Couch-Crashing in Tehran

Youth supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi.

Tehran, Iran. We could hear them on the other side of the thin garage door, their boots pounding the hot pavement, batons striking their riot shields in unison. But as soon as the Revolutionary Guard commandos moved on from the clock shop where we were holed up, the group of 20-something protesters was out in the streets again, chanting "Death to the dictators." In the midst of the haze from tear gas and trash fires, a 26-year-old engineering student who was nervously puffing away on a cigarette stub turned to me. "Tell the world what is happening here," he said, voice trembling. "This is our revolution. We will not give up."

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It was a romantic picture, but it wasn't the only side of Iran I saw, when I spent this summer crashing on couches in Tehran, an experience that brought me into contact with Iranians from a college-graduate-turned-Ponzi-schemer who grew up in the religious stronghold of Qom, to a computer whiz in Tehran blacklisted by the regime for his political activism over the past decade. I caught a firsthand glimpse of a society in flux, besieged with high inflation, even higher unemployment, and little leeway in personal expression, at least in public.

I also encountered a vibrant youth culture that falls outside the good vs. evil, protester vs. hard-line cleric dichotomy that has been frequently bandied about this summer. Where, after all, do underground fashion designers, an English teacher who listens to hip-hop but doesn't believe in the Holocaust, freshly minted investment bankers, and skateboard punks fit into our view of Iran? Iran is not all mad mullahs in training, Molotov-throwing young protesters armed with a Facebook account, or brainwashed baton-wielding Basij militiamen, many still in their teens. They are, granted, a part of the fabric of this 2,500-year-old culture, but the Islamic Republic today is much more nuanced.

In fact, aside from the immutable fact that some two-thirds of the population is under the age of 30, it is not clear at all what this critical bloc wants in what has become the largest reform movement since the revolution 30 years ago -- and it would be dangerous for outsiders to assume differently. Mistaking the protesters, who as recently as Sept. 18 poured into the streets by the thousands, as the only voice of the opposition might lead the international community to expect change quicker than the reality on the ground.

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