Celebrating Press Freedom
In Tehran, Arash Sadeghbeigi goes under the skin of the city
Friday was World Press Freedom Day, a UN-designated holiday that I’ve come to almost dread. Each year on this day, Reporters without Borders publishes its World Press Freedom Index, offering a global snapshot of the climate and conditions in which journalists must work around the world. And as has been the case for a number of years now, the picture is deeply disturbing. There are the devastating numbers of journalists killed in Gaza and the lack of international insistence on protecting reporters. The US has dropped to 55th place in the world, based largely on the industry’s economic struggles and the increasing attacks on media that undermine trust. And in a year of elections around the globe, media censorship and intimidation continues, with numerous countries mimicking Russia’s censorship strategies.
But annual appearance of the World Press Freedom Index is also a moment to stand in awe of the journalists who continue to do this work, fighting to inform citizens, sharing stories that matter and that move us, even at tremendous personal risk.
And the report’s appearance reminded me of one of my all time favorite pieces we’ve commissioned, in which Iranian writer Arash Sadeghbeigi interviews a sex worker while considering his own role as a reporter in Tehran. The piece is sweet, funny and complex. Sadeghbeigi describes a midnight trip to a vet, his run-ins with various blackmarket kingpins and the occasional absurdity of his work. The story itself is also an act of courage; RSF currently ranks Iran 176th for press freedom out of the 180 countries on the list.
Our entire Tehran issue is special, particularly given how little most of us the US hear from Iranian journalists. But it’s not unique. We have long worked with reporters in some of the most challenging environments in the world, bringing together stories to give nuanced portraits of different places. I share many of those stories in these newsletters every Sunday and we appreciate your reading them.
Last week, I was honored to have the opportunity to talk to
at about these efforts and why we’re devoted to building an ecosystem for writers and photographers around the world.
Take a listen—and then please leave your thoughts in the comments! In a time when we need global journalism more than ever, I’d love to hear some of your favorite places to read such work in the comments. Or share your favorite pieces from Stranger’s Guide.
Finally I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you to become a paid subscriber and help us spread the word about Stranger’s Guide. We can’t do this without you.
Abby
Art University of Tehran. Tehran. 2014. Photograph by Newsha Tavakolian/Magnum Photos
“Under the Skin of the City,” Arash Sadeghbeigi, trans. Salar Abdoh. Stranger’s Guide: Tehran.
It was 2 a.m. by the time the assistant at the 24-hour clinic held the cat down so the veterinarian could administer the vaccine. Golshan, my wife, had named the animal an hour earlier at the park where we’d gone to eat roasted corn. Jamshid, as this cat was now known, turned out to be a bit of an odd creature from the get go, sneezing in my face every few minutes. I didn’t know what the sneeze was about, and I wasn’t curious enough to care. But it was already too late—Golshan had her heart set on the animal, and here we were. As the stout and kindly vet was finishing up with the shot, Golshan went upstairs to get the starter kit a new cat owner needs. I noticed a stirring in the cat; Jamshid suddenly sprang to its feet and sprinted past me. The object of Jamshid’s wrath turned out to be a white terrier strutting uninvited into the examination room. Behind the dog sashayed its owner, whom I guessed to be, well, a prostitute.
In Tehran, and I suppose other places, the look of a prostitute often has to do with a certain “too-muchness.” This visitor threw down the file that the assistant had made her carry, then sat facing me. She seemed disoriented and reeked of alcohol, her makeup an over-the-top mélange of exaggerated lines and her mustard-colored silk manteau and hijab excessively bright but matching.
The vet picked up the dog and asked, “What’s wrong with Diesel?”
The pet’s owner replied in a raspy voice: “Not a thing.”
Her heels were no less than six inches high. She took the shawl off her head to reveal a patch of hair coagulated with blood. She appeared to have a nasty cut in there somewhere.
The vet turned bright red. He let go of Diesel. “What happened?” he asked, concerned.
“Some idiot hit me on the head with a bottle.”
The vet gently parted her hair to examine the wound. “You need to get yourself to a hospital. You’ll need stitches.”
She pushed his hands away and squeezed his cheeks. “Baby, if I wanted to go to the hospital, would I come here?”
“They’ll need to take a scan of you.”
“Hospital means trouble. They’re going to have a thousand questions for me. Take care of this yourself, darling.”
Then she turned her attention to me and spoke like a radio announcer. “I apologize, sir, for barging in here in the middle of your visit. It’s a real emergency, as you can see.”
I muttered something about it not being a problem. I glanced at Jamshid and ran a hand over the cat, which was backing away from the newcomers.
While the assistant was busy cleaning and sterilizing the wound and the vet was getting his tools ready, the woman told us her story. She wasn’t shy about it, and looked my way from time to time to see if I registered the proper degree of amazement. Apparently, her customer that night was someone who liked insults and varying doses of terror. The money he forked over for his kink was not just good; it was fantastic. But as the night grew long and they got busier, his sadism went a notch above the usual, and he ended up hitting his beloved with a non-alcoholic beer bottle. The blow was serious enough that she passed out for a minute. When she opened her eyes, the guy had her in his embrace, crying and dabbing cotton balls to her head. Minutes later, while she was throwing him out of her place, he pleaded to let him take her to the hospital. Not a chance. She shut the door in his face, put on her clothes and picked up Diesel. She resolved to come to the safest person she knew in the city.
The vet was still waiting for the area around the wound to get numb before he started with the stitches. He asked, “Your client brought that bottle he hit you with?”
“He did.”
“You can be certain when he was buying that bottle he knew exactly what he was going to do with it.”
Golshan reappeared with a gray litter box and a large bag filled with knick-knacks for the sneezing cat. She took one.
I muttered a barely audible “I’ll explain later” and turned my attention back to the vet and his charge.
“But the poor guy is generous,” the woman said.
“Who is generous?” the vet asked as he sewed her up. “The sadist guy?”
“Yes, him. Imagine I was throwing him out of my apartment, and he kept throwing more bills at me. I mean, big bills. I made a killing tonight.”
“You can be sure that part of the evening was also planned in advance.”
During the interval when the lady of the night, the vet, the dog, the cat and Golshan were doing a version of a goodbye, I did what any self-respecting reporter would do: I nosed inside the woman’s file (her dog’s, actually) and took a photo of her telephone number. Then, as soon as we were outside the clinic, I said to Golshan, “Unbelievable. What kind of a whore was that?”
Golshan’s silence told me she did not appreciate the vocabulary I had just used. Once we were home and the cat was mildly settled, she finally said, “Not whore. A sex worker.”
It wasn’t an argument I’d win. Besides, entering the woman’s number in my cell phone with the title of “worker” made things a lot easier. I planned to give her number to the city room team the next day. They were bound to get something good out of her. But that never happened. Between the everyday madness of living and working in Tehran, the new cat and its never-ending health problems—and the onset of the pandetmic a year later—the subject was forgotten. Well, not entirely forgotten; just put aside for a suitable time.
Tehran Prostitutes by artist Shirin Fakhim. London. 2009. Photograph by Yui Mok
The suitable time finally arrived, nearly two years later, when I began working at a new journal for which I’d written two of three promised pieces about the underbelly of life in Tehran. Although riding around town for several days with a marijuana dealer and his partner revealed the geography of the city in a way I had never imagined, it’s the time I spent with one of Tehran’s poker kings that made me aware of just how much money swirls about this country despite historically unprecedented economic sanctions. The truth is that Iran is rich, even when it’s not.
But the money circulates in a few hands and in places that are difficult to imagine, like the 500 or so gaming tables that see action on any given day or night in the Islamic Republic’s capital alone. It does not take long to do the math and figure out that the sums that change hands over 48 hours at a single table are more than I’ll make from a decade of hack work. The realization is a kick in the gut. After turning in the article, I spent days wallowing in self-pity. Maybe I should be dedicating my time to poker! Meantime, the third and final installment I was to write and send to the editor was upon me: something on the oldest trade in the world. However, I had been too miserable to hit the sidewalks of Tehran, with COVID-19 raging like a brush fire through the city. I was among its second or third wave of victims and was still recovering (or not recovering).
But the deadline was nearing. There was nothing to do other than go online. I searched for “street women.” After coming up with several tedious sociological pieces, I finally hit on the work of a reporter who actually pounded the pavements. His report even had pricing categories: 100,000 at home, 70,000 inside the car. “For strip dance and group events, we charge above 1,000,000, and we provide the place.”
These prices were way too cheap. I took a closer look at the date: three years ago. That was when 1,000,000 Iranian tuman was worth at least twice what it is now: about $100. A million barely cuts $50 nowadays. Sex prices must be double by now, if not triple. I do a few more searches and find out that pimps, too, thrive in the Islamic Republic. A woman admits, “Sometimes the client wouldn’t pay me. When I complained, they’d beat me up. Being a part of someone’s ‘team’ gives me security.”
I did a search for “team homes in Tehran.” This time, the person reporting and going nameless wrote of ending up in a house near Resalat Circle after connecting with a pimp on a motorcycle.
Tehran pimps, it seems at first glance, are always on a motorcycle.
It was an old house. We rang the bell. A guy in his mid-30s opened the door. We told him Shahin had recommended us. There were 18 women there, not exactly looking in mint condition. Some were smoking, others drinking booze.
I thought about all the stuff I had read on Tehran’s red light district before the Revolution. Or old pictures from the photographer Kaveh Golestan’s project in the same quarter.
“Pick any one of them you like,” he said. “They cost between 30,000 and 100,000. If you don’t have a place, you can use ours, but it’s an extra 20,000 for that.”
These prices were ridiculously low, considering Iran’s skyrocketing inflation rate. I took another close look: the date was 2010. Of course! Now it made sense why I hadn’t noticed one of these motorcycle men; what was still left of the real world moved online en masse over the past decade, prostitution included. And especially in Iran. What I needed was a real story. Someone tangible. Someone like…Diesel’s owner, the woman who came into the vet’s office two years ago at 2 a.m. squeezing the vet’s cheeks and commanding him to sew her up.
Worker. That is still the name I have for her in my cell phone. But how is one to telephone a so-called “worker” in Tehran? Does she use WhatsApp? Yes, she does. I click on her app’s photo—an ordinary image with nothing to suggest what she does for a living. She has on a straw hat and is gazing at some hills. Should I call her? Then what? A pandemic isn’t exactly a time to go knocking on a sex worker’s door, is it? Besides, I am still too weak from the virus to do much knocking in the first place. And what if she’s given up the business? If I called, would I just be bothering her?
And what time does a sex worker’s day begin, anyway?
I wait until 11 a.m. before sending a message: “Salam.”
I stare at the phone for the next five minutes until she replies: “You are?”
“I’ve seen you before.”
“Call me.”
From the other room, I can hear Golshan coughing. I dial the number.
The voice is the same raspy one as two years ago. Maybe even more so. “Where did you get my number?”
I tell her about meeting her at the animal clinic. Incredulous, she repeats, “Where did you get my number?”
I decide to lie: “You gave it to me yourself.”
“Impossible.”
It dawns on me that someone like her must have several phones, and this one is probably her private number. That night at the vet’s, she was still tipsy and had been hit over the head with a bottle. It’s not surprising she doesn’t remember or believe me. I describe details from that night.
She relents. “So you had your eyes on me since then!”
“Indeed.”
“Then get over here so I can see you. I just woke up.”
“I’m still recovering from COVID.”
She laughs. “Baby, you call after two years to tell me you have COVID?”
The absurdity of the situation makes me laugh, too. “I am a writer. Journalist, actually. I’m writing something about sex workers.”
“Your dad is a sex worker. I’m a whore!”
“I just have a few questions. I wanted to call earlier. I just never got around to it.”
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Come after you’re done with COVID.”
“But I have a deadline.” There’s a pause. I can tell she’s confused and doesn’t get it. I add, “I’ll pay for one session.”
“No.” She hangs up.
I have no idea what to do next. I send her my positive COVID-19 test so she’ll believe it’s really COVID-19 that keeps me from coming. Then I add from my Instagram page links to my other articles about the city’s underworld. Finally, I throw in a picture of myself and the president of the country after having won a literary prize. It’s a photo that has gotten me out of several highway traffic tickets between Tehran and my hometown, Esfahan.
Two hours later, her reply arrives. “How do I know you won’t record me?”
“I promise.”
“All right then. Send me 400 first to this number I’m sending you.”
“How long do I have for each session?”
“One hour.”
She’s able to check that I’ve sent her the money via my cell as we’re talking. “You can call me Afi. Yallah, start asking your questions.”
“How come I couldn’t find you on any social media sites?”
“What, you thought I’m one of those cheap whores on Telegram? I have a family. Brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. I don’t want my picture all over the place.”
“But can you make ends meet this way? I mean, everyone does everything through the internet these days.”
“I got off the streets a long time ago. That means the virtual street, too.”
I had hoped for a more up-to-date “worker.” But with the deadline looming, I have to go along with what I have. “All right, let’s start from the beginning. How did you get into this business?”
Her story is not uncommon. She’s from the provinces. A marriage proposal turns sour. She ends up in the capital and starts working odd jobs until the day she runs into a madam at a park. The madam takes her under her wings. Afi’s life changes.
“How long did you work for her?” I ask.
“Not more than three, four months. She wasn’t unkind. And I made good money. But she took a big cut. I decided to strike out on my own. We’re still friends, though. She’s good people.”
“But wasn’t going it alone dangerous? Weren’t you scared?”
“Dangerous? Not at all. I’m a good woman. When I’m working, I give my client my all. Danger is something that visits my coworkers, not me. Either they don’t do a good job or they’re junkies or they steal. Maybe they go to the guy’s house and they see something and take it. You can’t be like that in this business and survive long. You have to have faith. I’ve been to Mecca three times. Three! You understand? I know something about what’s forbidden and what’s halal. After three years of hard work, I even bought myself a little apartment.”
As she’s talking, a number I don’t recognize keeps showing up on my screen. Only now I remember the call I’d made earlier to a lab where they do COVID-19 testing at people’s homes. The price is high, but it’s worth knowing if Golshan got the virus from me or not. I tell Afi I’ll call her right back and I do, but she doesn’t pick up. I call again. And again. Finally, I write her.
She writes back: “What?”
“I apologize. I had to answer that call. My wife…”
“Forget your wife. You asked enough questions. We’re done.”
“But I paid for an hour.”
“So? People pay for an hour, but most of them barely take five minutes.”
“But I still have questions.”
“If you want to ask more, pay up for a second session. That’s the rule.”
Now I’m seething. I write, “You said you have faith and that you’ve been to Mecca three times. This is not how a righteous person acts.”
Nothing.
Golshan pops her head into my study. Her nose is hurting from the COVID-19 test she just received. We’re still keeping well apart and are both wearing masks inside the house.
She asks, “Your hour is already up?” I tell her what happened. She laughs. “Don’t expect her to change her rules just for you.”
“I’m annoyed.”
She shakes her head. “I know. And you have an annoying job.”
After 48 hours, Golshan’s test results still aren’t back. She appears to have a head cold, but she is also experiencing pain in her chest and deep fatigue. I don’t know whether we should break the self-imposed semi-quarantine between us or not. Truth is, I don’t even know who should be taking care of whom at this point. I dither. After a while, I start surfing the internet again, this time not necessarily looking for sex workers but for anything that might bring me closer to what that world as a whole might look like in the Islamic Republic.
The next few hours turn into a trip inside a social media labyrinth of desires the likes of which I honestly had not known existed, at least not to this extent. There are armies of sites where “temporary marriages,” the Shia Islam version and completely sanctioned by the law, are offered for a day or a week or more. “Friends” groups teem with members who seem to have little else to do with their time but riff on one another’s measurements: height, weight, eye color, hair color, fetishes, jobs, extreme fetishes, neighborhoods and favorite and least favorite body parts. And this is not only in Tehran or the other big cities. It’s everywhere. I happen upon a young woman from a remote village who snaps photos of her feet and sells them online for the equivalent of five cents per picture. She writes that the foot pics have to be ordered in groups of threes, as the bank will not accept any deposit for less than the equivalent of 15 cents.
It’s all well, but none of this brings me closer to meeting my deadline. Worried about Golshan’s test, I reach for the phone to call the laboratory when the thing buzzes. It’s Afi.
“Baby, you called my honor into question, and this is bothering me. I want my clients to be happy with me. All of my clients.”
I thank her.
“You have 10 minutes to finish your questions.”
“What will you do when you’re old?”
“Baby, I’ve made my plans. I’ll emigrate to Montreal. Money and everything else is ready. If it weren’t for COVID, I’d be there by now.”
“And what would you do there?”
“How do I know! I’ll do something. Tomorrow will take care of tomorrow.”
She had told me in our earlier conversation about having fallen in love long before moving to Tehran. I ask her if she ever fell in love again after that.
“Never. I worked hard not to. I’d rather live well than be in love.”
“You mean all these clients and you never once considered it?”
“They’re the ones who fall for me. A couple of years ago, another client fell hard. He was a manager at some oil company. Rich. Wife and kids. He was waiting for me to say yes so he’d leave his family. Not a bad guy at all. If my fridge broke, he’d buy me a new one. He even bought me a Peugeot. But guess what? Two days after he got me the car, I had an accident. Karma! I gave the car away to my nephew. I didn’t want another woman’s curse on me. Know what I mean?”
All of a sudden, I run out of questions. What do you ask a Tehrani sex worker on the telephone? Should I ask her how much money she makes nowadays? I already have an idea how much she makes: a lot more than me. Just like the poker pro makes a lot more than me, and the marijuana dealer makes a lot more than me.
I decide to go back to the old reliable subject: love. “But love isn’t like a toothache, is it?” I say. “You can’t just pull the tooth and be done with it.”
“I disagree. That’s exactly what you can do. Look at all these films. How many of them show lasting love? Take Titanic. If that ship didn’t hit the ice, you think the rich girl and the pauper DiCaprio would last very long? Those two never got around to having to put up with each other’s everyday garbage. They never had to smell each other’s stinking feet at the end of a day.”
Pause.
“What happens to your dog, Diesel, if you leave Iran?”
“Hm! You really were at the clinic that night, weren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t lie.”
“Nor would I. So I’ll tell you something. Another one of the clients who still loves me is that same guy.”
“Who?”
“The veterinarian.”