Tehran City Quotes

The truth has become a secret, a rare and dangerous commodity, highly prized and to be handled with great care.

When he would try to reason with her, she would tell him she did not want to be without him in the afterlife; he was all she had in this world and all she wanted for the next.

NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between.

Our world in that living room with its window framing my beloved Elburz Mountains became our sanctuary, our self-contained universe, mocking the reality of black-scarved, timid faces in the city that sprawled below.

From the pleasure podium of Ali Qapu, beyond the enhanced enclosure, the city spread itself towards the horizon. Ugly buildings are prohibited in Esfahan. They go to Tehran or stay in Mashhad. Planters vie with planners to outnumber buildings with trees. Attracting nightingales, blackbirds and orioles is considered as important as attracting people. Maples line the canals, reaching towards each other with branches linked. Beneath them, people meander, stroll and promenade. The Safavids' high standards generated a kind of architectural pole-vaulting competition in which beauty is the bar, and ever since the Persians have been imbuing the most mundane objects with design. Turquoise tiles ennoble even power stations. In the meadow in the middle of Naghshe Jahan, as lovers strolled or rode in horse-drawn traps, I lay on my back picking four-leafed clovers and looking at the sky. There was an intimacy about its grandeur, like having someone famous in your family. The life of centuries past was more alive here than anywhere else, its physical dimensions unchanged. Even the brutal mountains, folded in light and shadows beyond the square, stood back in awe of it. At three o'clock, the tiled domes soaked up the sunshine, transforming its invisible colours to their own hue, and the gushing fountains ventilated the breeze and passed it on to grateful Esfahanis. But above all was the soaring sky, captured by this snare of arches.(p378)

Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Santiago de Chile sit on the ring of fire. Tehran, far away from the ring still suffers the same fate. Earthquake-prone, the city has learned to adapt. The city, stacked with apartments on top of one another, looks like a box of Lego. Tight alleyways, covered with buildings, stretch all the way to the foot of the mountains. The folks in Tehran don’t want to even imagine what chaos will ensue if a major earthquake strikes. The most frightening phenomenon though isn’t the rubble and building blocks crumbling down. None of that scares the people. What concerns them is if the mother of all earthquakes pays a visit, the biggest threat will be rats. Tehran’s underground has a burgeoning “ratopolis.” To every living human being in the city, there are three rats to match every living soul. And if the city collapses, three rats are enough to ravage through human flesh in a matter of days. So the urban myth goes. Even if bodies can be rescued from the rubble there’ll likely be carcasses left behind.

The city had changed beyond recognition. Wrecking balls and bulldozers had leveled the old buildings to rubble. The dust of construction hung permanently over the streets. Gated mansions reached up to the northern foothills, while slums fanned out from the city’s southern limits. I feared an aged that had lost its heart, and I was terrified at the thought of so many useless hands. Our traditions were our pacifiers and we put ourselves to sleep with the lullaby of a once-great civilation and culture. Ours was the land of poetry flowers, and nightingales—and poets searching for rhymes in history’s junkyards. The lottery was our faith and greed our fortune. Our intellectuals were sniffing cocaine and delivering lectures in the back rooms of dark cafés. We bought plastic roses and decorated our lawns and courtyards with plaster swans. We saw the future in neon lights. We had pizza shops, supermarkets, and bowling alleys. We had trafric jams, skyscrapers, and air thick with noise and pollution. We had illiterate villagers who came to the capital with scraps of paper in their hands, begging for someone to show them the way to this medical clinic or that government officee. the streets of Tehran were full of Mustangs and Chevys bought at three times the price they sold for back in America, and still our oil wasn’t our own. Still our country wasn’t our own.

That night, Marjan dreamt of Mehregan. The original day of thanksgiving, the holiday is celebrated during the autumn equinox in Iran. A fabulous excuse for a dinner party, something that Persians the world over have a penchant for, Mehregan is also a challenge to the forces of darkness, which if left unheeded will encroach even on the brightest of flames. Bonfires and sparklers glitter in the evening skies on this night, and in homes across the country, everyone is reminded of their blessings by the smell of roasting 'ajil', a mixture of dried fruit, salty pumpkin seeds, and roasted nuts. Handfuls are showered on the poor and needy on Mehregan, with a prayer that the coming year will find them fed and showered with the love of friends and family. In Iran, it was Marjan's favorite holiday. She even preferred it to the bigger and brasher New Year's celebrations in March, anticipating the festivities months in advance. The preparations would begin as early as July, when she and the family gardener, Baba Pirooz, gathered fruit from the plum, apricot, and pear trees behind their house. Along with the green pomegranate bush, the fruit trees ran the length of the half-acre garden. Four trees deep and rustling with green and burgundy canopies, the fattened orchard always reminded Marjan of the bejeweled bushes in the story of Aladdin, the boy with the magic lamp. It was sometimes hard to believe that their home was in the middle of a teeming city and not closer to the Alborz mountains, which looked down on Tehran from loftier heights. After the fruit had been plucked and washed, it would be laid out to dry in the sun. Over the years, Marjan had paid close attention to her mother's drying technique, noting how the fruit was sliced in perfect halves and dipped in a light sugar water to help speed up the wrinkling. Once dried, it would be stored in terra-cotta canisters so vast that they could easily have hidden both both young Marjan and Bahar. And indeed, when empty the canisters had served this purpose during their hide-and-seek games.

You made me rejoin this culture, a part of me that i didn't know i had. You even made me like this "daran-dasht" this crazy city! You are my moonlight, my Tehran moonlight. I love you.

Yazd, a desert city around 600km (373 miles) south-east of Tehran. In 1934, a new temple was built there to house it, where it continues to burn to this day. It’s one of only nine in the world – a flame that has been kept alive for more than 1,500 years.

But the same kind of people ruled these streets;

Three days ago, Israel responded to the failed Iranian attempt at nuking Israeli cities by nuking Tehran, followed by frying all of the countries’ technology with an EMP about thirty miles above the country. Unfortunately, this also resulted in the neighbors of Iran being affected by this Israeli super weapon, so that parts of those countries are now in the dark. “The United Nations is in the process of sending people to check up on everyone affected by this thoughtless act -this crime against humanity by Israel. As of today, we in the United States, along with the United Nations Security Council, strongly condemn the actions of Israel and we are placing sanctions against Israel, along with a naval blockade. The world community will not tolerate the use of nuclear weapons and anyone who uses said weapons will have sanctions put upon them. While the United States has a long history of supporting Israel through economic and other means, we will no longer continue to do so. As of today, Israel is on its own.

Karimi crossed his arms, and with a look of irritation, said, “I assume Israel detonated a nuclear weapon, causing an EMP that shorted out everything on the surface. Then, as usual, the United Nations says some empty words, and life goes on as normal,” “Unfortunately, they detonated two nukes. The one that fried all the electronics and another that wiped out Tehran,” “So I no longer have a capitol city. You know, that’s really too bad. Besides, I wasn’t planning on basing my empire from there anyway,” “You’re not upset?” Evans asked, not sure he believed Karimi. “Upset? Hardly. Anyway, what did the United Nations do this time? Sit on their hands?” “They put sanctions on Israel and a naval blockade, with the United States Navy providing most of the ships for the blockade. The Israeli’s have already had one ship sunk after trying to push the issue, but they haven’t tried that stunt again. By the way, I took care of the Iraqis wanting your head for destroying Mosul,

A grassroots outpouring of sympathy for the victims of September 11 occurred on the streets in only two places in the Muslim world, both within days of the collapse of the twin towers and both among the Shia. The first was in Iran, where tens of thousands snubbed their government to go into the streets of Tehran and hold a candlelight vigil in solidarity with victims of the attacks. The second was in Karachi, where a local party that is closely associated with the city’s Shia33 broke with the public mood in Pakistan to gather thousands to denounce terrorism.34 What followed September 11 in Afghanistan and Iraq has only strengthened these feelings. The Shia in Afghanistan, between 20 and 25 percent of the population, were brutalized by the Taliban. The constitution adopted in that country in 2003 has broken with tradition to allow a Shia to become president and to recognize Shia law. The Shia have come out from the margins to join the government and take their place in public life. The violent face of Sunni militancy in Iraq underscores the divergent paths that Sunni and Shia politics are taking.

Iraqi leaders say that Tehran has often been faster than Washington to offer help in a crisis. When the Islamic State stormed Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June and moved south toward Baghdad, President Obama took a measured approach, pushing for political changes before committing to military action. But Iran jumped right in. It was the first country to send weapons to the Kurds in the north, and moved quickly to protect Baghdad, working with militias it supported already. “When Baghdad was threatened, the Iranians did not hesitate to help us, and did not hesitate to help the Kurds when Erbil was threatened,” Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said in a recent television interview here, referring to the Kurdish capital in the north. He contrasted that approach to that of the United States, saying the Iranians were “unlike the Americans, who hesitated to help us when Baghdad was in danger, and hesitated to help our security forces.” “And the reason Iran did not hesitate to help us,” Mr. Abadi added, “was because they consider ISIS as a threat to them, not only to us.” Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, said, “For the Iranians, really, the gloves are off.

From the outset, it was clear to me that Boot’s dictum was wishful thinking. Already the Bush doctrine had made a vicious mockery of it. Iraq, since the American-led invasion, had descended into a lawless sectarian hell, and democracy had brought to power, with Nour Al-Maliki, a Tehran lackey determined to create a Shia theocracy in Iran’s image. The democratic government of “liberated” Afghanistan had proved itself a corrupt bunch of clansmen. Its writ, a decade after that country’s “liberation,” barely ran beyond the capital, Kabul, and even that city could not, in any meaningful sense, be said to be under full control of the central government. From the ashes and slaughter had emerged a sole negotiating partner who offered Washington any hope of a more stable future and a safe exit from the mire: the Taliban, against whom America had gone to war in the first place.

Tourists enter Tehran from the south on a carriageway built by order of the Shah. On the city’s outskirts they pass through the green belt he envisioned would protect Tehran from the twin scourges of desert wind and dust. In the central city visitors pass by the government ministries, hospitals, universities, schools, concert halls, monuments, bridges, sports complexes, hotels, museums, galleries, and gleaming underground metro that were among his many pet projects. … He championed the social welfare state that today provides Iranians with access to state-run health care and education. He raised the scholarship money that allowed hundreds of thousands of Iranian university students, including many luminaries of the Islamic Republic, to study abroad at leading American and European universities. The Shah ordered the fighter jets that made Iran’s air force the most powerful in southwestern Asia. He established the first national parks and state forests and ordered strict water, animal, and conservation measures. Perhaps it is no surprise that Iran today has the look and feel of a haunted house. The man who built modern Iran is nowhere to be seen but his presence is felt everywhere. The revolutionaries who replaced the Shah may not like to hear it, but Iran today is as much his country as it is theirs.

Sex is an act of rebellion in Tehran. A form of protest. Only in sex do many of the younger generation feel truly free.

Because the Arab states have not experienced a similar opening-up and have suffered from colonialism, they were not ready to turn the Arab uprisings into a real Arab Spring. Instead they soured into perpetual rioting and civil war. The Arab Spring is a misnomer, invented by the media; it clouds our understanding of what is happening. Too many reporters rushed to interview the young liberals who were standing in city squares with placards written in English, and mistook them for the voice of the people and the direction of history. Some journalists had done the same during the ‘Green Revolution’, describing the young students of north Tehran as the ‘Youth of Iran’, thus ignoring the other young Iranians who were joining the reactionary Basij militia and Revolutionary Guard.

I took a cab into the centre of town and listened to the driver’s running commentary on all that ailed his beloved city, on the good old days when he could have a beer and a dance, and how he had escaped to America to study engineering but couldn’t afford the university fees and was forced to return home after a year. ‘Now, drive taxi in Tehran. No beer. No fun.’ He shrugged, resigned to his fate. After about twenty minutes, once his English vocabulary had been depleted, his analysis of Tehran’s problems was distilled down to two descriptions as he pointed at buildings in turn as we passed by. ‘Reza Shah!’ he would shout triumphantly at anything remotely grand or old. ‘Islamic Republic!’ he spat at each shoddy concrete office block.

After the revolution most of the major roads in the cities, especially in Tehran, had been renamed with the appropriate amount of anti-western fervour, changing the likes of Eisenhower Avenue to Azadi Avenue (meaning ‘freedom’ in Persian) and Shah Reza Square to Enqelab Square (the Persian word for ‘revolution’). My map recce also showed up a liking for using street names to show allegiance to Iran’s friends and allies, such as the ubiquitous Felestin – Palestine – which cropped up in many Iranian cities. There were more pointed allegiances too; the street that housed the British Embassy, Winston Churchill Street, had been renamed in typically cheeky Iranian fashion as Bobby Sands Street (it was transliterated as ‘Babisands’), in tribute to the IRA hunger striker. In 1981 the embassy had been forced to move their official entrance to a side street so as to avoid the embarrassment of having Sands’ name on their headed notepaper.

Iran was the glamour and glitz of Tehran, Shiraz, Esfahan. (...) she was struck by the high fashion and opulence of the cities. Parties overflowing with champagne. Women dressed in the latest Paris haute couture. But when Louise left Iran in search of horses, the landscape quickly changed from high rises to the high peaks of the Alborz Mountains, and overflowing rice paddies replaced champagne parties. (...) This was Persia. Roads that ended in orchards. Mountains rising and rivers tumbling in white and blue. All shades of green contouring farming fields and jagged peaks. (...) Iran was politics; Persia was poetry.

She starts thinking how the city’s peaceful aura withers and gives birth to its decrepit personality.

Far from Tehran Pars and Mehdi’s sordid home lies Valiasr Street. The longest street in the Middle East. It stretches from the south to the north of Tehran separating the city’s western and eastern hemispheres. The further you get up north, the more flashy the shops and alleys get. It ends in Tajrish where the last stretch of Valiasr is chaperoned by magical trees giving it shade all year round.

In the north of Tehran, right by the foothills of Tehran’s bit of the Alborz mountain range is Niavaran. The district is an entanglement of slopes and roads where way back in the day, going back to the Qajar era, villas and houses were all you would see. Now though it has become an extension of the city center with buildings and towers scattered across its narrow roads. Even with all of the congestion, the weather is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the city and it remains one of the “port out, starboard home” districts in Tehran.

A slick BMW 5-Series pulls right by the traffic light. As the car comes to a halt, a bunch of kids, street kids, go to work. One of them, a young boy no more than eight years old kisses the BMW emblem on the hood. The driver, drenched in apathy, doesn’t even look up. Another kid comes by the side, begging the beamer’s owner for some cash. Everybody in Tehran knows that to pay these kids is bringing Slumdog Millionaire’s silver screen to the silver smog city.

In this godforsaken city, predators make fortunes, and the prey? The prey either end up praying or doing drugs.

If doubt has brought you to this page, you probably need a little genealogical cheat-sheet: Kimiâ Sadr, the narrator. Leïli Sadr, Kimiâ’s oldest sister. Mina Sadr, the younger sister. Sara Sadr (née Tadjamol), Kimiâ’s mother. Darius Sadr, Kimiâ’s father. Born in 1925 in Qazvin, he is the fourth son of Mirza-Ali Sadr and Nour. The Sadr uncles (six official ones, plus one more): Uncle Number One, the eldest, prosecuting attorney in Tehran. Uncle Number Two (Saddeq), responsible for managing the family lands in Mazandaran and Qazvin. Keeper of the family history. Uncle Number Three, notary. Uncle Number Five, manager of an electrical appliance shop near the Grand Bazar. Uncle Number Six (Pirouz), professor of literature at the University of Tehran. Owner of one of the largest real estate agencies in the city. Abbas, Uncle Number Seven (in a way). Illegitimate son of Mirza-Ali and a Qazvin prostitute. Nour, paternal grandmother of Kimiâ, whom her six sons call Mother. Born a few minutes after her twin sister, she was the thirtieth child of Montazemolmolk, and the only one to inherit her father’s blue eyes, the same shade of blue as the Caspian Sea. She died in 1971, the day of Kimiâ’s birth. Mirza-Ali, paternal grandfather. Son and grandson of wealthy Qazvin merchants; he was the only one of the eleven children of Rokhnedin Khan and Monavar Banou to have turquoise eyes the color of the sky over Najaf, the city of his birth. He married Nour in 1911 in order to perpetuate a line of Sadrs with blue eyes. Emma Aslanian, maternal grandmother of Kimiâ and mother of Sara. Her parents, Anahide and Artavaz Aslanian, fled Turkey shortly before the Armenian genocide in 1915. The custom of reading coffee grounds was passed down to her from her grandmother Sévana. Montazemolmolk, paternal great-grandfather of Kimiâ and father of Nour. Feudal lord born in Mazandaran. Parvindokht, one of Montazemolmolk’s many daughters; sister of Nour. Kamran Shiravan, son of one of Mirza-Ali’s sisters and Ebrahim Shiravan. Cousin of Darius . . .

The elaborate OCI proposal to Iran, five volumes long, envisioned huge-scale projects including hydroelectric plants, rebuilt cities, and new industries imported from abroad. Mohammad Reza Shah, who had grown up mainly in Europe and knew little of his homeland, was captivated but uncertain. The directors of OCI needed a special envoy to close the deal. They hired Allen, who was a famous charmer as well as the former head of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In the autumn of 1949, Allen flew to Tehran to meet the shah. He must have been persuasive. Soon after he returned home, it was announced that Iran had agreed to pay OCI a staggering $650 million—more than five billion in the early twenty-first century—to complete a massive seven-year enterprise. This would be the largest overseas development project in modern history. It was the greatest triumph of Allen’s legal career. For Sullivan & Cromwell it opened a world of possibilities. “OCI provided the King of Kings with a blueprint for economic revolution,” Time reported, “and US and Western European businessmen with a guide to a vast new area of relatively untapped markets.