Iridescent Iran

This memoir from Dr. Wendy Coyle, an American who left for Iran at the age of 19 to live in Khorasan and roam the mountains and deserts and explore the heart of Iran captures the years from 1964 to 1978

The Hollywood Salon

We gathered at the Hollywood Salon on Koo-Sangi Street in Mashhad for the latest Western hairstyles: French twists and pixie bangs, teased high hair and feathered tendrils. Accompanied by the sound of Mrs. Hollywood Salon’s scissors and the fumes of hairspray, we encouraged each other to get a driver’s license, to send a daughter to college. We told a new bride how to limit her family size and advised her to put aside money for herself. Around the hair dryer, we agreed a son should choose an educated wife that might work outside the home.

I was happy to feel included at last. In my first few years in Khorasan, the women had been cautious in my presence, withholding their real emotions or thoughts. Of course they had been nice enough, and I hadn’t sensed any reserve, but in my presence, they spoke of superficial matters or said what they thought would please me until they knew my character. And why not? The American habit of telling everything to friend and stranger alike now seemed rude and foolish to me.

New ideas circulated as we looked at pictures and read articles translated from European magazines. And we recited the lyrics and poems of our independent sisters, Gugush, a beloved pop singer, and Forough Farrokhzad, the brilliant poet who’d made her own way and died tragically young. At the salon, away from the black veils, call 48 49 were modern women who came away looking like Natalie Wood, Sandra Dee and Elizabeth Taylor.

Mrs. Five-Star General’s copper lacquered hair clung to her head like the helmet of Darius the Great. It was an appropriate look, for she had come to Mashhad to do battle, to change our conservative city where coeducational schooling, public affection, dancing and drinking were among the many taboos.

To do this, she had formed the Women’s Progressive Council. Tehran had an opera company where imported sopranos with heaving bosoms and European tenors with immense bare arms sang and embraced each other. Shiraz hosted an avant-garde theatre festival with half-naked actors and shocking plots that put Iran on the artistic map. But Mashhad, hometown of a martyred saint, held out against the Shah’s and Empress’ efforts to align its culture with the 20th century West. Now, with the new medal-bedecked general and his wife, rumored to be a friend of a powerful princess, we would have dances and masquerade balls, bands and sock hops and box social dinners to break the barriers of class, religion and gender that kept us backward.