Last night, going through my Facebook inbox, I found really old messages exchanged with my friend Kourosh, dated from 2008. This was a short time after he had left to study in Italy. Kourosh was advising me to leave Switzerland as well for a while, a country which he felt had become too overwhelming for him.
Kourosh was born and raised in Lausanne, Iranian according to his face and his parents, and Swiss according to his red passport. Switzerland was his home, but he felt he needed to leave. For good or for a while, it was not so clear yet. But after he graduated, he moved to Iran to join the family business of luxury goods.
Now aged 33, it has been five years since he made Tehran his new home. When I talked to him the other day, through Facetime, he answered my very first question in a convincing way: «Yes, I’m really happy and definitely see myself settling here.»
Considered from a distant point of view, you might wonder why a guy who grew up in one of the wealthiest and safest countries in the world would rather reside in a place where a morality police (the «Basij») chase any «non Islamic» signs in the streets, forcing every woman to wear a veil in public or forbidding groups of young people to hang around outside.
Yet, Kourosh did not raise a single complaint about the presumed loss of freedom. «The police is less present than before. It is generally known in what specific times of the year, early summer for example, they will give a little bit of scare.» People simply learn how to deal with it, and for their other needs as well. Facebook banned? Allright, just get a proxy to get your IP address mixed up to pretend you are logged on from China. Wanting some booze? A simple call and you will get it delivered directly at home. And this is not only in the privileged milieu. «Everybody does it, you might simply question the quality of the alcohol», jokes Kourosh.
Kourosh has always been very laid-back and easy-going, not so much into politics. Does that make him an especially good candidate to accept living in a country led by what seems a brute Islamic regime repressing basic rights? «Honestly, here I never ever feel threatened.»
Kourosh’s older brother Bahman doesn’t feel completely the same: «The fear factor is always present». Bahman, who works in the luxury business as well, constantly has the idea of moving to Iran in the back of his mind. Instead, his job offered him a position in Paris, where he moved two years ago, letting him postpone the time for «the big questions», in other words, to decide where to settle. The election of the seemingly more open-minded Hassan Rohani and the recent negociations with USA made him hopeful that «Iran could be «normalized» through the eyes of the world», and he could find his place there. Yet, according to him, «it did not go as planned» and for his own sake, Bahman «would not move somewhere, unless it is with a clear project».
Bahman studied International relations in Geneva and you could certainly define him as political. Just check his Facebook profile, that he renamed Bahman Irani in 2009. The year when thousands of Iranians went down the streets of Tehran to raise their voice during the government election. What is now known as the Green movement grew bigger in reaction of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection and got violently repressed. More than a hundred people were killed, thousands injured.
Deeply moved, Bahman got involved, organizing demonstrations of solidarity in Lausanne. What about being an activist in Iran? «I was always too impressed by the intellectual speeches of the students and did not feel I would master the language well enough.» And, mostly, an easy answer to a simple question he had asked himself: «Was I ready to die for a cause?»
Still, Bahman often goes back to Iran to visit his family, as his parents settled back there like Kourosh. «Yes I feel good in the safe and wealthy Switzerland, where people freak out when the train is one minute late. But I also can find my satisfaction in a country ruled by a dictatorship, where freedom of speech is completely repressed, where Internet does not work, where crossing the street is dangerous. Anyway, I feel home and I respect this country, even if people might call it rubbish.»
Many Iranians who grew up abroad like Bahman and Kourosh, or who left Iran to study are facing the question of whether they shall return. «Our parents had to escape their country after the fall of the Shah, when all their belongings where confiscated», explains Bahman. They did not really choose to settle in Switzerland and though «our parents adapted and became swiss in a citizen way, they, especially our Dad, has always been and will remain Iranian. He would have trouble defining his identity as swiss». In other joking words: «He would love a good Vaud sausage but will never go singing with the Cossonay choral on Thursday night!»
Some of the exiles would never set a foot in Iran again, because of the regime. «Those who decide to settle back are well aware that it is far from perfect, but they are ready to find their way there, despite the troubles.»
And this, not only because Iran is their homeland, but also because, as Bahman perceives it: «Western world seems saturated, not letting any space for self-fulfillment». Not mentioning the various political turmoils. «Is United Kingdom conveying such a perfect model when a Tony Blair decides to bomb Iraq? What about Switzerland who votes against minarets, in other words, against its population of Muslim confession?»
Yet, growing up in Switzerland, you might have get used to a certain freedom of speech and movement, which is clearly not the case in Iran. How to deal with that? Kourosh’s answer struck me: «Here, I am doing everything I would do in Switzerland. Even more. Of course, as long as you have a job and you can afford it.»
In Lausanne, where Bahman and Kourosh grew up, they would meet their friends on the weekends, go out in bars and clubs. In Tehran instead, Kourosh and his friends meet in each other’s places, sometimes transforming family houses into a nightclub, gathering more than a hundred of people. «This is where boys and girls have a chance to get to know each other as well. Or they go on countryside houses.» Kourosh speaks of course from his point of view of well-off Iranian, who grew up abroad, which is the case for most of his group of friends there. Thus, they are evolving in a circle where their Western way of life can naturally be pursued.
For the more popular class, young people find other strategies. No houses to meet? No worries, car becomes their social space. Like the «Dor-dor» («turn turn») strategy for example, as Kourosh explains it to me. «There are specific roads in Tehran and other cities where you will find cars filled with groups of boys or groups of girls and they turn around for hours chasing each other.» Boys would drive with open windows and girls with their windows shut. If guys see a car they like, they approach and if the girls open the window, it means they like them too and they start to chat, joke and possibly exchange their numbers. Then, they all start again with other cars. «I never did it myself, says Kourosh, but it happened that I got struck into a traffic jam because of the cars stopped to interact.»
But people from the various classes can also enjoy more typical western hipsterish activity. «The new trend is to go on gallery hopping on Friday, along with nice restaurants and coffee-shops around», says Kourosh. They are established in the fancy neighbourhood of Shemiran, in the north part of Tehran. «I know at least twenty galleries there». One of Kourosh’s friends who grew up in Paris opened 3 or 4 art galleries in the area.
«Art is particularly present in Iran, and I really started to get into the art world since I am here. You are nearly naturally obliged to get interested in the arts in Iran, the history, the architecture, but also the nature. In Switzerland, I feel we get used to unnecessary things. In Iran, people start from a young age to do camping, enjoy outdoors. They love to do picnics in parks, inside or outside of town.» In Tehran there is for example the Park-e Mellat (park of the Nation), an equivalent of Central Park. Bahman jokes: «The regime loves to celebrate the martyrs of Shia Islam, it gives many days off to Tehranis, and a lot of them enjoy going to Caspian Sea.»
There, I was struck. Not to discover that Iranians were not confined to enjoy their free time indoor, but to wonder why Kourosh had never managed to do these kinds of things in Switzerland, which was his home as well after all, and a country certainly offering its share of outdoor activities.
Bahman would maybe explain this paradox. «In Switzerland, I challenge myself more, and I am always self-conscious towards the norms I try to adjust with. Yes I am Swiss, I feel Swiss, I talk like a Swiss, but somehow, the image people are sending me of myself is the one of a stranger.» There though, you have to picture a young man of 34, looking more European than Iranian, and in my opinion completely fitting the cosmopolitan environment we both grew up in. Yet, it was what Bahman had been sensed in Switzerland.
«Sometimes when I am in Iran, I could be driving around to visit the country, and feeling free like nowhere else in the world.»
Although Bahman and Kourosh had been born and raised in Switzerland, no matter how much they would appreciate it and make it their home, the process of naturalization would probably never equal this natural feeling of contempt they seemed to be experiencing in Iran.
No matter the lack of freedom the Iranian society officially had to face, camping on the land where your ancestors set foot, might feel more satisfying than a night out in the Alps, no matter how green the grass is and democratic the country.
For how long then?
Bahman and Kourosh’s parents, according to Bahman, never really managed to integrate in Switzerland and they always had the plan to eventually settle back in Iran. Yet they are lucky enough to manage travelling back and forth, able to escape once in a while the suffocation either felt in Iran or Switzerland. Thus, probably getting the best of both worlds. As for Kourosh, who often comes to Switzerland for work.
If Kourosh seems genuinely happy and determined to remain in Tehran, I wonder where Bahman will eventually decide to settle, whether it would be Switzerland or Iran. Or somewhere else, where he could maybe experience another kind of freedom, a more individually shaped one, emancipated from the norms of either adaptation or origins.
(Friends of Kourosh advised him to remain as discrete as possible, therefore both Kourosh and Bahman real names and some places have been modified.)