Inside the mosque

Inside the mosque

Inside the mosque – where the men are far away – we western women received an even warmer reception by the local women than we’d receive on the streets (and that’s saying something). At the Bogh’e-ye Sayyed Mir Mohammad (a mausoleum) in Shiraz we sat against the turquoise tiled walls and marvelled at the intricate mirror work on the walls and ceilings. Was it gaudy or grand? Some say it’d be a good place for a disco. We soon found it was a good place for social interaction, in any case. Soon after we sat, an Iranian woman came over and plonked herself down right next to me, so close she was almost touching. There was a lot of space in this mosque, but she wasn’t shy to want to be near us, to ask me to pray for her. Maybe she thought if we prayed to all our Gods (whether we had one did not seem to cross her mind), help would be more forthcoming. She managed to communicate to me that she’d had some bad results at the hospital and she needed prayer. This is no different to how my mum would feel in the same circumstance – wanting people to pray for her. She may not go to church and sidle up to a Muslim woman in a headscarf, grab her hand and ask her to pray, but that’s perhaps just the difference between churches and mosques. Inside the mosque is not a quiet place. Sure, there are many people praying, but there are also some sleeping, spread out on the beautiful Persian carpets. Some are lounging more casually, feet toward Mecca and chatting on their mobile phones. A few kids are running riot and threatening to pull down the curtain that separates men from women. Nobody is too worked up about it. There are some girlfriends holding hands and praying, and since we’re at a shrine, there are people touching the sarcophagus and a few are crying. A volunteer worker, who is normally a nurse in a burns hospital, told us that a group of women in the corner were there to read the Quran. Sometimes people come for five days, sometimes 10 or 20 in an attempt to become closer to God. This mosque is open 24 hours a day. So, yes, people come for prayer and to be closer to God and that is clear. What is not clear is what some others come for. Maybe just some peace and quiet? Many come to relax. The important thing is that is doesn’t really matter. There doesn’t have to be a service on to enter. People don’t have to sit by themselves and be quiet. They can sit with a friend and chat if that’s what takes their fancy. Or they can lie down or find a foreigner to stare at. Soon after the woman with the bad test results joined our circle, two other women and their four children rocked up and made it a party. They videoed us, picked up their kids, plopped them down in the middle of us and took some photos. We exchange the few words we shared in Farsi and English but we mostly just smiled at each other and showed photos of our families and shared something. Something that doesn’t make sense in words on paper or screen, but something we all felt. As a kid I was never allowed to play chasings inside my Catholic church, but as I sat inside the mosque so close to other women and their complicated lives, I saw that religion was the least important thing in understanding other people.

Tehran: What not to wear

In the final hour of my flight to Tehran, I started to think about my arrival outfit for the all important immigration queue. Packing for Iran was like packing for a weekend on the moon - I had only the vaguest sense of what people wore.

For a long time I think I thought 'hejab' was a particular garment of clothing. But it just means a modest way of dressing. The chador, the burka, the manteau are all forms of hejab. Lonely Planet had suggested jeans and a trench would be a suitable interim measure until I could buy a manteau (whatever that was) in Tehran. But now, as I sat on the plane about to land, I started to worry about the jeans I was wearing.

What sort of jeans were hejab? Straight leg? Waist high? Baggy boyfriend cut? Skinnies? Let's be honest, the shape of my calf would definitely be visible through my J-Brand straight legs and that, technically, was Against the Rules. But then, so were the daisy duke denim shorts with stockings I'd seen one girl sporting earlier on in the flight. I wasn't keen on using her as my modesty yardstick. In the end I changed into some black, wide leg trousers and my black trench - an outfit that made Mother Theresa look immodest.

Of course, when I arrived at the immigration queue Iranian women were wearing fitted jeans, skirts, tailored dresses and colourful kimono-style jackets. One or two even wore knee-length skirts with opaque tights (that really did surprise me, and I haven't seen it since). Their veils hung casually off beautiful dark brown buns of hair - like you might hang a towel on a door knob. I felt about as unfashionable as a velvet scrunchie (more on those later). In any case, I was waved through inspection, survived my first Tehran cab ride and arrived tired, and modest, at the Parastoo Hotel, where my slumbering travel buddy waited for me and our adventure. As suspected, I had a lot to learn about Iran...fashion and beyond.

A female visitor to Iran

As a female visitor to Iran, your sins are both expected and forgiven. Nobody bat an eyelid when I walked into the male toilets in Tehran airport. Later that day, when I delved deep into the mosque before realising I was the only woman, I got a few strange looks, but the most animated reaction was a guy cracking up when he saw the look on my face as a I realised my faux pas. You'd think the guy taking my shoes at the entrance might have mentioned I was banned from going in. Or one of the 10 or so men I passed in the entrance hall.

As a worldly western woman, often in Iran the men will treat you like an honorary man. This means there's not much fuss when you start wandering around the male section of the mosque, yes, but also it means men will approach you and talk to you in the street and you won't be scorned by talking back. (Lucky, because did I mention the men are HOT?)

'Hello, hello,' you hear wherever you walk. And you smile and say, 'Hello' or 'Salaam' and it's OK and it's basically flirting but it feels so much more outrageous because it feels dangerous!

What surprised us was how eager men were to tell us how they hated the hejab and Ahmadinejad. Invariably, five things happen when men approach.

1. They say hello in English and we reply.

2. They ask us where we're from and we say, 'Australia'. When they know where it is, they comment on how far we've come, and we don't go through the drama of telling them we've only come from London.

3. They ask us if we like Iran and we tell them we love it.

4. They apologise for the hejab and sometimes they tell us how different it is inside the home – how you don't need to wear it there. They tell us in their own way they hate it.

5. They tell us they hate the government and how it must go.

We tell them it's the same everywhere, and we don't really like our governments all the time either. But they know it's not the same thing and so do we. Really, they just want us to know it doesn't represent them; that Iranians are not all represented by the rules and rants of Ahmadinejad or Ayatollah Khamenei.

But by far the most interesting and moving reward of being here is how you are treated by the women. Many just want to stare. Some want to practise their English. Others want to hear about where you're from and your family and what you do. We have been approached by so many women, everywhere we go, every day, women stare at us, smile at us, look at us. Really look at us. I think they laugh, sometimes, at what dorks we are, having failed to totally nail the look just yet. But in some of their eyes, I see a yearning. It's more than curiosity, it's an eagerness, a wonderment. They don't mind coming right up to you and just staring at you – they don't try to hide it. They look into your eyes and smile and many also say 'hello' and you can tell you've made their day by just being there and smiling at them. By just being in their country, you've given them hope.

Because even though they can drink wine at home and dance and sing and wave their hair around like Beyoncé – they can do all of this at their home and the homes of their friends – they still want to be able to walk down the street without a piece of meaningless material sitting on top of their beautifully coiffured hair.

How I felt when I put on the hejab

I worked up the courage to go into the bathroom and put on my chador and headscarf. The headscarf was lovely; the royal blue brought out the blue in my eyes and covered my greasy hair and overgrown fringe. But that's a bit like saying, 'Oh well, she died having fun.' Cold comfort.

I thought everyone would stare at me – the way I stare at women wearing headscarves in Turkey or burkhas in London. I thought they'd ask, as I do, what made you make that decision? Why do you think it necessary to cover your hair, the shape of your body? Do you believe it is sanctioned by God? How can you believe that when it seems to me merely an endorsement of the sins of man? (And I use 'man' here with intention.)

I was the only woman in the queue wearing the chador. Most of the women were my age or younger and they were wearing jeans and long jackets or tops just covering their bottoms. I felt slightly ridiculous, but I had also felt ridiculous in my hiking shoes and chinos, right, so wasn't it the same thing? No. Because this time what I was wearing stood for something (other than my inability to combine practicality and style). It stood for something I detest and the people in the queue detested it too and it showed. It's here I got the stares: hard, disapproving ones and I thought for a moment that I understood. But I don't, do I?

As if to drill home the message, in front of me in the queue was the most handsome man I'd seen in weeks. I didn't laugh as I thought how what I wanted to do to him could get me stoned to death. (In reality, I later realised, it probably wouldn't but I'm still not willing to test the system.)

I'll question again and again my reasons for visiting Iran and whether it was the right decision. I know some people think it's not. Some people think the gift of the tourist dollar is tacit support of the regime and its rules. But I don't believe that. I can't – because how can we ever hope to understand each other if we don't go where we fear?

Why I couldn’t put on the hejab

I went into the WCs at Istanbul Airport, from where I was flying to Tehran, to put on my Iranian garb. I couldn't do it. I walked back out again without even having put on the headscarf.

I bought myself a sarnie and a coffee and I sat at a table chewing my fingernails – something I never do – asking myself why I was so nervous. For a moment I fooled myself into thinking it was because I had the chador – a long black cloak that was compulsory after the revolution, but to many women now a reminder of all they'd lost. In other words, I was told I'd stand out on the streets of Tehran and perhaps even be looked down on for being so conservative. It's only for old women and small towns and the seriously religious, people said. But they were people in books and on the internet and I needed to get there to see for myself; when I could go to an Iranian shop and buy the clothes they wear and be sure I was doing the right thing.

But it wasn't that, was it, because I couldn't even put on the headscarf. When I examined it, I realised I was afraid. What I was about to wear was anathema to everything I believed in. I do believe in respecting the cultures of the countries I visit, so in theory I had no problem wearing the hejab in Iran – and let's face it – no choice.

But in Turkey, I did have a choice. In the hotel I was staying at in Adana, I met an Iranian couple. They asked me what I would wear when I visited Iran and I demonstrated with the new pashmina I'd bought in Cappadocia how I'd wear it as a headscarf. They smiled and nodded in approval. Then the Turkish hotel manager said, quite seriously, 'Take it off now.

'Turkey and Iran are both Muslim countries but we practice it very differently.'

On a train the next day I met a Turkish woman and we got to talking about my trip to Iran. She asked why I was going and said that she'd heard people say it was different in Iran now. She asked if I had to wear a headscarf. I told her how the young women of Tehran wear it all the way on the back of their head, just resting on their high buns, to show as much of their hair as possible.

She stared at me blankly and said, 'But this is not free.'

She later thanked God she was born in Turkey. She won't be going to Iran as long as the women are not free. In Turkey, choice is important. It is a defining characteristic of the nation state and the population itself. Where you stand on the headscarf defines you.

I sat there, at that little table in the airport café, chewing on my fingernails, thinking about the two Turkish reactions to my trying on the headscarf in the past two days.

When it came down to it, I just wanted to cherish my freedom for as long as I could.

Clare Cameron - Rollercoaster Love

Rollercoaster Love

Love is a rollercoaster at the show

Sometimes it goes fast, sometimes a little slow

It’s a blast, a rush, you’re on top of the world!

You lose your stomach and may want to hurl*

Love is exuberant – you scream out a name

Love is knowing you’ll not be the same

Sometimes it’s gentle, you feel the wind in your ears

Sometimes love hurts, it brings you to tears

Rollercoaster love is feeling yourself soar

And standing many, many feet tall

Love makes you generous, love makes you free

It’s helping someone be the best they can be

You never want it to stop, never want it to end

If it does, you just get back on and do it over again.

 

*For our ten-year-old readers.

Clare Cameron is saving the world one comms strategy at a time.

She’s pretty sure this will be her last rhyme. 

Caitlin Moran on Australian radio: Do you have a vagina and do you want to be in charge on it?

There is a two-step test to find out if you're a feminist, says Caitlin Moran:
1. Do you have a vagina?
2. Do you want to be in charge of it?

Answer yes? Then you're a feminist and you should probably listen to this radio programme with How To Be A Woman author and Not the Style Pages' hero, Caitlin Moran.

She discusses fantasising about Chevy Chase the first time she masturbated (do you blame her?), how Germaine Greer and Courtney Love inspired her, why women should not have Brazilians and what porn should look like.

Don't miss it: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/sundayprofile/stories/2011/3334979.htm