HONEYMOON IN PURDAH

Not a holiday in hell, but no fun-filled romp, either: Canadian journalist Wearing dons the veil and wanders through the mostly barren Iranian countryside “because it frightens me; because it frightens the world . . . [and] I don’t believe in fear.”

She may not believe in fear, but she’ll permit herself a white lie: her Iranian sojourn is not a honeymoon. She is, in fact, not married to her traveling companion, a gay male writer identified only as Ian. Although the pair have been friends for many years, they’ve heard that post-revolutionary Iran is no place for a single woman traveling alone. So, with a gaudy wedding ring on her finger, a good buddy (whom she grows to detest) at her side, and a stifling black polyester Islamic hejab covering her from head to toe, the author endures interminable bus rides, bureaucratic imbroglios, grim hotels, and restaurants where cockroaches clean the plates. But she also finds she has only to struggle with her Farsi phrase book, express frustration with her hands, or glance at a distant landmark for English-speaking Iranians to hop out of the dusty shadows, almost desperate to provide her with food, shelter, conversation, and transportation to faraway shrines. From the gentle Islamic cleric whose hands were boiled in oil by the Shah’s torturers to the (Christian) American missionary whose face is scarred by beatings from the religious police, her hosts are passionately curious about Canada and the West, but they remain proud of the degradations they have endured. Giving only passing attention to the shrines and tourist sites, the author whines incessantly about how stifling, awkward, and physically demeaning her hejab is—as her personal discomfort becomes (she hopes) a metaphor for the physical, mental, and cultural torments Iranian women continue to endure.

A vivid sketch of a lively, wonderfully hospitable, but utterly lost society under the heel of religious tyranny.