Voices in the Darkness; Essays by Iranian intellectuals reveal the complexity of life caught between the mullahs and modernity.(My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices)(Book review)

Byline: Andrew Nagorski

Beyond the headlines spawned by Iran's nuclear ambitions, beyond the confrontation between Iranian political and religious leaders and Western governments trying to devise some way to keep them in check, there's a more basic question: what is this country called Iran and what do its people want? Lila Azam Zanganeh, the editor of "My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices" (132 pages. Beacon Press ), warns that there are no easy answers. After all, she writes, Iran is "at a surreal crossroads between political Islam and satellite television," and is both "religiously sclerotic" and full of young people "ravenously eager to embrace modernity along with a certain avatar of the American dream."

But this slim volume, with contributions from 15 Iranian artists and intellectuals, many of whom now live in the West, offers intriguing glimpses of that complex reality and the emotional turmoil it engenders. While most of the authors would agree with writer Reza Aslan that the Islamic republic is a "mullahcracy" or, as he puts it, "a bizarre hybrid of religious and third world fascism," they are uneasy when Westerners make similar sweeping characterizations. Photographer Shirin Neshat, for example, protests against portrayals of Iranian women as victims, but then argues they are especially creative and strong precisely because they have to do constant battle with oppression.

There's a near-lyrical quality to many of these essays and interviews that transcends such seeming contradictions. Take Mehrangiz Kar's chilling essay about mannequins. The human-rights lawyer charts the growing power of the fundamentalists through the fate of these objects in store windows: first, a few inches were added to their skirts; next, they lost their hair as veils became compulsory and "mobile Islamic moral courts" demolished unveiled mannequins, and, finally, the dolls in the windows were beheaded, since the authorities considered their lips and eyes unduly provocative. All of which paralleled the complete rollback of women's rights in Iran. "The ideal woman for fundamentalists was a woman who did not have eyes to see, a tongue to speak, and legs to run away," Kar writes. At the same time, though, she sees a growing grass-roots movement among women to regain their individual identity and freedom. She points to the subtle signs such as women finding ways to make fashion ...