Content area
Full Text
On a breezy afternoon several weeks ago, dozens of paddleboats lazed down the Zayandeh River, pistachios were sold along the shore, families ate picnic lunches in the shade of the poplars - and not a single "Death to America" banner was visible as far as the eye could see.
Women were cloaked in black, of course, from head to toe, their bodies draped and invisible and their hair tucked carefully out of sight. Otherwise, this could have been a summer afternoon in any Western capital.
Even the appearance of an American, a representative of the decadent, hostile nation long known to Iranians as the "Great Satan," caused no alarm, fear, or anger. People were interested, but decidedly friendly.
"America, really?" asked a woman whose son was kicking a soccer ball around. "We don't get many of you here. But you are very welcome."
Eighteen years after the earth-shaking revolution that toppled the shah of Iran - a Westernized monarch with close ties to the United States and Israel - and replaced him with a group of elderly Islamic mullahs, most outsiders have come to think of Iran as an implacable foe of Western civilization, and Iranians as frenzied fundamentalists in beards and turbans. Few Americans are allowed into Iran and few, for that matter, want to come.
On the surface, the perceptions - culled mostly from State Department rhetoric and television scenes from the hostage days - are justified. Standing at the gaudy golden shrine where Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is buried, for instance, one is likely to...