s eat that guy!’. ‘No, son, he’s too fat, it’s not good for you’. Finally, this young, bad hejab woman comes out of the plane. Her headscarf is pulled back WAY over here, she’s got make-up, a short skirt, no socks, and all the rest of it. ‘Let’s eat her!’, says the son. ‘Don’t be stupid’, says the father, ‘we’ll eat your mother instead’."

The conversation with the member of the Tehran illuminati to my left resumes its course. "Funny how in Farsi they use the French word for artistic categories, expressionisme, surrealisme, modernisme", he says. I say they must be used by virtue of being English (expressionism, surrealism, modernism), but he replies that, well — no, it’s the English that are using French terms themselves.

Meanwhile, Pacino has launched into song. He has a great voice, and he goes through religious songs, folk songs, male bonding songs. One is a slow, yearning hymn to the women of Iran: "If you want a woman who’s smart and strong, go to Abadan / If you want a woman who’s pretty and sweet, go to Shiraz / If you want a woman who’s cheerful and funny, [ ...] / But remember, gentlemen, remember it takes money, it takes a car, it takes a house," and so on.

The groom finally arrives, and we all get up and applaud. He’s surrounded by hi-8 video cameras, and big clouds of toman bills that people throw at him as he passes. Hordes of little boys squabble over the money as it floats to the ground. The guy looks completely exhausted. As he walks around the ballroom, shaking hands and smiling politely, the kids stumble around him, kicking over chairs, toppling glasses, and sending fruit bowls and cutlery flying through the room as they frantically fight over the cash.

He finally makes it to the stage, where he takes a seat between two young men in suits. These are his saqdush, which literally means "right shoulder" in Azeri, but which is commonly used for both of the gentlemen in question, right and left. Strictly speaking, my friend explains, a saqdush is a "good-looking, experienced young man who stands by the groom during his wedding", and gives him advice, particularly when it comes to what, supposedly, only married men have been through before. In practice, the saqdush are merely expected to sit beside the groom and look pretty for a little while. Which is what they are doing now, or at least they’re doing their best.

Pacino bursts into song again, and we resume our conversation, which shifts to the topic of learning foreign languages. This is when we catch a first whiff of food in the air, and everyone scrambles to their feet. What happens now is only ever practiced at the more officious ceremonies (never at private dinners), and is equally, I am told, very common in women’s sections. You can find it described in many novels and travel accounts on Iran, always with the same sense of bewilderment, and rightly so. After a long evening of entertaining your guests, with live music, poetry, and learned conversation, the guests throw themselves at the food, eat as quickly as they possibly can, without taking the time to sit down, and leave immediately. I find myself wishing they did this everywhere.

Tirdad Zolghadr