TRAVEL

How "normal" can a nation be that so often exudes defiance and antagonism? With a belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the forefront of most minds when it comes to Iran, what could a visitor expect to find in the county? Do women lead a normal life despite a draconian police ready to punish the most basic transgressions of wardrobe? Does the Islamic conservatism of the post-revolutionary era make for a sheltered youth?

Recently, I was interested in answering some of these questions. As a citizen of Singapore, I am entitled to a 14-day visa-free entry into Iran. I was prepared for a land of religious police and tight censorship. While that depiction may well be true, what I found was something more banal: a world not much different from the Westernized life to which I am accustomed.

Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the country's subsequent international political and economic isolation have largely stripped it of the bohemian appeal it held in the 1960s as a hippie destination. The country has been so starved of tourism that Ahmadinejad has sought to attract the politically curious by proposing tours of Iranian nuclear facilities, and has offered financial incentives to tour agencies who manage to lure in any foreigners.

When I landed at Mehrabad Airport, I cautiously wrapped my scarf tightly around my head, only to be later told by a friend that I looked "too Arab." She then taught me how to wear it loosely like most women do in Tehran.

I then began exploring Tehran, described in tour guides as an over-polluted metropolis that one should only visit in transit. Every corner of the city is developing, with construction cranes towering over new apartment blocks and a relatively modern subway system spidering its way into every corner of the sprawling city. It took a day or two to get used to the air, as Tehran is tucked into the slopes of the Elburz Mountains, and the smog from the multitude of small, boxy cars running on propane tends to sit heavily over the city. Who's driving? I wondered.

To find out, I followed my friend to her driving lesson. Given the chaotic traffic, this was perhaps the scariest experience I had in Iran. The driving instructor gossiped about her latest student, a religious woman wearing a full chador with only her eyes showing. She joked about how the bulky outfit would constrain the woman from turning the steering wheel properly.

While some women are fully covered in black, others - called "muhajababes" - push the margins of permissiveness in Islamic dress to the maximum. The women tend to be young, not surprising in a country with three-quarters of its population under the age of 30. Bulky hair under headscarves and Western fashion are all the rage. A trip to an apartment-cum-beauty salon full of Iranian women primping for the feast of Novruz gave me a deeper sense of the country's people. While I was getting my eyebrows threaded, a lady in her 60s waxed philosophical about the cultural differences between London and Tehran. In London, one could get away with anything, but not in Tehran, she said. In Tehran, appearances were important as every detail of one's self was scrutinized by others. Intense physical consciousness is quintessentially Persian, my friend later explained to me. It goes beyond appearances to a strong sense of pride in having what Iranians regard as a superior culture and history. You might call Iranians the French of the Middle East.

The analogy applies to politics, too. For example, I asked a middle-aged man what he felt about the tension between Iran and the United States. With the prickliness of a Charles de Gaulle, he answered: "Other countries telling Iran not to develop nuclear weapons is bullying. We do not oppose nuclear technology, even though most Iranians do not agree with the regime. We have an even deeper mistrust of the US. When it comes down to it, most Iranians would rather side with Iran than with the US."

That sentiment is common in Iran. Many are unhappy with the current regime and pine for cultural freedoms and a more modern outlook, but ever since former President Mohammed Khatami failed in his attempts at reform, many Iranians have calculated that getting involved in politics just wasn't worth the trouble. They're keeping their heads down, but I sensed that Iranians believed they could make their country a "great nation" again someday. They want to do so themselves, though, not via Western meddling.

After Tehran, my friend and I headed south to Isfahan and Shiraz, two of Iran's most beautiful cities. Isfahan is home to stunning examples of classic Persian Islamic architecture, while Persepolis, a UNESCO World Heritage site near Shiraz, easily rivals the Acropolis in its ancient splendor. Even the government seems to have sadly forgotten the country's splendid history and culture. The current political climate has meant that excavation and preservation of Iran's most ancient sites are simply inadequate.

As for daily routine, I thought that television surely would be filled with firebrand radicals, minimal Western influence, and a dearth of racy situations on shows. Yet almost everyone in Iran has satellite dishes that air foreign programs and movies. Talk shows like Oprah, American movies, and Arab music channels are commonly viewed all over Iran - though there is an amusing suspicion that the government somehow disrupts the satellite connection in the evenings when viewing reaches its peak. Some local programs openly tackle subjects such as drug use and prostitution in Tehran. Beyond this, I had full access to the Internet, where I blogged about my travels for the US-based Foreign Policy magazine's Passport blog.

There certainly may be evil lurking in Iran - the defiant 50,000 rial banknote showing electrons flying around a map of the country was released during my visit - yet, it isn't evil that is immediately obvious. In that sense, smelly cars, women laboring over their appearances, and full access to global media and entertainment, weren't much different than what I observe in my life in Washington. That isn't to say that there is no repression in Iran, or objectionable thought, or striking contrasts - it's merely to say that that hallmarks of the regular can seem regular in the most unlikely of places.

Diyana Ishak is the program administrator for the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has previously contributed to Foreign Policy magazine and the BBC Persian Service. She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.