Should Iranian diplomats wear creased pants?
Should Iranian diplomats pursue their duties in neatly creased trousers, as their Western counterparts tend to do?
Probably not.
It's hearsay, but author Hooman Majd, son of a former Iranian ambassador, says high-level advice comes from a pamphlet published at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. He attributes it to Mojtaba Hashemi-Samareh, senior adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but says no one seems to have the pamphlet but every diplomat "swears" it existed.
"Hashemi-Samareh believed," Majd writes, "that Iranian diplomats' trousers could not sport sharp creases, for if they did, it was surely a sign that the diplomats were neglecting their thrice-daily obligatory prayers, which comprise repetitive standing, kneeling and bowing gestures." The prayers might make for a lot of wrinkles.
Majd is the grandson of an ayatollah, born in Tehran, educated at American and British schools, a citizen of both Iran and the United States and a veteran of the American film and music industries. Now in his early 50s, he likes to explain in popular and witty English the peculiarities of Iranians' temperament and their Farsi tongue.
He emphasizes the centrality of Muslim piety to Iranian public and private life, but also tries hard to find resemblances between Iran and the United States.
"It strikes me often while I am in Iran," he writes, "that were Christian evangelicals to take a tour of Iran today, they might find it the model for an ideal society they seek in America. Replace Allah with God, Muhammad with Jesus, keep the same public and private notions of chastity, sin, salvation and God's will, and a Christian Republic is born."
He quotes a young man he met at a Tehran "burger joint" as insisting that Iranian youth fought for and won rights that cannot be taken away. He was not talking about political rights.
"... (W)hat he was talking about," Majd writes, "was being able to chat with a girl, exchange a phone number, and maybe dress as he pleases (all of which he was doing). Being able to watch satellite TV and bootleg DVDs. Or being able to drink and party at home, or hang out with girls at coffee shops like the Doors, an inviting place downtown with a large photo of Jim Morrison on what would be the bar if there were any booze, and typical of the many coffee shops that Iranian youths hang out in."
Though Iran bans booze, Majd found it easy to find, as is opium, which is also illegal. He tried a derivative called shir'e, which he describes as like heroin, but smoked from "a brown paste the color of a Tootsie roll." Some members of an older generation favor it for what he calls "salons" -- discussions in private homes, characteristic of an earlier period.
Iranians, he says, are strong on the distinction between public and private behavior. He points out to readers that the English word "paradise" derives from an Old Persian word for a walled garden.