Sex and the Islamic City: part 1

I have been living back in Iran for six months now. I was supposed to be back in my homeland just for a few weeks but I was soon infected with the Iranian curse of ‘bi khial’ and, without ever really making a decision to stay, simply failed to make a very clear decision to leave, despite the return date on my ticket.

Translated literally, ‘bi khial’ means ‘without intention.’ In reality it means not ever committing to anything or worrying about consequences, a sort of existential limbo that may have delighted Sartres or the Buddha, but is designed to drive to distraction a Brit used to turning up on time and subscribing to a work ethic (OK I am a writer so work ethic maybe is pushing it but I have been known to occasionally meet a deadline).

It first manifested itself to me as a national inability to make a date and stick to it. Even my friend M, who has been brought up in the US and has been living here for just 5 months, displayed advanced signs when I first arrived. Keen to meet up with her and catch up on the gossip, I tried calling her. Her mobile didn’t answer but the next day she called me back. I could hear traffic and the sound of her footsteps in the background. ‘I am dying to see you,’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing later? I am just off to a meeting, why don’t I call you when I am done at around 5?’

So I made my first mistake. Turning down other plans, I waited for her call. The hours passed and finally at 8 I sent her a text. The next day she called me. ‘Oh I am so sorry about last night,’ she said, her footsteps clattering. ‘My meeting ran late and then stuff happened and then I was in the mountains for dinner and I didn’t get your text cos I had no reception’ and etc.

This became typical of our interactions over the next few days and, I noticed, characterised at varying degrees all my social interactions. First I became frustrated: how was I ever supposed to see anyone when it was impossible to make plans? And how did anyone ever get anything done here? I put this question to my then still-platonic lover, who laughed. ‘Listen English,’ he said in Farsi lilting with a soft Kurdish accent. ‘This is Iran. Don’t take life so seriously. Everything will come right in the end, inshallah. You know darling, bi khial.’

So I learnt to let go and take things as they came, the kind of living in the moment espoused by the sages of yoga and countless America self-help gurus. And it was surprisingly easy to let go of schedules and expectations when it meant that I too was absolved of any responsibility to anyone except myself and to anything other than the next day’s plans. I started to float through the days, calmly reassuring family and friends that I couldn’t wait to see them, and then simply failing to call back for a couple of weeks. I had finally found the perfect way to deflect the unbearable pressure of family relations; having always taken seriously the implied duty of visiting all the family elders and accepting invites from all the family’s youngsters, my previous trips home to Iran had always been filled to bursting with family parties at which people would sit around commenting on my weight, the shape of my eyebrows and my defiant disregard of the importance of finding a husband ‘before it’s too late’ (ie: before you lose your looks). I would lessen the boredom by eating all the delicious food on offer and thus go back to London after three weeks in Iran fatter and paler, having never managed to escape the endless round of parties to take to the mountains that towered so enticingly outside the window.

Now, I do as they do. When my cousin, a notoriously fickle character, says ‘hey, shall we go to Dubai?’ I say, ‘Sure’, safe in the knowledge that it will never happen. I promise my legion of aunts that I will come and visit them in Shiraz ‘any day now’ and then I fail to show up from week to week, distracted by the lure of a party, a hiking trip in the mountains or an illicit visit to my lover in the west of Iran. I make apologetic calls, citing the pressure of work as an excuse (‘Sorry auntie, but suddenly I have so many articles to write. You know Iran is such a hot topic now…’) and I put off getting on the plane for another week. When a cousin’s husband asks me to research a new teaching method for him when I am back in London, I readily agree, knowing I will never remind him to give me his email address. Work that would have taken me a day now stretches to a week and I can no longer be bothered to check my emails every day, let alone hourly as I do in London. Life has taken on a loose and fluid form that I drift along on, failing to make a decision about anything.

For me of course this is the pleasure of pure laziness and the seduction of the lack of responsibility. For those who live here and who don’t have the escape clause of a flat in London and the reassurance of a British passport and bank account, it is a visceral reaction to living under an authoritarian regime, in a world where nothing is certain and everything depends on the grace of the person above you on the ladder of life, be it parent, husband, boss, mullah or president. I have begun to see how the lack of personal definition that characterises life in Iran is the reason why fabled eastern fatalism still hold true. I understand that 'bi khial' is sometimes the only way to survive.

The only sticky moment came when I was planning a research trip that I wanted my lover to accompany me on, a good opportunity for us since he lives on the opposite side of the country. I rang him several times with the dates, insisting he gives me an answer so I could reserve tickets. ‘Oh well, inshallah I will be able to come,’ was his reply.

I finally lost my cool. ‘Look my darling, inshallah won’t do. If you want to see me then you come on this trip and if you want to come on this trip you will let me know tomorrow. It’s up to you. No more "bi khial".’

He rang me the next night. ‘Good news,’ he said. ‘I went to my boss again to ask for the time off. He said, as usual, inshallah, as God wills, we will see. So I decided to be like you, English, and I got aggressive and said that I needed the time cos I had a guest coming from abroad and he had to give me an answer immediately. So he had to say yes.’

I was delighted he had learnt assertiveness from me, and, a couple of weeks later, seeing my lover waiting for me on the tarmac to start our trip, I felt that this was finally a meeting of the east and west I could claim some credit for.