Global Dispatches: Iran—Tehran’s Youth Gallivant About a ‘Little Western Town’

I found myself making U-turns around Iranzamin Street, trying to discover just what it is that some young Iranians consider fun.
Global Dispatches: Iran—Tehran’s Youth Gallivant About a ‘Little Western Town’
A young girl shouts slogans in protest during riots in Tehran. Youth are at the front of the Green Movement protesting against the standing government. (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
8/27/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/tehran_youth_protest.jpg" alt="A young girl shouts slogans in protest during riots in Tehran. Youth are at the front of the Green Movement protesting against the standing government. (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)" title="A young girl shouts slogans in protest during riots in Tehran. Youth are at the front of the Green Movement protesting against the standing government. (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1815497"/></a>
A young girl shouts slogans in protest during riots in Tehran. Youth are at the front of the Green Movement protesting against the standing government. (Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)
After a week in Tehran I found myself making U-turns around Iranzamin Street, trying to discover just what it is that some young Iranians consider fun.

Sitting in the passenger seat of a moderately expensive car, we drove up the street half a mile, turned around, and drove back. I was accompanied in this strange new land by Sanaz, a 20-year-old, secular, so-called ‘modern-minded’ girl who had wrapped a loose scarf around her permed and highlighted hair. “This is what the young folk of Iran do,” she told me.

Iranzamin Street is located in one of the country’s most prestigious neighborhoods, Sa’adat Abad in Shahrake Gharb or “Little Western Town” in Tehran.

The city’s western influence is unmistakable in its architecture, youth, and cars. While most of Tehran is inhabited by tall apartment buildings, in Iranzamin it was mostly houses—though, the structure and size could almost be mistaken for apartment buildings. On one side were these monumental houses, on the other an empty dirt sidewalk. Further on was a group of young men playing volleyball in the sand, wearing what would be considered even in the States to be shamelessly short shorts.

We reached a major stoplight, where 95 percent of the people in cars were 18-25-year-olds, both men and women. To avoid the social police girls and boys were never in the same car; and nearly all the cars were upscale. Sanaz explained, “You don’t come here if you have a regular car.”

Somewhat bashful and extremely intrigued by all that was going on around me, I worked up the courage to look at the people in the car next to me. Three young men were driving neck in neck with us, looking directly at us, and honking.

They, like all the other young people there, had come to the street to pick up phone numbers.

I burst into a giggle as I told Sanaz to go faster. Sanaz told me that there is a language here. “You step on the gas if you want to tell someone that they aren’t at your level, and that you are definitely not interested.” We made two U-turns, called ‘dor-dor’, in Iranzamin Street. The term ‘dor-dor’ is a common term of the young Iranian adults’ vocabulary. ‘Dor’ means to make a U-turn. Two of them put together implies getting phone numbers, flirting, and possibly a date.

The number of young people undergoing cosmetic surgery to alter their noses was astonishing. As we drove, nearly everyone seemed to have had one. This was the general trend in Tehran. A day didn’t go by without seeing at least one young person with surgical tape on his or her nose, though those were just the recent ones. For every one person with surgical tape, there were at least 5 or 10 who’d already taken theirs off. This was often alongside the new vogue for some Iranian girls today: a bundle of bleached blond hair, curled and shining, peaking out of the small scarf framing a made-up face.

The shadow that hangs over all the fun is the social police that make their regular rounds daily, arresting those found to be violating social norms between the unmarried youth. “If a boy is arrested for talking to girls, the police install a huge sign on the roof of his car, reading, ‘disturber of one’s wife and daughter,’” Sanaz told me. With the sign installed, the driver is made to drive his car to a lot, where it is taken in and his parents called. If the family is able to afford it, the car can be retrieved with a heavy fine.

It is no wonder that the Green Movement, as Iran’s latest bout of protests against the standing government were dubbed, was mostly fueled by Iran’s young people.
Author’s Selected Articles
Related Topics