To Trade a Throat for Song

Isfahan is a city bisected, a city of bridges: the Zayende Rood halves it like an apple. There are many such cities, most of which also have bridges.

Pole-Khaju is not just a bridge. It was once a different bridge, but no one knows that bridge's name. The Old Bridge, let's call it. The Before Bridge. Pole-Khaju was built on its broken body in the mid-sixteen hundreds. It is a bridge that is also a weir—even the Zayende Rood looks different when it leaves Pole-Khaju. Once, it was also a building—a teahouse, a pavilion, the stone chair of an old king. A king, too, is a kind of a building. He houses a nation. Or so my mother tells me. She leans into my ear, whispers, as we walk through the summer darkness toward the golden lights of the bridge. She whispers, because it is not safe to speak of kings in Iran. They once disappeared people for less.

Call this bridge, meeting place. Call it, mosque. Call it, and it will call back.

It's an architectural anomaly that does it. The curvatures along the base shaped like the petals of a flower on an Isfahani carpet. The underpass of the over pass, the place the bridge is bisected (everything in this country is halved). It makes the bridge strong, but it also makes it sing. It is singing now. Listen, I know how it sounds. But the song and stone are striking the water.

We didn't mean to find it, but that means nothing. Nothing is an accident.

We walk to the bridge, and they are singing into the arcs below it. They are singing old Persian songs, and the crowd sits on the river bank to listen. They have brought blankets. They have brought picnic baskets. They have brought portable teapots. It could be any park in America, except the time of night. Except the women in hijabs. Except the Basij, the religious police, will arrest everyone here if they find us.

A few weeks ago, a Basij punched one of the singers in the throat. The man standing next to us tell us the singer's vocal cords were permanently damaged. He can no longer sing. The ones who got away sing here again tonight.

Non-religious public gatherings larger than a few people are banned in Iran—the regime remembers too well how it came to power. The only legal music is state-sanctioned, religious. Art painted in the brush of propaganda.

The singers are shadow under the arcs, and it seems like the bridge itself is doing the singing. Tonight, Pole-Khaju sings pre-revolution songs about love and loneliness and sex—it reminds the listeners that once my mother's generation grew up wearing mini-skirts she wouldn't let me out of the house wearing today in America. I try to drag my mom away by the elbow, but she won't budge. What if the Basij come, I ask her.

Forgive me. I was fourteen, and young, and I had not yet learned how to be brave.

/

The bridge is one thing; the rap music is another.

I am older now, fifteen, and I have just found Barobax and Sasy Mankan. I do not like rap music; I prefer soft piano, and indie alternative, and emo ballads. But Barobax has a funny song about arranged marriages and the music video features a camel. Sasy Mankan uses traditional Persian drums and EDM and he sings a funny song about wanting Tehran to be more like LA. The music is funny and quirky. I sing the songs in my room. I laugh at the camel.

In 2009, Iranians go to elect a new president; current and unpopular President Ahmadinejad wins. The elections are suspected of being rigged, and the streets flood with protestors. The lucky are arrested. Others are beaten by the Basij. Several are killed, including Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman observing the protests with her music teacher.

Sasy Mankan is arrested for producing politically-oriented music promoting a popular candidate. Barobax dissolves altogether. Many Iranian musicians, already producing underground by necessity, flee the country to the surrounding and more liberal Arab countries. At seventeen, the funny song about arranged marriages isn't quite so funny when I find out it's about the government controlling women's bodies. The camel I laughed at isn't a funny camel. It's a symbol, drawing attention back to a long ago past of trading caravans, pointing at where this custom of arranged marriage actually belongs. The song about making Tehran more like LA isn't a joke—it's a plea. Each stanza is a campaign for human rights. Each refrain is a prayer for a better future. Each roll of the tumbaak rails against every disappearance, every beating, every execution.

At seventeen, I learned music and art cannot be taken for granted. Music and art are vessels for change, prayers for hope, an act of activism in a world that doesn't dare speak dissent too loudly. The song is a bridge between people, a teahouse, a pavilion, a weir. You will look different on the other side.

/

But that night at Pole-Khaju, I was still fourteen and young and I had not learned yet how to be brave.

Mom, come on. I tugged her arm again, and finally she came, ungluing from her vigil. We disappeared back into the trees, into the dark toward the hotel, away from the river, away from the song and the stone and the water. She didn't speak to me, and I did not yet understand. I could only think, how odd. How odd to barter your throat for a song.