Perspectives

Life in Iran. From a book review of “Honeymoon in Tehran,” a new book from the author of “Lipstick Jihad,” Azadeh Moaveni.

It’s the seductive contradictions of the motherland itself. The regime promotes this split by sending mixed signals: it makes repressive laws but sometimes looks the other way when people break them. Although it’s illegal to keep pet dogs, considered ritually unclean according to strict Islamic tradition, Tehran’s ladies who lunch openly sport poodles as accessories. Alcohol is forbidden, but the authorities pretend that the yuppies who descend on a rural market are wholesalers buying grapes in bulk, not the illicit winemakers they really are. Crackdowns do happen, but Moaveni portrays a society whose citizens — especially the young ones — behave as if the rules don’t exist, pushing to see how far the government will let them go.

... And after Ahmadinejad shuts down news papers, censors the Internet and actually enforces Islamic dress codes, there are still gambits of openness. He lifts a ban on women as spectators in soccer stadiums even as the authorities order a 37-year-old mother of four to be stoned for adultery.