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Chapter 3: A Dissident Neighborhood
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Chapter 3 A Dissident Neighborhood Shahrak-e Gharb, Dalghak-e Gharb (Shahrak-e Gharb mimes the West). Faith, No more! —Wall graffiti in Shahrak-e Gharb In 1994, Shahrak-e Gharb was a hot news topic among Iranians. A story, about which the official media and the state were entirely silent, spread through the country and even to outside Iran, where foreign broadcasts (of which BBC, Radio Israel, and the Voice of America were the most popular in Iran) sent the news back to Iran.1 The story was about the mysterious death of a teenage boy (we shall call him Babak) at his birthday party in Shahrak-e Gharb. In the absence of his parents, he had arranged a party in their apartment in a high building in Zone 1 in Shahrak-e Gharb. Young boys and girls mingled, drank homemade vodka, and danced to illicit music. Basijis stationed in Shahrak-e Gharb were informed and sent a patrol to investigate. When they rushed into the apartment, Babak fled to the balcony. Frightened of the punishment awaiting him, he tried to jump to the neighbor’s balcony. He did not make it and fell to his death. This was the officials’ version. However , no one was recognized as responsible for the incident. The tragedy of Babak underlined the reputation of Shahrak-e Gharb as a neighborhood distinct from other parts of Tehran—a neighborhood with a more liberal attitude toward sex and youth culture, a neighborhood constantly in conflict with basijis and the moral police. As it is formulated in Tehran, Shahrak-e Gharb is “a different world.” My interest in this neighborhood was sparked by all the rumors I heard and read about Sharak-e Gharb long before I started my fieldwork. In this chapter, I examine how young people of Shahrak-e Gharb construct their neighborhood identity as a space of defiance against the dominant social order. Shahraki identity is forged by dissociating from poor, “traditional,” “local” (all favorable attributes according to the Islamic regime) South Tehran. With the help of ethnographic glimpses, I shall try to show how supposedly “modern” (motajaded) and globalized young people in Shahrak-e Gharb distance themselves from the identity imposed upon them by emphasizing their individuality or by linking themselves to the transnational youth culture. But first I shall present a picture of the wider urban milieu in Tehran, and the geography of the city as a whole. Tehran Until 1796, when Agha Mohammad Khan, founder of the Qajar dynasty , chose Tehran as his capital, Tehran was an unimportant little town. Unlike other large Iranian cities like Isfahan and Shiraz, Tehran lacks Oriental features, that is, Islamic urban planning, with elegant mosques or palaces. Tehran is a giant Third World “city without memory ” (Pakravan 1971: 9). Tehran is situated on the southern slopes of the Alborz mountains, almost 100 km south of the Caspian Sea, at an elevation of 1100 meters above sea level. Although it has been the capital for more than two centuries , its urban development did not begin until the 1930s. The inflow of migrants from rural areas and little towns to Tehran has been increasing dramatically since the 1960s (Bayat 1997: 29). After the Revolution , refugees from the Iran-Iraq war, as well as from Afghanistan, have further contributed to the enlargement of the population. Usually poor and unskilled workers from various ethnic backgrounds, they have settled in the slums of southern Tehran. The city has gradually encompassed the surrounding satellite towns and villages. For the past three decades, the population has grown from barely 4 million in 1966 to over 6 million in 1986. In a similar way, according to the mayor of Tehran, the land area of Tehran has expanded from 200 square kilometers in the first year of the Revolution (1980) to 600 square kilometers in 1992 (Bayat 1997: 79). Until the 1960s, the urban structure in Tehran was concentrated around the bazaar. In today’s Tehran, this area is situated in the southern part of the city. Northern Tehran, with its green spaces and beautiful calm gardens at the foot of the mountains was the summer resort of the city dwellers. Because of its location, Tehran grew along a sloping north-south axis. The resulting difference in altitude reflects the socioeconomic hierarchy , making the north-south duality a salient feature of the urban structure . The north, with its green spaces, more moderate climate, and beautiful vistas, is the home of the affluent Tehranis...