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CONCEIVING IRAN’S FUTURE: YOUTH AND THE TRANSITION TO PARENTHOOD

MEHRNOUSH SHAFIEI INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC STUDIES MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL

JUNE, 2011

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Arts—Thesis

© Mehrnoush Shafiei

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For my mother . 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS...... 3

ABSTRACT/ABSTRAIT...... 4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………...... 6

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION…………………………………...... 7

CHAPTER TWO: THE NATION...... 23

CHAPTER THREE: SACRIFICE...... 55

CHAPTER FOUR: RESPONSIBILITY...... 84

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION...... 109

WORKS CONSULTED…………………………………………………..117

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ABSTRACT

Since the publication of images of Iranian students’ raised angry fists storming the

American embassy in 1979, the idea of Iranian youth has captured the world’s imagination and has been a source of puzzlement. The children of the Iranian revolution are today old enough to have their own children. Thus, one unique and original window from which to study Iranian youth is to investigate as they undergo the significant transition from youth to parenthood. This study will be in conversation with three expecting Montreal-based Iranian couples who fall in the cohort known as “the fruit of

Iran’s revolution;” in other words, youth that have lived entirely under the post revolutionary regime. I will examine parenting as an imagined projection and investigate ways in which my interlocutors envision their life as a first time parent. I suggest that the institution of parenting, with its focal point in society, presents a suitable framework for disentangling the complex and elusive understanding of Iranian youth.

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ABSTRAIT

Depuis la publication en 1979 d’images d’étudiants iraniens, en colère et les poings levés, attaquant l’ambassade américaine, la jeunesse iranienne est devenue un sujet captivant dans l’imaginaire et une source d’incertitude pour bon nombre de gens à travers le monde.

Aujourd’hui, « les enfants de la révolution iranienne » sont assez âgés pour avoir leurs propres enfants. Par conséquent, un moyen unique et original d’étudier ce groupe est d‘examiner sa transition de la jeunesse vers la parentalité. Cette étude se fera par le biais de conversations avec trois couples iraniens résidant à Montréal qui seront bientôt parents et qui tombent dans cette cohorte communément connue comme «le fruit de la révolution iranienne », en d'autres mots, ces jeunes qui ont vécu toute leur vie sous le régime postrévolutionnaire. Je regarderai la parentalité en tant que projection imaginaire et

étudierai comment mes interlocuteurs envisagent de mener leurs nouvelles vies de parents.

Je propose de regarder la parentalité, avec la société comme toile de fond, comme un cadre adéquat pour mieux saisir la jeunesse iranienne, sujet complexe et souvent insaisissable.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the individuals who graciously offered their time to participate in this research. I feel very honoured to have been granted access to such a special time in their lives. My colleagues at McGill University sustained me throughout the writing of this thesis through their friendships and intellectual engagements. I would specifically like to thank Sahar Rouhani who served as a soundboard for almost every aspect of this project. Warm thanks to Salwa Ferahian whose enthusiasm for the early stages of the research strengthened my sense of motivation. I would like to thank Karen Moore for encouraging me to keep the course at times when I was faced with personal difficulty. I especially would like to thank Adina Sigartu for her support, both logistically and emotionally. A portion of this thesis was written outside of Montreal and Adina’s kind words and warmth helped me fight feelings of isolation. My professors at McGill University inspired many aspects of this research: Professors Laila Parsons and Michelle Hartman made me think about cinema in new ways, Professor Malek Abisaab taught me the importance of gender and Professor Sajida Alvi encouraged me to consider questions of continuity and change. I am very much indebted to my thesis supervisor, Professor Setrag Manoukian for his thoughtful and patient guidance. Professor Manoukian helped me navigate my stages of interpretive impasse through countless hours of discussion and invaluable insights. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support. In particular, my brother served as my lifeline during the final stages and without his help this thesis would not have reached fruition.

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Chapter One: INTRODUCTION

Beginnings

I became interested in the question of Iranian youth when I travelled to Iran with my close friend Lily in 2006. Lily had grown up in Iran and had moved to Montreal roughly three years earlier to pursue an undergraduate degree at McGill University, and that is where we became acquainted. Unlike Lily, I am an Iranian Canadian and had lived in Canada since I was a young child, and before this fateful trip I had travelled to Iran exclusively with my family and rarely had the chance to escape family obligations and experience the world of the youth of Iran. This trip offered me the opportunity to enter that world. Lily, being a native of the country introduced me to her huge network of friends, and I introduced her to some of my own cousins who were close in age to us and they accompanied me during our nightly social excursions. We had travelled to Tehran in early August when the oppressive heat made any socialization during the day nearly impossible.

Fun evenings were spent walking around city parks, sitting in coffee shops, and taking joy rides on the freeway with blasting music. In retrospect, I find it amusing how impressed by the whole scene I was, proudly telling my mother over the phone that “Iran has changed, people actually have fun here!” Of course, I realize today it wasn’t so much that Iran had changed, but rather my perspective had. Until then, my parents or other

“adults” had been hovering nearby during most of my interactions with my cousins and other young Iranians. By escaping this arrangement and bringing along my friend Lily, I was able to see a whole new side of my cousins. Communication flowed more easily than it had before; conversations were raw and saucy as jokes were exchanged without 8 hesitation or embarrassment. Underground parties similar to what occurs on most North

American college campuses, were common.

At first it took me some time to adjust—I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my cousins who displayed such impeccable manners and polite speech had, for lack of a better word, a wild side. Soon I started to become hypersensitive to everything that was happening around me and looked for deeper meanings in unlikely places: the punk rock hair styles of young men and women, the brightly coloured clothes with matching shoes, the Angelina Jolie posters and the rock music that blasted from cars. I felt as though I had discovered a brave new world within Iran and wanted to pursue the question of Iranian youth culture and share it with outsiders.

My need to share with non Iranians “the real Iran” first started to develop when as a child I viewed the film Not Without My Daughter (1991) which depicts the escape of an

American woman (played by Sally Field) from the cruel hands of her brutal and oppressive Iranian husband. This film perpetuates stereotypes about Iran and is a source of much anger and disappointment among Iranian immigrants. In my 25 years in Canada I have yet to meet a single Iranian Canadian who has not seen it; even today, it is not uncommon for this controversial film to be fiercely condoned in Iranian circles. I first watched this film at the tender age of eight years old; at that time I was a huge fan of

Sally Field (waking up early on Saturdays to watch re-runs of her sitcom The Flying Nun) so understandably, seeing her play the wife of an Iranian man (who looked oddly like my own father) left a lasting impression on me. I remember that for some time during elementary school, I would hesitate to reveal to my school friends that I was born in Iran.

Of course, my dark hair, thick eyebrows and Iranian name made it difficult to conceal my 9 ethnic background, not to mention that I was the only elementary student who had packed pistachio nuts as an afternoon snack. Only later, when I made my very first trip to Iran in the summer of 1997, did I finally come to terms with my Iranian-ness. My introduction to

Iran coincided with my thirteenth birthday and it was a wonderful time in my life, dispelling the images of oppression and fundamentalism that my young mind had associated with Iran since watching the notorious Not Without My Daughter. In retrospect, I have come to realize that the combination of that film and my early positive experiences in Iran fuelled my desire to discover the “real Iran.”

In the summer of 2006 I felt as though I had unveiled the “real” Iran and it was the world of the youth, filled with parties, dance and music. Although I did not know it at the time, that very summer there were numerous scholars and journalists reporting on the late-night party sessions, red lipstick, and the social lives of the young. The secret lives of

Iranian youth and their rebelliousness was hailed to be the “smoking gun” that would finally help crack the cryptic “Persian puzzle.” Judging by the enormous success of these books, it is clear that there was a ready audience eager to be directed to the “real Iran.” As

I became more and more relaxed with my new relationships with my young cousins, I felt as though I had “figured them out.” I was so confident in fact, that I wrote in my journal that summer that I predicted that once these “wild” young people “grew up” they would turn Iranian tradition on its head. Close to the end of my trip, I had an experience that made me less certain of my naive generalization.

It was a particularly hot and humid day, and myself and my two cousins—Tara and Azadeh, headed to an upscale shopping centre for some much needed ice coffees.

Tara and I had grown quite close and I loved being in her presence—she was a vivacious 10 and popular socialite who was always looking for ways to get a laugh. As we sat at a table in a posh café, she began to make teasing comments about the other patrons in between giggles and incredibly loud slurps of ice coffee. Her older sister Azadeh was horrified and gave Tara stern warnings to act properly, telling her in hushed whispers that what she was doing was inappropriate ( zesht) behaviour. 1

This was not the first time I had witnessed such a scene between these two sisters, and although Azadeh was merely a few years older, she assumed an authoritative tone when around her younger sister, much to the displeasure of Tara. Usually their confrontations were cut short out of respect for me; this time however, Tara couldn’t hold her tongue and while in the driver’s seat of the car on the way home, gave her sister a piece of her mind. I was sitting tensely in the passenger seat and Azadeh was sitting cross armed in the back. Tara skilfully navigated Tehran’s notorious traffic and without taking her eyes off the road, she began her complaint:

Let me tell you something, she used to be to be worse than me! She was the biggest party girl—always going out here and there. She used to jump out of her house window to go out, and of course I never told anyone. I miss those days, when she was fun, and then she went and got married and had a baby and now see how she is? You are a witness, she is worse than our mother!

I was quite shocked, I never would have guessed that Tara and Azadeh shared any personality traits, they appeared so completely different. Azadeh exuded an air of maturity and seriousness while Tara was gregarious and light- hearted. The twenty-eight year old Azadeh answered in a slightly exasperated but patient tone:

1 The Persian word zesht is translated directly as “ugly;” however Tara used it here to denounce her sister’s behaviour as vulgar and in bad taste. 11

You are still a child Tara, you don’t know what you are talking about. Once you get into my position and have experience, then we’ll talk. Experience, life is about experience.

Slightly embarrassed to have witnessed their altercation, I gave Tara a sideways glance in the car and caught her shooting her sister a look of pity through the rear-view window.

Soon after that incident I returned to Montreal with wonderful memories, a suitcase filled with pistachios and a valuable lesson—not everything is as it appears in

Iran. During my winter semester as an undergraduate at McGill University, I registered for an Iranian contemporary history class taught by Professor Manoukian. When critically reading literature on the subject of Iranian youth, I was surprised by how many scholars directly equated the attitudes of Iranian youth with Iran’s future political trajectory

(Nooshin 2007; Varzi 2006; Cohen 2006; Khosravi 2008; Rahimi 2003). I came across this line of reasoning once again when I began reading literature during the first semester of my Masters in fall of 2008. 2 I appreciated that young Iranians were an important category of study; in fact, “youth” as a discrete category of analysis has fuelled much anthropological literature and is particularly pertinent in the Iranian context due to the fact that approximately 70% of the population is under the age of thirty and has lived entirely under the post revolutionary regime. However, I also had a sense from my personal experiences that the formula that Iranian youth behaviours and beliefs can be used to predict adult attitudes may be difficult, if not impossible, to calculate. Soon I began to become interested in the demarcation line between youth and adulthood and

2 One argument particularly stood out to me: “The survival of the clerical rule will depend on the importance that youth place on the Islamic component of their identity” (Varzi 2006:197).

12 more specifically in the “rite of passage” for Iranian youth embarking on adulthood—the transition to first time parenthood. I was curious about the thoughts, expectations and anxieties this transition revealed. My sense was that parenthood is a radical life altering experience and I wanted to know how young people imagined parenthood would impact their young lives. I wanted to concretely engage with this question and was not content with merely asking young Iranians to share with me imaginations of future parenting in a hypothetical sense. By enlisting young pregnant couples for the research I believed I could avoid philosophic expositions; in some ways, the fact that the unborn baby is an absent presence helped direct the conversations to actual and looming expectations about parenting.

I conducted fieldwork with expectant Iranian couples in Montreal, Canada. I initially had intended to conduct research on expecting parents in Iran in June 2009; however due to extenuating circumstances that made fieldwork difficult, I redirected my focus on former and current Iranian international students from McGill or Concordia

University living in Montreal at the time of the interviews. I carried out in-depth, semi- structured interviews with three primiparous couples between the ages of 25-32 and engaged in participant observation. Using an informal self-reflective interview style and drawing from Jackson’s (2005) phenomenological approach, this transition served as a

“site” to provide insight into expectations and anxieties related to the process of imagining, expecting, and preparing for the arrival of a first child. As mentioned previously, the ethnographic style consisted of open ended interview questions which allowed for active and lively conversation; however, a side effect of this particular style was that data was collected concerning a wide range of discussions—politics, sports, and 13 even the latest gossip magazines. The conversations were anchored in discussions of the couples’ expectations, strategies and anticipated anxieties. I spoke to the three couples separately, conducted phone interviews with exclusively the women, and on one occasion hosted a focus group at my house for the three women together. My status as an Iranian who did not grow up in Iran afforded me a “familiar distance” (Crapanzano 1980:12) that was necessary for the depth of the discussion. I had an “insider’s perspective” since I was able to converse with the couples comfortably in both English and Persian and had insight into common cultural references.

Within an anthropological framework, pregnancy is designated as a “rite of passage” and as such offers an enhanced opportunity to study how people relate to social values (Turner 1969). 3 During this period values which may have previously been taken for granted are actively reflected on (Turner 1969). Pregnancy as an “in between” or liminal stage characterized by heighten self awareness has been documented (Balin 1988,

Miller-McLemore 2000); yet, few social scientists focus on the “idea of having children” despite the fact that the transition to parenthood is a time of significant change and upheaval (Fox 1985). The phenomenon itself is very complex and is both a biological and social process (Layne 1999, Miller 1998, Taylor 2000). In Iran, as Erika Friedl has argued, “pregnancy, birth and children are located in the field of emotions and behaviours that are functions of interfamily politics and power negotiations shifting in the course of the life cycle of parents and relatives” (Friedl 1997: 76). Furthermore, pregnancy may be a time in which exposure to a variety of medical and scientific discourse occurs; and as

3 The general concept of “rite of passage” was first formulated in 1909 by Arnold van Gennep to describe the rituals that accompany the transitional phase between childhood to full membership of a social group. See Arnold van Gennep The Rites of Passage (London: Chicago University Press, 1977). 14

Marcia C. Inhorn (2006) points out, such discourse is not “immune” to culture; on the contrary, reception of such discourse is subject to “local considerations” (2006:429).

Employing the paradigm that “reproduction, in its biological and social senses, is inextricably bound up with the production of culture” (Ginsburg and Rapp 1995:2) my research is anchored in a particular perspective: the transition from youth to parenthood.

Within the framework of my research, pregnancy offers an opportunity to study Iranian youth projections of parenting and ways in which distance is created between categories of youth and adulthood.

I discovered from my informal conversations with my interlocutors three dominant themes: nation, sacrifice and responsibility. I argue that these three themes, which are in close dialogue with each other, constitute the main axis of articulation of the future parents’ discourse about the transition to adulthood and are significant to understanding my interlocutor’s images of projected parenthood. These themes of projected parenthood were a means by which my interlocutors created a distance between youth and adulthood.

Questions of “good mother” and “good father” were discussed revealing gender differences. Gender plays a significant role in the question of what it means to be a “good parent;” through the act of gestating and birthing the baby, women tend to be held to higher expectations and have greater demands and pressure placed upon them. Gender dynamics also appeared in the ethnographic research; certainly the most obvious difference between my male and female interlocutors was that the women were 15 undergoing a physical change of their bodies at the time of the interviews. I argue that for these women, the idea of parenthood became even less of an abstraction since “skipped periods, morning sickness, emotional liability, and fatigue can give reassurance (welcome or unwelcome) that the pregnancy is real” (Colman and Coleman 1971: 36). Perhaps even the fact that the women occasionally felt their babies kicking during the interviews encouraged them to be more invested in the research and thereby assume a greater role in the interview process than their husbands. This may be why, in terms of participation, the women tended to answer my questions with more enthusiasm and a greater degree of depth and detail than did their partners. Gender also played an important role in the information I was able to solicit. Being a woman myself, I felt slightly more comfortable speaking to the expectant mothers; consequently, the soon-to-be mothers compose a greater part of the ethnographic research.

Imagined parenthood is obviously very different from actual parenthood with the former lending itself more readily to more romanticized and idealized notions of parenting since it is not based on tangible daily interactions between parent and child

(Galinsky 1982). As mentioned previously, the very reason I solicited expecting couples for this study was so that the projection of parenting would be grounded in the fact that it was a concrete anticipation with a future temporality. That said, it is important to recognize that since the interlocutors are primiparous couples, their expectations of parenthood may not be as tempered as individuals who already have children and are actively engaged in childrearing. Ellen Galinsky (1982) describes the transitional stage of pregnancy as a time when imagining parenthood, or images of parenthood, by prospective parents make abstractions more concrete. She writes, 16

I see images as being the adult legacy of children’s play. Children explore; they try on the future by becoming it. The child who worries about robbers may pretend to be a robber or a cop attacking an intruder…. By adolescence, the pretending has become more internalized. Teenagers, just like children, anticipate events to come, but they do so by taking mental forays, imaginative excursions out on a date with someone admired, or to a track meet or exam. As adults, we continue this lifelong process of imagining what lies ahead. At transitional times when we are about to embark on something new—pregnancy for example, our thoughts are filled with images (Galinsky 1982:8).

This thesis is concerned with the expectations or “images” of projected parenting.

These images help construct a distance between my interlocutors’ lives as Iranian youth and their lives as Iranian parents; the themes of nation, sacrifice and responsibility were the main axis by which these couples created that distance. It is important to recognize that the images of parenthood that were revealed over the course of the interviews were influenced by many factors, such as childhood memories, Iranian culture, the city of

Montreal and their particular relationship with me as the interviewer. These influences will be discussed throughout the thesis.

I did not want to present ethnographic data without including some of the contemporary discourse that contextualizes my interlocutors’ narratives in a broader social framework (Jackson 2005); consequently, I include in the analysis a selection of

Iranian film. Since cinema facilitates a discussion of culture; I believe it is important to include a selection of Iranian films as a supplement to the ethnographic material presented. I do not view film as a direct representation of Iran and for the purposes of this thesis, I am not concerned with providing a criticism of film or a film review; rather the films will be used as critical thought vehicles (Shapiro 2001). I am using film as a site of anthropological inquiry to help develop particular ideas and themes relevant in the ethnographic material; Iranian films, as Naficy argues, “embody varying themes which 17 taken together can clue us in on both the kinds of tensions the society is undergoing and the way post revolutionary values are played out on the screen” (Naficy 1992:550).

The films featured in this thesis are respectively: Bashu: the Little Stranger

(1987) , Leily is with me (1996) , The May Lady (1998) , The Apple (1998). In the subsequent chapters, I will produce an analytical description of these films by taking into account lexicon, symbolism and gender difference. These films generally are not regarded as part of mainstream commercial cinema and are more appropriately referred to as Art films. I approach the interpretation of these films as a cultural anthropologist, like

Michael Fischer (2004) I am drawing on the films discussed in this thesis as “vehicle of ethnography…a descriptive medium, of cultural patterns, of patterned social dynamics…and of the hybridities- or the transnational negotiations of globalizing and localizing cultural processes” (2004: 231). As Mottahedeh rightfully argues, “Operating on a global terrain, national film cultures represent neither real identities nor uncoded realities. They create worlds” (2008: 144). I enter these “worlds” to help provide a conceptual language with which to discuss the themes of nation, sacrifice and responsibility in the Iranian context.

Drawing on the insight that “people make babies in contexts not always confined to their immediate places of residence” (Kanaaneh 2002:9) it is important to acknowledge that, although these couples will not be giving birth in Iran, their homeland does influence their images of parenthood. Additionally, the experience of being away from Iran makes them more sensitive to imagining themselves as a specific kind of parent. The fact that the three Iranian couples are away from Iran influences both their nationalistic feelings towards Iran (which will be discussed in chapter two) and their ideas of parenthood. 18

On the other hand, it cannot be taken for granted that Canadian parental discourse will also shape their landscapes of imagined parenting. Montreal is a vibrant city and is home to over a hundred different cultural communities. It is estimated that a fourth of the population is born abroad. Home to approximately 10,000 Iranians, Montreal is a city where you can easily find Iranian shops, medical offices, and cultural centers. Since my interlocutors are Montreal-based Iranians, they are naturally exposed to much Canadian and Western discourse about pregnancy and parenthood in terms of self help literature, child-rearing manuals and childrearing books found in Canadian bookstores. Such literature stress the role of mothers and fathers in ensuring a child has a healthy and successful future (Schlessinger 2000). There is specific emphasis on the role of the mother (Johnston and Swanson 2003) which is also reflected in Iranian parental discourse. For example, the current religious leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei stresses mothers’ increased parental responsibility:

Islam, in some places, has preferred woman to man. For instance, when there is a father and a mother with a child: although the child is that of both but the child has more responsibility towards the mother .The mother has more right to the child and the child has a heavier responsibility towards the mother. There are many hadiths in this regard: Once a man asked the Holy Prophet, “Whom should I serve?” The Prophet responded, “Your mother.” The prophet gave the same answer to the same question for three times. When the man raised his question for the fourth time the Prophet responded, “Your father.” Therefore, the woman has a greater right in the family. Not because God wanted to prefer some group over the other but because women have heavier responsibilities. 4

Thus, it is important to recognize that the parental discourse in Iran and Canada is similar in some ways; that said, discourse that is particular to Iran will be discussed and developed in greater detail in the subsequent chapters.

4 From the official blog of Ayatollah Khamenei November 10th 2010.

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Furthermore, the fact that I, myself am an Iranian Canadian and the fact that the setting of the interviews were in an Iranian café perhaps also influenced my interlocutors’ images parenthood and consequently shaped the course of the discussions. My informal interviews with the three couples likely facilitated reflections on Iran since they took place at Nocochi Café, a stylish café in downtown Montreal specializing in delicate

Persian pastries. Since I anticipated that I would be spending many hours there, I considered it the perfect location because I am friends with the owner, so I could assure my interlocutors that we could sit and talk for as long as we liked without appearing impolite and feeling like we were loitering. According to my interlocutors, the encompassing aromatic smell of the café powerfully evoked memories of Iran; indeed, there is much research linking memory and smell (Wassman and Stockhaus 2007). Yet, the main reason I decided on this setting for my conversations was due to the fact that the café itself is quite aesthetically pleasing, with clean white walls accented with subtle

Iranian décor; as one food critic of the Montreal Mirror describes, “The entire place emphasises purity and provides clarity of thought, it’s the best place to go and think.”

As a young Iranian Canadian it was interesting for me to see how these young people, all of whom were in my same age group as I, were talking about how things

“change.” In essence there were two components to my interviews—one was questions about the pregnancy stage itself (patterns of consumption, nutritional guidelines, and musings about the baby’s name) and the other was projected parenting. My role as 20 researcher was significant since I did not consider myself to be in a transition to parenthood (or even remotely close). This placed me in a particular position with respect to my interlocutors, particularly to the women since they were almost educating me on stages of pregnancy development. In some ways I felt, for lack of a better word, as a subordinate; as an interviewer I did not feel as though I was extracting information as much as I was being graciously offered it. On the other hand, with respect to the topic of

“Iranian parenting” I was, much to my surprise, considered a source of information. I assumed a role that I had not anticipated when I began my research; I initially imagined the interview process to be a simple one way interaction, in which I would ask questions and elicit responses. On the contrary, questioning was redirected toward me particularly with respect to the fact that my interlocutors, who I considered my peers, would sometimes view me as an embodiment of the product of Iranian parenting in Canada.

Since raising their future child in Canada was a serious consideration for some of the couples, I was repeatedly asked questions regarding ways in which I negotiated my own

“Iranian-ness” growing up in Canada. There was much interest in the sort of person I was and what my connection was to Iran. The mere fact that I was an Iranian Canadian interested in Iranian and Islamic studies was taken to be confirmation of some sort of successful cultivated Iranian-ness. A frequent question asked of me was the role my own parents played in my pursuit of anthropological study of Iran. I found myself reflecting back to my own parents’ childrearing strategies and sharing stories with my interlocutors which were earnestly received. Many times surprise was expressed at how comfortable I was conversing in Farsi despite having left Iran when I was an infant. On one occasion I was praised for knowing an obscure fact about Iranian culture—evidence that I was a

“real” Iranian who grew up in Canada. In some ways, my research offered an opportunity 21 for the three couples to ask questions and actively imagine, through my own personal anecdotes, different scenarios of what their future child’s experience could potentially be if raised in Canada. I suggest that because I was viewed as an Iranian who had retained

Iranian customs, the conversations were directed towards ways in which Iranian-ness could be cultivated in future childrearing. The connection between the role of the nation and projected parenting will be discussed in the next chapter.

Before proceeding I will briefly outline my schema: the themes of nation, sacrifice and responsibility are divided into three chapters. Chapter two will introduce the couples who are featured in the research and will focus on the role of Iran and how the nation influences the expectations and anxieties about their future role as parents. I discovered that while in this pregnant state, the couples constructed themselves as parents by consumption of “baby things.” They actively reflected on and constructed themselves as

“Iranian parents” through the consumption of Iranian foods bought at an Iranian grocery store and the bestowal of an Iranian name. Granting a baby an Iranian name was linked to

Iranian culture and by extension, Iranian language and this idea will be developed using the film Bashu: The little stranger . In some instances, pregnancy discourse that my interlocutors were exposed to in Canada (through books or medical advice) were appropriated and reconciled with Iranian traditions.

Chapter three is concerned with the role of sacrifice and more specifically, motherly sacrifice and how this is understood and negotiated by the three women. The film, The May Lady is used to develop this theme by complicating the idea of the “Iranian mother” as a “selfless” woman. This theme was very much connected to the concept of 22 transformation and the idea that having a child has a transformative effect which precipitates a change in perception. This idea is dramatized in the film Leily is With Me and is appropriate to include in this discussion since it is almost a satire on the idea of sacrifice inducing transformation. Some of the fathers I interviewed revealed that a “good father” must exhibit good behaviour and give up vices such as smoking or the use of profanity once the baby arrives.

Chapter four examines the theme of imagined parental responsibility; specifically responsibility for ensuring the health of the baby (through the practice of breastfeeding), facilitating academic success and disciplining the child. Responsibility also extended to being able to provide for the child; fiscal notions of being able to “afford” children were connected specifically with ideas of paternal responsibility. The Apple , a caricature of the stereotypical strict “Iranian father” will be discussed to unpack the question of paternal responsibility and its connection with discipline and protection of child.

Many times, when examining the themes of nation, sacrifice and responsibility, discussion revolved around ideas of “good mother” and “good father” and since these themes are historically contingent, and inspired by Foucault’s rejection of epistemology centred scholarship, I analyze the three themes within a historical framework or genealogy at the beginning of each chapter. 23

Chapter Two: IMAGINED PARENTING AND THE NATION

The focus of this chapter is the significance of the nation and its connection with my interlocutors’ images of parenthood. There is considerable disagreement over the definition of the nation and whether or not it is even relevant today. My notion of the

“nation” is multilayered and by this I mean it is not confined to the geographical limits of the nation-state. I make use of Benedict Anderson’s (1983) idea of “imagined communities” to inform my analysis. As Anderson has argued, “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lies the image of their communion” (Anderson 1983:6). I examine different ways my interloctors imagine and construct representations of Iran in

Montreal. Anderson (1992) has pointed out that “long distance nationalism” is greatly facilitated by relatively inexpensive communication technologies; more recently,

Alexanian has argued in a similar vein, that “Rather than signifying a movement away from the nation, Iranians abroad have been forceful in constructing representations of Iran through various media, including the internet” (Alexanian 2006:142). 5

Certainly, thinking about issues of Iranian nationalism in a Canadian context brings with it a whole set of unique considerations; certain acts which may not necessarily be considered patriotic gestures in the home country take on added significance in

Canada. For example, I discovered that for some of my interlocutors, the decision process involved in naming the future child was intricately bound up by considerations of the nation and was important in constructing an Iranian baby, and by extension transforming

5 In terms of the Internet, Iranians are recognized as active bloggers and Farsi is believed to be the third most used language in the blogosphere. See: Annabelle Sreberny and Gholam Kiabany, Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co, 2010). 24 themselves into “Iranian” parents. The chapter begins with a brief history of the unique experience of Iranian nationalism and its significance to discourse concerning the family.

Following the historical discussion, I introduce the three couples I interviewed and present the ethnographic data which resulted from hours spent talking over the phone, over coffee and email correspondence. This chapter will examine how the idea of the

Iranian nation is implicated in my informant’s patterns of consumption (through food and baby items) and the bestowal of the baby name.

Genealogy of the Nation

In order to understand my interlocutors’ imaginations of parenthood it is important to take the role of the nation into account. When examining the genealogy of how particular national discourses were linked to familial tropes, the influence of Shi’a

Islam is very significant. In this respect, the family of the Prophet plays a significant role in the symbolism around the “Iranian family.” Shi’ism differs from Sunni Islam in that the former believe that the first Imam in the line of twelve, Imam ‘Ali, was the lawful successor of the Prophet. He is considered to be one of the most revered figures in

Shi’ism and his marriage to the Prophet’s daughter, Fateme al-Zahra and their resulting children are the symbol of “ideal family.”6 Shi’as believe that the Prophet’s family have been endowed with a reflection of the Prophet’s light and particular descendants of this line make up the succession of twelve Imams who are considered to embody ultimate spiritual authority. Religious doctrine holds that the last Imam, the twelfth Imam, is in hiding and the faithful Shi’a await his return from occultation.

6 In fact, the official day to celebrate family values in modern Iran marks the union of Imam ‘Ali and Fateme al-Zahra which occurred over 1, 400 years ago. 25

In addition to the religious significance of Shi’a familial lineage, it is also effective at invoking patriotic feelings in Iranians, since it is believed by many that Imam

‘Ali’s son and the third Imam, Imam Hussein, fell in love with and married a Persian princess, Shahrbanu; ultimately producing a son that would survive the massacre at

Karbala 7 and become the fourth Imam, Imam Sajjad. This intimate connection between the Prophet’s family and Iran was especially highlighted at the turn of the twentieth century when Iranian nationalists exploited the legend of Shahrbanu 8 to effectively appropriate Shahrbanu and Imam Hussein for a “nationalist genealogy that refashioned

Iranianization and Imamification” (Najmabadi 2005:116). In other words, since the fourth

Imam was the son of an Iranian princess it injected the resulting Imamate line with

Iranian blood and in this sense, propelled the Iranian-Islamic nationalist narrative forward.

Furthermore, the nationalists emphasized connections between the concepts of homeland, vatan and the family. As Najmabadi (2005) describes, these concepts became increasingly intertwined as the homeland started to acquire feminine connotations and modern Iran was transformed, by the refashioning of national tropes, from fatherland to motherland (Tavakoli-Targhi 2001). This refashioning was made fairly easy by the double connection of soil and womb. Najmabadi (2005) explains that these two concepts became closely connected with the Sufi concept of vatan and the mystical belief that human beings are in perpetual exile, (ghorbat) and long to return to the Beloved. Sufism

7 The events that occurred in Karbala are discussed in chapter three.

8 Shahrbanu is believed to be the daughter of Yazdigird, the last Sassanid Emperor of Iran. Her shrine can be found today in the southern suburbs of Tehran in ancient Rayy. Some scholars have cast doubt on her marriage to Imam Hussein. Nonetheless, for many in Iran today, her legend and the stories surrounding her life are a persevering belief. 26 considers life to be a journey to return to the womb; this return is realized when one is laid in the grave and returned to soil. Since the trope of soil is a symbol of the nation it can be used to invoke feelings of patriotism; thus, the nationalists refashioned this Sufi concept of ghorbat to include the nostalgia one feels when far from the homeland. 9

The early 1900s in Iran was an era characterized by the Qajar monarchy’s struggle to maintain Iran’s independence in the face of British and Russian imperialist desires. As

Iran’s sovereignty became increasingly threatened by foreign powers, the need to persuade ordinary citizens to become active in the political affairs of the country became urgent. 10 To that end, the intelligentsia would write articles or compose plays depicting

Iran as a metaphorically sick mother figure (Najmabadi 2005). This narrative forcefully invoked the idea of citizens being invested in taking care of the nation as they would care for their own mother. In this vein, the case for women to participate in social and political life was made by the argument that filial obligation was better fulfilled by women, since a daughter was believed to be more capable than a son of nursing a sick mother back to heath (Najmabadi 2005: 120 )11

9 The symbolism of soil is also important in Shi’a Islam in that turbat-i pak is the purified soil of Karbala where the blood of Imam Hussein and his companions was shed. Many pilgrims who visit Karbala make sure to bring home a sample of soil and harbour the belief that anyone who dies on such soil is guaranteed entry into Heaven.

10 It was during this era in 1906 when citizens demanded a constitution to limit the power of the Qajar monarchs and bring about parliamentary rule. See: Ervand Abrahamian, A history of modern Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

11 This was not unique to Iran; Lisa Pollard discusses how the care of the nation had become the “ sine qua non ” of Egyptian politics in 1919, the goal of liberating Egypt from the British Empire had a significant impact on the notion of motherhood. See: Lisa Pollard, Nurturing the nation: the family politics of modernizing, colonizing and liberating Egypt, 1805-1923 (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2005), 122.

27

Thus, direct calls for women’s participation in the public realm were essentially disguised as an extension of a domestic duty. The argument to educate women followed a similar logic; namely, the claim was that if girls were educated they would develop into educated mothers who will raise intelligent children who would ensure the nation’s prosperity. We may examine a segment of an article written in 1907 in the Iranian publication New Dawn that outlines this argument:

The best path to civilization is the education, training of girls. The first necessity of moral refinement for girls is to be educated, trained, and cultured. Every nation that wants to become civilized has to begin educating and training girls from an early age. Each nation, according to their own religious laws and practices, should provide it (education) for them with any means possible. Indeed, these girls will become mothers themselves, and their children will socialize with one another and their habits and disposition will spread among each other. But if they have been educated in a good manner and with moral refinement, then there can be established in that nation a higher civilization. In this manner, the nation will develop and complete its march of progress by becoming civilized.”12

Scholars have shown that family and reproductive patterns may often become the foundation from which new political and cultural paradigms are imagined (Ginsburg and

Rapp 1995). With respect to modern Iran, the family was refashioned and situated in relation to the nation; in other words, what was good for the state was good for the family

(Najmabadi 2005: 194). Since education was imagined to be the cure for a weak nation, women were no longer viewed merely as a vessel for the fetus but rather as an important figure expected to educate children. Najmabadi argues that this radical shift had profound and far reaching social implications, especially with respect to the marriage market. When the time came to choose a spouse, the degree of competence a prospective bride exhibited

12 See: Akhram Fouad Khater “Girls’ Education is the Basis of Civilization and Moral Refinement” found in Sources in the History of the Modern Middle East (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004), 71.

28 in matters of childrearing became increasingly more and more significant. Brides who were educated and displayed intelligence were highly sought after; in short, it was desirable to marry someone who would make a “good mother.”

Conversations with Expecting Couples

The connection between marriage and evaluating a potential spouse’s candidacy to be a “good mother” or “good father” is a link that I discovered had relevance for the expecting couples I interviewed; in fact, several of my interlocutors admitted that picturing their spouse as a future parent was important in their decision to commit to their partner. Of course, “good parenting” is relative; indeed much, of my conversations involved addressing the question of what this concept entails. My interlocutors expressed great interest in this question and offered thoughts that were nuanced and wide- ranging.

Among the different dimensions important for conceptions of “good parenting” the nation emerged as a crucial component. Success in cultivating a sense of Iranian-ness in the future child was considered an important element in “good parenting.” In other words,

Iran played a significant role in their expectations of future parenting; by this I mean specifically patriotic feelings towards Iran during the pregnancy process or anxieties regarding “good Iranian parenting.” The relevance of Iran to the discussion was revealed in many ways such as consumption patterns, Iranian customs such as burning esfand, and the process of choosing a name for their unborn child.

Over the course of several months I spoke to three Iranian couples whom I was introduced to through my previous experience with the McGill University Iranian 29

Students’ Association. I was on the executive board of this organization in 2007, at that time the group consisted mainly of Iranian international students pursuing post graduate studies. My interlocutors belonged to a similar category—they were post graduate students ranging from the ages of 25-32 who had come to Canada from relatively high socio-economic classes. They are not immigrants in the strict sense of the word, and some still were ambivalent about how much time they were going to spend in Canada. Often, my respondents told me that they wanted to live in both countries and travel back and forth. However, for the near future, most of the couples were confident that they would remain in Canada and intended to make permanent life decisions about where they would ultimately settled after the baby was born.

Introductions

During my very first interview sessions with each of the couples I brought along a tape-recorder, turned it on and put it close to their mouth and nervously requested they introduce themselves as I diligently wrote down word for word what was said:

Hello, my name is Parisa, and I was a student at Bushehr University where I received my doctorate and I have been in Montreal from 2006.

Hello, my name is Ali, I am Parisa’s husband and we met when we were both students at University.

Once these introductions were made the conversations that followed were markedly more relaxed and informal; however for all six individuals I spoke to, the awkward first few minutes of the interviews more often than not were filled with a strikingly similar 30 pattern—my interlocutors introducing themselves by stating their name and their university education.

Hello, my name is Lana, I studied at University of Tehran before coming to Montreal and I have just obtained my biotechnology certificate from McGill University.

I had already been acquainted, to a certain degree, with Lana prior to my research, yet she too made the decision to state her name and educational background when asked to introduce herself on tape. I suggest that the information an individual offers in a brief introduction is significant because it reveals a sense of what they believe to be important to help better understand them. My reading of these introductory encounters is that my interlocutors still very much identified with being a “student” and by extension used this particular entry point to emphasize their “youth.” Being a university student, ( daneshju) in Iran connotes a youthful stage of life and is considered to be a more free and independent time when compared with high school, especially since the sexes are given permission to mix in the same classroom. In contrast, high schools in Iran are gender segregated, the curriculum is quite challenging and it is generally considered a stressful experience, particularly when the time comes to write the highly competitive konkur university entrance exam. Ali revealed to me something that I had previously heard from my own cousins who had immigrated to Toronto from Tehran:

Ali : In Canada, high school is easy and university is hard. In Iran, it’s the opposite. Your time in university is the best time of your life.

Additionally, the term daneshju carries a particular connotation of political radicalism or rebellion; to be sure, many people tend to associate Iranian political revolt with the clenched angry fists of university students. Consequently, in the Iranian context, daneshju entails more than just being a student; it accommodates, to a certain degree, notions of 31 rebelliousness and independence—ideas associated with in Western scholarship with

“youth culture.” My reading of these brief introductions suggest that the emphasis on university background was a way for my interlocutors to stress that they, like me, are students or recent graduates and belong to the category of youth.

Although Parisa and Ali were fairly close to age with me (mid to late 20s) they had already finished their education and both studied medicine at the Bushehr University of Medical Sciences. They are both from Shiraz, quick witted and intelligent. I spent much time conversing with this couple over streaming cups of Iranian tea, and they appeared invested in the research; my impression was that they continued our discussions in private, even after the interviews were over. Parisa was exceptionally warm and eagerly shared with me her expectations of parenthood. Her husband was interested in the research but was more prone to joking around and often made teasing remarks about his wife’s “baby weight” and new image as mother. Their relationship was very affectionate and Ali would often “talk” to the baby while patting Parisa’s stomach. They had similar thoughts on some of the questions I asked and it appeared that they had many activities and interests in common.

Farnaz and Arash was another couple who were involved with the project. Farnaz was extremely talkative and very interested in Iranian philosophy and history. She had moved from Tabriz to British Columbia in 2005 and after living in Vancouver for a few years moved to Toronto for a short time before once again relocating to Montreal and enrolling in Concordia University. She told me that the three different Canadian cities each had a distinct “flavour” of which she preferred Toronto due to the large and concentrated Iranian community, affectionately referring to it as “Tehranto.” 32

Farnaz : I like Toronto because you have a mix of new and older immigrants from Iran. In Montreal, the Iranians have lived here a long time and can be “very” French.

I spoke to Farnaz in early December 2010 and on an especially cold and cloudy Montreal afternoon, she happily informed me that she was preparing to move back to Toronto and was considering settling there permanently with her husband, Arash. Arash is an engineering graduate of McGill University who works for Siemens; when compared with his wife, he appeared very shy and quiet during the interviews, sometimes answering my questions with a silent shrug. Farnaz studied Fine Arts and came from an artistic family who instilled in her a love of world cultures; she jokingly attributed Arash’s occasional reticence to her belief that engineers were incapable of understanding neither Art nor anthropology. They appeared to me as polar opposites but complemented each other quite well. Arash revealed that he did not really have a preference for any particular city, for him, all cities were the same. However, he was keen to know more about Toronto since he and his wife were moving there soon. Since I had grown up in Toronto, many times during my talks with Arash the questioning was redirected towards me and I was asked what it was like for me being an Iranian who was raised in Toronto. It was interesting because at times I almost felt as though Arash was viewing me not as a peer, but as a

"substitute” representation of his own future child if raised in Canada. Arash was a planner and liked to think ahead, and so he asked me questions pertaining to my early and teenage years. In contrast, Farnaz gave the impression of being much more free spirited and spontaneous and she commonly countered her husband’s concerns with her favourite mantra “whatever happens, happens.” 33

The third couple I interviewed was Lana and Farshad, they spoke in the drawn out mellow tones of Tehrani drol, which reminded me of my own cousins in Tehran and made me reminisce about my trip to Iran. Lana’s husband, Farshad was fairly quiet and had a hectic work schedule so I was not able to interact with him as much as I would have liked. Lana had studied sciences in the University of Tehran and continued her education at McGill University. She worked in the same bioengineering laboratory I had worked in during my undergraduate studies in the Biology department at McGill and so I already knew a little bit about her prior to the research. She was born and raised in Tehran but had a special connection to Mashad where her mother’s side of the family originated from.

Patient and warm, Lana had a very religious mother and occasionally attended the Iranian mosque, (masjid) in Montreal. She was a very accomplished young woman who had earned her family and friend’s respect in Iran. She described to me an emotional return trip to Tehran when everyone had gathered at the airport to welcome her, proudly referring to her as “Madame doctor” ( khanum doctor). 13 Years ago I had helped her with her English and she was always ready for an opportunity to practice the language. As a result, a portion of my interviews with her were conducted in a mix of English and Farsi.

Imagined Parenthood and Consuming Nationalism

Due to the fact that the couples I spoke to were outside Iran, the question of the nation and its role in this transition to parenthood can begin to be unpacked by examining consumption patterns and how the couples maintain relationships to Iran while being

13 In Iran the label “doctor” is meant as a term of endearment and great respect. 34 embedded in the consumer capitalist culture of Montreal. In other words, the question that we are concerned with here is: how does the consumption of certain objects that are acquired during the pregnancy stage evoke a specific set of feelings we associate with the

Iranian homeland and with parenthood? There tends to be the feeling among many people that consumption is a negative or destructive notion since it seems to be the “end of the road for goods and services, a terminus for their social life” (Appadurai 1986:66). There has been research complicating this assumption and supporting the idea that consumption is intimately connected with the social construction of the child (Layne 2004). Indeed, the objects that are acquired during pregnancy are meaningful windows into investigating how my interlocutors imagined their future child and their role as a parent. Taylor (2004) argues that motherhood is very much linked to consumption and that consumption itself may be a site of cultural creativity. The objects of consumption I discuss in this chapter are important ways in which these couples construct themselves as parents, particularly as

“Iranian parents” and ways in which they socially construct their baby as an “Iranian baby.” All the women were several months into their pregnancy and were just beginning to buy items in anticipation for their future child. They explicitly expressed that the acquisition of these goods for themselves and for their future baby was making them feel as though they were being transformed into “real parents.” Clarke (2004) argues that material culture is essential to the social transformation of becoming a parent. I would argue that the role of material objects is particularly important for primiparous women since pregnancy is a new experience for them and consumption may be a way to practice

“mothering” during the months leading up to the birth of the baby. 35

I spoke to Lana one Sunday evening over the phone after she had gone window shopping for baby cribs. She told me that Farshad had not accompanied her and quoted something she had learned in a pregnancy book, saying in English: “Women become mothers when they discover they are pregnant and men become fathers when they see the baby, no?” I could tell by the inflection in Lana’s tone that this innocent comment betrayed the fact that she was disappointed that she was left to do the majority of baby shopping without her husband. Farshad had a strong dislike of long lines and shopping centers and Lana essentially excused his lack of interest as a difference between the way in which women and men view the pregnancy stage. She was confident that once the baby was born her husband would be more than willing to take time to devote to the baby. I asked Lana what was the first thing she bought:

Lana : I bought a few pregnancy books, someone suggested “What to Expect when Expecting ” which helped me manage the early stages of the pregnancy.

The best selling book What to Expect when you are Expecting (2002) is a 600 page book describing all the different stages of pregnancy. It also provides detailed advice on what to eat, what activities to avoid, and general suggestions to improve the health of the baby.

The book goes beyond mere health guidelines and attempts to prepare readers psychologically for their future role as mothers. For example, in one passage the author tells the reader: “You’ll also notice changes in the way you live—and look at—life”

(Murkoff et al. 2002:106).

I consider buying books and reading as part of cultural consumption (Torche 2007) and drawing on the insight that “Consumers are not without agency, but rather appropriate mass produced goods to their own projects and purposes” (Taylor 2004:12) I argue that 36

Lana actively appropriated the North American book to further her own projection of parenting. She revealed that she paid more attention to the biomedical knowledge of in the book; in this respect Lana viewed the medical information as authoritative, hegemonic and cross cultural. There are equivalent books in Farsi which are written for expecting mothers, such as Mitra Soltani’s (2004) Essential Pregnancy Knowledge ( danestani-ha- ye zarori bara-ye doran-e bardari ). Lana informed me that some of the Iranian books are translated in part from an English source into Persian and said that she preferred the

English book because she wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to further her language skills. The reason I have decided to mention What to Expect when Expecting is to highlight an instantiation of consumption facilitating the “transformation” of Lana as a

“youth” to a “parent.” Drawing on Salle Han’s (2009) argument that, “babies are not simply born but are made and made significant through social practice” I argue that by buying and reading pregnancy books Lana is exposed to images of parenthood and thereby begins a process of turning an abstract notion of future parenting into a more concrete reality. Lana was disappointed that her husband showed little interest in the pregnancy books, yet she felt confident that Farshad was going to be transformed into a great father once the baby was born. Indeed, transformation became an important theme in my conversations with the couples and resurfaces again in later chapters.

Soon after my telephone conversation, I sat down with Lana and Farshad at Nocochi and shared a plate of Persian treats and tea. Lana had bought tiny baby jumpsuits in gender neutral colours of yellow and green owing to the fact that she did not want to be told the sex of the baby. She told me that she would touch the fabric and picture her child in them. 37

Much to Lana’s surprise, Farshad expressed a similar feeling to which Lana reacted incredulously, “really?” and teasingly quizzed him as to why he resists accompanying her to Baby Gap, his response was that, “Right now it’s too soon to spend so much time doing these things, let’s wait until we get close to the delivery date before we go and buy tons of clothes.” At this point Lana was almost four months pregnant and not showing very much, and Farshad felt that they should wait a little while longer before they indulge in shopping sprees. Farshad was against buying excessive amounts of baby clothes, not necessarily because of the financial costs but perhaps because he felt uncomfortable with acquiring goods before his wife started showing a significant change in her appearance.

What’s more, I also got the impression that Farshad felt that even speaking about an unborn baby was inappropriate. Needless to say, that made my job as an interviewer much more difficult; however I came to realize that Farshad was not necessarily introverted but his taciturn presence during our discussions was more likely a result of the fact that he felt uncomfortable with openly expressing his hopes and thoughts about his future baby. In many ways, Farshad’s silence was very revealing. In Iran, it is generally considered improper or in bad taste to indulge in optimistic visions of the future

(particularly with recently introduced acquaintances) for fear of inducing bad luck or evil eye, ( cheshm-nazar ).

If there had been a consumption competition among my interlocutors, Farnaz would have easily taken top prize. She described herself as an avid shopper and could easily provide detailed accounts of her recent shopping trips. Her purchases ranged from the necessary—strollers, bottles, bibs to the frivolous such as a zaky pillow; a relatively expensive pillow that can be ordered online which is designed to imitate the look and feel 38 of a parent’s hand. In contrast, her husband Arash had bought very little admitting that the only item he had acquired was a “baby on board” bumper sticker for his car which was given to him by a close friend and co-worker.

Arash : “Of course, I’m not going to put it on the car right now, I’ll wait until after the baby is born, it’s inappropriate, ( zesht e) and bad luck to do that.” 14

Part of the “inappropriateness” of putting a baby on board sticker was that it was presumptuous (better to wait until the baby is delivered safe and sound) and also it might attract evil eye and create bad luck. Arash admitted that he did believe in eye evil to a certain extent. Iranian superstition, ( khorafat) holds that evil eye is induced by an envious person—particularly if that person is a stranger. To reiterate, it is generally deemed inappropriate to discuss with strangers details about pending success—such as a potential job offer, or exam result, especially if the outcome is not guaranteed. In Iranian culture, babies, young children and pregnant women are considered to be especially prone to evil eye since they tend to garner excessive compliments and attract the attention of strangers.

As a preventative measure, one may wear a protective turquoise colour ceramic bead imitating a fish’s eyes. 15 The women occasionally donned the turquoise bead as a fashion accessory and all revealed that they had some form of the amulet as part of their home décor. 16

14 I have translated zesht e, as ‘it is inappropriate’ although it literally means ‘it is ugly.’ As mentioned in the introduction, it is a term that connotes a certain level of vulgarism. 15 It is believed that evil eye is somewhat related to dryness and a fish is imagined to be immune because its eyes are always moist. See: Dundes, Alan, Evil Eye: Folklore Casebook . (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 257-259. 16 Another way to prevent back luck is to say “it is God’s will” (mash’Allah) after bestowing a compliment; when commenting on the expanding stomach and apparent good health of the expectant mother. The expectant husbands would do this when speaking of their wife’s heath, and I would do the same.

39

Iranians also burn esfand seeds to ward off evil eye by circling the scented smoke around the heads of those who have been exposed to other people’s envy. I was slightly surprised to discover that Lana, Parisa and Farnaz all had at one point in their pregnancy burned esfand .17 None explicitly expressed a serious belief; Farnaz insisted that she only liked the smell since it reminded her of Iran and her own mother and grandmother. For

Farnaz, burning esfand was a maternal act that constructed her as an “Iranian mother” owing to the fact that she associated it with Iran and with the mothers in her life.

Engaging with Iranian superstition by wearing the ceramic beads or burning esfand was a way in which my interlocutors maintained a connection with Iran during the pregnancy state.

As mentioned above, Iranian superstition tends to operate on the assumption that it is bad luck to discuss with strangers positive future results; thus, I would argue that because I spent less time with Arash and Farshad, I was more of a “stranger” to them than

I was to their wives; consequently, they tended to be more hesitant to share with me detailed expectations of their future happiness. Of course this is not to say that there was a lack of significant and revealing information shared. In one particular occasion, Arash somewhat sheepishly revealed that he had downloaded recordings of Iranian children’s music in preparation for the baby. His particular favourite was a song he associated with his own childhood, Atal Matal . Arash told me that listening to this Iranian song reminded him of his own childhood growing up in Iran and he could imagine singing it to his child.

17 It has been my experience that Iranians in Canada generally hesitate to publicly admit their esfand use. When I invited the three women to my house, I burned the esfand seeds before our conversations, and I suspect that perhaps that act on my part made them more comfortable admitting they also burn esfand to ward off bad luck. 40

Atal matal tootoole Gov-e hasan che joor-e? Na shir dar-e na pestoon! Shiresh-o bordan hendestoon Ye zan-e kordi bestoon Esmesh-o behzar amgezi! Dor-e kolash ghermezi Hachin o wachin Ye pah-to varchin!

Atal matal tootoole How is Hasan's cow? It has neither milk nor breast! Its milk is taken to India Take a Kurdish wife Call her by the name Am-qezi! With red around her hat Hachin o wachin Lift (remove) one of your legs!

I remember one particularly awkward discussion when I asked Arash point blank if he was excited about becoming a father. He looked down at his finger nails for a moment and said in a somewhat distracted way, “sure why not” (areh, chera ke na). He certainly did not seem very excited to me. When I later saw his eyes light up and listened to him enthusiastically discuss his downloaded version of Atal Matal , I recognized it to be an implicit signal that he was, in fact, very excited to be a father. Farnaz shot me an exaggerated look of confusion as Arash starting singing the lyrics of Atal Matal and teasingly retorted:

Farnaz : He thinks that it’s too early to put a sticker on a car but it’s not to early to play this music! You have no idea how irritating this song is when it’s played in the car! When reviewing my field notes, I discovered that the irony Farnaz was pointing out was quite insightful. My lasting impression of Arash over the course of the interviews was that he was not necessarily opposed to the acquisition or discussion of consumer goods for the baby; in fact, baby showers are a common ritual that occurs in Iran. On the 41 contrary, what appeared inappropriate to Arash was the discussion of or the public display of such goods to strangers. This could perhaps be why he did not like the idea of putting the “baby on board” sticker on his car in clear public view, yet was comfortable with listening to children’s songs inside the privacy of his own car.

When discussing patterns of consumption I became increasingly interested in what food products the couples consumed and its connection to Iran. As mentioned previously, most of my interviews were conducted at Nocochi café in downtown Montreal and were usually held over Iranian tea and sweets. Consequently, my interest in food developed quite naturally since most interviews usually began with deciding which Persian pastry to order for the table, leading to discussions of Iranian cuisine. When I discussed what kinds of foods they consumed and where they bought their food, I observed one commonality between the couples; they regularly shopped at Akhavan, the Iranian grocery store located in the west end of Montreal. Akhavan is a large Persian supermarket which is frequented by most of the Iranians who reside in the city. It offers an opportunity for Iranians to meet and socialize and creates a sense of “home.” It has a vast selection of herbs, dried fruits and nuts as well as prepared Iranian meals. My interlocutors revealed that consuming items from this store was very much related to sentimental feelings towards Iran; Iranian food was linked with nurturance and reminded them of their own childhood.

Food and Nationalism

There is much literature detailing how food can be used as implicit or explicit expressions of nationalism (Apparadui 1988; Palmer 1998). Takeda Hiroko’s (2008) study of

Japanese nationalism reveals how discourse about Japanese cuisine depicts it as the 42 essence of “Japaneseness.” 18 Hiroko describes how food can be a “biopolitcal device” and an instantiation of what Michael Billig (1995) termed “banal nationalism.” Billig argues that the nation is very much present in the “embodied habits of social life” (Billig

1995:8). Similarly, with respect to my research, I observed that in some ways, shopping at

Akhavan and consuming Iranian food items was a “performance” of their sense of

Iranian-ness and as a way to construct themselves as “Iranian” parents.

When I asked Farnaz about some cravings, ( havas) she was experiencing she replied:

Farnaz : It’s funny, I’ve heard that women have pickle cravings when they are pregnant; I have cravings for 1&1 Pickles! You can only buy those at Akhavan; sometimes they sell fake ones at the Arab stores. 19 1&1 Co. is a high quality Iranian manufacturing company with a wide production range specializing in Iranian pickles, jams, rose water, and mint extract. There are other companies that sell similar products and mimic the labelling of the 1&1 packaging; which is what Farnaz was referring to when she said she did not want the “fake” brand. You can find this particular brand of pickles in shops other than Akhavan, but Farnaz refused to buy them anywhere else, and stressed that the mega-Iranian supermarket “opened her heart,” (del-am vaz mishe) and made her feel confident and assured that she was buying the “real” 1&1 Co. pickles. The combination of the Iranian product, bought at an Iranian store, gave her a sense that she was eating something “authentically Persian” and that

18 See: Takeda Hiroko (2008) “Delicious Food in a Beautiful Country: Nationhood and Nationalism in Discourses on Food in Contemporary Japan” in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism Vol. 9 No. 1.

19 To the best of my knowledge, the idea that pregnant women are prone to cravings is not something that is particularly well developed in Iranian pregnancy discourse. Farnaz revealed that she had been exposed to the idea of pregnant women and cravings through Western film depictions of pregnant women. 43 feeling was what motivated her to make the trip to Akhavan. 20 As Farnaz’s pregnancy progressed she was increasingly making more trips to Akhavan and by doing so, participating in a cultivation of Iranian-ness. Daniel Miller (1998) has argued that grocery shopping becomes a “means by which relationships of love and care are constructed by practice” (Miller 1998:18). In this respect, the consumption of Iranian food was an opportunity for the women to perform nurturance and practice “mothering” before the baby was born.

In one of our phone conversations, Farnaz told me that her mother would soon be travelling from Iran to stay with her and Arash for the duration of her pregnancy. She had recently been talking to her mother over the phone and was being coaxed into dictating a list of Iranian food items she wanted her mother to bring with her from Tabriz. Farnaz repeatedly insisted that her mother did not need to bring anything since Akhavan has

“everything.” Farnaz’s insistence that she did not need anything was not merely a polite gesture to spare her mother the trouble of lugging food from Iran to Canada; but rather, by citing that Akhavan “has everything” Farnaz was sending a signal to her mother that she was happy and doing well in Canada. I would even go so far as to suggest that her insistence to her mother that she did not need Iranian food was an indication of some sort of successful cultivation of Iranian-ness far from her family and homeland.

Farnaz : I actually can’t wait to take my mom to Akhavan when she visits, I think it will be a relief for her to know that I have easy access to Persian bread and cheese (laughs).

20 Farnaz lived in downtown Montreal and Akhavan is located in the West end of the city, forcing her to change two buses to make the relatively lengthy commute. 44

When speaking to Parisa and Ali about Akhavan, they told me that the Persian supermarket was a place that made them feel as though they were “back home.”

Parisa : I love Persian food, lately I’ve been making a lot of trips to Akhavan. It’s like our version of “comfort food” (she said that in English). 21

Food items such as pomegranates, saffron, pistachios, and Basmati rice were all considered “Iranian” food. These items were made more special when they were bought at Akhavan. There was a sense among my interlocutors that nothing could take the place of Iranian food and that it had no equivalent. For Parisa, foods that were quite similar to

Iranian food—“Arab” kebab, or “Turkish” baklava for example, were described as not being in the same league as the Iranian version. 22 As Parisa put it, “nothing is like Iranian food.” This sentiment has similarities to what Kayama Rika (2002) terms “petit nationalism”—referring to how Japanese youth harbour love for all things Japanese. Thus

Parisa’s preference of Iranian food signifies her connection with Iran and her way of cultivating this connection in Montreal. The discussion of food was very much connected to the idea of imagined parenting and ideas of nurturance and love. The expectant mothers would make trips to Akhavan and in essence be eating for themselves and their future child. In some ways, it was the unborn child’s first experience with Iranian culture.

As I expected, the women were aware that what they put into their body could potentially harm their baby. In Canada pregnant women are usually told by their doctors to avoid caffeine and alcohol. Farnaz revealed that she was diligently following her

21 The concept of “comfort food” does not really exist in Iran; Parisa’s statement is an example of appropriating a Western concept with Iranian-ness. 22 As culinary historian Charles Perry has argued, there is no “pure” Iranian cuisine since external influences have greatly shaped what is considered to be Iranian traditional food. 45 doctor’s orders by avoiding wine and coffee as a precaution. It occurred to me at that moment, while watching Farnaz sip her second cup of Iranian tea, that she certainly had not reduced her tea consumption. When I mentioned the obvious fact that tea also contains caffeine; she paused thoughtfully and after some reflection insisted that “Iranian tea is different, a lot of pregnant women drink tea in Iran.” In this way, Farnaz circumvented the biomedical authority and applied the nutritional guidelines offered by her doctor to suit her own needs. Her past experiences with pregnant women in Iran influenced what actions she now deemed acceptable and not acceptable. Farnaz’s reception of her doctor’s advice bespeaks Marcia C. Inhorn’s (2006) argument that “local considerations” may restrain Western scientific knowledge or technologies (2006:429).

This is another instance of how relationships with Iran were maintained during the pregnancy stage.

I was also surprised to discover that Farnaz supplemented her doctor’s advice with

“Iranian” nutritional guidelines, revealing she was careful not to eat too many “hot”

(garmi) foods. In Iran, foods may be classified into two groups: “cold,” ( sardi) and “hot,”

(garmi). This classification system dates back to the pre-medieval era, with Avicenna’s grouping of foods based on metabolic process. 23 Foods that fall under the classification of garmi are: lamb, chicken, fish, sheep’s milk, and generally all sweet things. Foods that would be considered sardi foods are: beef, cow’s milk, lettuce, spinach, and generally all sour things. Admittedly this is an outdated model; however, some Iranians believe that consuming a significant amount of garmi foods will have a detrimental effect on the

23 For more see: Alan Davidson and Tom Jaine , The Oxford Companion to Food (New York, Oxford University Press, 2006). 46 pregnancy and therefore Farnaz closely monitored her dietary regimen. Farnaz did not think her knowledge of garmi and sardi was at odds with the medical advice she had been given in Canada and she seemed almost smug to be privy to traditional Iranian pregnancy discourse.

Farnaz : I usually don’t have much of an appetite, but now I’m trying to eat good things that give me energy and put me in a good mood.

Her avoidance of certain foods and consumption of others was both a way to perform

“mothering” as well as a way that connections to Iran were maintained.

Names

One of the most important decisions to be made by prospective parents is determining a list of appropriate baby names. Lana proclaimed to be going “crazy” over her obsession with reading up on Persian baby names online. I had the impression that the name of their children was one of the most important questions the couples were debating among themselves. The process of deciding a name was one that made the idea of the future child less abstract. Parisa had not settled on any names when I interviewed her, and she was agonizing over choosing the “perfect” name. She told me that she believed that “a lot of our history and our culture are reflected in our names” and thus there was much at stake with the naming of the child. Certainly, the process of choosing a name plays an important role in the transition to parenthood in contexts outside of Iran. Naming as a ritual or practice may reflect larger values, as Tania Zittoun (2004) has noted:

A concrete task to solve during the transition to parenthood is finding a name for the coming child. It sometimes confronts the future parents with an extraordinary 47

bewilderment, because they want names fitting complex and contradicting streams of requirements. They think about the signs of group, national, religious belonging they want others to see or not to see in the first name. They think about associations designated by the name, both personal (memories, tastes), and socially shared representations or cultural meanings. They evaluate first names as objects of the senses, with sound, taste and shape, and care about how they will fit with surnames or other names in the family. They imagine the child, or themselves as the parent of a girl called so-and-so ( Zittoun 2004:142).

It is interesting to note that occasionally the very names themselves were also thought to influence the personality of the children. For example, Farnaz and Arash could not agree on a name and had a mini debate during one of our interviews. Farnaz really liked the name Kamran if the baby was a boy and Arash strongly disagreed because he was acquainted with someone with that name whose personality he did not like. The name Kamran evoked a particular emotive reflex from Arash which made him uncomfortable associating his coming child with the personality of his unlikeable acquaintance. Farnaz was quite set on the name Kamran because she thought it would be easy for Westerners to pronounce yet it was still part of the corpus of Iranian names.

Farnaz : I want an easy one, like Kamran. It’s easy to say, and will make life easier.

An expansive semantic field is covered by Iranian names, many of which have political and emotional connotations. During particular historical moments, Iranians have been known to change their names according to the political circumstances of the day. For example, toward the end of the Pahlavi era, royal names, as well as the names of member’s of the Shah’s family were considered politically loaded and soon became 48 unfavourable (Friedl 1997: 78). 24 We must be reminded that since the couples I interviewed are not in Iran, bestowing an Iranian name on their future child brings with it particular concerns and anxieties. Anxiety over naming was to be expected to a certain extent since the bestowal of the name is the first act of “power” and the first major responsibility as parents. Ann Anagnost writes that “The child’s name raises the problem of how the child is to be positioned in the realm of the symbolic” (2004: 156) 25 .

Me : Why do you want the name to be Iranian? Why is that important? Parisa : I want my future child to feel connected to and proud of his/her heritage.

To be sure, giving their future children Iranian names was a way for the parents to promote attachment to Iranian culture. All three couples were fairly certain that they were going to give their child an Iranian name, however some like Farnaz, classified Iranian names into two categories: the easily pronounceable and the not so easily pronounceable.

Farnaz made very clear that she preferred the former.

In contrast, I was surprised to discover that Lana intended to give her future child an especially “difficult-to-pronounce” Iranian name, to make it more challenging for her child to assimilate to Western culture and to serve as a reminder of “where s(he) comes from.”

24 Interestingly, many Iranians have two names—and sometimes the name they are called by their family and friends is not the one designated in their passports .

25 Ann Anagnost (2004) ethnographic work describes how couples who adopt children from China feel a sense of duty to negotiate their children’s ethnicity through naming. 49

Lana : I almost wanted to give an especially difficult name to my child so that it will be harder for him/her to dismiss the Iranian culture.

An interesting and revealing account of the naming process can be found in

Azadeh Moaveni’s (2010) fascinating personal memoir Honeymoon in Tehran . Moaveni is an Iranian-American writer who decides to name her first born son Hourmazd, which is the middle Persian form of Ahuramazda, the Zoroastrian god that predates Islam. She insists on this rather antiquated name in spite of her father’s insistence that it would be unpronounceable outside Iran. Moaveni passionately counters this by arguing that the trend of “easy” names would “soon make endangered species of any Iranian names considered too long or challenging for non-Farsi speakers” (Moaveni 2010: 264). This sentiment was very similar to how Lana felt; indeed, she was also considering names that would clearly symbolize her future child’s Iranian roots. She easily waved off any concerns about pronunciation and insisted that Canada was a place that invited diversity and because of this she felt quite confident that her future child would not endure any significant disadvantages by having an Iranian name.

Farnaz was very anxious about the problem of phonemic difference and the difficulty that may result with respect to assimilation.

Farnaz : The name is very important as an identity marker- it can make a huge difference. I don’t want her/him to be ridiculed.

Farnaz stressed her point by recalling unpleasant stories she had heard from Iranian-

Canadian friends who complained of the teasing they had to encounter during childhood. 50

Certainly, Farnaz wanted to prevent her child from experiencing ridicule; however, she was not prepared to give an English or French name to her child, she preferred an Iranian name that would easily cross over to the English language- names like Tara, Sina, or

Roxanna. 26 Arash seemed frustrated by Farnaz’s unyielding position that the baby’s name must be “easy” to pronounce and asked me about my own name, Mehrnoush, and if I found it difficult to grow up in Canada with a relatively challenging name for some in the

West to pronounce. I found myself relating the story of wanting to change my name in the sixth grade to Chantelle to the horror and disapproval of my parents. At the time, I had been attending a school with very few immigrants and I was tired of people mispronouncing my name. Slightly embarrassed to have revealed this information, I earnestly insisted to Arash and his wife that, in retrospect, I am very happy that I was not given permission to do such a thing. Arash took this opportunity to drive home the point to Farnaz that she did not need to consider only “easy” Iranian baby names by exclaiming

“look at Mehrnoush, life wasn’t too difficult for her, she turned out fine!” And then Arash added quite interestingly, “maybe if you had kept the name Chantelle you wouldn’t be doing the research you are doing now.”

From my conversations with the couples, I perceived an attachment to Iran that was actively reflected on during the naming process. The act of giving a child an Iranian name outside of Iran took on a significance that went beyond mere functionalism; it was a patriotic act. The decision making process involved with choosing a name helped make

26 Farnaz felt restricted by the corpus of names she could choose from and it is interesting to note that in Iran there is also a limit to what names are legally recognized. See: Azadeh Moaveni, Honeymoon in Tehran (New York, Random House, 2010), 240.

51 the abstract notion of the future baby more “real” and into “their baby.” The naming of the child is a symbolic way of imagining Iran and connecting to the nation. In other words, choosing a name from the Iranian language is a way in which the individuals I spoke to “imagined” the nation. Benedict Anderson argues that the concept of “imagined communities” was facilitated by the widespread printing of vernacular languages since it

“unified the fields of exchange” (Anderson 1983:44-5). Certainly a common language is a vital component of building relationships to the nation and one such film that captures the importance of language to Iranian nationalism is Bahram Bayza’i 1987 film, Bashu:The

Little Stranger (Gharibe-ye Koochak). This film also speaks to the idea of consumption as way in which parents and children are constructed.

Bashu: The Little Stranger

Bashu is the story of a mother, Na’i, from a small village in northern Iran and her meeting with Bashu, a little dark skinned boy who escaped the horror of the Iran-Iraq war from the

Khuzestan province in the south of the country. The Iran-Iraq war is what propels the narrative forward (Mottahedeh 2008: 22) and is the reason for Bashu’s personal tragedy.

Although Bashu has survived intact, he has had to witness the death of his family in the collapsing of buildings that result from aggressive Iraqi bombardments. The young orphan is haunted by horrifying images of his mother burning to death and in an attempt to escape the horror of the war, young Bashu randomly jumps into the back of a moving truck which is traveling to the north of Iran. By chance, he comes across a village in which Na’i is living with her two fair skinned children awaiting the return of her husband, who is away from the village in search of work. Na’i finds Bashu hiding in the vast fields 52 that surround her modest home, without a way to communicate, since Na’i speaks Gilaki

(a dialect of Farsi) and Bashu a form of Arabic. Feeling sorry for the boy, she leaves him some bread and as Bashu devours the simple meal, Na’i’s maternal feelings surface and by the look of sympathy and quiet determination in her eyes, the audience recognizes that she has now assumed the role as his mother. Na’i adopts Bashu into her family and in this way defies the ways of the village and the “authority of the family” (Naficy 1995: 552).

As his “foster” mother, she fiercely defends Bashu from the mean-spirited remarks fellow villagers make about his dark skin. In one scene she is hosting guests at her home and becomes very irritated when unflattering remarks about her adopted son are made, culminating in her abruptly forcing the entire group to leave. Bashu also faces mockery from the village children who throw stones at him and laugh because he cannot communicate with them in their dialect. Again Na’i protects Bashu and chastises the boys for their cruelty. In the scuffle with the other village boys Bashu is pushed to the ground where he by chance finds himself next to a casually discarded school textbook. He takes hold of the book, rises to his feet and opens a page at random and begins reading in a loud confident voice:

Iran is our country We are from the same land We are the children of Iran

The boys all surround him are surprised to learn that he is indeed literate and knows how to read the official standard Farsi that is taught in schools nation-wide. As he reads,

Bashu wins over the approval of the village boys and is accepted and recognized as an

Iranian. Bashu and the school boys are from opposite ends of the country and probably 53 would never have meet had it not been for the circumstances created by the war; however, the fact that Bashu can read Farsi makes him part of the “imagined community” of Iran. 27

Bashu is accepted by the schoolchildren; however the same cannot be said with respect to

Na’i’s husband. Na’i writes a letter to her husband explaining the circumstances in which she found Bashu and her desire to adopt him into their family. Her husband responds to his wife’s letter and emphasizes that the young boy cannot, under any circumstances, live with them. Na’i defies the authority of the father by insisting she will keep Bashu and arguing that “like all children he is the child of the sun and the earth.” But as fate would have it, Bashu intercepts the letter written by Na’i’s husband and is devastated by it and runs away, prompting Na’i to weather a terrible storm to find him. Na’i brings Bashu successfully home but falls deadly ill in the process. Bashu has become “her” child and no sacrifice is too great. As Na’i lies in bed fighting off grave illness, the audience recognizes her sense of selflessness and confirms her legitimacy as his foster mother.

As Danielle F. Wozniak (2004) argues, foster mothers tend to undergo a process of taking

“any” child and transforming it into “my” child. Wozniak states that many times this process is achieved in terms of financial sacrifice or in terms of consumption (2004:83).

Interestingly, there is evidence of this process in the film. In one revealing scene, Na’i catches Bashu eyeing a purple shirt at the local bazaar. He lingers on the shirt for a moment and touches the fabric. Na’i makes note of this and although the audience knows that she is not financially secure and cannot be lax with her spending, she nevertheless buys Bashu this purple shirt as a way of symbolically transforming herself into his

27 For more on the role of a uniform language in helping imagine the nation see: Richard Tapper, The new Iranian cinema: politics, representation and identity (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001). 54 mother. Thus, through consumption Bashu becomes intimately connected to Na’i’s family and through his literacy of standard Persian he becomes equally bound to the nation. 55

Chapter Three: SACRIFICE AND IMAGINED PARENTING

How should I fear childbirth? Isn’t it just a thing you do, just quietly give birth alone and then sit up and carry the child in a sling? Doesn’t the child just grow up and work for you?28

The above passage was the sentiment of a pregnant woman in Botswana in 1989 recorded by anthropologist Megan Biesele. She describes the sense of confidence this woman exuded while anticipating her future birth and role as a mother. While examining

Biesele’s fascinating ethnography of this particular tribe in Africa I was struck by the fact that there was very little expression of anxiety or fear among pregnant women. Childbirth was articulated as an investment rather than a sacrifice and a process which imbued the mother with extraordinary power. In contrast, the interviews I conducted with expectant

Iranian couples in Montreal were coloured with expectations of future sacrifice. On many occasions there would be concurrent equating of future rewards and blessings as well as restrictions and loss of freedom. As the expectant couples described what they imagined parenthood entailed, they emphasized that once the child was born they would be held to expectations of self sacrifice. In particular, the expectant mothers I interviewed expressed varying degrees of anxiety towards what they considered the “Iranian ideal” of the selfless mother.

Of course, the association between sacrifice and motherhood is certainly not limited to the Iranian context; indeed, Arendell’s (2000) review of mothering suggests that in the North America the prevailing idea associated with motherhood is that a mother

“sacrifices sense of self and is child centered” (Arendell 2000:1194). A brief caveat is

28 See: Megan Biesele, “An Ideal of Unassisted Birth—Hunting, Healing and Transformation among Kalahari Ju/hoansi” in Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 747. 56 warranted here: although this thesis is concerned with how the concept of sacrifice is implicated in imagined parenthood for both expectant mothers and fathers, this chapter nevertheless has a heavy maternal bias due to the gender difference linking sacrifice with motherhood to a more pronounced degree than with fatherhood. Sacrifice was closely connected to the concept of transformation; the idea of sacrifice inducing transformation is clearly dramatized in the film Leily is with Me . The theme of motherly sacrifice will be explored by examining the ways motherhood is represented in the film The May Lady .

Genealogy of Sacrifice in the Iranian Context

Before beginning the discussion of sacrifice and the role it plays in the transition to parenthood, it is important to recognize the peculiarities of the idea of “sacrifice” in the

Iranian context. We can ask the following questions about the discourse of sacrifice: what are the historical modes of existence? How has it been used and how has it been appropriated? Sacrifice is an important trope in the imagination of the Iranian nation and active denial of self is referred to in the literature as an “ideal” Iranian character type

(Beeman 1979) or a “Shi’a mode of being” (Mottahedeh 2008). To be sure, sacrifice has significant Islamic connotations as well. Iran is a predominantly Shi’a nation and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein at Karbala (680) is a symbol of sacrifice par excellence in

Shi’a mythology. The martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet and his immediate family at the hands of the Ummayid Caliph Yazid has been appropriated in a uniquely

Iranian art form called ta’ziyeh. The ta’ziyeh passion plays re-enact the historic battle at

Karbala and are so emotional that they provoke the audience to tears and intense 57 lamentation. The passion plays are not just a form of catharsis but also have a

“transformative” conversionary effect on the audience (Beeman 1979: 24-31).

In more recent years, the tropes of sacrifice and self denial rose to prominence in the years leading up to the 1979 Iranian revolution. Indeed, the lectures of ‘Ali Shariati praising active self-sacrifice and martyrdom ignited mosques and intellectual circles in

Tehran. From exile Imam Khomeini made use of Shi’a references to express his loathing for the Pahlavi monarchy—referring to the Shah as Yazid. Later, in post-revolutionary

Iran, the discourse of sacrifice was once again appropriated during the Iran-Iraq (1980-

88). The war, which was instigated by Iraqi aggression, began on September 4 1980 and cost both sides more than one million dead (Swearingen 1988:1). Despite the fact that there were many Iraqi Shi’as fighting against fellow Shi’as, the Iranian war discourse portrayed Saddam Hussein as Saddam-Yazid and likened the war as a modern day fight against the Ummayids (Kalpakian 2004:125). As the war progressed, the ideal of self sacrifice was appropriated by a group of young volunteers, called Basiji , as they made their way to the front and risked death in one of the bloodiest conventional wars of modern times. Some of those who survived from this gruesome ordeal, returned to Tehran devoted to preserving the Islamic character of the revolution, which often meant policing the physical appearance and behaviour of individual citizens in public spaces (Varzi

2006). Public urban spaces have become an arena for extolling images of sacrifice in the form of street murals, depicting the faces of young martyrs. 29 The murals are state commissioned, ubiquitous and usually feature faces of young martyrs. Iranian state

29 For more on shahadat and street murals see: Talinn Grigor “(Re)-Claiming Space: The Use/Misuse of Propaganda Murals in Republican Tehran.” IIAS Newsletter, No. 28, (2002): 37. 58 discourse highly praises mothers who have lost children while protecting the nation thus linking sacrifice with ideal motherhood (Varzi 2006: 66).

Sacrifice, Cinema and Transformation

To be sure, the Iranian film world has appropriated the discourse of sacrifice, drawing on a history of martyrdom and the ta’ziyeh tradition (Dabashi 2001). Roxanne

Varzi writes that many of the Iranian war films are “an attempt to make the war itself a performance of ta’ziyeh ” (Varzi 2006: 159). In many of these films, the protagonist undergoes a transformation or conversion. Similarly the medium of film itself has a transformative effect on the audience since it is presented “as a mimetic procedure that both fixes through communication and transforms in the process of exchange”

(Mottahedeh 2008:34).

The theme of sacrifice is heavily present in Iranian films concerning the Iran-Iraq war and constitutes a particular genre called “the cinema of sacred defense” (Partovi

2008). 30 One such example is the 1996 release Leily Is with Me (Layli ba man ast ) directed by Kamal Tabrizi who, as Pedram Partovi explains, received a stipend from the government to “capture the spiritual and transformative dimensions of the Iran-Iraq war”

(2008:513). One way such films develop the trope of sacrifice is through the concept of

30 The state also commissioned a documentary to be shot in real time during the war; the film series was called Witness to Glory (revayate fath). The motivation sustaining the project was a belief that “faith could be witnessed and filmed and in turn could encourage the faithless to become believers” (Varzi 2006:79). For more see: Roxanne Varzi, Warring Souls: youth, media, and martyrdom in post-revolution Iran (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 79.

59 shahadat which is a mystical Islamic idea which means “to witness” in the context of a divine manifestation.” 31 As Partovi explains

The films are inviting the audience to experience the shahadat , or martyrdom, of the protagonists and, thus, be transformed through the experience. The audience is a shahid , or witness, to the divine presence too, for in distinguishing the actions of a true believer from a nonbeliever the audience is making the Hidden manifest (2008:516).

Leily Is with Me may be considered a satire on the idea of transformation since the conversion is exaggerated for cinematic effect. The film takes place during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) and the protagonist Sadiq Mishkini, who is a television cameraman, is in desperate need of a loan. He is told that war veterans have priority in the distribution of loans and to achieve his goal of obtaining his much needed loan, Sadiq unfaithfully volunteers to go to the south of the country despite his terror and resistance to coming face to face with the war. He does not display any sense of national duty; rather his only goal is to secure his loan and return home safe and sound as soon as possible. In a twist of fate he ends up exactly where he did not want to be—at the war front. Yet, something unexpected happens here, as a result of his various interactions and experiences he not only accepts his fate at the front but is transformed by it. By actually witnessing the war he gains a deep sense of awareness and undergoes a conversion of sorts—disregarding worldly goods in exchange for greater spiritual growth. According to Partovi “Sadiq is initially shown to be an unbeliever and, as such, ignorant of the fate of the nation and his responsibilities toward it” (2008:515). By the end of the film, the audience realizes that

31 For more see: ‘Ali Shari’ati, “Shahadat,” in Jihad and Shahadat: Struggle and Martyrdom in Islam, ed. Mehdi Abedi and Gary Legenhausen (Houston: Institute for Research and Islamic Studies, 1986), 201.

60 his reformed sense of self sacrifice is no longer for securing a loan nor is it exclusively for the defence of the nation but rather it is the source and end of his spiritual victory.

According to Partovi this film is an outlier for this particular genre of war films since the protagonist does not die (although he does get injured by an explosion in the final scenes of the film); yet, he still obtains the ultimate redemption. Partovi argues that the fundamental message of this genre of film is that acts of sacrifice and denial of self have a transforming effect on the individual, making action that appeared burdensome pre-transformation be actively sought after and almost appear effortless.

I discovered that the association between transformation and sacrifice relevant to the ethnographic material as well. For example, when Parisa described the anticipated sacrifices she expected she would have to make when she became a mother, she invoked the concept of transformation and the idea of “being changed.” In other words, for Parisa, motherhood was a transformative transition that created an atmosphere which eased the demands of self sacrifice.

Anticipated Sacrifices of Expecting Couples

In terms of the discourse of sacrifice and its association with parenting I discovered that the expectant couples described the ideal parent as one who sacrifices self interest for his or her child. Throughout the conversations the idea of sacrifice was expressed using both the English term “sacrifice” and the Persian phrase describing putting the child before oneself ( az khod begzari). Parisa and Ali were the most comfortable with the idea that parenthood demands sacrifice on the part of the parents; 61 yet even when they discussed the idea of sacrifice it was tinged by a certain level of anxiety. This couple was considering the option of raising their (future) child in Canada and revealed that they might have to reconcile some of their anticipated Iranian parenting techniques with their adopted country. Ali was worried that because they did not have as large a network in Canada to draw on for support, most of the parental duties would be left to him and his wife, demanding they make more sacrifices as parents.

Me : As you imagine your role as a future parent what does good parenting mean to you? Parisa : It means many things; mostly it means thinking about your child in everything you do. Well, you certainly can’t be selfish, (khod ka) when you have a child. The child deserves the best. But it will be harder here, since I don’t have the family support I would back home, and you need to find a way to not lose yourself but take care of a child as well. Ali : But at the same time you can’t be too absorbed in the child either, because that will have a detrimental effect, you don’t want them to be spoiled.

The tension underlying the above exchange was between commitment to child and a parent’s own wishes and desires. Nicolina Fedele and el (1988) explain:

Since parenthood involves negotiating commitments to self and to others, the dialectic between autonomy and affiliation becomes highlighted around the transition to parenthood. The search for the balance between self and other affects the marital relationship and the parent-child relationship (1988: 96).

As Parisa pointed out, parenting in Iran generally involves more than just the mother and father. Extended relatives, neighbours and friends all in some ways contribute to certain parental duties. For example, Parisa described how it is the parents’ duty to motivate a child to excel in school. One of the ways this is attempted is by invoking the child’s academic progress as a topic of conversation with friends and neighbours. Indeed, in Iran it is not uncommon for parents to share detailed accounts of their children’s academic progress with friends and family. Parisa told me that having the child present during these 62 conversations encourages them and serves as an incentive to try harder to excel at school.

Ali described that a similar technique exists to induce younger children to eat their vegetables. Extended family members or friends are occasionally asked by parents to talk about the benefits of healthy eating to convince a stubborn child to eat what his parents put in front of him. At times, this technique is accompanied by comparing the child to an older, taller child and saying that “so and so always eats his vegetables.” Ali told me that being compared to other children occurs quite often as parents try to motivate their children to higher standards. In contrast, it has been my experience that in Canada it is generally considered inappropriate to make direct comparisons between children. A source of anxiety for Ali was not being able to have other Iranian parents to draw on to participate in such childrearing strategies, thus leaving the burden of ensuring the child is doing well at school or eating well; for example, on the parents. Such an arrangement would require the parents to devote a lot more time and energy. Ali believed that more sacrifices would be required of himself and his wife living in Canada since they would be the principal role models for their future child.

I was curious about specific ways in which the couples would be “sacrificing” in their future roles as parents and how they imagined their life would change as a result of being parents. The most common answer to the question of what changes are anticipated to occur after having a baby were behaviour changes such as driving carefully, drinking conservatively, self censorship and cutting down on profanity.

Ali : So many things will change—like no partying until late. And no spur of the moment travel plans. Parisa : When have we ever traveled last minute? Ali : Well, if we wanted to, we couldn’t.

63

It is interesting to reflect on Ali’s response here and the fact that he took into account something he never usually would do to emphasize how his life would be influenced by this future change. I suspect that underlying his statement was a sense that stability is more desirable than spontaneous change when one is a parent. I asked Parisa if there was anything she wanted to change about her husband and she answered, “He needs to drive like a human, (mesl-e adam) when the child comes.” This expression “ mesl-e adam” connotes a certain level of propriety and maturity. According to his wife, Ali has a somewhat reckless driving style and, despite having lived in Canada for four years, still found it burdensome to wear a seatbelt. I asked Parisa if actions such as conservative driving or not smoking were for the child’s sake or rather were more to reinforce their image as proper parents:

Parisa : Well, from now on you have to set an example for your child, they have to respect you. You have to put pressure on yourself to be better. It will be hard because you can’t just say the first thing that comes to your mind or else they will pick up on it, it’s a little frustrating when I think of it! (Laughs) It is interesting to imagine coming up with “parental codes” to say around the kids.

Parisa said “parental codes” in English and made quotation signs in the air with her hands. She anticipated that soon she and her husband would have to have conversations that they did not want their child privy too; thus, she anticipated cutting out profanity and creating phrases that would only be understood between her and her husband. Having to watch what language one uses in front of the child was a common response among my interlocutors. Talking in code to circumvent a young child’s (always listening) ears was expressed by Parisa with a degree of happiness and excitement even though she described it as an anticipated restriction.

64

During my interview with Lana there were moments in the discussion when the concepts of fun and independence appeared to stand in contrastive tension to the potential future duties of parents. One of the first questions I asked Lana was if she felt prepared to be a mother:

Me : Do you feel ready to have a baby? Lana : Yes because I’ve had my fun, I’ve traveled quite a bit and I’m pretty satisfied about where I am at work.

Lana had recently obtained a certificate in biotechnology at McGill University which would eventually allow her to be upwardly mobile at work. She related this good news to me and expressed that now she felt that the “stage” was now set for a baby’s arrival.

When I asked her why she believed fun was in some ways incompatible with parenthood, she answered that “things change” and when probed further she could not find the Persian words so she answered me in English: “Once you have a baby, it all goes down the drain.” Lana’s words seemed quite ominous to my ears but her tone was light hearted and jovial reinforcing the idea that she was “ready” for motherhood.

I asked Farnaz, who was different from the other two women in that she did not plan her pregnancy, how she felt about the future changes that she anticipated would occur in her life. She revealingly shared with me that her biggest fear was not being able to live up to the expectation of “an Iranian mother” and that she would not be able to put her individualism aside. 32 Farnaz told me that she had a “lax” upbringing, the youngest of three siblings, she was used to doing what she wanted without much parental scrutiny.

Yet she also contended that not taking a child’s needs into account was inappropriate for

32 Even in contexts outside of Iran, the cultural imagines of “ideal mother” can be overwhelming and cause many women to feel guilty for not living up to inflated expectations. See: Susan Walzer, Thinking about the baby: gender and transitions into parenthood (Philedelphia, Temple University Press, 1998). 65 an “ideal” parent. As we sipped our tea, Farnaz suddenly interrupted me mid question and advised me to wait until I was “absolutely 100% ready” to have a baby, after a long pause she said emphatically “ vay , I feel so old!” There were moments in my conversations with

Farnaz that she almost seemed incredulous that she was becoming a mother. Her anxieties about getting older were very much connected with her anxiety about motherhood. Sitting in the café and looking out the window, Farnaz decided to calculate her age and the baby’s age at various life stages: “When I’m 39 the baby will be 10, I’ll be almost 40 and the baby will only be ten! When I’m 50 the baby will be 21!” I was not sure what was harder for her to imagine—being a 50 year old woman or having a 21 year old son or daughter.

Fatherly Sacrifice

The link between fatherhood and sacrifice was a difficult connection to make at first glance. Certainly the men, like their wives, confided in me that there would be changes in behaviour once the baby arrived. However these anticipated changes were very much connected to good behaviour and restraint and were markedly different than the sacrificial attitude the expectant mothers expressed. For example, Parisa’s husband,

Ali, told me that the ideal Iranian father was not necessarily one characterized by selflessness; rather he was a man who was protective, supportive and financially secure and who took his responsibilities seriously. Nonetheless I questioned Ali what sacrifices he anticipated with the arrival of the future baby. Ali considers himself a “social smoker,” and was planning on quitting smoking with the arrival of the baby. His wife, Parisa was eager that he begin cutting back from the time I spoke with them in December 2009 as 66 she was anxious to not have any cigarettes anywhere close to her child. Ali grudgingly accepted with a silent shrug and responded with a gesture that implied “there is nothing else I can do” and then he told me half jokingly in English “its game over.” My impression of this exchange was not of a man giving into a dominating wife but more as someone who was himself actively creating and submitting to a script of parenthood that left no room for negotiating smoking—the family man is not a smoker. I was intrigued by the prohibition on smoking, I understood the medical reasons why a woman should not smoke when she is pregnant; but I wanted to tease out the justification of why a parent ought not to smoke unbeknownst to the child. Parisa simply stated that “A good father sets a good example.” Indeed, the internet in general is filled with blogs and articles about

“good parenting” and a common thread that runs through some material I surveyed catered specifically to Iranians is that a good parent leads by example. For example an

Iranian blogger on a social media site offered a parenting lesson in a quintessentially

Iranian way: posting a classical story of Mullah Nasruddin:

A woman came to see Nasruddin complaining that her son had an uncontrollable sweet tooth and she asked Nasruddin to tell the boy to stop eating sweets all the time. Nasruddin listened intensely and told her to return in two weeks. Two weeks later, he simply looked at the boy and said “I command you to stop eating sweets!” When the mother asked why they had to wait two weeks for such advice, Nasruddin answered “I couldn’t have told your son that two weeks ago because I myself love sweets. First I had to stop eating sweets, and only then could I tell your son to stop. 33

The above story illustrates the line of reasoning that a proper adult leads by example.

When I asked Ali whether he thought it would be hard to kick the habit, he casually answered “no” and recounted to me that his own father quit when he was born. My impression was that Ali was confident that his ability to quit would more or less come

33 Accessed November 2010 “Sorry I can’t…my parents are Persian” http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=240393564388&v=wall 67

“naturally” once he became a father. Like his father before him, fatherhood would have a transformative quality that would grant him an advantage when giving up smoking.

Sacrifice and Transformation

A few weeks after my individual conversations with the couples, Parisa, Lana, and

Farnaz were invited to my studio apartment to participate in a focus group. My apartment, like many typical student homes in Montreal, is furnished with Ikea furniture. Yet, it is unique in that there is a fairly significant amount of décor from Iran—from the Persian rugs on the floor to the Iranian paintings on the wall. The girls seemed amused by the juxtaposition of Ikea furniture and Iranian souvenirs, Farnaz joked that I had

“Persianified” the Swedish brand. I even have a miniature decorative framed Persepolis picture on my bookshelf that I bought at a Tehran bazaar. Farnaz picked up the picture and asked me questions about visiting Persepolis. I sheepishly told her that I had not actually been there and she smiled and shook her head telling me “wow you are really

Iranian!” My Iranian-ness was even more pronounced to Farnaz when I brought out tea,

Persian pastries and began playing old Googoosh records softly in the background. 34 The women appeared even more impressed when I told them that I often played Googoosh and made Iranian tea for my non-Iranian guests as well. I suspect the ambience of my apartment, like Nocochi café, was reminiscent of Iran and was influential at directing our conversations to the idea of “Iranian” parenting.

As the four of us gathered around the coffee table, I recounted to the other women Farnaz’s fear that she was “not ready” to be an “Iranian mother” (a cultural

34 Googoosh is arguably the most popular Iranian pop star to date . 68 reference that everyone automatically knew to mean a selfless and devoted mother) and she shared with the group her doubts about her feelings of inadequacy to fill this role.

Parisa, who by far was the most confident in her future role as a mother (as well as the oldest) tried to reassure her:

Parisa : I know that it seems hard now, and it feels like a sacrifice but when the baby is born everything will change. It will be much easier than you think, once you see the baby you’ll want to do it—sacrifice everything, it won’t even be an issue for you.

Parisa’s argument was that once a mother witnessed the experience of birth and actually saw the child, she would be “transformed” by it. The transforming effect that Parisa proposed was interesting because behaviour described as burdensome pre-delivery ceased to be so once the child was born. She argued instead that a wilful sense of duty would naturally develop in which feelings of inadequacy would be ruled out. Parisa was confident it would all essentially solve itself; however Farnaz was not convinced. Farnaz, who is an avid reader of Rumi and the Sufi tradition joked that she was not ready to become a parent if that meant turning into a “martyr” (shahid), and recalled the Sufi idea of self annihilation, (fana’) saying she was worried this would happen to her. 35 When I playfully reminded her that this was a Sufi ideal and the highest goal of the mystics, she patted her stomach and said with laughter “(s)he will make me into a real Sufi!” Our group erupted with laughter and I made a field note to remind myself that despite

Farnaz’s genuine resistance and unease about the idea of sacrifice and her “lost” youth

35 Interest in Rumi and mystical Sufism is very popular among the youth of Iran. For more on ‘Sufi Cool’ see: Varzi, R. Warring Souls youth, media and martyrdom in post-revolution Iran .

Fana’ is essentially a Sufi term for the “passing away of self” in other words, worldly matters cease to be important; the highest level of fana ’ is achieved when the person is unaware of even reaching fana’ . 69 she always accompanied her dramatic rhetoric with a huge grin and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

Mothering and Work

Although Parisa was confident that sacrificial mothering would come naturally, she expressed a markedly lower degree of confidence when the group discussed the balancing of work and family. Farnaz told the group that she worried that mothers are expected to sacrifice more when they become parents particularly in the domain of professional life.

Shavarini describes this difficult balance in the Iranian context:

Iranian women instead grapple with balancing family and work, with preserving the sanctity of the family unit while applying their education skills—allowing them to be recognized as mothers and professionals (2006: 1980). I was aware that as Farnaz was embarking on motherhood she was also being faced with some difficulties in her professional life. She hoped to one day open her own art gallery and at the time of the focus group was thinking about ways to expand her nascent art jewellery business.

Farnaz : I don’t want to be known as “just someone’s mother” and I feel like there is still so much I want to do; I still want to have a successful career.

Farnaz’s anxiety of her womanhood being eclipsed by her motherhood is not uncommon.

In the Western context, particularly since the 19 th century, motherhood and womanhood have tended to be treated as almost interchangeable (Arendell 2000: 1192). I found that the Iranian women I interviewed felt that their careers would suffer more than their 70 husbands unless they turned into what Farnaz referred to English as, “supermom.” 36

Parisa told me that no mothers were exempt from the oppressive expectation that they would have to successfully manage child rearing and having a rewarding career unless they were comfortable with being regarded as neglectful.37 Lana interrupted Parisa adding that even the Iranian Nobel peace prize winner was not exempt from this expectation.38 I instantly knew what Lana was referring to since we were both intimately familiar with

Ebadi’s memoir Iran Awakening: From Prison to Peace Prize (2006). In the memoir

Ebadi describes that although she had an exceptionally supportive husband, she was still left to do the majority of the housework, cooking and childrearing on her own. Ebadi is a lawyer specializing in human rights violations and despite her high profile cases and constant danger of her job still managed to diligently prepare meals for the family.

What’s more incredible is that when she started to hear whispered rumours that she would be sent to Evin prison (a notorious prison associated with political dissent) she had the foresight to prepare meals and stock them in the freezer so that her two daughters and husband would have prepared meals handy while she was in jail. When Lana and I related this aspect of the memoir to Parisa and Farnaz their faces would alternate between expression of wide-eyed awe, horror (particularly Farnaz) and amusement. Although such expectations of “intensive mothering” were distressing and described as oppressive they were implicitly approved by nonverbal cues of laughter and smiles. As we recovered from

36 Bonnie Fox (2001) explains the concept of “intensive mothering” and how mothers are advised by “experts” to respond to the every need of their baby and still be able to maintain a successful career. 37 Fox (2001) rightfully points out that women who can indulge in “intensive mothering” require material resources—thus, class dimensions play an important role in this notion. 38 Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2003 and became the first Muslim woman to ever hold the prize. 71 our mental image of a strong human rights activist agonizing over what to make for dinner the conversation shifted to our own memories of living with our parents.

Memories of Konkur

All three women expressed that they had what they described as “selfless” parents. Farnaz in particular viewed herself as exceptionally lucky because her mother had travelled all the way from Iran to be with her for the duration of her pregnancy.

Farnaz : I’m very lucky that I have my mother with me, she does not like to travel long distances but she came here because she knew how much I needed her. And also its very cold so I know she is not very comfortable here in Montreal, sometimes I feel a little bad. Parisa : Rest assured, its not as bad as you think, you are her daughter of course she is going to help you if she can, obviously!

This prompted me to point out the fact that Farnaz herself was a beneficiary of her own mother’s sense of “duty” and selflessness, and the supreme irony of this was not lost on her. Farnaz related some memories of her family life in Iran. She grew up in Tabriz and she related to me that “during the konkur ” her entire household revolved around her preparation for the college entrance exam. The standardized entrance exam, konkur , is notoriously difficult and used to determine university placements. After the 1979 revolution this exam became an enhanced opportunity for social mobility among the lower and middle class by granting a greater segment of society access to higher education (Shavarini 2006). Some families finance remedial help for their child in the form of tutors or preparatory classes to increase their child’s chances of doing well on the exam. Shavarini describes families who would “even sacrifice family values” to finance such assistance (2006:1969). I asked the women to provide some anecdotes of their own memories of studying for the konkur and the role their parents played in their success. 72

Parisa : About every few hours I would hear a knock on the door of my bedroom, followed by my mother entering with a plate full of fruits, for energy. Lana : My diet consisted of fruit and fish and anything that would be rich that would allow me to study, I think I gained about ten pounds during that time. My mother was so nervous, even more nervous than me. She asked all our neighbours to pray for me! Farnaz : For me also, family life revolved around when/how I prepared for the test. My older brother was forbidden from making any noise and television, radio or even my parents conversations were always kept to a minimum volume.

All three scored exceptionally well on the test, and I was inclined to ask “Does a person’s score reflect on parental style?”

Parisa : I think that children with considerate parents do better than those without. For example, I know someone that had an older sister’s wedding to go to days after the konkur exam. Can you imagine? All that attention on her older sister, I think she was neglected and she probably suffered as a result and didn’t do as well. Lana : All parents in Iran are obsessed with the progress, (pishraft) of their children. If a student is lazy it’s not really the parent’s fault, but the parents 100% have an important role to play the student’s development.

I observed that there was an expectation that parents who facilitated academic progress would end up having children who excelled academically. Parents who did not do this were evaluated to a certain degree as “not doing there job.” The general feeling was that parents, particular mothers, need to be selfless and put the needs of their child first. The idea of the “selfless” mother is very interesting notion and may be examined in greater detail drawing on the film, The May Lady .

The May Lady

The May Lady (1998) (Banu-ye Ordibehest) examines the notion of the all- sacrificing mother and the protagonist’s effort to answer the question of whether or not two loves can fit in one heart. The May Lady features the story of a middle age divorcee who is negotiating how the concept of self sacrifice plays into the roles of motherhood 73 and womanhood. I choose this film because it is very popular and also because it is provocative and complicates the assumption that motherhood entails sacrificing a sense of self and of womanhood.

The director of the film, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is one of the most critically acclaimed female directors in Iran and her films usually operate on multiple layers of meaning. The protagonist in The May Lady is named Forugh Kia, and Bani-Etemad’s choice of name is not without meaning; in fact, the name pays respect to two iconic figures in Iranian culture. The surname, Kia, is Bani-Etemad’s homage to Abbas

Kiarostami, who is considered by most to be Iran’s premier filmmaker. The first name

Forugh recalls Forugh Farokhzad, a famous Iranian feminist poet and filmmaker who personified the ideal of a strong independent woman (Donmez-Colin 2006) Farokhzad is most fitting considering she wrote poetry about the agonizing choice women have to face between motherhood and pursing a career (Milani 1992) 39

Iranian films are famous for blurring the lines between fiction and reality, and

Bani-Etemad’s The May Lady is no exception. She blends real documentary footage with a fictional story and adds a further layer of realism since she herself was a single mother and filmmaker, similar to the protagonist, at the time of filmmaking (Varzi 2008: 88).

39 See: Farzandeh Milani Veils and words: the emerging voices of Iranian women writers (NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 65.

Every morning from behind the bars My child’s eyes smile at me As I begin happily to sing, His kissing lips near mine.

O God! If I need to fly out one day From behind those lonesome bars How will I answer this child’s crying eyes? Let me be, a captive bird I am.

74

Forugh is given the task of filming a television documentary on the subject of exemplary Iranian mothers. Like the women I speak to in the ethnography, Forugh is highly educated, middle class, and has a successful career. She reads poetry, routinely socializes with friends and makes time for jogging in the park; all details the director includes to make her modernist inclinations clear. Her son, Mani dresses like a

Westernphilic, “modern” teenage (he is seen in head-to-toe denim at one point) and listens to loud Western music (Ace of Base it’s a beautiful life is blasting) and he even has pets, which is fairly rare in Iran. Bani-Etemad clearly portrays the family as secular— although categories of secular and religious are difficult to delineate and “perhaps not meaningful or operative categories” (Badran, 2008; Mahmood 2002).

The main dilemma that propels the plot is that she is a single mother who attempts to strike a balance between her desires to make time for her new love interest and the possessiveness of her teenage son. Her “modern” son absolutely rejects his mother’s right to get remarried. When the film begins the camera only captures half of Forugh’s face and the audience sees her writing in her journal. The hidden half of her face symbolizes that one part of her—her feelings for her love interest, Dr. Rahbar, which is a source of her internal conflict. The camera captures some words Forugh has written: “Being human is not a gift, it is a non-transferable right.” With this opening scene, Bani-Etemad firmly grounds her film and complicates the equating of human-hood with motherhood and thus casting doubt on the entire notion of a selfless mother. Forugh feels pressured to sacrifice her feelings for Dr. Rahbar and succumb to her son Mani’s wish that she remain single and be solely a dedicated mother. 75

It is interesting to note that the konkur exam plays a diegetic role in the film as well. There is scene where Forugh is cooking a meal for her son and casually inquiring about his preparatory class for the konkur. His lacklustre response prompts her to remind him that the top konkur student a few years ago was the son of a shepherd from a tiny village that was so isolated it did not even have access to newspapers. This was her way of motivating her son; as mentioned previously, it is not unusual for Iranian parents to cite other young people’s success when trying to encourage their children academically.

Perhaps the fact that Mani was preparing for the konkur made Forugh that much more reluctant to cause him distress by confessing her feelings towards Dr. Rahbar.

As Mani becomes more aware of Dr. Rahbar’s presence in his mother’s life he jealously tries to keep his mother to himself and assumes the traditional role of the male member of the family, responsible for protecting the female member regardless of her age or status (Varzi 2008). The film shows Forugh winning accolades and receiving great praise for her work. Yet despite her clearly displayed talent and great intelligence; she still submits to her son’s disapproval of her love interest. Her inner monologue displays this distress:

He believes I am only his. He is upset and disturbs me with his sarcastic remarks. He knows well that I’ll submit to his annoyance, I understand his youthful reactions. But how far does he understand me?

In another one of her interior monologues Forugh asks “why should the gift of motherhood deprive me of another gift—love?” Interestingly, Dr. Rahbar is never physically present in the film but symbolically represented by the ringing telephone. It is probably safe to assume that the director employed this technique to evade potential 76 problems with censorship; 40 however, in many ways Dr. Rahbar’s absence evokes a contained symbolism that embodies a stronger presence.

To be a good mother, Forugh feels pressure to sacrifice her desire for love and companionship. In one scene she is jogging with her friend in the park and she confesses that her heart is torn between her son and the man she wants to share her life with. Her friend listens with concern and sympathy and asks “so what are you going to do?” Forugh replies: “evasion would be the best way out” of her difficult situation. Her friend gasps and says in disbelief “you mean self censorship then?” 41 Forugh tells her friend “Darling, when you are a woman, a middle aged woman and a mother, you cannot speak of love so easily.” Her friend seems dumbfounded and says “if you can’t than who can?!” This scene serves to highlight to the audience that the expectation of a selfless mother is one that all women, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds, are expected to fulfil. Forugh is worried that her crown of motherhood, (taj-e madari) will be compromised if she refuses to sacrifice her love life and tell Mani the truth about her feelings toward Dr. Rahbar.

Remarriage

An important concern of this film is the issue of remarriage which is a highly sensitive topic in the Iranian context, especially for women. Arlene Elowe Macleod

(1991) notes that women in the Middle East are occasionally viewed as victims of an oppressive culture equated with Islam; however, what is oppressive towards Forugh here

40 Unrelated actors are not permitted to have physical contact with one another. 41 Censorship is a very loaded term in Iran, especially for filmmakers, some of which admit to self censorship when making films in Iran. 77 is not necessarily Islam since she indeed has the right to remarry according to Shari’a .

Yet, despite the fact that Islam permits women to divorce, remarriage is still a highly sensitive cultural taboo. In the 1980s, after the eight year war with Iraq and countless fallen soldiers, there were many war widows in the country. Imam Khomeini addressed a group of women essentially reminding them that remarriage was acceptable according to religious decree:

May I offer you young ladies married to men who have been martyred a word of benevolent, fatherly advice. Do not refrain from remarrying and through your marriages rear children like yourselves, steadfast and valuable to society (Algar 1981:34).

Although Imam Khomeini is specifically addressing widows of the war and not divorcees, this address is still important because it highlights how difficult the idea of remarriage was to accept.42 The focus of Imam Khomeini’s pragmatic rhetoric is on the idea of reproduction and the fact that women cannot live by themselves because they would be lonely and defenceless. In contrast, the film The May Lady takes a radically different perspective and attempts to promote women’s self determination but also admits to the difficulty of living without male custodianship. For all of Forugh’s “modernist” tendencies, she still has to come to terms with her son who assumes the traditional authoritative role of brother/father.

Forugh’s inner conflict is exasperated by the assignment she is given to film a documentary about exemplary mothers. To this end, she seeks out and films Iranian

42 The taboo of remarriage still exists in Iran, a recent article written by Anoosheh et al (2010) suggests that one of the reasons elderly people in Iran experience loneliness and remain single because they are reluctant to remarry due to adult children’s disapproval of parent remarriage. See: “Understanding loneliness in the lived experiences of Iranian elders ,” Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences Vol. 24 Issue 2, pp.274-280.

78 mothers who have sacrificed everything for their children. The interviews Forugh conducts with various women highlight her own perceived distance from the “ideal mother.” A particularly poignant scene is when she meets mothers of martyred sons who continue to piously take care of the graves of their deceased children. The reference to the martyrs of the war recalls the state discourse of sacrifice and shows how the discourse becomes refashioned and embodied by the mothers of those sons that are no longer living.

Forugh wonders how she is to be judged against “mothers who left love in the coffins of their children?”

Motherhood as Habitus

In different moment’s in the film the crown, ( taj) of motherhood appears oppressive and weighs heavily on Forugh’s head, and on other occasions she capitalizes on that very discourse. An example of its oppressive nature can be found in the following scene: her son gets arrested because of illegal partying and a condescending official blames her failure as a mother to account for her son’s bad behaviour. Forugh is extremely frustrated, especially since she herself drove her son to the party and did not believe his arrest was warranted. 43

In contrast, an example of when the motherhood discourse becomes empowering is the following scene: on the night of Forugh’s birthday, she is having a special dinner with Mani and the doorbell rings signalling to the audience that Dr. Rahbar is downstairs.

This disrupts the intimate dinner between Forugh and her son and without saying a word,

43 Roxanne Varzi’s ethnography on Iranian youth shows how young people rely on the permission and assistance of parents when organizing mixed-gender parties (Varzi 2006: 166). 79

Mani grabs his car keys and storms out of the house tearful and furious. In his state of rage he jumps into his car and begins driving at top speed past a Basiji barricade. In the next scene, the audience discovers that Mani has been arrested for speeding on the freeway and is taken to jail for punching the Basiji who had tried to stop him. Forugh is distraught and meets with the Basiji youth and desperately tries to convince him to drop the charges against her son and release him from prison. As they face each other, the

Basiji youth solemnly tells Forugh:

When your son was playing with toys I was with my brother at the battlefield playing with bullets and automatic rifles. Now I guard the same streets on which your son speed drives. And when I ask him why, he answers me with his fists.

Forugh knows that Mani is the guilty party of what transpired between the two young men and she does not make any excuses for her son; instead, she passionately appeals to him with the most forceful line of reasoning she can produce: “I am a mother.” By invoking motherhood she tugs on the Basiji’s heartstrings and requests the release of her son from prison; in this respect, the film presents motherhood discourse as fluid; oscillating between oppressive and empowering elements. I would argue that Forugh’s citing of motherhood does not make her hypocritical or suffering from “false consciousness.” To understand Forugh’s quick reflex to appeal to her status as a mother, we may refer to Bourdieu’s (1990) idea of habitus . There is no sense of discursive consciousness in Forugh’s strategy, rather her disposition is a result of the situation she encountered thus, she cannot be charged with being complacent in reproducing the very social sensibility that a woman is defined by her motherhood. Lauri Umansky (1996) sums up this dichotomy writing that some feminists have focused on the oppressive 80 elements of motherhood which compromise a woman’s independence and on the other hand, some feminists have focused

On motherhood as a positive force [which] holds the truly spectacular potential to bond women to each other and to mature, to foster a liberating knowledge of self, to release the very creativity and generativity that the institution of ‘motherhood’ denies to women (Umanksy 1996:3).

In a similar vein, Klassen (2004) writes that “sacrifice is not always a threat to female subjectivity but in some cases a creative venue for the subjectivity” (2004:260). She goes on to write that “who decides what constitutes sacrifice and whether sacrifice carries a positive or negative valence are questions crucial to any analysis of women’s subjectivity” (2004:261).

Film and the State

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution domestic production of Iranian film has been and continues to be greatly encouraged especially since the majority of foreign films are not given official access to Iranian movie-goers. After returning to Iran from years in exile, one of the first questions to be asked of Imam Khomeini was regarding the role of cinema in an Islamic state:

We are not opposed to cinema, to radio, or to television… The cinema is a modern invention that ought to be used for the sake of educating the people, but as you know, it was used instead to corrupt our youth. It is the misuse of cinema that we are opposed to, a misuse caused by treacherous policies of our own rulers (Algar 1981:258).

Cinema is considered part of the infrastructure of Islamist culture in Iran (Naficy

1995: 551) and Imam Khomeini’s call for the purification of cinema from the clutches of what he considered to be American neo-imperialism recognizes the “conjunction between dominant cinema’s production values and the imperialist power of its enuciative 81 strategies over the national body” (Mottahedeh 2008: 152). In other words, it is due to the very “transforming” nature of cinema that Imam Khomeini believed film to be an important vehicle for creating “Islamic subjects (Mottahedeh 2008).

The Islamists aimed to recalibrate cinema to reinforce, as Mottahedeh argues,

“Shi’a” modes of being” namely to embody values such as modesty and humility. Indeed, much of Iran’s acclaimed cinema does in fact embrace such values yet uses allegory and ambiguity to complicate those values. New wave Iranian cinema is very much influenced by Italian neo-realism (Spiro 2009) and some Iranian filmmakers may even be considered as “quasi anthropological” (Tentori 1983) and certainly Bani-Etemad, would qualify as such a filmmaker. In an interview with Gonul Donmez-Colin (2006), Bani-Etemad suggested that some Iranian filmmakers portray women unrealistically:

Before the revolution, women were depicted either as prostitutes or as some kind of ‘problem’ for man. After the revolution, we fell into another trap; we tried our best to construct a very positive character of women, which created a myth. The film makers began to mould characters that the society expected, such as good mothers. The character of a woman cannot be determined by her motherhood qualities. Women are human beings with positive and negative characteristics. They are not what our society, tradition or culture expects from them. The problem is that when we watch the woman as a mother, we define and judge her character within this situation (Donmez-Colin 2006:26).

With The May Lady, Bani-Etemad attempts to create a more realistic image of an Iranian woman. Yet as Mottehedeh (2008) insightfully points out, a realistic image is not just a simple reflection of ‘real life’ but a “highly mediated production.” (2008:11). Mottahedeh argues that, “The disintegration of boundaries between the fictional and the everyday, between temporal and spatial limits, has become a trademark of the Iranian screen since the Revolution” (2008: 15).

Film as Subversive 82

Film is a space of cultural negotiation as well as a potentially subversive media.

Varzi writes that that,

For the Islamic state (and again most totalitarian ones) women are only mothers, sisters and wives, which is precisely why The May Lady is such a radical film: it allows Forugh to be a woman and still be an exemplary mother.” (2008:88)

Ironically this film, deemed by many cineastes as quite subversive to the regime in

Iran, it is one of rare films Bani-Etemad has made that did not have any problems with the

Film Censor Council. 44 It is important to recognize that Iranian films do need to be approved by state censors, however “no one sector, private or public, seems to monolithically dominate either the discourse on film or the film industry itself” (Naficy

1992:69). Although many Iranian films feature symbols and tropes that are reflected in state discourse, it would be inaccurate to assume that all Iranian film is contained within the dominant hegemony. As Comaroff and Comaroff (1991) rightfully point out,

Since it is possible, inevitable, for some symbols and meanings not to be hegemonic— and impossible that any hegemony can claim all the signs in the world for its own— culture cannot be subsumed within hegemony, however the terms may be conceived. Meaning may never be innocent, but it is also not merely reducible to the postures of power (1991:20). Moreover, the government facilitates production loans for films but the actual monetary loans come from banks and the private sector. Therefore entrenched business considerations and the private capital of investors do indeed play a very significant role in

Iranian “national cinema.” Of course, this is the general nature of cinema all over the world; not everyone can make films due to the obvious fact that it costs money to make and distribute films. In this respect, film-making is to a certain extent embedded within

44 She did not speculate as to why this was the case (Donmez- Colin 2006:24). Of course, this paradox may be a result of the fact that many film critics have not figured out precisely how censorship works in Iran.

83 the existing power dynamic of the society. That said, it is important to point out that many

Iranian filmmakers leave the endings ambiguous, prompting the audience to intervene imaginatively to fill the void and I would argue that by blurring the distinction between filmmaker and audience, the power dynamic is reconfigured.

It is well known that one of the reasons Iranian films are able to “outwit” the censors and be subversive is by the use of ambiguity. Iranian films are famous for employing this cinematic technique and certainly the Persian language lends itself to ambiguity quite well since it does not have grammatical gender. The audience usually is given agency to imagine the endings of ambiguous films since they are left indecisive;

Roxanne Varzi eloquently compares it to the Iran- Iraq war: “since the silent stalemate that was the end of the war, there have been few Iranian films with conclusive endings. It is as if entire culture in state of indecision” (Varzi 2008: 97). If ambiguity is defined as the absence of closure than we may say that The May Lady is unambiguous. In the final scene, the phone rings, the symbol of her lover, she answers the phone and the camera captures her entire face (as opposed to half her face as in the beginning) and she says

“Hello I am Forugh.” In the final analysis she has reconciled her dual roles as a mother and as a woman and has come to terms with the fact that she does not need to sacrifice love to be a loving mother. 84

Chapter Four: RESPONSIBILITY AND IMAGINED PARENTING

In this chapter, the investigation will shift focus to the parental theme of responsibility, (masu’liat). British scholar, Andrew Bainham (1999) conducted a socio- legal review of the term “parent” and he essentially defines parenthood as a position with unique responsibilities; such as: naming the child, providing education, disciplining the child, safeguarding the child, and providing a home and adequate nourishment. Indeed, responsibility is an immensely significant component in the general understanding of parenthood (Oberman & Josselson 1996: 344). However parental responsibility means different things in different contexts; therefore, to unpack the particular question of

Iranian parental responsibility, this chapter will examine the couples’ expectations of responsible parenting and examine what is at stake as these couples undergo the transition from youth to parenthood. An important dimension of this chapter involves class. In some respects upper class expectations may be different than the middle class or lower class and “thus, the duties, and responsibilities of parenthood are viewed very differently”

(Jacoby 1969: 725). It is important to remind readers that the three couples I featured in the ethnography were self described as middle to upper class, extensively travelled and described their lives in Iran as privileged and are not necessarily a representative sample of Iranian youth.

In the following pages, I discuss expectations of both motherhood and fatherhood and take gender into account, since women and men tend to become more differentiated from one another during the transition to parenthood (Walzer 1996). Gender in families includes “structural constraints and opportunities, beliefs and ideology, actual 85 arrangements and activities, meanings and experience, diversity and change and interaction and relation” (Thompson and Walker 1989). Specifically, the experience of motherhood tends to reinforce gender roles for many women (Fox 2001) especially since childrearing duties tend to be the mother’s responsibility in the traditional discourse of parenthood (Schlessinger 2000). Similarly, studies of Iranian immigrant families suggest that mothers are mainly responsible for childrearing (Mahdi 1999:62). A paternal perspective is offered by making use of the film The Apple , (Sib) to help unpack the question of responsibility and fatherhood. The concept of “choice” (in terms of choosing when to have a child) and was heavily implicated when I discussed with the couples the role of responsibility with respect to health of child, facilitating educational development and disciplining the child.

Genealogy of Parental Responsibility: Iran’s Encounter with Modernity

To begin, we can examine the influence that Iranian nationalism and European modernity has had on the prevalent parenting discourses and practices of the mid 19 th to early 20 th century in Iran. Indeed as Iran encountered “modernity” it became important to supervise women on “correct” mothering practices (Najmabadi 2005 & Kashani-Sabet

2006). This is the beginning of pregnancy advice taking on a disciplinary function (Oaks

2001). Parents, and particularly mothers, were encouraged to uncompromisingly assume full responsibility for the wellbeing of their child.

In 1850 the Iranian intellectual, Mirza Aqa Khan Kirmani, in his “100 Discourses” stated that there were various environments responsible for a child’s emotional and physical wellbeing and he arranged these in a hierarchy in which the first and foremost 86 school was the womb (Najmabadi 2005:186). He designated the second school as the family; the third was religion; the fourth was government; and the fifth was climate and individual circumstances. It is very significant that the womb, as symbolic of women, is placed at the top of the hierarchy and is perhaps the harbinger to the idea that a mother is primarily responsible for her child’s development. Conversely, Kirmani’s work contributed to discourse that portrayed a neglectful or irresponsible mother as a sin,

(gonah).

Such discourse needs to be historically contextualized; to be sure, as Iran encountered “modernity” a major social problem was extremely high infant mortality rates throughout the country (Kashani-Sabet 2006:1). Iran’s experience with modernity was very much influenced by European modernity and Europe’s apparent superior medical-scientific advancements. In some ways, Iranian modernity was in competition with Europe; and in this respect Iran’s high infant mortality rates posed a major problem because it deflated the nation’s population. For Iranian nationalists who wanted to compete with mighty Europe, population growth was essential to transform Iran into a strong nation en par with other world powers. Cyrus Schayegh writes that reproduction was socialized and that the natural reproductive body was transformed into a social body, to serve the demographic needs of the nation (Schayegh 2009: 8). To this end, a campaign was launched in an attempt to foster practices and discourse that “would laud domesticity and motherhood” (Kashani-Sabet 2006:2).

An example of discourse that praised motherhood is the 1891 book entitled “The

Rearing of Children” (tarbiat-i atfal), which according to Najmabadi (2005) charged that a mother who entrusts her child to someone else upon birth (through hired help or 87 nannies) has committed a grave sin and should be stripped of the title of “mother.” The book devotes many pages to detailed expositions concerning prenatal care, nutrition, questions pertaining to the child’s mental development, (tarbiat-i ‘aqlani) and essentially to questions of how children should be raised (Najmabadi 2005; 1999). 45 This is an extremely significant development in Iran since prior to the publishing of such books, childrearing advice had been passed on through female relatives and friends rather than being a distinct discipline and normalized. Najmabadi points out that the publication of such childcare books was justified as a shield against Europe; yet ironically it granted access for a European male (who usually authored these childrearing texts) to penetrate a space that had been up to that point “mainly oral and female” (Najmabadi: 2005: 189).

In a similar vein, various establishments became preoccupied with the institutionalization of childrearing practices and children’s hygiene. Awareness of hygiene mandates became closely linked with the discourse of parental responsibility owing to the fact that Iran was being plagued by various epidemics causing widespread mortality (Seyf 2002). Kashani-Sabet discusses how hygiene was intertwined in the maternalism ideology which “promoted motherhood, childcare, and maternal well being not only within the strictures of family, but also in consideration of nationalist concerns”

(Kashani-Sabet 2006:2). In 1926 the Red Lion and Sun Society was concerned that the combination of what they considered uneducated midwives and irresponsible mothers could potentially risk the lives of both mother and child and consequently lower Iranian demographics. To prevent this, the Red Lion and Sun Society established state run birth

45 Najmabadi (1999) suggests that the book was believed to be translated from the original French into Farsi. 88 centers which could “decide whether parents were ready to assume responsibility for their children, intruding into what was once considered exclusively the parents’ domain.”

(Kashani-Sabet 2006: 11). The fact that parents were not assumed de facto to be capable of shouldering the responsibility for their children was an interesting development. Of course, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what criteria would deny a parent the “approval” of such state run birth centers; however, it surely involved a process of deducing if the guardians of the child were conscious of simple hygiene mandates. Being oblivious to such mandates was highly stigmatized.

Another highly stigmatized practice which was opposed by the medical establishment was the belief in superstition. Many midwives, to varying degrees, were believers in the power of evil eye and the harmful effects of excessive compliments to a child’s wellbeing. I suspect this stigma was perhaps rooted in the idea that belief in superstition would translate as a willingness to share responsibility for the fate of the baby with metaphysical forces. In other words, abstract notions of evil eye could make midwives less likely to deliver a healthy baby when compared to a non superstitious

“responsible” medical doctor who was knowledgeable about hygiene and sanitation dictates. In some ways, the front against midwives was waged as a proxy war discrediting superstition and the idea of “evil eye” (Floor 2004). In other words, if superstition was discarded then the burden of responsibility for an unhealthy baby could not be blamed on the “evil eye” but would be placed squarely of the midwife and the mother herself.

Despite a campaign to discredit superstition, the fact remained that superstition was not 89 eliminated; indeed, Willem Floor (2004) has argued that, in general, Iranian physicians were no less superstitious than their midwife counterparts. 46

Similarly, another practice that was discredited, closely linked to the theme of responsibility, was the practice of employing wet nurses. Traditionally, it was not uncommon for women to hire wet nurses to suckle their babies for them; however, in the early 1920s, the medical establishment had serious grievances against the use of wet nurses who, according to “expert” opinion, handled newborns incorrectly—for instance, bundling them in tight blankets, and giving them cold showers (Kashani-Sabet 2006:6).

The stigmatization of wet nurses coincided with the endorsement of breastfeeding by mothers. Women who simply opted out of this “duty” were shamed and berated (Kashani-

Sabet 2006:9); indeed, at the turn of the century discourse was propagated advertising the imagined benefits of breastfeeding for mother, child and nation. It was considered more hygienic to breastfeed a newborn and thought to increase an infant’s chances of survival; thus women were encouraged to breastfed and by doing so would be actively supporting the nation in its goal to bolster Iran’s population. 47

The drive to offer pregnant women advice on how to feed their babies is a matter of social relevance even today in both the Iranian and Western contexts. The contemporary debate has often pitted breastfeeding against the use of formula, and over the years the pendulum has swung in both directions. In the U.S. during the 1970s, the

46 Superstition continues to play a role in contemporary Iran and in the lives of the couples I interviewed as discussed in chapter one. 47 The significance of a mother’s milk went beyond mere nourishment and was linked to the personality, (shaks) of the baby. Indeed, Iranian nationalists claimed that if you wanted to have children who were nation loving (vatan parast), they should be breastfeed by nationalist (vatani) mothers (Najmabadi 2005). Such notions strengthened the link between motherhood and nation.

90 majority of babies were weaned on formula rather than breast milk (Fomon 2001).

Encouraging women to offer infants formula was considered part of responsible parenting and was also endorsed as a way in which both mother and father 48 could bond with the infant by partaking in the nourishing of the baby (Lee 2007:1081). Today, the pendulum has swung in favour of breastfeeding; to be sure, there is an enormous amount of literature encouraging women to give up formula. Murphy (1999) did a study of British mothers and concluded that women who opted for formula had to respond to accusations of being a ‘bad mother’ due to the fact that they deviated from the fairly widespread mantra of ‘breast is best’ (Murphy 1999:187-8). Besides citing nutritional value, contemporary discourse promoting breast milk also stresses the social aspect; in particular that breast feeding increases the bond between mother and child (Knaak 2005). In early

May 2011, the BBC published an article citing a British study that found that children who are breastfed had fewer behaviour problems, including lying or stealing. 49 The study states that 6% of breastfed children exhibited these negative behaviours as compared to

16% of children who were formula fed. Interestingly enough, the study also concedes that it is currently unknown whether the findings are a result of the nutritional contents of the milk or a result of the intimate bonding that occurs between mother and infant during breastfeeding. Despite this fairly significant gap in the science, the article can be read as essentially adding to the discourse that “breastfeeding creates good children” and by extension, breastfeeding is an embodiment of responsible parenthood.

48 For more see: Earle, S. (2000) Why some women do not breastfeed: bottle feeding and fathers’ role Midwifery , Vo.16, No. 4, p. 323-30. 49 Jane Hughes. Breastfed babies ‘develop fewer behavioural problems. BBC. Accessed May 9 2011 91

Breastfeeding and Parental Responsibility

The discourse that a mother’s milk can produce “good children” is not just contained to the British context; indeed, I found that all three Iranian women I interviewed agreed that breastfeeding was necessary for the future child’s health. The favouring of breast milk is not just limited to urban, upper class tastes but is reflected in

Iranian village life as well. Erika Friedl’s book Children of Deh Koh (1999) highlights the importance of a mother’s milk in a small village in Iran. Friedl records that there was the belief among the village women that a sinful mother’s milk is haram (religiously unlawful) and would corrupt the infant ( Friedl 1997: 87). She writes,

Halal and haram , religious lawful and unlawful, enter the politics of nursing in yet another way. Essentially, a mother’s milk is neither, but a mother can make her milk halal by declaring it as such for a specific child, anytime, retroactively. This is considered the strongest blessing a mother can bestow on her child (1997: 87). 50

Similarly, the expectant mothers revealed to me that they took their future breastfeeding responsibilities seriously. Parisa, Farnaz and Lana equated breastfeeding with being a

“good mother” and fulfilling their motherly duties. When I asked if the actual quality of a mother’s milk could influence a child’s personality Lana disagreed,

Lana : Of course, it is not the milk itself, it is how you interact and raise your child that will influence his/her personality. Milk is more connected to the nutritional component, and will give them better health.

50 Within Iran itself, breastfeeding is the norm and considered entitlement for pay, (nafaghe ) which means charging husbands for nursing of one’s own babies (Poya 1999). There is a Qu’ranic reference that encourages women to breastfeed: “mothers shall suckle their children for two whole years” (Sura 2:233). TorkZahrani writes that because breast feeding is a regulation derived from Islam “the baby’s father should provide emotional and economic support for the mother during this time” (2009:53). It has also been reported that the government has limited importation of baby formula within the country (Vahidnia 2007:5)

92

Lana was of the opinion that using formula for the sake of convenience was a mark of irresponsibility.” 51

Parisa, who is a non practicing physician, discussed in minute detail why she intended on breastfeeding. She expressed a strong connection between parental responsibility and health of the baby; she insisted that breastfeeding promotes infant neural development and can reduce the chances a newborn will catch infectious diseases.

For Parisa the health benefits were significant and outweighed the inconvenience of nursing a newborn. Of course, Parisa was quick to add that a woman who was unable to breastfeed due to medical reasons certainly was entitled to using formula. This led me to casually pose a hypothetical question: “if you could not breastfeed your child, would you allow a wet nurse to do so, or would you use formula?” Parisa seemed very uncomfortable with the idea of someone else breastfeeding her child, and I almost felt regret for posing the question in the first place. She reluctantly responded, much to my surprise, that in that case she would opt for formula. Parisa did not want someone else nurturing her baby and said with a hint of defensiveness, that she did not want another woman bonding with her baby. Despite all the medical value Parisa had associated with breast milk, her disavowal of using a wet nurse reinforced the idea that motherhood is something that needs to be performed; consequently, giving a baby a bottle with formula was a way, albeit an unfavourable way, in which this could be accomplished. Indeed, the

51 It is important to state that class plays a role in a woman’s decision to breastfeed or not. Since it is difficult to return to work and breastfeed simultaneously, women of lower socio-economic standing are more likely to use formula. See: Beaudry and Dunfour (1991) Factors of successful breastfeeding in New Brunswick. 93 general attitude of these women towards breastfeeding was that it was part of nurturing the baby, which was a motherly responsibility.

When I inquired what knowledge Farnaz had of the benefits of breastfeeding she vaguely answered that it, “boosts the child’s immune system.” When I pressed her for any physiological details of why she preferred breast milk to formula she soon grew exasperated and looked at me incredulously saying emphatically:

Farnaz : Of course I would prefer breastfeeding, it’s obvious. I’m going to be a mother, that’s what a mother does; a mother gives her child milk. Its part of being a mother, you have to do it.

My impression was that the health benefits of the breast milk were incidental to Farnaz’s advocacy of breast feeding. For Farnaz, the decision to breast feed was almost taken for granted, as something that “had to be done.” In some sense she viewed the act of breastfeeding as an actual, tangible embodiment of motherhood. There is much literature on the body and how social roles can be negotiated through the reinvention of the body; for example, studies have been conducted suggesting that when a woman chooses to breastfeed she is negotiating her body and relationship with society (Mohon-Daly &

Andrews 2001). Farnaz’s imagination of a mother’s breast was closely connected with being a milk provider, and thus her projection of breastfeeding was a way in which she could perhaps negotiate her transition from being a young woman to a nurturing, responsible mother. In other words, through projected breastfeeding she was creating a distance between her “youth” and her future role as a mother.

Indeed, the ethnographic record suggests that breastfeeding was imagined to be a way to ‘act out’ responsible motherhood; and more interestingly, the raison d’etre of why my informants thought women have greater duty when it comes to parental responsibility:

Me : Why do women have a greater parental responsibility? 94

Parisa : One reason is, I think, that there is a natural bonding- a physical reason. Lana : A bond that begins from labour and again when women breastfeed. Farnaz: I think that the experience of breastfeeding makes you more connected and more aware of your role as a mother- you realize that the child cannot survive without you and it reminds you of your responsibility.

Thus the act of breastfeeding was imagined to be a way to embody responsible motherhood as well as the action cited to explain why women have a greater responsibility for childcare duties.

Choice and Parental Responsibility

The theme of responsibility is also very much related to the concept of choice: “Aside from the word reproduction itself, the most obvious conjunction between discourses of the market and of childbirth is the stress on choice” (Klassen 2004: 249) Since the introduction of the birth control pill, effective contraceptives, and the legalization of abortion, the process of having a baby has come to be understood as a matter of choice

(Ginsburg 1989). In this respect I am referring to the idea that one actively intends to fall pregnant and consequently ceases birth control methods and/or engages in fertility treatments. 52 There has been much literature regarding the concept of choice and how it influences ideas about parenthood. For instance, Linda L. Layne (2003) discusses pregnancy loss and argues that such loss needs to be understood in the context of choice; the experience of losing a baby that one actively choses to have. Layne describes how some couples even try to choose the future birthdays of their unborn children by planning when their pregnancies will fall (Layne 2003:134). Choice is important to discuss since it

52 It must be stated that although the discussion of choice is important in understanding a particular perspective, we must be wary not to read too much into it. Certainly, “choice” is constrained by legal, religious and economic conditions (Klassen 2004).

95 adds a particular perspective when looking at the question of imagined parenting and the theme of responsibility. I include a discussion of choice in this chapter since it appeared in the ethnographic record; more specifically, choice was understood as opting to have children later in life.

The lengthening of time before one undergoes the transition to parenthood is important in contemporary Iran since marriage at an early age is increasingly less popular with today’s women (Shavarini 2006:1970). According to my interlocutors, the choice to get married later and have children later was closely connected with feelings of financial security and a sense that one is “ready” to take on parental responsibility. In other words, having children at a time when responsibilities could be realized in some ways inflated and raised their expectations of what parental responsibility entailed. Anticipated future responsibilities were wide ranging and included enrolling their child in extracurricular activities, hiring tutors, and taking their child on vacations to introduce him/her to new cultures.

According to Ali, the burden of financial responsibility was placed particularly heavily on the father. Ali explained to me that he would “not have been able to” have children years earlier since he felt that in the past he did not have the resources to provide for the child. He exclaimed that “children are expensive” and it would have been difficult to absorb the high cost of extracurricular activities, presents, birthday parties and social outings. The concept of choice applies to men in a unique way as Bonnie Fox (2001) argues, 96

New mothers must accept responsibility for their babies, many new mothers want to do so, given their feelings for the babies. Father’s however have choice about how actively they will be involved in the baby care (Fox 2001:379) 53

Ali felt he was at a specific point in his life, due to success in his professional life, where he could make the transition to parenthood comfortably and be heavily involved with childrearing duties since he now imagined himself to finally have the financial resources to do so. 54 Projections of financial responsibly and stability was a way in which Ali created a distance between his youth (a time when he was financially insecure) and his future role as father.

Family Planning and Responsibility

The emphasis on choice has been a significant component of the family planning discourse in Iran. This highly successful state initiative encourages families to choose to have fewer children and have them later in life through a refashioning of parental responsibility discourse. The Iranian family planning program advocates limiting the number of children to one or two despite the fact that during the early days of the revolution, large families were a core revolutionary ideal; particularly since it provided a larger number of soldiers to defend the country (Vahidnia 2007: 260). As the war came to

53 Fox (2001) rightfully points out that women who suffer from postpartum depression may have a drastically different response. For more see: Verta A. Taylor, Rock-a-by baby: feminism, self help, and postpartum depression (New York, Routledge, 1996).

54 Taking into consideration financial requisites for parenthood is not unusual and occurs quite frequently in the North American context (Clarke 2004)

97 an end, ideas about population increase shifted. Homa Hoodfar (1994) argues that because the government publicly vowed to serve the oppressed and powerless of society,

(mustazafin) it soon realized that overpopulation was going to make the promises of the constitution 55 : the promise of food, basic health care, and universal access to primary education, extremely difficult to honour. With this realization, a family planning campaign was launched promoting discourse that championed the slogan that “life is better with fewer children” (Hoodfar 1994:11). One of the main reasons put forth for opting for fewer children was the fact that mothers would be able to spend more time with their children. Homa Hoodfar writes,

The backbone of this policy is to prevent unwanted pregnancies and genetic abnormalities, and enable parents to space their children, as well as prevent the negative impact on women’s health of too frequent pregnancies, treat infertility, and improve the general health of society by promoting the psychological and physical development of children and families (Hoodfar 1996:32).

State discourse encouraged women to spread out their pregnancies so that children could

“get the attention they deserve” addressing women by employing the rhetoric “what motherhood means if a mother cannot enjoy her child’s smiles and watch them blossom?”

(Hoodfar 1994:13). Such discourse is not limited to the Iranian context, Alison Clarke

(2004) discusses how in the West during the mid 20 th century, the traditional nursery evolved into the “playroom” (2004:61) with emphasis on parent-child interaction.

55 Article 29-30 Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran.

Article 29 : “It shall be the universal right of all to enjoy social security covering retirement, unemployment,…and health, medical treatment and care services through insurance, etc. The Government shall be required, according to law, to provide the aforesaid services and financial protection for every individual citizen of the country…”

Article 30 : “The government shall be required to provide free education and training for the entire nation…”

98

Moreover, Iranian discourse encouraging fewer children has been supported by a large segment of the religious establishment within Iran. Homa Hoodfar describes how family planning discourse was refashioned in theological terms; in other words, Islamic scholars were asked to compile medieval Islamic texts to prove that family planning,

(tanzim-e khanevade) is intrinsically Islamic and compatible with moral dictates and not merely another encroachment of the West (Hoodfar 1994: 12). This certainly played a significant role in the great success of the program; between 1986 and 2000 a stunning

64% drop in fertility was observed, surpassing the initial projected goals (Vahidnia

2007:260).

I asked Lana how many children she was planning on having after she delivered her first baby. Her response was quite amusing; she looked to the side and put up both hands as if to shield herself from the very idea of more children. I was surprised she felt so strongly, especially in light of the fact that she still had not delivered her first baby. I wrongly assumed she would want more than one child and had phrased my question in a slightly presumptuous way. Farnaz decisively told me that she would have a maximum of two children declaring that “it’s too much after that!” Sentiment along these lines was reflected in my conversations with Farnaz and Parisa as well, with both women stressing that only people with the luxury of having a lot of time could afford several children.

Ali said with mock seriousness that he intended on creating a large tribe of children; a remark Parisa did not find amusing. With raised eyebrows she launched into a passionate lecture explaining that, although she loved children, it was irresponsible to have more than one could “handle.” 99

Parisa : You need tp spend money taking them to different sport classes, then you need to make sure you can attend their games to support them, you need to buy them toys but you also have to sit and play with them, it’s not enough just to buy them things, you need to invest your time as well. That’s why it is almost impossible to have more than 2 or 3 children; there is only 24 hours in a day.

This idea of giving your children “enough” attention was linked to notions of parental responsibility requiring mothers and fathers to allocate sufficient time interacting with their children and was generally a source of anxiety and considered a deterrent to projections of having more than one or two children.

When the topic of “how many children to have” surfaced I noticed that the men usually turned and looked to their wives for direction. For instance, Farshad simply stated

“it all depends on Lana” when asked about ideal number of offspring. On a similar note, the various family planning programs in Iran operate on the basis that women are the individuals primarily responsible for fertility (Hoodfar 1994). In recent years, a two hour mandatory family planning course for newlyweds has been established for both men and women. Parisa and her husband were exempt from these classes; they were told that since they were both medical students they could opt out. Farnaz and Lana took the class and they revealed that the instructor strongly encouraged that the women wait a few years prior to having children.

Lana : I remember being warned not to have children right away, and there was a question and answer period in which questions about fertility and sexual health were discussed. It was over fairly quickly, I think it lasted under one hour. Farnaz : I don’t remember much, it was mainly about pregnancy prevention. 56

I was unable to solicit detailed information from Farnaz and Lana about these classes, perhaps due to the intimate nature of the class combined with the fact that Iranian decorum sanctions overt discussion of this sort in a public setting. Consequently, to

56 It is estimated that contraceptive use among married women is 75% in Iran (Vahidnia 2007:260). 100 obtain a better understanding of these premarital classes, we may refer to Azadeh

Moaveni’s memoir, Honeymoon in Tehran . Moaveni is an American-Iranian journalist who unexpectedly found herself pregnant and engaged to be married on a trip Iran. She attended one of these state sanctioned premarital classes and described her experience in detail:

I sat down in the women’s classroom, where the instructor launched into a description of the anatomy of the female reproductive system, not unlike the weekly sex education class that I had giggled through in the fifth grade. She waved about a blue condom, explaining the various forms of birth control available to brides-to-be. From a drawer she removed a heap of birth control pills; “Pay special attention to these,” she said, holding up a strip of tiny pills for what she called “urgent contraception.” I realized she was referring to emergency contraceptive pills, sometimes called morning-after pills, which can prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. All five of the women she addressed, including the chadori and slim young woman wearing a nautical headscarf, took notes attentively. How impressive, I thought, that the Islamic Republic of Iran promoted the use of controversial up-to-date contraception (2006: 141). 57

I include Moaveni’s memoir here to provide a more detailed description of these classes in Iran. Although Moaveni is quite impressed and taken aback by the content of the classes and the ways in which they are conducted, Farnaz and Lana did not share her sense of bewilderment and surprise.

Education and Parental Responsibility

When discussing with the couples what duties fall under the umbrella of “parental responsibility” great emphasis was placed on the role of parents in ensuring academic

57 It is important to note that providing a forum which presents sex without embarrassment is a feature of premarital family planning classes the world over and are informed by medical and psychological discourses and do not particularly have anything to do with Islam .

101 success of children and serving as developmental facilitators, especially if the parents themselves had obtained university degrees. In other words, good academic achievement on the part of the child was a reflection of “good parenting.”

Me : Is a mother who is educated a different kind of mother? Farnaz : I think it puts more pressure on you to make sure the child does well and goes to university, you have to sit with them and do homework with them and motivate them. Parisa : I think that if a mother values education and works with the child, the child will as well.

Parisa is a non practicing physician and she was planning on staying home with her future baby for at least the first few years. She expressed that stimulating her child intellectually with educational toys and creative games was one of her greatest duties as a mother. From my conversations, it appeared that notions of what adequate childrearing entailed were inflated when the mother was highly educated.58 Parisa strongly believed that a child’s academic success was a reflection of how engaged and present a parent was in the child’s life.

Parisa : If you create a strong relationship with your child when they are young, then you can more easily foster an environment in which you have influence over them when they are older and attending high school .

Parisa and Ali expressed little doubt that their future child would obtain post-secondary education and be academically successful. Parisa’s own father is a retired doctor who had both high expectations and great support for her when she was in high school. Similar to his wife, Ali believed that academic success was closely related to parental duties.

Examples of such strategies included monitoring homework, limiting television and encouraging their child to develop friendships with academically inclined students.

58 It is interesting to note that within Iran itself only 15% of women work for wages and thus there is a very high proportion of highly educated stay-at-home mothers (Shavarini 2006: 1961). 102

Parisa shared with me a childhood story: she came home from school and showed her father a test score of 18/20. Her father remained expressionless and asked what the highest mark in the class was; only when he discovered Parisa had obtained the highest mark did he break out into a smile and show approval. Obtaining her father’s approval was one of Parisa’s motivating factors sustaining her determination to obtain top grades.

She credited her mother and her father for her academic success and told me that she intended to emulate her own parents’ attitude towards education.

Arash and Farnaz also felt a similar way, in that they anticipated their child would go to university although Farnaz added that “As long as my child gets into university I will be satisfied, I don’t except straight A’s in university, but high school is different…you need to be strict in high school to guarantee children study.” Arash jokingly said that the only real duty a parent had was to be strict and remind the child to

“study” like a broken record during high school. Farnaz told me that encouraging children to do well at school is “very Iranian” and that such parents tend to be disappointed if their children exhibit subpar performance at school. Certainly, this is not exclusive to Iranian parenting style, Amy Chua (2011) argues that the majority of Chinese parents believe that academic achievements is directly related to the quality of parenting; in other words, when children struggled at school parents were “not doing their job.” Being “strict” was stressed as an important component of fostering academic success and according to my interlocutors; fathers played an especially important role in this respect. We can turn to the Iranian film, The Apple to unpack the idea of fatherly responsibility; this film is fitting since it is almost a caricature of the “strict” paternal authority figure.

The Apple , Sib 103

The Apple (1998) is an international award winning Iranian film directed by

Samira Makhmalbaf—the precocious daughter of prominent filmmaker Mohsen

Makhmalbaf, who was only eighteen when she directed the multilayered and complicated film The Apple . The film begins when residents in a lower class district in southern

Tehran alert the state authorities that a man in their neighbourhood, Ghorban Ali Naderi, has kept his 12 year old twin daughters, Zahra and Massoumeh, as virtual prisoners in their own homes. The Apple is based on a true story and Makhmalbaf hires the real life family to plays itself, with the exception of the mother figure who is replaced by a hired actress. The family consists of the twins, a blind mother and an elderly father. Naderi, who is unemployed, makes a meagre living selling bread and ice and occasionally receiving small money handouts in exchange for offering prayers. The film is primarily concerned with the authority and responsibility of the father; the blind mother is relegated to a marginal role owing to her physical disability. To emphasize that the mother is essentially irrelevant the director made the cinematic decision to physically put a barrier between her and her children (and by extension, the viewing audience) by requesting the actress to cover her entire face with the hijab .59 Makhmalbaf’s decision to have the mother’s face fully covered serves the purpose of directing the audience’s attention to the question of fatherhood; in many ways, this film defies the assumption that mothers are primarily responsible for childrearing since Naderi is portrayed as the sole parental

59 A discerning viewer would see that this is an inaccurate representation of the real life mother-- at one point in the film the audience sees an actual picture of the family (in a real newspaper clipping) and the mother’s face is visible; indeed, the majority of women in Iran leave their faces exposed.

104 authority; it is precisely for this reason that this film is relevant to a discussion of paternal responsibility. 60

The first scene of the film offers a striking image: the camera’s gaze focuses on a small house plant that is being watered delicately by a set of tiny hands. As the camera pans out slightly, you see a child’s arm outstretched and straining against steel bars that appear to look similar to a jail cell. The audience comes to realize that this is the hand of one of the young girl’s stretching out from inside her home. Naderi’s house is typical of many Iranian homes; there are two doors for the residence, with the outer door consisting of a gate with steel bars. Watering this plant requires a certain amount of exertion on the part of the girls since they are barred from going into the courtyard. Despite this, the girls take delight in watering the small plant and watching it grow. This scene sets up a major theme in the film—the idea of nurturance and responsibility.

As mentioned previously, the neighbours collectively sign a petition claiming that the girls’ mental development has been stunted by their extreme isolation. A welfare worker investigates the situation and holds the father primarily responsible for the girls’ sad state—slurred speech, dishevelled appearance and reduced cognitive abilities. The children are taken from Naderi and moved to a temporary holding center where they are bathed and given haircuts. When Naderi arrives he claims that the reason he does not allow his daughters freedom outside of the house is due to the fact that his wife is blind and is quite literally unable to look over them. The authorities dismiss this weak defence yet grudgingly agree to allow the father to retain custody of his children on the condition

60 Makmalbaf contacted the family and obtained permission to begin filming (Moore 2005:15). When asked about obtaining the parents’ permission to film the twins, Makhmalbaf said in an interview that only the father’s approval was necessary; thus, she recognizes the father as the sole parental authority. For more see: Sheila Johnston, “Quietly Ruling the Roost” Sight and Sound 1999, 19. 105 he allows them mobility and does not trap them inside the home. He initially agrees to this stipulation but he does not honour his promise. Once he returns the children home he reverts back to his old ways of locking the door of the house when he leaves his residence.

The neighbours once again alert the authorities which prompts the welfare worker to return and this time she forces the children out of the house and locks the father inside to give him a taste of his own medicine. When the twins are ushered out of the house and into the courtyard, they hesitate and look reluctant to leave. The social worker forcefully makes them go out and play on the street and gives both of them combs and mirrors as presents. By this act she symbolically initiates them into a world they have never known—a world of vanity and appearances. The mirror is also a symbol of self-reflection and knowledge, and it is interesting to note that the twins, unlike their blind mother, are finally able to see their own reflection (Moore 2005:16).

As the children embark on an adventure exploring the neighbourhood, the social worker gives Naderi a handsaw and tells him that if he wants to leave the house he has to physically cut the steel bars and saw his way out. He is stunned by this and tries to reason with the welfare worker to let him out. 61 She staunchly objects and he is left defeated and hopeless on the other side of the bars while she watches over him from the courtyard. As he sits on the floor near the door, trapped in his own home, the image that introduced the film once again resurfaces: Naderi with outstretched arms, strains through steel bars to

61 This was a fictional component of the film and was not part of the actual sequence of events. 106 water the small plant in the courtyard. The image serves as a reminder of the thematic element of obligation and responsibility.

Fate

A counterpoint to the concept of responsibility is, in some ways, the idea of fate.

The concept of fate is a thematic thread in The Apple , specifically as an explanation for misfortune. Indeed, an Iranian linguistic form of speech is to occasionally explain an unfortunate situation as “ qismat e” which means “it is fate or God’s will.” When Naderi is confronted by accusations of being an irresponsible father he contends that “qismat-e,” he believes it is his fate to be faced with such difficulty and misfortune. Although Naderi admits that locking his daughters inside the house is indeed wrong and unacceptable; he follows his concession by matter-of-factly asserting “it is fate and destiny.” This frustrates the social worker; she wants him to accept full responsibility for his unacceptable parenting style; yet, Naderi deflects this and invokes the idea of “fate” to help cushion the blow that he is a bad father. In this way, parental responsibility can be managed through manipulation of the concept of fate.

Certainly in the case of The Apple , it is obvious to the neighbours that Naderi is a

“bad” father, however it is not obvious to Naderi himself, he believes he is doing the right thing and being a good parent. The fact that he does have good intentions is underscored in one scene when a cheeky neighbourhood boy interrogates Naderi on why he refuses to give his daughters pocket money and Naderi replies that he did once give a 1 toman coin to one of his daughters only to discover that she had swallowed it and consequently had to be rushed to the hospital. The cheeky boy cleverly offers a solution: “why don’t you give her a bill so that way she won’t choke.” The fact that Naderi thinks he is being a good 107 father is once again reinforced in a poignant scene when he explains to the welfare worker that his each of his daughters is “like a flower, and like a flower, will wilt if she goes in the sun” and he says that this is advice he acquired from a parenting book entitled

“Advice to Fathers” which advocates fatherly protectiveness as part and parcel of paternal responsibility. This is an interesting instance of disciplinary parenting advice intruding in the world of a father. I consider The Apple a satire on the idea of paternal over-protection; however on balance, Makhmalbaf does not portray Naderi as the stereotypical patriarchal oppressor. In fact, his character is somewhat redeemed in a heart wrenching scene in which he sings a traditional Iranian song of lament about his poverty and suffering, beseeching God to bring him closer to the end of his life.

Direct me to the gates of death, or free me from my chains, I haven’t complained because it was always my destiny.

Iranian Father

Naderi’s level of over-protectiveness may be considered quite extreme; however, his actions invoke certain qualities of the stereotypical “Iranian fathers”—mainly linked with notions of “strictness” and authority.

Farnaz : The stereotype of the typical Persian father is one who is strict, especially when it comes to dating, school or friends. Parisa : I think that the stereotype is a man who is very strict- especially regarding good grades. Someone who is constantly admonishing “sit and study” (beshin dars-e to bekhoon !) Lana: It’s important in Persian culture to have respect (ehteram), for the father, and because of this he is responsible for disciplining the children- I remember when my mom wanted to emphasize a point she would say, ‘don’t make me tell your father.’

These stereotypes are relevant because they reveal that my interlocutors consider fathers responsible for the majority of disciplinary action in parenting.

108

While Naderi is being lectured on his poor parenting style by the welfare worker, his daughters are roaming the streets of Tehran and rejoicing in their new found freedom.

The film is aptly titled The Apple owing to the fact that the girls seek out and buy apples-- symbolic of the knowledge and growth attained when they are freed from containment.

The film ends with a frozen frame of the blind mother finally grabbing the apple that the cheeky neighbourhood boy had teasingly been hovering over her head by a string, perhaps symbolizing her triumph finally over ignorance. 62

62 In real life, several weeks after filming, the twins were placed in foster care and permanently removed from their home (Moore 2005:18). 109

Chapter Five: CONCLUSION

Looking out the large snow covered windows of Nocochi I wait for Parisa to arrive before ordering our usual Monday afternoon tea. Sitting at the opposite side of the café is an adorable toddler accompanied by what appears to be his mother and rather stylish grandmother. It occurred to me then that it had finally happened; I was starting to feel broody. I was so fixated on this adorable little boy with chocolate on his face that I barely noticed that Parisa had finally arrived. I discreetly pointed out the little boy to her and we both “ooohed” and “ahhed” (which sounds closer to akhey in Persian) over him.

Discarding any pretence of professionalism, I crumpled my nose slightly, pouted and said in an exaggerated baby voice “I kind of want a baby.”

Parisa:(laughs): What does “kind of” mean? You still have time, enjoy your youth. Everything changes when you have a child, darling.

This was not the first time I had heard the admonition that “Things change;” in fact, this was something I had heard from almost every participant at one point during the course of the interviews. Farnaz had advised me to take advantage of my lack of responsibilities and self imposed schedule and “live my life to the fullest” before deciding to have any children. Arash warned me that being a parent was “serious” and a “24 hour job.”

As I was silently musing over my sudden bout of broodiness, the owner of

Nocochi spotted Parisa and I from across the café and came over to say hello. I was quite surprised to see her since she was known to escape Canadian winters by travelling to Iran from late December to mid March. She told us she had cancelled her trip this year 110 because her son was embarking on a new business venture in Montreal and requested she put her trip on hold and stay in the city for moral support. This appeared to be a decision she had come to regret judging by the way she cursed the cold Montreal weather and lamented her unfortunate state of affairs with melodramatic Persian flair. When the owner was out of hearing range, I leaned in and whispered to Parisa “her son is forty, and he’s married” my tone suggesting that I found it ridiculous that a grown man would ask his mother to cancel her yearly trip to Iran for his own sake. Parisa laughed, uniting the tips of her fingers in a single point facing upward to emphasize, “This is what you call an

Iranian mother.”

At that moment, we heard a large crash; my first instinct was that the adorable toddler I had gushed over earlier was causing havoc from across the café, a divine warning that I was nowhere near ready to have a baby. But alas it was only a clumsy waitress; she had dropped our drinks and the shattering of glass disrupted the serenity of the entire café. As we waited for our new drinks to arrive, Parisa with genuine concern asked me about my health, my grades, my thesis, my family and kindly offered to buy me anything I needed from Akhavan the next time she made a trip there. She was becoming more and more maternal towards me, and I remember thinking that she is destined to become a great mother. Yet despite being close in age, I was struck by the distance between Parisa and myself.

In some strange way, Parisa represented to me what I imagined to be my distant future as an “adult:” a responsible and sacrificial mother willing to put her child’s needs before herself. For her, I represented her recent past: an Iranian youth without childcare responsibilities who could afford to be occasionally selfish and self-serving. This is not to 111 say that as a youth I do not share Parisa’s qualities of responsibility and maturity; or in contrast, that she does not have selfish tendencies as an “adult;” rather the point that I am arguing is that as Parisa is embarking on parenthood she is creating distance from behaviours and activities she deems are not part of the landscape of “parenting” and by extension, youth.

A similarity between my interlocutors and myself, aside from the fact that we are close in age, is that we all share a sense of Iranian-ness; however, my connection with

Iran tends to be more part of who I am as an individual and perhaps even taken for granted. In contrast, my interlocutors actively reflected on their sense of Iranian-ness; their attachment to the nation was important to imprint on, expose to and teach their future child. I discovered that cultivating a certain relationship with Iran, was an important conscious aspect of what it meant to be an Iranian parent.

This research was motivated to a large extent by the question “what happens when

Iranian youth grow up and have babies?” The idea to focus on primiparous couples was inspired by the double entendre of conceiving Iran’s future (through political and sociological projections). Iranian youth behaviours and ideas are suggested to be predictive of Iranian adult behaviours and ideas. I argue that the transformative space constructed between youth and adulthood makes it difficult to formulate such predictions.

By considering the transition to first time parenthood as the “site” of adulthood I was able to “catch” a group of young Iranians as they embarked on their “last” cusp of youth. This thesis has identified three axes: the nation, sacrifice and responsibility, that when taken together illustrate the expectant couples’ perceived distance between “youth life” and the contrastive terrain of parenthood. By asking my interlocutors questions about their 112 visions of the future and what kind of mother or father they intended to be, I was able to get insight into what they considered appropriate adult behaviour. They projected that their priorities and perspectives on life would change when they entered this new phase.

In some ways they expected they would become a “different kind of person.”

The chapter on the nation was slightly different than the chapters concerned with sacrifice and responsibility, in the sense that the interlocutors’ orientation towards the nation was expressed through consumption and by actively reflecting on baby names. In contrast, the themes of sacrifice and responsibility were more “character traits” my interlocutors intended to develop (or imagined was appropriate to develop) once the baby arrived.

The theme of the Iranian nation was strongly integrated in the couples’ perspectives of parenthood. The attachment to the nation was revealed through the often difficult and complicated process of choosing the “right” Iranian name. In light of the fact that the interlocutors are in Canada, choosing an appropriate Iranian name and thinking about ways in which to expose the future child to Iranian culture became an incredibly significant decision; the child’s name was an outwardly symbolic manifestation of

“Iranian-ness” and could not be taken lightly. Imagining their baby as an “Iranian baby” was negotiated through specific patterns of consumption, like buying Iranian food and

Iranian children’s songs. Reading books about pregnancy, following nutritional guidelines and requiring baby items all helped create a distance between their previous status as non parents to their present status as expecting parents. My interlocutors sought advice and information from me on how I negotiated my own sense of Iranian-ness 113 growing up in Toronto. My experiences helped them imagine different strategies of parenting which also helped further their perceived distance between youth and adulthood

As outlined in chapter three, sacrifice is a dominant trope in Iranian culture and it was a theme that was appropriated by my interlocutors, particularly the women, as an appropriate character trait for the ideal mother. Farnaz, Parisa, and Lana told me that they anticipated a great deal of change in their lives when the baby arrives. After the first few sessions of interviews, expectations about future parenting became more complex, owing to the fact that I spent a greater deal of time with the women. They progressively became more comfortable discussing negative feelings such as anticipated lack of freedom and the difficulty to manage both motherhood and career. Specifically, they told me they expected to consider the child’s needs before their own and would have to negotiate ways in which they could be both a good mother and a successful career woman. Parisa tried to ease Farnaz’s anxieties about not being “ready” to be the ideal of the selfless mother by telling her that once she saw her baby she would be “changed.” Thus, notions that motherhood was a transforming experience helped ease the burden associated with expectations of future motherly sacrifice. Ali and Arash similarly expressed anticipating change in the future—change corresponding to what they imagined was the “ideal father.” These notions were closely related to the fact that children mimic their parents and thus “the family man” was someone who set a good example and refrained from smoking, excessive drinking and risky driving. Ali and Arash admitted to indulging in these vices occasionally but anticipated abandoning such activities, and as Arash said,

“Leaving that world behind” when they became fathers. 114

Closely related to the theme of sacrifice was the idea of responsibility. Parental responsibility was linked with ensuring the success of the future child. Academic success of the child was described as being the result of considerate parents who were involved in educating their child and creating an atmosphere at home conducive to expectations of high grades. Parental responsibility was closely connected with financial responsibility; indeed, I was surprised to discover that both Ali and Parisa and Lana and Farshad had taken their fiscal situation into account before deciding to have a baby. Farnaz and Arash were different than the other two couples in that they had not intended to fall pregnant, but did choose to have the baby. Interestingly, it was Farnaz who stressed to me that keeping a child was a choice, and if parents decided to make that choice they ought to assume all responsibilities that came with it. Farnaz had not planned on having a baby and although she exhibited personal doubts about her adequacy to assume the role of mother, she was nevertheless invested in the idea that parents have a significant and long lasting effect on the life of their child.

Underlying most of the conversations I had with the expectant couples was an assumption that being a parent was a significant and important role. As the baby’s due date for the various couples approached, I sensed that there was an ever widening space between what was important to them pre-pregnancy and what they considered important in the liminal stage of transition to parenthood. There was an active reflection on their connection with the nation and expectations that a “good mother” and “good father” ought to be willing to sacrifice for the child and assume responsibility.

My initial concern at the beginning of my research was to obtain a better understanding of Iranian youth and somehow create a framework to “explain” the 115 rebellious world of the youth I had entered in summer of 2006. This was a difficult task to undertake especially since the classification of “youth” can be considered a socially determined category and essentially a product of modernity. Critical youth studies is a relevant and important direction in social science research; however I have found in my own reading of Iranian youth ethnography (Khosravi 2008; Cohen 2006) that the scholarship tends to overlook the possibility that youth beliefs and behaviours may undergo transformation. As Parisa succinctly put it, “things change.”

Had I not witnessed the tense scene in the car between my cousins—new mother

Azadeh and her younger sister Tara, I perhaps would not have been inclined to pursue the question of Iranian youth through the specific lens of transition to adulthood. Now that five years have passed since my trip to Iran and after having done ethnography, I strongly agree with Marc Flack’s suggestion that researchers engaged with youth studies,

Should be more attentive to the ways in which the definitions and experiences of youth are entwined with and depend on society’s definitions and experiences of adulthood in a particular historical moment. There are instances when young people’s responses to researchers’ questions appear to be rooted less in the background of the individual youth ad more in the youth’s foreground, that is, in the kind of adulthood the individual anticipates experiencing in the future (2007:79).

All my interlocutors fall under the umbrella of “youth” and I argue that an interesting window to obtain insight into Iranian youth beliefs and attitudes is to “look over their shoulders” as they make the transition to first time parenthood. The time is certainly ripe to conduct such research since the majority of those born after the 1979 Iranian

Revolution are quickly nearing their childbearing years. 116

Clearly there remain many dimensions not explored in this thesis, and it perhaps it would have been fruitful if I had been familiar with my interlocutors prior to their pregnant state and thereby would have been able to personally comment on the distance between their youth behaviours and beliefs and their “adult” ones. However, the fact that they themselves repeatedly emphasized that “things change” helped reinforce the argument that there is a distinct space that is created in the transition to adulthood.

As I turn on my computer and click on the file titled “Pictures Iran 2006” I come face to face with images that five years ago I naively considered “evidence” supporting the idea that wild Iranian youth would, without a doubt, “grow up” and turn Iranian tradition on its head. As I reflect on the difficulty of speculative morphology, I am reminded of Spivak’s (1996) warning that not everything that seems innocuous is rebellion, and not every rebellion is a precursor to revolution.

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