"Look Mr. deBellaigue - I'm Iranian. I can't remember drinking alcohol or looking lustfully at any woman other than my wife. I can't remember going without saying my prayers. Behind this lies a thought, an essence, and this essence has to be made to harmonize with modernity. Then, our problems will be solved."
Christopher deBellaigue "In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs."

"Here in Iran, no matter what the differences are between us, we are all the same here," she says, pressing her hand to her chest. "We are all Muslims."
  Woman at a concert I attended.

Salam, everyone.

Today, as I was walking to the Internet café to write this, I passed a woman in a full black chador. She was talking on a cell phone...her essence "harmonizing with modernity." Ali is a religious young man. He prays and fasts. He tells me that in Iran the criminal penalty for adultery is death. He says the government tries to avoid this punishment by discrediting witnesses to acts of adultery. It's part of Iran's attempt to moderate its image abroad.

Adultery is also, of course, against Ali's religion. In addition to married people cheating on spouses, adultery also applies to sexual relations between unmarried couples. To circumvent violating his religion in his relationships with his girlfriends, Ali resorts to a temporary marriage - a feature unique to the Shia branch of Islam.

An unmarried man and woman can have relations by entering into a mutual agreement that allows them to be married for a set period of time. It could be for one night, or it could be for years. Typically Ali and a girlfriend will agree to a temporary marriage for three months. This is done with the simple recitation of some lines in Arabic and the payment of a dowry to the woman. Ali might give his girlfriend a rose as a symbolic dowry. If they like, the temporary marriage can be renewed so that relations can continue. But temporary marriages are also used to take advantage of women who are destitute and forced to prostitute themselves. It's a way for the man to absolve himself of sin for a night of pleasure. Ali performs his own temporary marriage, but to have a truly legal one, he says you must apply to the government. So he is still subject to criminal prosecution if he is caught.

Ali is attempting to balance religious tradition and modernity. Some reform-minded Iranians are trying to do the same. I spent time Saturday with Ali Mazruei, the head of the Iranian Association of Journalists. I asked him if democracy and Sharia (Islamic law) are compatible. He said he believes they are. This isn't the opinion of other liberals in Iran, but it is the safe one to express. Perhaps Mr. Mazruei is being sincere, or maybe he's practicing the self-censorship that he told me all Iranian journalists must practice.

Mazruei served several terms in the Majlis, the Iranian parliament. In elections earlier this year, he and other reformists were deemed unqualified to run for reelection by the unelected, cleric controlled Guardian Council. When Mazroei's reformist newspaper, Salam, was shut down in 1998, it sparked violent student riots. Today there are far fewer reformist newspapers than in the past. Mazroei says without this outlet some reformists have become radicalized. "The only chance to save the country is with democracy," he says. He feels that now that the conservatives have consolidated power in all branches of government, they may not feel as threatened. He says that perhaps under their control there will be some relaxation of freedom of speech and press, but, he added, "The behavior of Iranians is not predictable!"

As the name implies, shared taxis involve riding with other passengers. They whiz through the streets of Tehran and when you flag one down, you tell the driver where you want to go. If it's along the route he's taking to drop off the other passengers, you climb in. If not, he simply zooms off and you wait for another shared taxi. Obviously it's in the interests of the driver to pack as many fares into his car as possible. Frequently four people are squeezed into the back of the little Iranian-made Paykan, with two people sharing the passenger seat in front, practically on each other's lap. Friends have told me they've even seen a passenger squeezed in to the left of the driver!

On the outskirts of north Tehran, the Alborz Mountains rise dramatically, appearing through the smog and haze. You can jump into a shared taxi near Tajrish Bazaar and take the short ride up the narrow road to Darband, a park in the foothills of the mountains. Here you climb a stone and concrete walkway that follows a stream. Both sides are lined with restaurants and teahouses. There are vendors selling corn roasted over coals. There are stalls packed with fruit. You can pay 200 toman (about 25 cents) to a man who holds a parakeet in his hand. He passes over row of folded papers until the bird plucks the one that is your fortune. Mine told me that people take advantage of me and that I shouldn't get my hopes up about the future. Some fortune.

The teahouses are on terraces that climb the steep cliffs You take off your shoes and sit on a carpeted platform above the glittering lights that line the walkway below. Couples find privacy here and in the dark corner of a platform a boy and girl can show affection in a way they wouldn't dare in a more public place. Here women can smoke the "hubbly bubbly" or "galyun" (water pipe), which they aren't permitted to do in other places. The fruit-scented smoke drifts into the evening air.