The Thousand and One Borders of

A country marked by controversy, Iran’s social, cultural and political dynamics are too often reduced to a few misleading clichés. Islamism is widely con- sidered to shape all social relations in Iranian society and, while Iranian society is indeed Islamic, this term’s multiple meanings in everyday life and practices go far beyond the naive and monolithic idea we are used to. The Thousand and One Borders of Iran analyses travel as a social practice, exploring how diasporas, margins and so-called peripheries are central in the construction of a national identity and thus revealing the complexities of Iranian history and society. Written by a leading anthropologist, it draws upon field- work carried out in Iran and Iranian migrant communities across Dubai, Tokyo and Los Angeles from 1998 to 2015. While casting new perspectives on the place of transnational relations in an increasingly globalized world, this work also sheds new light on the evolution of Iranian society, countering the explana- tion furnished by nationalist ideology that has been reproduced by the Islamic Republic itself. Its unique approach to the analysis of Iranian society through the theme of travel and borders considers the links and even the quarrels between the centre of Iranian society and the periphery, and the foreign ele- ments that have contributed to society’s development. Travel is key to these interactions and, following the journeys of merchants and workers, students or the faithful, elected officials and experts, or exiles and refugees, this book offers an anthropological study of travel that re-thinks Iranian history and national identity. This book would be of interest to students and scholars of , Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology.

Fariba Adelkhah is a social anthropologist and director of research at Sciences Po/Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (CERI) in Paris. Her main research interests focus on the interplay between social changes and political transformations in Iran since the second half of the twentieth century. She has also undertaken important research on as a mirror for Iranian society. Iranian Studies

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1 Journalism in Iran 7 Continuity in Iranian Identity From mission to profession Resilience of a cultural heritage Hossein Shahidi Fereshteh Davaran

2 Sadeq Hedayat 8 New Perspectives on His work and his wondrous Empire and society world Edited by Colin P. Mitchell Edited by Homa Katouzian 9 Islamic Tolerance 3 Iran in the 21st Century Am-ır Khusraw and pluralism Politics, economics and conflict Alyssa Gabbay Edited by Homa Katouzian and Hossein Shahidi 10 City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran 4 Media, Culture and Society in Shiraz, history and poetry Iran Setrag Manoukian Living with globalization and the Islamic State 11 Domestic Violence in Iran Edited by Mehdi Semati Women, marriage and Islam Zahra Tizro 5 Modern in Afghanistan 12 Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam Anomalous visions of history Qur’an, exegesis, messianism, and form and the literary origins of the Wali Ahmadi Babi religion Todd Lawson 6 The Politics of Iranian Cinema 13 Social Movements in Iran Film and society in the Islamic Environmentalism and civil Republic society Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad Simin Fadaee 14 Iranian-Russian Encounters 22 Nomads in Post-Revolutionary Empires and revolutions since Iran 1800 The Qashqa’i in an era of Edited by Stephanie Cronin change Lois Beck 15 Iran Politics, history and literature 23 , Literature Homa Katouzian and Culture New leaves, fresh looks 16 Domesticity and Consumer Edited by Kamran Talattof Culture in Iran Interior revolutions of the 24 The Dae-va Cult in the Ga-tha-s modern era An ideological archaeology of Pamela Karimi Zoroastrianism Amir Ahmadi 17 The Development of the Babi/ Baha’i Communities 25 The Revolutionary Guards in Exploring Baron Rosen’s Iranian Politics archives Elites and shifting relations Youli Ioannesyan Bayram Sinkaya

18 Culture and Cultural Politics 26 Kirman and the Qajar Empire Under Reza Shah Local dimensions of The Pahlavi State, new modernity in Iran, 1794–1914 bourgeoisie and the creation of James M Gustafson a modern society in Iran Bianca Devos and Christoph 27 The Thousand and One Borders Werner of Iran Travel and identity 19 Recasting Iranian Modernity Fariba Adelkhah International relations and social change 28 Iranian Culture Kamran Matin Representation and identity Nasrin Rahimieh 20 The S-ıh-ro-zag in Zoroastrianism A textual and historico- 29 The Historiography of Persian religious analysis Architecture Enrico G. Raffaelli Edited by Mohammad Gharipour 21 Literary Subterfuge and Contemporary Persian Fiction Who writes Iran? Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami This page intentionally left blank The Thousand and One Borders of Iran Travel and identity

Fariba Adelkhah

Translated by Andrew Brown

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Add AddAdd AddAdd AddAdd First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Fariba Adelkhah The right of Fariba Adelkhah to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Fariba Adelkah, Les mille et une frontières de l’Iran. Quand les voyages forment la nation, © Éditions Karthala, Paris, 2012 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Adelkhah, Fariba. [Mille et une frontières de l’Iran. English] The thousand and one borders of Iran : travel and identity / Fariba Adelkhah ; translated by Andrew Brown. pages cm. -- (Iranian studies ; 27) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-138-91971-6 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-315-68771-1 (ebook) 1. National characteristics, Iranian. 2. Iran--Boundaries--Social aspects. 3. Iran--Social conditions. 4. Iran--Emigration and immigration--Social aspects. I. Title. DS268.A3413 2016 955--dc23 2015007783

ISBN: 978-1-138-91971-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-68771-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books Contents

Acknowledgments viii Preface ix Preface to the English edition xv

Introduction: on the road to Damascus 1 1 Beyond the national narrative 15 2 Leaving without leaving behind, leaving behind without leaving 107 3 Another look at pilgrimage: the new border of the hajj 188 4 Being Iranian offshore 233 Conclusion: Iran between self-sacrifice and dirty tricks 298

Glossary 305 Index 308 Acknowledgments

I cannot exhaustively thank all the people who made possible or facilitated this research by lavishing their time and trust on me. Rather than risk com- mitting omissions or placing any of my helpers in an awkward situation, I prefer not to name any of them. But they should all know that this is not any sign of ingratitude on my part! My laboratory, the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (CERI) of the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, hosted and largely funded this project, while allowing it to benefit from a stimulating scientific environ- ment. My gratitude goes to its successive directors, Jean-Luc Domenach, Jean- François Bayart, Christophe Jaffrelot and Christian Lequesne. The Institut français de recherches iraniennes (IFRI) in Tehran welcomed me in 2001; the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, and the Department of Anthro- pology, the Iranian Library of Wadham College and the Oriental Institute, all in Oxford, in 2003-2004; and Waseda University during my stays in Tokyo. Thanks go to their directors, and the colleagues whom I was able to meet on those occasions, especially Yoshiharu Tsuboi and Keiko Sakurai in Tokyo, Christophe Balaï and Rémy Boucharlat in Tehran, Eugene Rogan, Walter Armbrust, James McDougall, Homa Katouzian, Debbi Usher, Steven Vertovic, Roger Goodman, Mette Louise Berg, John Gurney, Reza Sheikholeslami and Sanjay Subrahmanyam in Oxford. I would also like to thank the Research Department of the Agence française de développement (AFD), its director, Robert Peccoud, and his team, and the Fonds d’analyse des sociétés politiques (FASOPO) that ensured I had the financial means to achieve some of my fieldwork. Finally, Jean-Pierre Digard, Jashmid Behman, Ahmad Salamatian, Dale Eickelman and François Nicoullaud have provided me with generous encouragement and help. Hélène Arnaud revised my manuscript with her customary competence. And Agha Jean, as they like to call him in Iran, accompanied me as a javanmard throughout this endeavour, continually raising new questions and supporting me during the moments of doubt that always loom during the writing of a book whose completion has been long overdue. Preface

I’ve heard that a dealer had 150 camels and 40 servants. He asked me one day to his shop in Kish and continued to rave all night long, saying that he had such and such a piece of property in Turkistan, and another in India, showing me the deed for one property and the security for another. Sometimes he told me of his desire to visit Alexandria because of its mild climate, sometimes he spoke of the rough seas of the Maghreb. Finally, he told me his secret: ‘OSa‘adi, I am planning one journey after which I will retire to the end of my days.’ I asked him what journey he had in mind. And he answered: ‘I will take sulphur from Persia to China where I have heard that it earns a considerable price, then take Chinese bowls to Rum, Rum silk to India, Indian tin to Aleppo, glasses from Aleppo to Yemen, and Yemeni cotton to Persia. Then I will retire from trade and be happy with just managing a store for the rest of my life.’ (Sa‘adi, Golistan)1

The idea for this book came to me during a first trip I made to Dubai in 1998, with my mother. We were both surprised, as Iranians, to meet nothing but ‘Laris’ and ‘Gerashis’. ‘What exactly are these Laris and these Gerashis?’ my mother asked me. She had never heard these names, and I must admit that I wasn’t much better-informed. I told her they were two southern cities, Lari and Gerash. However, it soon became clear that these Laris and Gera- shis were ubiquitous in the business environment in Dubai and constituted the bulk of the Iranian community in the emirate, along with the Arabs from the province of Khuzestan and El-Baluch, natives of the province of Sistan and Baluchistan, who had become subjects of the . They ran, for example, the two main places of worship in the city. They had once controlled the trade routes of the Great Hormuz between the and the Persian Gulf, and many of them – especially Zoroastrians – had left for India, to occupy important positions in the administration. In their home provinces they created schools based on the Anglo-Indian model, and made them the entry points of Western modernity into , before the region succumbed to decline and oblivion between the two World Wars. Thus began a decade-long quest that would lead me in succession to California, Syria, Japan, Afghanistan, , , and most of the border regions of Iran. This quest merged with the experience of travel in the x Preface course of which I met other travellers. I shared happy and unhappy moments with them. Some welcomed me with generosity, others were wary of me, with equal generosity. Some were at the beginning of their wanderings, others were expatriates who had been settled for a shorter or longer time in their chosen country. I mingled with them and I let myself be carried along by the rhythms of their lifestyles. In California, I attended many meetings of the Iranian community and frequented many shops in ‘Tehrangeles’. In Tokyo, I felt the chilliness suffered by vendors of phone cards, I went into their husayniyya and I danced in the nightclubs of the Roppongi district. In Damascus, I made my devotions at the tomb of Zaynab and Ruqayya and I had fun every night with my fellow pilgrims, who loved to dress up and make jokes at the expense of the Arabs. In , I stayed in my favourite seat in the bus, behind the driver, though this meant I was taken for his temporary wife by his colleagues who crossed the path of, or overtook, our vehicle. In Afghanistan, I docilely followed my Pashtun informant, keeping a yard behind him, unable either to greet or thank the vendors, as ‘a woman in a burqa does not speak’, as my companion pointed out to me. In Dubai, I underwent a temporary marriage, unwittingly and in spite of myself, with… a seller of pots and pans: and my presence allowed those accompanying me to enter, for the first time, discotheques which single men are forbidden to enter. I saw a host of poor people, smugglers waiting under the scorching sun for the changing of the guard so they could cross the border between Iran and Pakistan, and I heard myself ask a customs officer to get a move on and leave the way free for them. In Khasab, I counted the sheep as they were landed from dhows from Iran, and when I wanted to buy one I was told that they were destined for Saudi Arabia and were already paid for: to seal a deal, I would need to wait for a smuggler who would take advantage of this delivery to get his animals through on his own account. Proof that, surprisingly, even smugglers suffer from smuggling! In short, this quest was a school of life. I threw myself into it without any suspicions or a priori assumptions, because the research field was self-evident and it was to some extent as fluid as the trips that were my theme. This did not spare me some unpleasant and even intimidating experiences, as when I found myself accused of being an agent of the Islamic Republic on one of the radio stations of the Iranian community in California, or was stopped by security forces in Bandar Abbas, and again near Torbat-e Jam, on the Afghan border. To say that I’ve never been afraid, nor ever had the feeling of being under suspicion, would be a lie. All the same, there was nothing heroic about this fieldwork. Simply, I experienced the condition of having an unusual status, on the margins of social relations and even of the professional practices found in academia – a status that is experienced by the very same travellers I met, as seen from their own point of view. I got caught up in the game, but I never played games with the people I studied. Or more accurately, as my master Gérard Althabe would have said, as an anthropologist I was myself part of the game.2 Preface xi The difficulty that arose, a traditional one in my discipline, lies in imposing coherence on everything I have observed without placing on the same level facts and practices that are not governed by the same logic or that do not have the same weight. In particular, political exile involves an irreducible ele- ment of suffering that cannot be compared with that of the economic migrant or the student in a foreign university, who are free to choose, regardless of the constraints and challenges they face. Similarly, the legal and economic fra- mework of having to leave home, like that of expatriation, differs from one case to another. In other words, how can one make sense of the narrative of the journey without denying the incommensurability of the elements and moments that constitute it? This book is a continuation of my two main works, La Révolution sous le voile. Femmes islamiques d’Iran [The Revolution behind the veil. Islamic ] (1991) and Being Modern in Iran (1998, English trans. 1999). It ponders the question of what it means to be an Iranian man or woman – the multiple forms of national or cultural identity and of a sense of belonging in times of accelerated social and political change. It strives to unravel a whole series of dichotomies and alternatives in which we tend to imprison ourselves when we write – myself first of all. Distinctions, for example, between the state (dowlat) and society (mellat), the religious and non-religious, modernity and tradition, Iranian identity and Arabic (or Turkish) identity do have their uses and have inspired several works which remain fruitful. But it is also useful to look at things from another standpoint so as to further reflection. This new standpoint will here be the border. The borders between those concepts which we readily use, and also, of course, the borders that separate Iran from other countries. Throughout these pages, we will constantly be crossing both sets of borders. It is a matter of decentring our gaze to see what escapes these classifications. It is not a matter of carrying out an anthropology of the margins, the marginalized, the forgotten or the losers of history, or an anthropology on the margins of the social sciences. It is not a matter of deconstructing the centre, the centre of Iranian society or of the social sciences, but of considering the links and even the quarrels between the centre and the periphery and the foreign elements that have contributed to its development, in history as in knowledge. And in these interactions, travel is the key: the travels of merchants and workers, the travels of students or the faithful, the travels of conscripts, veterans and administrators, the travels of elected officials and experts, the travels of families and tourists, the travels of exiles, displaced persons and refugees. So our theme will be travel. However, travel, as a social practice, produces specific logics of life, just as war does, for example. It releases us from our environment, it immerses us in anonymity and uncertainty, it forces us to focus on achieving a specific goal. In short, it transforms us. This involves joy, exultation, nostalgia, suffering, and fear. Insofar as travel has a particular quality, it raises the question of the adequacy of most of our analytical tools that have been developed to under- stand the intricacies of societies in the setting of their borders, within their xii Preface settled state, and within the territorial terms or identities of their established definition – in their hearts, one might almost say. It reminds us that societies do not have any intrinsic essence and that they are constituted in their rela- tionship with the Other – on their very borders. This does not alter the evi- dent fact of their uniqueness. But this uniqueness stems precisely from their interrelations. The anthropology of travel, margins, marches, and the border finally raises questions about the imperturbable self-representation that this society creates by calling itself, or wishing itself to be, Iranian, Shi‘ite, authentic (asil); by boasting of its ancient history, even if it has to invent it; and by making it a point of honour to defend its exceptionality. Again, I do not deny the particularity of Iranian society nor reject Iranians’ right to be proud of it. I just hope that the following pages will help the reader, as they impelled me, to re-examine the historical and social context that created this often paradoxical difference, and to re-think Iranian history. Travel, as an anthropological object, has the advantage of articulating or dovetailing heterogeneous elements of society from one place to another, wherever it can be apprehended. It is often said that, in order to know someone well, you have to travel with them. Well, it is the same with societies. Travelling forces us to leave behind the false certainties in which we live. It establishes a critical distance that is not just geographical, but analytical too. This book is a work of social science. It does not take sides in the current public debate. But it does perhaps contain a political education. Every Iranian is the site of a tension that is precisely the object of my analysis. On the one hand, he is the bearer of discourses of exclusion, whether they draw their authority from the nation, from Islam, from secularism, from the republic or from the monarchy. On the other hand, he develops inclusive practices in his travels, his religious sociability, and his economic exchanges. He partly claims to embody the origin of Iranian identity, its roots, by naturalizing it and claiming a monopoly on it, in the ‘Yo u wo n’t find anyone more authentic than me’ mode. But he also continues to cross the borders that distinguish him from his fellow citizens by regional or religious origin, by gender, or by ideological orientation. More specifically, this book is that of an anthropologist, not a historian. It is based primarily on the observation, often the participant observation, of actors and their practices. However, I also evoke the past and I quote the work of historians, particularly in Chapter 1. From this point of view, I do not claim to be exhaustive or, let me repeat, to be working as a historian. I am aware of the risk of simplifying the facts or being reductive with regard to the studies and debates of my colleagues. But then, my only goal is to provide readers with reference points against which they can better map my remarks. Similarly, this is not a work on migration and diasporas. These themes have inspired a detailed and high-quality literature; so it seemed better, in my view, to change the angle of analysis and focus on the experience of displacement which is constitutive. Thus I have avoided the aporia of having to define the different categories of travellers – the categories of the exile, the refugee, the displaced person, the economic migrant, the expatriate, the businessman, Preface xiii the pilgrim, the tourist, the student, the fighter, etc. These categories are often fungible or successive in a person’s life story. And one thing then becomes crystal-clear: travel is central rather than exceptional. On a day to day basis, our societies are born and sustained by movement, by displacement – long before we even mention the word ‘globalization’.

Overview This book, the writing of which was itself a long journey, takes the form of a caravan of chapters. It takes us first, by way of introduction, on a pilgrimage to Damascus. Its first chapter then contrasts the national Grand Narrative that posits the permanence of a timeless Iranian identity, and a centuries-old history of commerce between Iranian society and its environment – an openness that continues today, among other examples, in the Persian Gulf and Japan. The second chapter focuses on the multiple interactions between these ‘else- wheres’ and the interior of Iranian society from the perspective of social practices, the public debate they generate, the remoulding of national space under the impact of the trade and immigration they entail, and the political economy that results. The third chapter allows us to detail the types of man- agement, outsourcing and intermediation that characterize this political economy, based on the paradigmatic example of the management of the hajj. The fourth chapter, finally, examines the production of new configurations of Iranian identity, in California, Afghanistan and Japan. At the end of this journey, another vision of how people belong socially and culturally to Iranian society emerges, in a twofold relation with its historical specificity and its universality.

Sources By definition, a work of anthropology is based primarily on fieldwork. I conducted this work intermittently from 1998 to 2011 with an emphasis on qualitative and indeed participant observation, and informal interviews that were not recorded so as not to worry my interviewees or make them feel awkward. I successively visited the United Arab Emirates – especially Dubai – and in June 1998, August 2000 and January 2002; the United States – essentially Southern California – in May–June 2000 and October 2011; Japan, or more precisely Tokyo, in March–April 2003, October–November 2004 and November 2008; Quetta, in Pakistani Baluchestan, in July 1999; Afghanistan – mainly Kabul, Herat and Kandahar – in August–September 2006, in June 2008, in November 2009 and in June–July and November 2011; Syria – Aleppo and Damascus – in August–September 2002; and Saudi Arabia – Mecca and Medina, during the Umrah – in July 2010 and March 2011. However, I was not able to stay for any length of time in three countries that have hosted part of the : , Turkey or Germany. On the Iranian side of my research, I conducted fieldwork on several occasions from 1996 to 2011, in Khorasan (including Mashhad, Fariman, xiv Preface Torbat-e Heydariyeh, Kashmar, and Sarakhs); in Sistan and Baluchistan (in Zahedan, Zabol, Saravan, Iranshahr and Chahbahar); on the coast of the Gulf (in Bandar Abbas, Kish, Lengeh, and Bushehr); in Khuzestan (in Khorramshahr, Abadan, Dezful, Andimeshk and Ahvaz); in Golistan (in the cities of Behshahr, Gorgan, Bandar Turkaman, Kordkuy and Agh Ghala, as well as the small frontier bazaar of Incheh Borun, on the border with ); in Gilan (in Astara); in western (in Urmia and Maku, whose small frontier bazaars, Sanam Bolaghi, Buralan and Sarisu, on the Aras, live off smuggling with Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan and Turkey); and in Kurdistan (in Baneh, Sanandaj, Piranshahr and Naqadeh). Of course, I complemented this fieldwork by reading the secondary literature in the social sciences available in French, English and Persian, and a whole series of eye-witness accountants and travel stories written in these three languages. I have also gone through various archives and collections of journals and reviews, including those in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the statistical data of the Iranian National Centre for Statistics, in Tehran. The Iranian press and many websites, finally, have provided abundant and valuable resources, whatever biases and limitations they may have. I have referenced these different sources in footnotes.

Notes 1 Sa’adi Shirazi, Golistan (edited and introduced by Manouchehr Adamiyat on 1367/ 1988), Salahchour Edition. 2 Gérard Althabe, Oppression et libération dans l’imaginaire. Les communautés villageoises de la côte orientale de Madagascar (Paris: Maspero, 1969). Preface to the English edition

In 2014, Iran returned to the foreground of the international scene in a way that had not perhaps been foreseen. The civil war in Syria, the rise to power of ‘Islamic State’ (Da’esh) in Syria and in Iraq, and the claim on the part of this jihadist movement that it was going to sweep away the oil monarchies of the Gulf and would soon be in Tehran, shifted the diplomatic alignments and completely upset the power relations in the region. It is true that the nuclear dispute between the Islamic Republic of Iran and western countries is pretty much as unresolved as ever, in spite of the opening of new negotiations in 2013. But Iran is looking increasingly like an element in a possible solution to the regional crisis, rather than comprising its main problem. In Iraq, but in Afghanistan too, its interests tend now to converge with those of the United States, though this leaves their differences over Israel, nuclear proliferation and the future of the Syrian regime unaffected. However, to imagine that the current alliances might be reversed as a result is a step that I shall not be taking. The question, after all, lies less in a classic analysis of international relations than in the political and moral economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including through the transnational (and not just interstate) relations that this country has fostered with the surrounding regions. Indeed, the main lesson to be drawn from my book is that the two things cannot be separated. Trans- national relations are embedded within interstate relations, and they often strengthen the central state rather than subverting it, as the theory of inter- national relations tends to conclude. And vice versa, the state is reliant on these relations when conducting its own policies. As we shall see, the relations between Iran on the one side and Syria, Dubai, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia on the other cannot be untangled unless we keep in mind this interface between interstate and transnational dimensions. In particular, the very for- mation of state and nation in Iran cannot be grasped unless we remember the way they are linked to foreign countries, across the longue durée of history. This is what the following pages try to demonstrate, focusing mainly on the social practice of travel, in all its forms (insofar as they can indeed be distinguished): economic, touristic, academic, religious, diplomatic, and diasporic. xvi Preface to the English edition Let us take one of several examples, from the – very intense – relations between Iran and Turkey that I have not been able to discuss systematically in this work. These relations are made easier by the fact that Iranian citizens wishing to travel to Turkey are exempt from the need to have visas, whether they are going to visit family members (several hundreds of thousands of Iranians went into exile in Turkey after the 1979 revolution), taking a holiday in Istanbul and especially Antalya, or travelling on business. On 17 December 2013, a major political scandal erupted in Turkey, implicating several gov- ernment figures and undermining the authority of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an. At the centre of this shady business there loomed an Iranian businessman, Reza Zarrab, who held both Azerbaijani and Turkish national- ities. He stood accused of having bribed members of the AKP government, of having been the channel for the transfer of 87 billion euros from Iran to Turkey via his companies between 2008 and 2012 and, above all, of having been the kingpin in the trafficking of gold that enabled Iran to be paid for its gas and oil exports in spite of western sanctions and in spite of the country’s exclusion from the international SWIFT system for transferring money. Reza Zarrab’sSafir Gold Company ended up being responsible for 46 per cent of Turkey’s total gold exports. (Zarrab’s surname is ‘Sarraf’ in Turkey, which gives away his profession since sarraf means a foreign exchange dealer – and zarrab is a change machine!) And several observers could not fail to discern the hand of the United States at work in the eruption of the scandal: Washington could not continue to tolerate such a massive violation of its sanctions by a NATO ally, via one of its public banks, the Halk Bank… Yet again, we see the logics of states interacting with the logics of informal, fraudulent or illicit transnational relations. Reza Zarrab/Sarraf is highly representative of the generation of ‘golden boys’ who prospered in the lack of transparency endemic in the ‘fourth sector’ of the Iranian economy which I analyse in my book. He was linked to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, just like his buddy Babak Zanjani as well as Saeed Murtazavi, the former head of Iran’s Social Security Organization, both of them implicated in the Melli Bank scandal of 2011. But this generation of ‘golden boys’ emerged with the economic liberalization brought about under the aegis of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the 1990s, or even in the years of the Iran-Iraq War, following the trading and exchange opportunities arising from the rents of situation provided by economic centralization, and the dif- ficulties of supplying and arming a country placed under an embargo and short of cash. It was these ‘golden boys’ who were the kingpin of Iran’s accommodation with the neoliberalism that triumphed across the world in the 1980s, concurrently with the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Some of its emblematic figures, whom we shall meet in this work, were Jazayeri Arab, under Mohammad Khatami, Khodadad and Rafiqdust, under Rafsanjani, and Mousavi Qomi in the period of Mir Hussein Mousavi’s government. This new class of businessmen, distinct from and even in com- petition with the milieu of the bazaar (while having the inevitable links with Preface to the English edition xvii the latter) prospered in import-export business thanks to the many different exchange rates, the privatizations, and the skirting of trading regulations and western sanctions that were all, for these businessmen, sources of wealth. The new class acted on its own behalf, but also on behalf of those in power: the ‘golden boys’ were often the straw men for the latter, their fall guys, and their scapegoats, depending on the vicissitudes of political life, and they served the interests (especially the security interests) of the very same state that they also plundered. Their rise, which transcended factional splits while aggravating them with each new scandal and each new election campaign, contributed to the trans- formation and modernization of the Iranian economy, in a complete lack of the ‘transparency’ which liberalization is supposed to promote. Apart from the fact that they marginalized the traditional milieu of the bazaar (though also forcing it to evolve), they also fostered the spread of a new urban lifestyle that was consumerist, ostentatious and even flamboyant: the other side of the coin was an exacerbation of social inequality for all those deprived of any access to it. It is now clear that, in the Islamic Republic, the nation is shaped by the formation of the urban middle classes, but also by its relations – commercial and financial as well as cultural – with foreign countries, whether those countries be near or far. In other words, when travel shapes the nation… This work, written by an anthropologist and drawing mainly on fieldwork and on the analysis of a particular social practice, namely travel, overlaps with several major debates in the social sciences. On the one hand, as we have seen, it takes a new look at the place of transnational relations in the process of globalization and their relation to the state. On the other, it contributes to ‘rescuing history from the nation’–as the title of the famous work by historian Prasenjit Duara puts it – and sheds a new light on the evolution of Iranian society, differing from the explanation furnished by nationalist ideology (and largely reproduced by the Islamic Republic itself). I hope that it will further the understanding of a controversial country and regime whose real social, cultural, and thus political and strategic dynamics are often reduced to a few misleading clichés. This page intentionally left blank Introduction On the road to Damascus

As everyone knows, pilgrimage is a central religious practice in Islam, while not being specific to it. But behind this banal observation lies a great complex social and historical complexity. On the one hand, pilgrimage is not a timeless phenomenon. It is located in time and, of course, space. On the other hand, it also involves extra-religious and worldly or secular aspects.1 As Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori put it, its motivations are ‘inevitably mixed – a combination of holy reason and social, economic, and political concerns’.2 To unravel this skein, let’s take part in the pilgrimage of a coach filled with Iranian Shi‘ite faithful to the holy sites in Syria that shelter, inter alia, in Damascus and surroundings, the graves of Hazrat-e Ruqayya – the daughter of Imam Hossein (she died at the age of three), – of Zeynab, the sister of Imam Hossein, of Rasul Hossein, the head of Imam Hossein, and most of the 72 companions killed in the battle of Karbala. Meanwhile, in Aleppo is kept the relic of a drop of blood of Imam Hossein.3 Iranian Shi‘ites traditionally made pilgrimages mainly to Mashhad, where the Eighth Imam, Reza, is buried, to Karbala and Najaf, the great holy cities of Shi‘a Islam, in Iraqi territory, and of course to Mecca. Whatever the devotion which Zeynab attracted, especially in the ritual performances of ta’ziyya, Damascus really became part of the religious geography of Shi‘ite Iranians only in 1977, when the sociologist Ali Shariati (1933–1977), an emblematic figure of the Islamic left who died in London in conditions subject to controversy,4 was buried, according to his request, alongside the sister of Imam Hossein, whom he revered for her courage and spirit of resistance. Politically, the city had already become a meeting place for opponents of the Shah who went on to Lebanon to fight or join in the struggle; in Lebanon, these joined up with ‘Ikhwan’, or Islamic Brotherhood movements, Third World or Arab figures. But it was not until the years of the war against Iraq that Syria became a popular religious destination. Indeed, most of the Iranians who wanted to go to Najaf and Karbala despite the conflict, to reflect, to visit relatives or to bury a dead body according to ancestral usage, took this detour. Similarly, the last Iraqis of Iranian origin who fled Saddam Hussein’s regime left the coun- try via Syria. Furthermore, the mo‘aved (literally the expelled, i.e. the Iraqis of Iranian origin whom Saddam Hussein forced into exile in successive waves 2 Introduction: on the road to Damascus from the late 1960s onwards)5 played a decisive role in the discovery or the ‘invention’ of the pilgrimage to Zeynabiyeh, located 7 km from Damascus on the way to the airport, and continue to control at least the logistics of the hotel network. The journey to Damascus, in the context of informal trade linked to the war situation, also became common, together with other trips, for example to Dubai or Istanbul. With the return of peace, in 1988, and the liberalization of foreign trade, the growth of informal trade, more widely, the development of new forms of tourist travel that ensued, Damascus was visited by an increasing number of Iranians and is now one of their favourite destinations, served by an endless stream of buses chartered by agencies or individuals and, since 2002, by two-weekly trains. An estimated 600,000 to 1 million Iranian tourists per year visit Syria, and several hundred buses per day cross the border.6 I followed this pilgrimage from 28 August to 13 September 2002, in a bus chartered by an agency which one individual woman had helped to fill 20 seats by acting as a go-between. In fact the escapade was thus led by an informal pair of people: on the one hand, the agency guide, on the other, the ‘lady’ (Haj Khanum) who drew her authority from her commercial role as a go-between and from her role as organizer of religious meetings in her neighbourhood. The two leaders were assisted by the driver and his two aids, a cameraman, a cook and a ‘groomsman’ (eftekhari) who placed himself at the service of the group on a day-to-day basis, as way of paying for his journey, in accordance with a common practice. There were 45 travellers, significantly more than the regulations allowed for, and they had paid a variable amount depending on whether they had used the agency or Haj Khanum: 130,000 and 140,000 touman respectively (1 euro = 1,010 touman in 2002). On departure day the bus allowed the agency passengers on board first, before those with Haj Khanum. But one of the notable features of the trip was that the two sets of travellers were soon socializing as one group. The bus crossed the Iranian-Turkish border after a 15-hour drive. It headed towards Erzurum, then Malatya and Gaziantep, before passing Aleppo and finally reaching Damascus after four days on the road. The return took place in roughly the same time and by the same route. If I had to pick out just one characteristic of this escapade, it would be its organization and the group’s ability to comply with this willingly despite its heterogeneity. One example was the preparation of meals. This was done by the chef, as one would expect. But everyone was soon helping out, while one of the passengers, a retired colonel, routinely cleaned the tablecloth as he had made a vow to do so. Despite their fatigue, 50 or so people could eat in an hour, or an hour and a quarter. Behind the rules of politeness observed in Iranian society, the habit of living together and the shared participation of the pilgrims in the religious purpose of their trip, the agency imposed a quasi- military programme. At no time did we go short of anything, except water on the last day – but this was probably retaliation on the part of the assistant driver who had realized he would not be getting a tip! One woman who organized pilgrimages whom we met in Damascus told us she also planned Introduction: on the road to Damascus 3 the meals in minute detail and in a fixed order: bread, grapes and cheese, butter and jam for breakfast; rice and a sauce dish at midday; ‘a dry meal’ (i.e. a sandwich with grilled meat or tuna, or a flat pastry cake of herbs and potatoes) in the evening – and, of course, tea and fruit to which passengers could help themselves all day. The nights spent in hotels also meant that soup could be served. The reliability of logistics, particularly food, is a sine qua non of peaceful existence on pilgrimages, and agencies and individual organizers bolster their reputation mainly by ensuring this. In general, any waiting caused by delay or unwillingness on the part of some passengers was almost non-existent, which is remarkable in a group and especially in a society characterized, it is said, by the systematic lack of respect for any rules and any timetables – pace Gobineau! To take this as a reason for seeing the bus of pilgrims as one communitas 7 united by faith is a step we will not take, as this community was riven by lines of cleavage and con- flicts of interest to which we shall return. However, the practice of pilgrimage attests to the vitality and viability of a form of socially and economically independent civility and, when the time comes, we will need to ask whether it falls within the concept of civil society. On the other hand, that it points to a moral economy is obvious and almost a tautology. Through pilgrimage, an ethical, religious and symbolic representation of the world is embodied – a representation that summarizes the journey of initiation in response to a call (talabidan) – in this case to visit the grave of Hazrat-e Zeynab – which finds expression as a sense of personal accomplishment and gives rise to a whole series of social practices involving meditation, sharing, giving, support, and distinction. And a moral economy of this kind is also political, in its dual relationship to merchandise and the national sense of belonging this implies.

A predominantly female ritual Nothing is less ‘traditional’ than this pilgrimage to Damascus. Besides the fact that it is, after all, of recent creation, it signals one of the major change in Iranian society over the last 20years. Once upon a time, the pilgrimage to Mecca was made almost exclusively by men and indeed community leaders, and the one to Mashhad was entirely a family business. Today, both young people and women also take to the roads to venture thousands of miles from home, not only in international space but also outside the family framework that once constituted pilgrimages. In other words, the practice of pilgrimage has been democratized, although it remains a criterion of social distinction. And from this point of view, the pilgrimage in Syria is particularly revealing of this transformation. Women are its cornerstone, both as believers accomplish- ing religious duties and as organizers. The initiative for setting out frequently lies within the jalaseh, the religious meetings of women which have proliferated since the revolution.8 In buses and in shrines themselves, in black or with a flowery pattern predominate. This can be explained quite simply by the fact that women have fewer work commitments, and therefore more opportunities 4 Introduction: on the road to Damascus to get away for a fortnight. However, this interpretation is not altogether satisfactory – women also have more family and household responsibilities – and does not pinpoint the essential factor, namely the social significance of the journey itself. Thanks to this journey, women can assert themselves in the public space, acquire specific know-how, develop their own forms of sociability, burst onto the international or at least regional scene, change the social rela- tions within families and neighbourhoods, accumulate capital or independent income through the street trading in which they can indulge during the pilgrimage. Consider the case of Haj Khanum, for example. Married to a grocer and occasionally serving in the shop, she organizes religious meetings in her home. This is where she recruits most of the female pilgrims accompanying her to Damascus, while others hear about it by word of mouth. The pilgrimage in which we participated was Haj Khanum’s seventeenth trip. But she also organizes journeys within Iran, especially to visit the hot springs, reputed to be full of healing powers, at Sareine in the province of Ardabil. Sometimes she works in a joint venture with the agency, and in this case she relies on it for everything related to logistics, including obtaining a Syrian visa. Sometimes she hires a bus for herself, when enough pilgrims register, and then handles the material organization of the trip. As we have seen, the pilgrimage in which we took part was an example of the first case. However, Haj Khanum exercised a definite authority in our small community, derived from her experience and the 20 or so pilgrims she had brought along to the agency, in return for two free places for herself. According to some of the women travellers, she had on a previous trip directed the driver to turn back about 40 km to take breakfast on the shores of Lake Van, in accordance with her own habits and for the pleasure of the passengers. Basking in her ascendancy, she kept up a veiled rivalry with the guide, not failing to point out that her husband would have done it better if he had been there, and handing out instructions to the crew without much restraint. Camping at the back of the bus with her travelling companions, she had arranged a sort of berth in which she could sleep, covered by her , while other passengers had to grab forty winks curled up on their seats. She bustled among the (masculine) crew, unabashedly handing round the meals. But of course her main job, where she excelled more than in religious matters, due to her lack of education, was informal trade to which she was devoted and which was her main preoccupation. She had first managed to ensure the agency stock up with provisions for the pilgrims from her husband’s grocery. Then, in the two main cities where purchases for the venture were obtained, Damascus and Gaziantep, she endeavoured to procure the goods which she had been asked to obtain in Tehran. So she went by collective taxi, via a stopover, to Bab Touma, the eastern gate of Damascus, to find a nightgown and a pair of luxury shoes whose quality contrasted with the Chinese products for sale round Zeynabiyeh. Finally, she bought a few packets of nasal dressings which are all the rage in Tehran among girls who want to give the impression that they have undergone cosmetic surgery – for the ways of social Introduction: on the road to Damascus 5 distinction are inscrutable! In addition, in Zeynabiyeh, when the afternoon reserved for shopping came, the guide took care to point out, with some emphasis, to the tenants of two stores, one selling cosmetics, the other cho- colates, that the travellers were Haj Khanum’s – Haj Khanum is the guide (mo‘allem) – thus implying that the commission should be paid to her. And, in our hotel, Haj Khanum invited a seller of shirts and scarves who also offered her if not a percentage, at least a gift. These notes are sufficient to establish that pilgrimage can take a woman such as Haj Khanum not only out of her traditional role, but also out of the role of being the organizer of jalaseh, and extending it beyond the neighbourhood. In this context she behaves as the equal of a man and as an entrepreneur operating in the international sphere. It is particularly noteworthy that Haj Khanum in this case accompanied our group to Damascus while her husband, at the same time, was heading for Sareine, leaving the grocery store in the hands of his son: in this decidedly very dynamic couple, international affairs are left to the wife. The latter now possesses an undeniable commercial com- petence, playing with boundaries and distances, comparing products, assessing their value, negotiating their purchase, and mobilizing relatives and acquaintances to carry out her business. The case of Haj Khanum is corroborated by the wife of the guide. She joined us in Damascus with her daughter, travelling by plane, citing the length of the journey and the fragility of her constitution. In fact her clothes and her whole way of being sought to appear distinguished and were in contrast with the more traditional style of Haj Khanum and most of the other pilgrims. Even in the shrines she did not wear the chador, but elegant coloured scarves that she changed twice a day. As some travellers were going on to Karbala and leaving seats free on the bus, the guide’s wife returned with us by road. She thought she could modify the seating arrangements, kept talking about everything and anything – but especially her purchases – all the way, operating a digital counter of salavat, and, having availed herself of her husband’s cell phone, replied with a smirk to the many calls from families who were concerned about the progress of the bus to Tehran. However, the ordinary women on the pilgrimage do not get left behind. They also demonstrate initiative, accumulating knowledge and experience, facing up to new situations, engaging in commerce and drawing from their adventure extra prestige or social distinction once they have returned to their families and neighbourhoods. One scene was very revealing of this little revolution in the habits and protocols of a pilgrimage. While we waited for the bus to be repaired at a service station in Turkey, a group of women pilgrims began singing and joking. A cart pulled by a mule came through the service area, and we suggested to the coachman that he take us for a ride: he consented willingly. And some seven women in chadors were thus carried round by a mule at a gallop, laughing and singing: a scene unimaginable in an urban social setting in Iran. It naturally caused rumblings of disapproval among the crew, who, however, could not do a thing about it… 6 Introduction: on the road to Damascus In fact, throughout the trip, an almost complete reversal of roles could be witnessed. These were men who did the cooking, washed the dishes, and did the shopping, while the women, as passengers, tourists and members of the faithful, were served on, had fun, and indulged in the joys of shopping and the giddy delights of trade. Back home, they would also be able to shine in society, boasting of having done nothing other than ‘eat and sleep for a fort- night’, recounting the adventure, recognizing on the television the places they had visited, watching the inevitable videos with their families, and staying in touch with the woman they had been on pilgrimage with. It is indeed a ‘summer holiday’ atmosphere that the trip to Damascus created, with a hangover on the return journey or a longing to return to the humdrum life of Tehran. Nevertheless, what is left is the narrative, and this alone is the bearer of a transformation in the social condition of women. Not that the magic of words is in itself sufficient, but this magic is accompanied by objective chan- ges in the relationships of affection and power and in the intellectual and economic autonomy of the pilgrims – especially as the latter can boast of a religious quality of a transcendental kind: they were called, and thus chosen, elected (talabideh shodan).

Pilgrimage and the structuring of civil society In Iran, as in other Muslim societies, the commemoration of the saints is a field of religious activity independent of the sphere controlled by the clergy. But what is new is that this field is becoming feminized. Previously, only Hazrat-e Masumeh, the sister of Imam Reza, and (albeit with a lesser degree of dogmatic aura), Bibi Shahrbanu, the daughter of the last Sassanid king, the wife of Imam Hossein, and hence the mother of the Fourth Imam,9 were the subject of a cult, in Qom and the southern suburbs of Tehran respectively. The other female saints had only a very local influence. In contrast, the devotion of the pilgrims travelling to Damascus was focused mainly, and almost exclusively, on a woman and a little girl: Hazrat-e Zeynab and Ruqayya. And this veneration was paid by both men and women. The social assertion of the latter through the practice of pilgrimage thus finds its symbolic expression in the very heart of the sacred sphere. But the cult of these female saints proves the rule. It is largely outside the control of the clergy and of the Republic, or in any case is on the margin of official religiosity. It is also revealing that the mosque of Hazrat-e Zeynab, despite its increasingly ‘Shi‘ite nature’,10 is a place where Shi‘ites and Sunnis can meet, blurring their religious differences: at the large gatherings for the recitation of the Qur’an, Sunni Muslims (and Arabs) doubtless constitute the vast majority, but this does not in the least prevent Shi‘ite (and Persian-speaking) pilgrims from participating. Admittedly, management of the shrine of Hazrat-e Ruqayya, in the centre of Damascus, is in the hands of the Iranian organization in charge of waqf, which has completely redesigned the site and imposed the use of Persian for the ceremonies. However Hazrat-e Zeynab is under the control of the Syrian Introduction: on the road to Damascus 7 religious authorities, even if the donations of Shi‘ite from Iraq, Iran and other Gulf states are very high, according to the authorities of the shrine themselves. Thus the first shrine is popular among Iranian pilgrims who are happy to make shorter visits to Zeynabiyeh, between two sequences of shopping and to fulfil the needs of videotaped testimony. But in both cases the believer ultimately finds himself alone, facing his God, through the intercession of the female saints. When they arrive in Zeynabiyeh, pilgrims pass quickly through the courtyard of the mosque, in some cases under the eye of the video camera: they happily indulge in chatting or joking. Once inside the shrine itself, they first meditate around the mausoleum, slipping a gift, money or personal items through the grates. Then they pray, immerse themselves in reading a religious book, distribute food to other believers to fulfil a vow, or weep as they pour out their hearts. What is striking, then, is the intimacy of the inner dia- logue between the believer and his saint or his God. The pilgrims are packed together due to the crowds, but despite this promiscuity, they feel alone in the world at this moment when they definitely believe that they have been summoned. We must not, of course, take a naïve or culturalist view of this religiosity. On the one hand, these sequences are brief and rare, including in terms of the pilgrimage. They cannot be generalized as being representative of the religious and even less of the social life of the Shi‘ites. On the other hand, they do not exclude bargaining or blackmail with God or his saints. Upon leaving Tehran, for example, the guide had asked the travellers to recite only the first sura of the prayer for departure and to keep the second for their arrival in Zeynabiyeh: it was up to the saint to ensure the safety of those praying to her, if she wanted to hear the prayer in full. And the colonel’s wife, who had, as was expected of her, bought the devotional dolls offered to Hazrat-e Ruqayya and resold at the end of the day to new pilgrims by the staff of the shrine – with the profits from the operation going to the waqf – explained to us that she would take them with her to Tehran and bring them back only if the saint were willing to grant her requests. But the main point is this essential complementarity between the collective dimension and the personal fulfilment that is the basis of the moral economy of the pilgrimage. The individuation of the believer is supported by his membership in the community of pilgrims. They share the joys and fatigues of travel, are united in the same sociability, are striving towards the same goal, but pray alone. When one of them – the phenomenon seems to be specifically female, as far as we have observed – manifests a particular emotion or even a state of trance in a ceremony, the other faithful request that she pray for them, but avoid interfering in her dialogue with God. This interplay between collective commitment and the logic of individuation seems, in our view, to be a constitutive element of Iranian civil society in its relation to the state.11 It nourishes the autonomy of the social sphere in rela- tion to the political field and the institution of the clergy. Pilgrimage is the vehicle of considerable financial flows that are not fully controlled by either 8 Introduction: on the road to Damascus the religious authorities or by political power. In addition, it is conducive to the emergence of new manifestations of religiosity on the initiative of the faithful themselves even, horresco referens, of women believers. The clothes and behaviour of pilgrims, their practices of devotion and gifts such as offerings of dolls, songs and chants, the choice of religious books and even zapping between prayer and shopping, would make more than one ayatollah grow pale. Finally, as we have seen, pilgrimage is self-managed by private operators at the interface of trade and religion, operators who in fact are not subject to the supervision of the republic, if indeed this can be described as a homogenous, centralized or coherent entity. However, pilgrimage as a devotional practice is not isolated and intersects with a whole series of other related religious phenomena, such as neighbour- hood meetings like the jalaseh (for women) or heyat (for men), the cult of the dead, the popular or juvenile celebration of Ashura. In the latter case, for example, heyat and jalaseh have become increasingly common, and arrange for vigils and processions, the latter being the prerogative of men, with the women content simply to be spectators. These forms of sociability tend to bring people together from the same neighbourhood or the same profession, but do not exclude a certain social heterogeneity insofar as attendance remains largely a family matter and where neighbourhoods too are not socially homogeneous: ultimately, people of different ages and backgrounds meet there. This increasing number of heyat and jalaseh dedicated to the celebration of the death of Imam Hossein is conducive to all kinds of inno- vations: the singers are now younger and do not necessarily have any clerical training; they willingly introduce into their repertoires poems by Hafez or evocations of the experience of war, even if they have not experienced this themselves; they naturally resort to modern sound systems. In addition, the banners that are deployed during vigils and processions are more colourful and larger than before. The preparations for these festivities results in effects of distinction in dress or hairstyle. The reception of the faithful is more attentive and luxurious than before, and one can immediately see who is the host or hostess, greeting the faithful at the entrance to the courtyard or of the apartment where the commemoration is taking place. As one might expect, this change is not to the liking of all the older people. But the young people and the women do not fail to retort that the homage they intend to pay to Hussein is theirs. It is also significant that the names given to the heyat and jalaseh are becoming more intimate: for instance, people will speak of the heyat Hussein jun, where jun is an affectionate colloquialism distinguished from the more literary form of jan (my soul) instead of the heyat of the Two Innocents, of the Martyrs of Karbala, of Ya Aba Abdellah, etc. Similarly, the cult of the dead is an opportunity for many commemorative meetings attended by relatives, neighbours, friends and colleagues, meetings that are also accompanied by meals, songs and music, transport to the graves, given that such cemeteries as the one at Behesht-e Zahra in Tehran are becoming better equipped for such events. Religious sociability is thus a Introduction: on the road to Damascus 9 privileged dimension for social initiative, since most of these mobilizations are self-managed. But it also has its own specific political economy, giving rise to considerable subcontracting in catering, musical performances or travel arrangements – a subcontracting that lies outside the control both of the clergy and of the Inland Revenue. It is thus a favourite place for the ‘second economy’ that has been thriving for two decades. Ultimately, the issue of civil society that had been highlighted by the candidate Mohammad Khatami, in 1997, was in fact addressed as much to these social dynamics, as they were already effective amid the middle and lower classes, as to intellectuals in search of public space as defined by Habermas. The political hope he embo- died was the expression of this freedom of enterprise, albeit in the service of God and his people, and not just the (in any case rather vague) project of the reformers who quickly found themselves disconnected from the ordinary concerns of voters and became mired in factional struggle. From this point of view, pilgrimage was not the least of those social practices that paved the way for the opening of the second half of the 1990s, both by what it represented in terms of movement and social change and by what it conveyed in terms of informal economic accumulation. Let the reader judge from one example. Before crossing the Turkish border on the way to Damascus, the driver and his aides had not failed to load the coach with the maximum number of jerry cans of petrol for resale in Turkey, as the price of fuel in Iran is very low, which encourages massive fraudulent exports to neighbouring countries. We waited in the Malatiya area, in a garden, for a whole day, ostensibly to rest, but in reality – as we discovered later – so as not to arrive too early in Gaziantep where the petrol was to be resold. The coach then left us in the main shopping area reserved for travellers from Iran, called Turkmen Caddesi, and disappeared for nearly four hours for ‘technical’ reasons. In this same town, the crew bought blankets, one per traveller, but dissuaded us from doing the same, arguing that they would inevitably be seized by Syrian cus- toms. In fact, the crew used our personal franchise and sold the stock on our arrival at the hotel, in Zeynabiyeh, where a go-between was waiting. On the way back, the same crew taxed each of the boxes loaded in Gaziantep by the travellers – mainly household appliances – and one of the women pilgrims, who had eighteen all to herself, did not hesitate to attribute the cause of the accident of which we were victims to the rapacity of the driver. If we add to this trade the ticket prices, sales of video recordings made by the cameraman, the various commissions paid to the guide or to Haj Khanum by restaurants, hotels and wholesalers frequented by the pilgrims, and finally the obols collected in a plastic cup on several occasions during the trip, we can see that a pilgrimage represents a considerable financial flow. This flow is largely outside the control of the state although it does not actually undermine it. It is thus part of the relative autonomy of the social sphere which contributes to the structuring of civil, and in this case religious, society in its moral economy. Another paradox is that this informal financial or economic flow and the transnational social dynamics that underpin it 10 Introduction: on the road to Damascus ultimately register and support the national consciousness through this moral and religious economy, although the latter claims to be universal, referring as it does to the umma, or at least as without boundaries, defining itself against the regional Shi‘ite trend that extends more or less from India to the Levant via the Gulf.

A transnational political and moral economy in the service of national awareness There is no need to recall at length that the umma is a principle of universality, and that the Shi‘ite community is itself transnational in its clerical organization and in the regional circulation of the faithful from one place of pilgrimage and trade to another. Of course, the contemporary political debate tends to obscure these first truths by focusing on Islamic or sectarian identity and the conflicts it creates. All that people see of Islam is Islamism or even terrorism, and Shi‘ism is associated solely with the clashes between communities that it triggers, for example in Lebanon, the Gulf monarchies and Pakistan. But besides the fact that the Muslim faith is one of the great religions described as ‘universalist’, the teaching of Shi‘ite theology, the collecting of the religious tax by their clerics and the scope of their authority, and the organization of the waqf and the financial networks (hawala, Islamic banks) which they maintain are definitely transnational. In this light, holy cities such as Najaf and Karbala are, so to speak, off shore. Likewise, theological syllabuses and matrimonial alliances within the Shi‘ite clergy complicate the national alle- giances of clerics: the great figure of Lebanese Shi‘ism, Musa Sadr, was of Iranian origin and related to the families of the Imam Khomeini and Mohammad Khatami. It remains true that, at the same time, the Iranian national consciousness in about 80 per cent of the population is more or less inseparable from being Shi‘ite – and the leaders of the Islamic Republic are not slow to insist on the complementarity between the two identities. Iranian pilgrims traveling to Zeynabiyeh, to the holy cities of Iraq or to Mecca, are at the heart of this tension between the sectarian colouring of their nation and the universality of their faith. Moreover, our travellers view themselves as being-in-society (adam-e ejtema‘i), active throughout the world, economically enterprising, indulging in the pleasures of consumption, conscious of their rights and their respectability, exploring new social relations, forging a link between their private lives and their participation in the public space. Under the guise of religious devotion they are open to the great wind of globalization and also gain access through this to a certain form of universality, limned in the hues of modernity and globalization. The moral geography of pilgrims helps us to better understand how these false contradictions are transcended in practice. Many of them do not go ‘to Syria’, but to the tomb of Hazrat-e Zeynab. ‘We’re arriving in Damascus’, I replied to a young woman in her thirties who had asked me where we were. She did not really understand my answer, and I had to explain: ‘We are arriving in Zeynabiyeh’, which was immediately intelligible. In the bubble of Introduction: on the road to Damascus 11 their coach, pilgrims travel through a thoroughly transnational space circum- scribed by sacred places transcending national geography. For example, during the war with Iraq, a TV viewer in Tehran had asked me whether the Euphrates which was constantly cropping up in press reports on the progress of the conflict was indeed the same river on whose banks the Imam Hossein had died of thirst. This does not mean that the pilgrim is lost in this transnational moral geography. He communicates with it as an individual, albeit supported by a circumstantial community, that of the other travellers, but this is to return to Iran, his home, his family’s home, his country. And he keeps in touch with his family by phone and by making purchases that are intended for them. As for street trade or smuggling, it worked well for Tehran or Iran. The nostalgia of the last day, which is expressed so strongly during the final visit to Hazrat-e Ruqayya, the feeling that the party’s over and that the mediocre law of everyday life will again prevail,12 the joy and the pride, also, of coming back to one’s family and friends basking in the glow of this adventure clearly mark this reintegration into the national arena. Pilgrimage is a departure whose value lies entirely in this kind of return. The transnational field does not dissolve the national dimension, it enhances and sublimates it, enriching it with new reference points and new experiences. Moreover, pilgrimage is not just a fleeting moment, a mere parenthesis, as once the travellers have returned home, they usually stay in touch, and these relationships can sometimes be intense and emotional, contributing to the diversification of national civil society. In addition, the transnational character of the moral geography of pilgrimage is tempered by the commercial geography of the latter. The flows of travellers between Tehran and Damascus are of such a kind that, throughout their journey, travellers live in a world that remains familiar. Many Iranians have settled along the main staging posts of the journey and run shops. As for the locals, Turks and Syrians, they have learned the rudiments of Persian for their business needs service providers and merchants set up signs in Farsi and accept rials. Similarly, pilgrims can still eat Iranian food and in the hotels of Zeynabiyeh they find portraits of the Imam Khomeini and the Supreme leader. In the cocoon of this Iran transplanted to the Levant, Iranians can thus measure their difference from other pilgrims from the Indian sub- continent, South-East Asia or the Gulf, as well as from the Syrians them- selves. One evening, two women amused themselves by imitating an Arab servant woman and housewife, with a good deal of mimicry and to general uproarious laughter: they had outrageously veiled their faces, put on a display of corpulent sloth, and remained silent. Even in the Holy Land, Arabia is the target of jokes in more or less good taste. And in this case the satire allowed them to reaffirm the superiority of Iran, whose women can be enterprising participants in the public sphere: it also reminded everyone that you can always find people who are more submissive than you. Pilgrimage also provides an opportunity to include this national consciousness in the processes of Middle Eastern regionalization and globalization. The 12 Introduction: on the road to Damascus Iranians who go to Damascus meet fellow expatriates who left home a longer or shorter time ago: these latter engage in business and have an international experience without being any the less Iranian as a result. They draw from this a certain familiarity with the modern world outside their own country, and even take some pride in the fact: after all, Iranians can also succeed abroad, and this feeling vaguely reinforces the desire to leave that runs through society. Likewise, pilgrims broaden national horizons. Even if they do not always realize they are dealing with mo‘aved, they hear the guides of other travellers calling them ‘Iranians’ even when they have Kuwaiti, Bahraini or Emirati nationality. Just like commercial pilgrimage to Dubai, the pilgrimage to the tombs of Hazrat-e Zeynab and Ruqayya makes tangible the social and historical reality of the diaspora that has been spreading for centuries, and more precisely since the early twentieth century, to the Gulf, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Levant. Not only does this not contradict their national feeling: it actually complicates, enriches and refreshes it. On the way back, three hours before arriving in Tehran, a secondary school teacher who was travelling alone and had made friends with the crew succumbed to our request and agreed to sing. Having seized the guide’s microphone he intoned Morgh-e Sahar (The Bird of Dawn), a poem by Mohammad Taghi Bahar which was adopted as an anthem by the nationalist movement and whose subtext remained associated with this and with the resistance of society (mellat) to the state (dowlat). At no time had we talked politics during the trip, and it would probably be wrong to give this highly emotional moment – the whole bus had taken up the song, clapping along – any explicit political meaning. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that a transnational pilgrimage should have come to an end with a national chorus. In this way, the unity of the Iranian nation found expression, beyond factional divisions and ethno-regional particularities. And perhaps even more the aspiration, both national and personal, to take control of their own destinies: ‘O panic-stricken bird, escape from your cage and strike up with mankind the hum of freedom!’ Pilgrimage is a religious practice, a celebration of the saints, but far from being the mere opium of the people, it turns out to be a vehicle for awakening and social mobilization. The question remains: what are the main lines of this moral economy of state and nation conveyed by transnational pilgrimage? There is no question of suggesting that pilgrimage reveals any consistent ‘Iranian’ or ‘Shi‘ite culture’. But it subtends certain ethical values and certain practices which seem inse- parable from the historical experience of Iranian society in the Islamic Republic.13 The first obvious factor relates to the social empowerment of women: it is an absolutely unprecedented phenomenon to see them travel, develop specific forms of worship and engage in trade independently of their husbands – abroad as well as in their own country. Another striking feature is the individuation of the pilgrims, irrespective of their sex or age. They travel essentially as individuals, leaving behind the entity of the family, which of course does not exclude the fact that they may possibly be accompanied by a Introduction: on the road to Damascus 13 member thereof, nor the fact that they remain in constant contact with those who have remained in the home country, by phone or by their emotional attachments. Third, religious experience, while keeping its transcendence and its irreducibility, goes along with the all-pervasiveness of rational economic calculation: the sacred realm and the business sphere are found side by side though they never entirely merge, and the pilgrim, absorbed in his devotions, spends a crucial part of his trip implementing his business strategy. Fourth, pilgrimage brings travellers face to face with the unknown abroad, and introduces an element of relativization and self-reflexivity into the national consciousness: geographical and linguistic unfamiliarity, separation from friends and relatives, unexpected events on the journey – these represent a change in social scale and here too introduce again a break with past practices. This is especially true as the experience of religious pilgrimage fits into the growing experience of economic expatriation and fits into the circuits of the diaspora. Finally, if the journey continues to be a source of knowledge, wisdom and distinction, even more so today than in ancient times, it is legitimized by the religious purpose of the pilgrimage that to some degree ‘purifies’ the inten- tions of those who set off, and who might always be suspected of engaging in economic activities or reprehensible pleasures. In its polysemy, pilgrimage as a religious and transnational practice raises the question of its exact relationship with the formation of the state. Let’s listen to the song of The Bird of Dawn to consider the changing shape of contemporary Iran from a different angle, that of its relationship to the outside world rather than its ‘national’ history.

Notes 1 In addition to the classic works on pilgrimage on which I have drawn, though I have preferred to rely primarily on fieldwork and participant observation, I must mention the excellent collective work edited by Sylvia Chiffoleau and Anna Madoeuf: Les Pèlerinages au Mahgreb et au Moyen-Orient. Espaces publics, espaces du public (Beirut: Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2005). 2 Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori, eds, Muslim Travellers. Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), p. xiv. 3 We should also add the shrines dedicated to different personalities dear to the hearts of Shi‘ite, such as the children and companions of the Prophet, the women of his tribe, and scholars. For a better understanding of the Shi‘ite holy sites in Syria, see Sabrina Mervin, ‘Sayyida Zaynab, banlieue de Damas ou nouvelle ville sainte chiite’, Cemoti 22, 1996, pp. 149–163, and Myriam Ababsa, ‘Significations territoriales et appropriations conflictuelles des mausolées chiites de Raqqa (Syrie)’, in Chiffoleau and Madoeuf, Les Pèlerinages, pp. 109–31. 4 Ali Shariati died of a heart attack. The opposition suspected the SAVAK of murdering him. 5 Fariba Adelkhah, ‘Transformation sociale et recomposition identitaire dans le Golfe: parfois malgré eux, toujours entre deux’, Cemoti 22, 1996, pp. 83–107. 6 Myriam Ababsa (in Chiffoleau and Anna Madoeuf, eds, Les Pèlerinages, p. 113) gives a figure of 232,985 pilgrims in 2002, based on Syrian statistics. However, it 14 Introduction: on the road to Damascus should be noted that pilgrims travelling by coach do not have individual visas but are given one collective visa per coach. In addition, the number of passengers per coach, which officially should not exceed 40, in reality often reaches 50 passengers. In 2009, there were apparently 20,000 pilgrims in the period of Nowruz alone, and 600,000 for the entire year (with 60 per cent travelling by bus), but this estimate probably does not take into account the pilgrims travelling to Damascus from Iraq or Turkey, or the travellers to Syria who use organizations not approved by the authorities of the Organization of the Hajj and Pilgrimage. The quasi-civil war that has ravaged the country since spring 2011 has naturally slowed, and finally halted, the flow of Iranian believers. 7 Admittedly, the concept of communitas as used by Victor Turner does not seem to be any different from the idea of social process as outlined by Christian Decobert in his conclusion to Chiffoleau and Madoeuf, eds, Les Pèlerinages, p. 402. But the current usage of the term refers more to a community of bodies, a body united by faith and sealed once and for all, and tends to hide its dimension as a process. 8 Fariba Adelkhah La Révolution sous le voile. Femmes islamiques d’Iran (Paris: Karthala, 1991), ch. 3. 9 Mohammad Ali amir-Moezzi, ‘Shahrbanu, Dame du pays d’Iran et mere des Imams: entre l’Iran préislamique et le Shi‘isme imamite’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 27, 2002, pp. 497–554. 10 Mervin, ‘Sayyida Zaynab’, pp. 153–154. 11 Fariba Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran, tr. by Jonathan Derrick (London: Hurst & Co., in association with the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales, Paris, 1999). 12 See the work of Anna Madoeuf on the past time of pilgrimage, ‘Ephémérides de la ville en fête: une lecture des mouleds au Caire’, pp. 289–311 in Chiffoleau and Madoeuf, eds, Les Pèlerinages. 13 This does not prevent them from being found in other Muslim countries: see in particular Eickelman and Piscatori, eds, Muslim Travellers.