Tehran or Bust

It is tempting to think of Jamkaran as emblematic of a Shia obsession with the end of days—some have used it to argue that Ahmadinejad's government is seeking nuclear weapons in order to hasten the apocalypse and the return of the Mahdi. But Jamkaran is much more a place for people, admittedly pious, to get away from the rigors of life, and to hope that through their journey here they will somehow be saved. Begging favors of a hidden imam (as preposterous as his presence at the bottom of a well may seem) is not, as far as some Iranians are concerned, that different from Roman Catholic belief in the healing powers of a visit to Lourdes. On this day a group of a half dozen or so women in chadors were picnicking and enjoying themselves under one section of the half-finished extension to the mosque. At the well, I approached a group of young boys dropping notes down to the Mahdi. One of them, trying to peer through the grate into the pitch-black depths, asked me if I had a flashlight. "Do you think there's someone down there?" I asked him. "We want to see," he replied, and I suspected he and his friends were unconvinced by the myth. An older man stood at the counters nearby, deep in thought and jotting down words on a small piece of paper, collecting his thoughts, and then writing some more.

A tall, slender and handsome young woman in a black chador, with the faintest hint of makeup, furiously scribbled at another counter, oblivious to the fact that she was in the men's section. She folded her note, walked up to the well and dropped it through the grate. "A special favor?" I asked her. She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and I explained that I was a reporter. "It's private," she said, "but we all have problems, don't we?" She walked away, perhaps skeptical that I had no ulterior motives. Her answer and her demeanor, however, spoke volumes. She was purposeful and had no time for state-imposed gender segregation. Whatever her "problem" was she didn't want to take it to a mullah in Qum who might lecture her on the fine points of Islam or Islamic behavior. (Indeed, a yearning for the Mahdi can be seen as a rejection of clerical rule, for the ayatollahs exist to defend Islam only in the absence of the Mahdi, and presumably will have outlived their usefulness upon his return to the physical world.) And she felt she had a place to go, on a weekday when perhaps her family or husband were at work, to unburden herself. Other people I talked to, both times I visited, were hoping for everything from a cure for a backache to a relief from debt, and the presence of well-marked infirmaries on the grounds suggests that Iran, a nation of hypochondriacs, is as concerned with survival as it is with salvation.

Just before reaching Tehran's train station, traditionally the southern gateway to the capital, one passes through a neighborhood called Javadieh. Once a notoriously rough area—Tehran's South Bronx or Compton, and nicknamed "Texas" for its Wild West atmosphere—it is rarely visited by most Tehranis even today. Yet the neighborhood is far less seedy than it once was. Modern apartment blocks compete with the older mud-brick buildings crowded onto narrow alleys and streets. New cars are parked everywhere.

This is Ahmadinejad territory. Although the president was actually raised in a lower-middle-class neighborhood farther north, his appeal as a man of the people, an incorruptible and unpretentious politician who has the interests of the poor at heart, is strongest in places like Javadieh. South Tehran is deeply religious, yes, but, more important, working class—suspicious and resentful of authority, particularly if that authority is identified with Iran's wealthy elite (many of whom are clerics). Residents turn out to vote in great numbers, with good reason: the Tehran mayors they've elected, including Ahmadinejad, have transformed this part of the city. Its denizens now enjoy good schools, parks and clean streets, as well as something that was once impossible in a strict class society: hope. Ahmadinejad's health-insurance plans for the poor and doubling of government pensions have won him many fans in Javadieh, but at least as important is his example of a poor-boy-made-good. Often he is respectfully referred to as Dr. Ahmadinejad, to note his Ph.D. (in traffic management).

The freedoms we value so much in the West are nowhere near as attractive as this new social mobility. On the streets of Javadieh, I stopped to talk to a man parking a late-model Pride (basically an -Iranian-made Kia) in front of a butcher shop displaying the heads and feet of sheep on the sidewalk. "In my father's day we could not have imagined owning a car, much less a new one, or taking vacations," he said, adding, "Shokr"—an expression meaning "one must be grateful." As bad as the economy is in Iran, with double-digit inflation (meas-ured in dollars) and unenviable unemployment statistics, every single motorcyclist I saw on Javadieh's traffic-clogged streets had a cell phone poking out of his pocket.

The Middle East's longest street begins at the railway station. Once vaingloriously and eponymously named by the Pahlavi dynasty, it is now Vali-asr Boulevard, and it runs uphill to the very northern extremes of the city. Whereas downtown one sees mostly older men and women dressed conservatively—even shabbily, almost as a badge of pride—jeans, colorful headscarves and gelled hair become more common in the boulevard's northern stretches. At Vanak Circle, a busy intersection with a JumboTron in one corner that unofficially demarcates North Tehran from the rest of the city, I stopped at a newsstand to pick up an English-language newspaper while a young man pushed in front of me to pay for his. I asked him who he thought would win the June 12 elections. "God forbid that anyone but Ahmadinejad does!" he replied. I was taken aback, and he noticed my surprise. "Let Ahmadinejad win," he explained, "and he'll be the downfall of the entire system."