WEDDED BLISS, IRANIAN STYLE - PART 3Love and Marriage Under Wraps
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY SANNA SJÖSWÄRD - BILDBYRÅN SILVER
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| After the dinner the bride and groom leave the restaurant. They speed around Tehran in their car, and all their friends and relatives follow in their cars and sing and honk their horns. |
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| When we get to the family of the bride they will slaughter a sheep and burn incense, and the bride will say good-bye to her parents. Then she leaves to go live with her husband in her new home. |
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| Since I’m not from Iran it was hard to know what was OK behavior and what wasn’t. When you’re not at home or in a relative’s house, you have to think about how you conduct yourself. I was taking photos of my niece at a bathing house and the staff came up to me and threatened me. They forced me to delete all the photos and said that if I had ever showed them I would have been hung. |
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| Another person I met during my trips to Iran was my sister’s daughter Eliahe. She is ten years old. They all live in Eslam Shahr, outside the southern part of Tehran. The class distinctions in Iran are clearly noticeable. This is the lower-class part of town and there are heaps of garbage everywhere and no streetlights. The residents paint the concrete walls in bright colors. In Eliahe’s yard there are flowers and butterflies painted on the walls of the house. She’s a happy kid, and she doesn’t seem to worry about the future. |
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| This woman is watching Britney Spears on MTV, something that obviously is totally illegal. |
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| Sedighre’s husband, Äshghär, and their first-born son Mahdi, 28, take a nap after lunch. Äshghär works as a truck driver and is married to two women. They are both named Sedighre. Mahdi owns a hairdressing salon. He works 14 hours a day, seven days a week. His dream is to move from the slum of Eslam Shahr to northern Tehran, home of the rich people. |
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