Behind Closed Doors

S.O.S. IN TEHRAN

A film by Sou Abadi

First Run/Icarus Films     

2001, 52 minutes

By Pamela Nice

Sou Abadi spent five months in her native Iran filming in institutions never before seen in Iranian documentaries. An Iranian friend of mine, upon viewing this film, agreed with Abadi's distress call. Iran, especially since the re-election of Khatami, is losing hope. Where are the reforms? Why does the only welfare for the poor come from the most religiously conservative association in Iran — the Relief Committee of the Imam? Why are the women so unhappy? These are deep social and political questions. Abadi seeks answers in the intimate spaces of Iranian life — the life behind closed doors.

Abadi's camera rests in a room, watches and listens. We watch as upper-class wives complain about their husbands' sexual demands in group marriage-counseling. In the next scene, a young woman seeking a mate at the Marriage Foundation is told to be afraid of Judgment Day because she wants to work part-time after she becomes a mother. Young women learn the proper uses of a condom at mandatory pre-marital sex education classes at the Health Ministry. We hear an unseen woman on the Voice of Assistance hotline asking the male counselor why she still has nightmares about returning to prison.

“We are approaching a psychopathic society,” concludes Dr. Majd, psychiatrist to the elite of Iran, after listening to the complaints of the five couples at his group marriage-counseling session. He cites a number of factors: social restrictions (life under the mullahs), the estrangement between the sexes, and social “miseducation,” among others. He sees contemporary Iranian society pulling in two directions at once: “On the one hand, we are reaching the year 2000; on the other hand we are moving toward 1000. People feel this gap and become confused. The result is depression, and a thousand other problems.”

Abadi cuts between several locations, layering voice-overs from the phone hotline. The resulting effect is of an average day in Tehran . We move back and forth between the poor in the streets or in the Relief Committee of the Imam's offices to psychiatric sessions, matrimonial services and sex education classes. This editing allows for ironic juxtapositions and some dark humor, but the overall tone of the documentary is one of compassionate observation of Iranians' private pain.

This pain is so private that it usually does not find a voice. The remarkable feat of Abadi's film is in finding these voices in today's Iran and letting them speak for themselves, with no commentary. What they speak of mostly is the range of frustrations within male/female relationships.

A couple of wives in the counseling session are amazingly frank. One woman describes her marriage: “I voluntarily surrendered all my legal and human rights to someone else. . . . How could he then grant me the rights that the Islamic republic denies?” In this chilling segment, while her husband sits silently watching her, she recounts the repeated humiliation of giving in to his sexual demands while he offers her no respect. “I accepted sex as a reality, in order not to insult him,” she says. “I did it like cooking and cleaning.”

Consequently, she feels absent in her own life. “I forgot what I am and what I want from my life. . . . I always tried to make him satisfied. Now I know it has nothing to do with satisfaction. He can only love a person who is crushed and destroyed — not a proud one, his equal.”

Another woman claims, “They want a woman who has never seen or done anything, but then they want her to do belly dancing. It's not possible.”

A pensive young husband offers another perspective: “It's the Iranian men's problem. Or perhaps men in general — the problem of sex with their wives. . . marital duty, maximum two times a week. But this kind of relationship does not interest me. Because it lacks love. The wife agrees to intercourse out of religious obligation or sometimes out of compassion. But this doesn't come with willingness and love. That's why, after sex, I feel like I have violated my wife's rights. I have imposed myself on her.”

“Do you give your wife freedom?” someone asks. “My wife has freedom,” he responds. “She's free not to fall in love with me for the rest of her life. The same goes for me.”

What does the psychiatrist have to say to help these couples? With his dark sense of humor, Dr. Majd suggests adding an anti-depressant drug to Tehran 's water supply. “I suggested it to the mayor of Tehran … He laughed and said, ‘You shrinks!' I said, ‘Someday you'll see....' Maybe he realized it in prison.”

Perhaps this advice is as useful as that given to a desperate woman on the Voice of Assistance hotline. She has called seeking the courage to ask her husband for a divorce. A female counselor tells her to reconsider: the husband may not accept her request for a divorce, and even if he does, she will lose her children and financial support. The counselor says that she hears from women like her all the time — their husbands abuse them, leave them, divorce them. “Then what should I do?” the woman on the hotline asks. The counselor responds, “Do like other Iranian women. Endure a bit more.”

Abadi immediately cuts to a group wedding organized by the Relief Committee of the Imam. One would-be wife opines, “They say the first hundred years are the hardest. So I guess things get easier after we're dead and buried.” The group wedding commences, and the camera surveys a group of 20 or 30 poor young women, transformed into ghostly figures by their white chadors, with discordant music wailing in the background.

The film is full of such ironic commentary. Some of it is unintentional, for example when the translation errs. One instance is during the pre-nuptial sex education for women, when the counselor suggests that those who have “an irregular hymen” go to a gynecologist a few days before the wedding. The subtitle reads, “If you have a particular hymen, we may refer you to the coroner.”

No irony is more profound, however, than that of the woman on the hotline who has recurring dreams of being in prison again. Her voice on the phone opens the film, and we return to her near the end. The male counselor asks her if she ever was in prison, and she says she was, between the ages of 19 and 27. In her dream, she asks them at the prison, “Why am I here? I am innocent. I am married now, have a family. Why am I here?” The counselor assures her there is nothing to worry about in her nightmare. “Look, no matter what we do, the past won't come back. No matter how hard you try. The past is gone for good.” As he speaks, the camera catches an old picture of Khomeini on a street poster.

The very end of the film offers a glimpse of hope, though it seems rather simplistic in light of the problems revealed in the film. “Just say ‘No'!” — like the little girl who refuses to don a hijab so she can be on television. If only it were so easy.

This review appeared in Al Jadid (Vol. 7, no. 37, Fall 2001).

Copyright (c) 2001 by Al Jadid