The Iranian disease

Shiva Naipaul

Teheran The house, as is usual in Persia, was hidden behind high walls. Its style was vaguely Iberian facade washed in white, red-tiled roof, a ground floor veranda framed by arches. The proportions were those of a small palace. A swimming pool gleamed in a corner of the twilit garden. My host, a lawyer, was rumoured to have made his money only within the last ten years; the house, a tangible expression of that success, was less than a year old. Northwards the lights of Teheran were spread like a rash up the lower slopes of the Elburz mountains. Snow streaked the higher summits. Beyond that black mountain wall lay the Caspian, sea of sturgeon and caviar. A majordomo waited on the pillared porch. I was led through a hall adorned with Persian miniatures, across a parquet floor strewn with rugs of intricate design. My host and his wife were in the library. A bell summoned a manservant. He approached soft-footedly and, bending low over me, took my drink order. I gazed at the books.

'Over five thousand volumes,' my host said.

The books were ranged on two floors, the upper, bordered by a wrought-iron balcony, housing, my host explained, his collection of Persiana; the lower, books of a more general nature. A spiral staircase connected the two. The house, in fact, had been designed around the library.

'We ran out of space,' my host's wife said. 'In the end we decided that the only thing to do was to build a new house.'

A girl of about fifteen the daughter of the house appeared. She put on a jazz record. Both she and her brother attended American boarding schools. , My gaze strayed to a group of terraccitta animal figures arrayed on a sideboard.

'3000 BC,' my host said.

Other guests began to arrive. Abdul and Manny; Ali and Leila; Xerxes and Fatima.

The women glittered with jewels, sparkling on fingers, necks, bosoms. Their fat husbands were more casually dressed, T-shirts sleekly stretched over bulging stomachs. A servant passed round caviar on thin slices of toast.

My host's wife fingered Manny's soft white dress.

'It's exquisite, Manny. Really fabulous, Where did you find it?'

'I picked it up the other day in a little shop in Soho.'

'Is it Indian?'

'Afghan, I think. Abdul insisted I buy it. "That's you, Manny," he said. You know what Abdul's like.'

But now it was Manny's turn to praise. 'What a beautiful emerald that is! I don't think I've seen you wearing it before.'

'I got it on our last trip to New York. I can't resist Sachs. Every time I'm in New York I just have to buy something at Sachs.'

'I know the feeling,' Manny said. 'Abdul and I were in Chicago not long ago.'

'What was Chicago like?'

'Very windy,' Manny said.

'They say it's a windy city,' my host's wife confirmed. 'Did you buy anything there?'

'I picked up quite a nice diamond. . . but, you know, I prefer to get my jewels in Paris.'

'It's ages since we've been to Paris,' my host's wife said. 'Darius is getting lazy in his old age.'

`So is Abdul,' Manny said. 'Lazy and fat. Last year I literally had to drag him to that health farm in Sussex.'

'Darius won't hear me talk about health farms.' My host's wife looked martyred.

Manny smiled sweetly at me. `Do you know Paris well?'

'Not very.'

`Do you know,' Manny said, 'I spend sleepless nights worrying that Paris might change, that one day they might pull down Notre Dame and build a supermarket. I must see Notre Dame at least once a year. I would die if I didn't.'

The ladies drifted away. More caviar was passed around. Dinner was announced. Two candle-lit tables had been set up in the dining room. A manservant filled our crystal goblets with a rosé wine. I was sitting next to Leila, a pretty, scented creature. She smiled at me. `Do you come from Tahiti?' she asked.

'What makes you think that?'

'Ali and I were there a few weeks ago.'

The line of deduction was not easy to follow. 'What were you doing in Tahiti?'

'Ali loves islands. We've been to Jamaica, Barbados, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Fiji . . . Ali's really into islands.'

I looked at All (he was sitting at the other table), the man who loved islands. He was masticating slowly, majestically, his eyes half-closed, sunk in satiated repose.

'If you don't come from Tahiti, where do you come from?' Leila asked.

'I come from Trinidad.'

'Is that an island?'

'I'm afraid so.'

The news excited Leila. 'Ali! Ali! This man comes from a place called Trinidad. An island! Have you heard of it?'

Ali blinked. He studied me with inert, saurian voracity. Would he devour me on the spot?

'I must write it down,' Leila said. She called for a pen. The manservant offered his. Leila stared critically, disapprovingly, at the instrument an expensive Parker ballpoint.

'Look.' She showed it to my host's wife. My host's wife shrugged. 'What can one do?'

'I would keep my eyes on that fellow,' Xerxes said.

The pen was passed around the company. Obviously, the man was getting above himself. A peasant with a Parker. What next?

Liqueurs were served in the library. I had cognac mixed with Grand Marnier.

The story is told of the lady the wife of a man who had speculated wisely in real estate who wished to decorate her house in the style of the Louis XIV period. But then she was advised by a cruel friend that the style of Louis XXX was much more chic So she went to Paris and began asking around in the shops for Louis XXX fur niture. 'That,' the man who told the joke said, 'sums up the nouveau riche of our country. Ignorant and West-mad.' Teheran is rife with rags-to-riches stories tales of street-corner hawkers who have become millionaires, of building contractors who have become multi-millionaires, of chauf feurs who have become property tycoons The Shah himself is, of course, something Of an arriviste. Despite his strong sense 0 imperial grandeur and his frequent invo cations of Cyrus the Great, his dynasty the creation of his rough soldier father Is barely fifty years old. His chief worshipper are to be found among the 'West-mad' elite He is their Shah. They are his people. The money is new. Very new. Nearly all of it has been conjured up within the last ten years, the ten glorious years of OPEC. It Is these new rich who give Teheran its tinselly glamour, whose buying power, whose taste, is reflected in the shops crammed with costly foreign goods; whose cars flood the broad avenues and make a journey at any time of the day a torment; whose imported cultural aspirations find fulfilment in the opera and ballet performances that are put on in the Rudaki Hall; whose lusts are catered for in opulent brothels where mere entry might cost fifty thousand ryals almost four hundred pounds; who fill to capacity the Iran Air jumbos flying West: last year two hundred thousand Iranians visited London, spending, on average, nearly two thousand pounds per head; whose sons and daughters wear faded jeans' chew gum, play guitars and speak bad English in rank American accents; for whom the 'International' channel Of National Iranian Radio and Television fills its broadcasting hours with I Love Lucy type programmes and whose presenters are brought over direct from the United States 'Good evening. This is Teheran. Here is the noos . . .' And everywhere there are the spivs, the young men in tight trousers who call you `Meestah' and who, in the later afternoon, loiter outside the cinemas, gawking at the near-naked, lasciviously posed women festooning the posters advertising