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This Week’s Audio Book:
Honeymoon
in
Tehran:
Two
Years
of
Love
and
Danger
by Azadeh Moaveni
Featured the week of March 8, 2010
Both
a
love
story
and
a
reporter’s
first
draft
of
history,
Honeymoon
in
Tehran
is
a
stirring,
trenchant,
and
deeply
personal
chronicle
of
two
years
in
the
maelstrom
of
Iranian
life.
In
2005,
Azadeh
Moaveni,
longtime
Middle
East
correspondent
for
Time
magazine,
returns
to
Iran
to
cover
the
rise
of
President
Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
As
she
documents
the
firebrand
leader’s
troublesome
entry
onto
the
world
stage,
Moaveni
richly
portrays
a
society
too
often
caricatured
as
the
heartland
of
militant
Islam.
Living
and
working
in
Tehran,
she
finds
a
nation
that
openly
yearns
for
freedom
and
contact
with
the
West,
but
whose
economic
grievances
and
nationalist
spirit
find
a
temporary
outlet
in
Ahmadinejad’s
strident
pronouncements.
Mingling
with
underground
musicians,
race
car
drivers,
young
radicals,
and
scholars,
she
explores
the
cultural
identity
crisis
and
class
frustration
that
pits
Iran’s
next
generation
against
the
Islamic
system.
And
then
the
unexpected
happens:
Azadeh
falls
in
love
with
a
young
Iranian
man
and
decides
to
get
married
and
start
a
family
in
Tehran.
Suddenly,
she
finds
herself
navigating
an
altogether
different
side
of
Iranian
life.
Preparing
to
be
wed
by
a
mullah,
she
sits
in
on
a
government
marriage
prep
class
where
young
couples
are
instructed
to
enjoy
sex.
She
visits
Tehran’s
bridal
bazaar
and
finds
that
the
Iranian
wedding
has
become
an
outrageously
lavish–though
often
still
gender-segregated–production.
When
she
becomes
pregnant,
she
must
prepare
to
give
birth
in
an
Iranian
hospital,
at
the
same
time
observing
her
friends’
struggles
with
their
young
children,
who
must
learn
to
say
onething
at
home
and
another
at
school.
Despite
her
busy
schedule
as
a
wife
and
mother,
Azadeh
continues
to
report
for
Time
on
Iran’s
nuclear
standoff
with
the
West
and
Iranians’
dissatisfaction
with
Ahmadinejad’s
heavy-handed
rule.
But
as
women
are
arrested
on
the
street
for
“immodest
dress”
and
the
authorities
unleash
a
campaign
of
intimidation
against
journalists,
the
country’s
dark
side
reemerges.
This
fundamentalist
turn,
along
with
the
chilling
presence
of
“Mr.
X,”
the
government
agent
assigned
to
mind
her
every
step,
forces
Azadeh
to
make
the
hard
decision
that
her
family’s
future
lies
outside
Iran.
Powerful
and
poignant,
fascinating
and
humorous
Honeymoon
in
Tehran
is
the
harrowing
story
of
a
young
woman’s
tenuous
life
in
a
country
she
thought
she
could
change.
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