Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran

1. On her trip to Iran to report on the 2005 presidential election, Moaveni encounters many Iranians who are boycotting the vote to register their disapproval with the government. (44) Others, however, plan to participate despite their opposition to the mullahs, because they wish to shape the outcome. Compare these two perspectives of ethicality versus practicality. Discuss whether voting under an authoritarian regime adds to the government’s legitimacy. Are those who choose to abstain also somehow complicit in what unfolds? What would you choose to do in such a situation?

2. Moaveni writes of Iran in 2005, “Iranians accustomed to a bland, mullah-controlled existence lacking in entertainment and retail prospect had never faced so much choice” (47). Compare her portrait of Iran at that moment with the more repressive society she describes in the book’s final pages.

3. In exploring the shock victory of the hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Moaveni learns that he ran on a platform of more jobs and economic change. The new president’s radical Islamic ideology was as much a shock to Iranians as it was to everyone else in the world. Discuss whether the real circumstances surrounding the president’s victory were effectively reported by the Western media. Did you assume that Ahmadinejad reflected Iranians’ true worldview?

4. Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel laureate, appears as a character throughout the book. How would you describe her?

5. Compare Arash and Azadeh’s attitudes to the Shia festival of Ashoura (119). How do their views reflect their respective experiences with Islam, and Islam’s intersection with politics?

6. Does Azadeh’s description of the government’s premarriage class (141), with its frank discussion of sex and liberal attitudes toward marriage and divorce, resonate with your understanding of Iran as a fundamentalist nation?

7. Was it foolish for Azadeh to risk her future by getting married under Iranian law?

8. Moaveni writes that “Iran has struggled for centuries to reconcile the Islamic and Persian traditions.” The tension between these two pasts recurs throughout the book. Discuss what it means for Iran to be a Persian, as opposed to Arab, nation, and how this history influences Iranians’ identity today (159).

9. Azadeh and Arash argue frequently about Islam, specifically whether the faith should be judged by its core tenets or by the realities of its modern adherents (168). What do you think?

10. In the chapter entitled “The Persian Bride’s Handbook,” Azadeh describes a society enthralled with extravagant weddings. What parallels do you see between the Iranian and the American wedding industries? What does the desire for such productions, the willingness to spend beyond one’s means, say about our societies?

11. As she chronicles Iranians’ attitudes toward their government’s support for groups like Hezbollah, Azadeh portrays a moderate society that frowns upon radicalism and yearns for respectable ties with the outside world (208-216). Is her depiction surprising, given how Iran is typically portrayed in the media? Is it convincing?

12. Discuss Azadeh’s interaction with the family she describes in the chapter “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” How do Azadeh’s attitudes toward her reporting and the Iranians she interacts with evolve throughout the book?

13. The history of Iran-U.S. relations, particularly the impact of the two countries’ troubled relationship on the daily lives of Iranians, is discussed throughout the book. Arash describes how U.S. economic sanctions keep Microsoft from developing Farsi software, effectively denying millions of Iranians access to computer-based learning. We learn that sanctions bar Iran from buying American and often European aircraft, and that many civilians die each year from air accidents in shoddy Russian planes. Azadeh also finds that the Bush administration’s democracy promotion fund has prompted a major government crackdown on civil society. She writes that “activists and scholars, the people who were toiling in their respective fields to make Iran a more open society, were being targeted as a result.” Discuss how intimately U.S. policy affects Iranians’ lives.

14. Azadeh questions “whether it was even possible to raise an open-minded, healthy child in a culture that was fundamentalist and anarchic.” Discuss how families cope when trying to impart values that run counter to the mainstream culture around them.

15. Azadeh writes that “paradoxically, authoritarian laws had somehow made Iranian society more tolerant” (282). In her description of young Iranian women’s instrumentalist attitude toward the veil, she interprets the ease with which women shed or don the veil to suit their relationship ambitions as progress. Would you agree that this is progress within a still deeply patriarchal culture, or do you consider it just an extenuation of adjusting to fit the demands of men?

16. The portrait of Iran that emerges throughout Honeymoon in Tehran is often quite complex. Azadeh describes the regime’s censorship of music and literature, but points out that censorship predates the Islamic Republic. In describing how Iranians’ attitudes toward music have evolved in the last century, she notes how the government’s repressiveness once reflected very real culture mores: “Something in our culture nurtures tyranny, and has for centuries.” Discuss the theme of complicity between Iranians and their government.

17. Discuss how Azadeh’s relationship with Mr. X evolves throughout the book.

18. In the Epilogue, Azadeh finds motherhood in the West more challenging and isolating than in Iran. Discuss how cultural norms of family life influence how stay-at-home mothers and working mothers are able to balance their own needs against those of their children.