"People Are Scared to Death"

There are still pop songs, peddlers and even discos, but life is much changed

Clustered around the kebab and hamburger stalls behind Lala (formerly Farah) Park in downtown Tehran, young members of the postrevolutionary jet set are smoking a little hash and swaying to the music of Gougoush and Shoreh, two Western-style pop singers who have been barred from performing in public by the Khomeini regime. Elsewhere in the downtown area, near Mellat Park on a street that bears the nickname "Hippiabad," vendors sell Top Ten tunes on cassettes, blasting out their wares on expensive Japanese tape decks. In an apartment in North Tehran, at a birthday party for a well-known singer, champagne and Scotch flow as freely as they did in the days before prohibition was imposed last winter.

Such scenes in Tehran are vivid reminders that two worlds coexist uneasily in Iran today. The first, the political world of the revolution, is currently focused on the U.S. embassy, where the crowds--smaller than they were a few weeks ago--still gather to shout anti-American slogans and epithets of Islamic fervor, especially when cameramen are on hand. This world also includes the universities and technical schools, the late-night meetings of the supreme Revolutionary Council, the intraoffice struggles within many government ministries and the intense rivalry between the new Pasdaran revolutionary militia and the now eclipsed armed forces.

Surprisingly, the cataclysmic events of the past year have not drastically affected a second world that includes millions of Iranians, both city dwellers and peasants, who are struggling to maintain a semblance of normality in their lives. Tehran's traffic, which may be the worst in the world, is as bad as ever, and so is the smog. Most people still go to work and shop at corner groceries or reasonably well-stocked supermarkets. Their children still go to school, although classroom discipline is poor after a year of revolution. In the suburbs of North Tehran, people still line up to eat in a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant (whose English-language signs, following a franchise dispute, now read simply FRIED CHICKEN). It is still possible to buy certain foreign-made luxury items, such as French perfume, that have been smuggled in from Europe. Sidewalk vendors with boiled sugar beets, pistachio nuts and sunflower seeds still do business in the streets. Peddlers hawk everything from blue jeans to plastic kitchen utensils. Even some discotheques continue to operate, illegally but discreetly, serving soda instead of booze. But there is a flourishing black market in liquor: Scotch, bootlegged from Iraq, sells for $60 to $90 a bottle and moonshine vodka from $15 to $30.

A few items are in short supply. The government has banned the import of new cars, and spare parts for old ones are scarce. "Our people have learned to live under seemingly impossible conditions," notes a history teacher. Thus many of the people who trumpet their willingness to undergo "martyrdom" are also hoarding essential commodities as rumors of imminent scarcity spread. "I am ready to die for Iran and Islam," says a Tehran carpenter who has stockpiled about 100 packets of detergent powder in his bedroom. "In the meantime," he explains, "I prefer to have clean linen." Most essential imports, including food, that were formerly bought from the U.S. now come from other countries --wheat and beef from Australia, rice from Pakistan and Thailand, eggs and poultry from Turkey and Rumania.

Nonetheless, daily life in Tehran is full of reminders of changes wrought by the revolution. Besides the new paper money, there are old bills in circulation that bear the likeness of the deposed Shah; on some notes his image has been overprinted with Islamic designs. Television carries the occasional old American and European movie but devotes most of its programming to news coverage of demonstrations, speeches by Khomeini and the like. Every night, as part of the "mobilization" of 20 million Iranian youths, TV audiences are given instruction in how to operate an automatic rifle or a submachine gun.

A year ago, the staple fare in Iranian moviehouses consisted of the latest releases from the West, including a generous dollop of soft-core porn. Today strict censorship prevails, and the sellouts are movies with revolutionary, and preferably anti-American, themes. A big current hit is State of Siege, Costa Gavras' 1973 indictment of CIA activities in a Latin American country, for which Tehran moviegoers are paying ticket scalpers three times the regular admission price of $1.25. Iranians can also see occasional features produced by their own flourishing film industry, which until recently was noted mostly for its output of erotica but is now in the business of dramatizing the revolution.

Pressure from Islamic extremists forced Tehran's two leading daily newspapers to close down last May. They were replaced by papers more openly committed to the Khomeini line. Officially, however, freedom of the press is not curtailed, and kiosks still sell American and European magazines (including TIME, despite the expulsion of its correspondents) as well as the International Herald Tribune. There are also several lively opposition publications. One of the most critical of the revolution, though not of Khomeini himself, is Khalq Musalman, organ of the Muslim Peoples' Republican Party, which is supported by the moderate Ayatullah Seyed Kazem Sharietmadari.

In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, Iranian women went on the offensive to protect the rights they had gained during the Shah's regime. Led largely by educated, middle-class women, street demonstrations protested Khomeini's attempts to revive the chador. The women won their point: the chador remained optional. Even so, Iranian women wearing Western dress on the streets are sometimes subject to insults and harassment.

Whether the rights of women are sufficiently protected under the new constitution is a major issue. The constitution approved last month abolished a 1967 law that restricted the number of wives a man could have by making additional marriages conditional upon the consent of his first wife. In effect, this clause had abolished polygamy in Iran. The new laws permit an Iranian man to have four wives if he is capable of treating them all equally; since that judgment is left to the man himself to decide, it is obviously not enforceable. Previous legislation also gave women the same divorce rights as their husbands, as well as the possibility of being granted custody of their children in the event of a separation. No longer. In questions of custody, all males of both sides of a family, including the wife's own uncle, now take precedence over the wife as potential legal guardians.

Upper-class women in particular feel that their career hopes will be curtailed by the revolution. Says one elementary school teacher: "Women are being thrown out of their jobs on all manner of pretexts and being replaced by men. The only reason I'm still employed is that only reason I'm still employed is that there is an extreme shortage of teachers." A housewife with four children acidly sums up Khomeini's vision of female life: "We are supposed to be good mothers and then go to heaven. Very holy but not very practical."

If Iranian city dwellers have a serious common complaint, it is that the revolution has led to a sharp slowdown in the economy. Few factories are operating anywhere near capacity. Most privately owned companies have been taken over by the government-run Mostazafin Foundation, which inherited the assets of the deposed Shah's Pahlavi Foundation, or are being run by workers' councils. For the most part, these councils have shown themselves to be short on management skills and quick to vote themselves wage increases, fringe benefits and reduced working hours.

Hardest hit is the construction industry, which has come to an almost total halt. Dozens of huge apartment complexes in Tehran stand unfinished. One example of the pervasive industrial malaise is the Melli shoe factory, which used to export 11 million pairs of shoes a year to the Soviet bloc. Production at the Melli plant, now run by production at the Melli plant, now run by a workers' council, is down to 2 million pairs a year, scarcely enough for domestic consumption. The council claims that the problem is lack of spare parts and materials; the real problem is the council's ineptitude.

In Khuzistan, the big agribusinesses have been split into small-acreage plots by revolutionary farm workers, and production has dropped. Elsewhere in the countryside, farmers have grabbed land belonging to "feudal lords." Ironically, some feudal families, in the name of the revolution, have forcibly reclaimed land that had been distributed to peasant farmers during the Shah's reign. To reduce urban unemployment, the new regime is pressing a "return to the village" policy, hoping to send back to the farms some of the millions of peasants who migrated to cities during the past generation.

Tehran officials tend to scoff at Washington's recent prediction that as the result of U.S. economic pressures, Iranians this winter would be "cold and hungry." Boasts Iran's Oil Minister Ali Akhbar Moinfar: "When you have oil revenues of $80 million or $90 million a day, you can always do business." Moinfar insists that the U.S. embargo on sales of oil equipment to Iran will not be insurmountable because "we have had no difficulty buying whatever we want through third par ties." As for reports that the departure of foreign technicians has caused problems in the oil industry, Moinfar declares: "I have piles of applications on my desk from experts who are eager to return."

Despite such official optimism, it is obvious that many Iranians are very nervous about their future. "In the bazaar, nobody will give anybody credit any more," says Siamak Akha-van, a young businessman who runs his family's steel-importing company from the Tehran bazaar. "The system usually operates on a man's word. These days only cash works." The banks, suffering from a loss of both talented employees and nerve, have curtailed credit. "Most of them don't even have a manager," complains Akhavan, who predicts that "we are going to have to live with 100% inflation." (The present rate is 25%.) Still, Akhavan is hopeful that the Islamic republic will be sufficiently flexible in its policies to revive the economy.

One significant change that the revolution brought to Iran has been the altered role of the armed forces. Like so many of the Shah's monuments--the industrial complexes that now stand idle, the telecommunications system that no longer works flawlessly--the army has found its role curtailed. In November, when the central government fought off a thrust for autonomy by Kurdish rebels, it did so by sending to Kurdistan a specially formed division made up of army and air force units. Why not a regular army division? Either because the army did not have a unit that was deemed capable of doing the job, or because the government does not altogether trust the army. Suspicion that the army has not yet proved its loyalty is a basic motive behind the formation of the Pasdaran (literally, Guardians), the revolutionary militia.

The army was entrusted with the task of training and equipping the Pasdaran, an assignment the army deeply resented for two reasons: the army itself faced a shortage of equipment and a cutback in supplies, while the Pasdaran had a seemingly limitless budget. Army leaders did not hide their satisfaction when the Pasdaran, basically an urban force, fared badly in mountain warfare against the Kurds. The army, by contrast, refused to be drawn into hit-and-run encounters with the insurgents.

The rivalry between the army and the Pasdaran has not deterred the revolutionary regime from its aim of setting up an independent force whose loyalty is beyond question. Pasdaran units were flown to Tabriz from Tehran last month to quell unrest in Azerbaijan. At last count, the Pasdaran numbered about 20,000, or roughly two-thirds of its planned total strength.

The army is also suffering from a drastic drop in discipline. Top-ranking officers have been retired (or in some cases executed), and a mullah who acts as a kind of spiritual commisar has been attached to every unit down to the battalion level. Says a young soldier: "In the Shah's army, if you did not obey your officers, you were punished. Today you can argue with them because many of them are afraid to punish you." In addition, the break with the U.S. has halted the flow of spare parts and has deprived Iran's armed forces of essential U.S. maintenance crews. As a result, a good proportion of the $10.3 billion worth of military hardware purchased by the Shah in the past decade is out of service.

The strengthening of the Pasdaran may be good for the Khomeini regime's internal security, but the weakening of the army does not bode well for the survival of a nation afflicted by powerful autonomy movements. Last week, as the first real snowfall of the winter fell on Tehran, the mood of the capital was one of unease. Remarked a businessman: "Any impression that life is normal is purely an illusion. The professionals, the government people, the idea men who keep a country moving are all scared to death." A university professor agreed. Said he: "Nobody I know expects things to go on this way much longer. But neither does anybody have any idea which way things are going to blow."

The well-to-do of North Tehran are adapting to the strange new realities, but not without a sense of bitter irony. An Iranian exile in Los Angeles recalls a recent telephone talk with a friend who is still in Tehran. "How are things going?" he asked. "Well, it's all right," she answered grimly. "We have very slim figures because there is no vegetable oil or margarine, and fortunately we don't have too much meat, which is bad for the body anyway. The mullahs have done so much good for us. We don't need to eat, really, and since we're devout Muslims who are supposed to abstain and fast, we do abstain and fast. Anyway, what's the good in going to parties? What's the good in dancing or wanting to be in the company of others? Why don't we just sit at home and read the Koran? Our Arabic has become so good lately, and we know the Koran by heart. I really read that holy book every night." -

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