Paradox and power in Iran

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ

The Paradox of Modern Iran

Hooman Majd

Doubleday: 288 pp., $24.95

Not long ago, while visiting family in Tehran, I found myself in an elevator with an elderly Iranian man. When the doors opened at our floor, we both instinctively took a step back and beckoned the other forward. Thus was launched that uniquely Iranian social ritual of exaggerated politesse called ta'arouf -- a self-deprecation contest to see who can subordinate himself more.

"After you," the man said, gesturing toward the open door.

"No," I said, stepping farther back into the elevator. "After you."

"I insist," the man replied.

"I cannot," I responded.

"I am your servant," he said.

"I am your slave," I answered, my back now pressed against the elevator wall.

The ritualized back-and-forth continued for a few more seconds, each of us staking out a position at opposite corners of the elevator, until the doors shut and the elevator continued to the next floor.

I have never figured out how to explain this absurd yet quintessentially Iranian custom to my non-Iranian friends. Ta'arouf is more than a mere social ritual, it is a cultural imperative, one most Iranians are born with and most Americans find incomprehensible.

So much of Iran is an enigma. It is not just the baroque social customs or the hyperbolic nationalism; it is the inherent paradox of a country at once modern and ancient, Persian and Islamic, morally lax in private yet utterly puritanical in public -- a country in which condoms are passed out for free and sex education is taught to young girls, but where an adult man and woman can be thrown in jail for holding hands on the street.

Hooman Majd's "The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran" is perhaps the best book yet written on the contradictions of contemporary Iran. The son of an Iranian diplomat, and the grandson of an eminent ayatollah, Majd grew up mostly in England and the U.S., but he frequently travels to Iran and has served as a translator and unofficial advisor to both the current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his predecessor, the reformist cleric Muhammad Khatami.

Majd's dual background, not to mention his unprecedented access over the last decade to two of Iran's most prominent politicians, provides him with a deeply informed perspective on the religion, politics and culture of Iran. Part memoir, part travelogue, part cultural criticism, "The Ayatollah Begs to Differ" captures like no book in recent memory the ethos of the country, in elegant and precise prose.