I worked in the service department of the Electric Company for many years. But my pension was not enough to cover my family’s expenses. I received around $220 per month. Fortunately we have a tiny apartment in Nezamabad, in the east of Tehran; otherwise every penny of that would go to rent. After we paid the bills and bought some chocolates for the grandchildren we were broke, even before the month was over.

It was obvious we needed some help bringing in more income. I told everyone, from neighbors to relatives and others, to be on the lookout for a job for me. One day a neighbor whose son was a journalist came to our door and told my wife that a new magazine where his son worked needed a tea server. That evening I went straight to the neighbor’s place to meet the son, and we agreed that the next day I’d go with him to the offices of the magazine.

This was my first time in the “editorial room.” Most of the editorial staff were young and cheerful. I sat there for a few minutes until they took me to the office of the managing editor. He asked me about where I had been and what I had done in life. I told him about my experience and he asked me, without a moment’s hesitation, when I could start. I said, “Tomorrow.”

The next day I dressed up and went to the magazine’s offices. No matter how many times I rang and knocked on the door nobody answered. I called the neighbor’s son and he told me, “No journalist is awake at this hour. They start trickling in around 11 am.” I was taken aback. What kind of a job was this? I walked around the neighborhood and when I returned, the secretary had opened the door. The journalists started appearing slowly. I brewed the tea quickly and filled a tray with cups. They started talking to me and soon we became friends.

It was very different from the Electric Company. Each day we became more intimate and exchanged jokes. They treated me like someone their own age. They both respected me and joked with me, and our intimacy never suffered because of it. I worked at the magazine for two years and not once did they offend me nor I them.

Then one day the news came that the magazine had been suspended, or “arrested,” as they say. I was baffled. How can you “arrest” a magazine? I asked myself what was going to happen and a thousand other similar questions. I imagined it was like impounding a car, requiring a fine to have it released.

The magazine had to suspend publishing because of a piece one of the guys had written. He wandered around the office, crying and repeating, “It’s my fault that everyone’s going to lose their jobs.” It was then that it clicked. We were going to lose our jobs. For a couple of days we continued to visit the office. The managing editor told us to stop coming in and that he would let us know if something happened. Then this was what “arrest” meant? They were closing down the office as well?

At first I thought I would be out of a job for a couple of weeks but a month passed and nothing happened. I contacted the managing editor and he told me that there was no news. He promised to let us know the moment that something happened and the magazine could resume publishing. But he never called.

I was really depressed. I missed the staff at the magazine and financially I was struggling again. My wife needed surgery and the rest of our savings were already wiped out. I went to the neighbor’s son. He was writing for another publication but he did not have a job for me. Wherever I went the doors were closed. I called everyone I knew at the magazine but no one had leads for work.

I had a very difficult four months until a journalist who used to work part time with the magazine called me. He said that a new paper was being launched and they needed somebody familiar with the ways of an editorial board. I dressed up and went to the offices of the newspaper in northern Tehran. With his beard and his buttoned-up shirt, the managing editor appeared to be a Hezbollahi, religiously and politically deeply conservative. After our initial talk he said he had to interview other applicants and that he’d contact me if they wanted me.

Two weeks passed and I heard nothing. I had lost all hope when they called and told me to come back. I started to work there but the atmosphere was not as good as it had been at the first magazine. There was no intimacy, no joking, and the workload was heavier. They were doing the preliminary work for publishing the paper but it was not clear when the first issue was going to come out.

A month passed but they paid no salaries. They said the paper was yet to be published and that they hadn’t received any funds yet from advertisers or the newspaper’s investor. They promised they would pay two months salary in a lump, at the end of the second month. The second month came to an end but no salary was paid. As though our own expenses were not enough, I also had to pay to commute across Tehran.

It was around the middle of the third month when they said that the investor had reneged and was not going to invest in the paper after all. My two and a half months of work went puff into the air just like that. Not only we did not get paid but we had to pay for expenses like commuting and food. After a lot of entreaties and pleadings they paid my salary for one month and acted as though they were doing me a favor, saying “We’re paying you out of our own pockets.”

I was out of a job again. My wife told me, “What kind of a job is this? They either shut it down or they have no money and do not pay your salary.” She was right but I had grown to like journalists and looked for a job working with them. But it was not going well. Either no new newspapers were emerging, or they were, and I wasn’t hearing about them. The existing publications already had their own tea servers. I couldn’t find a job with other businesses because they preferred to hire younger people. I was worse off than before. I had no savings and our only source of income was the same meager pension.

For four months I was out of work until the editor-in-chief of the first magazine I’d worked for called me. He told that he had started working for a monthly.

“Are we going to be shut down again?”

He laughed. “It’s is a specialized monthly. God willing we will not be shut down.”

I have been working there for a few years now. I have heard that the authorities have warned us a few times. Whenever they talk about shortage of funds and warnings and things like that I get the jitters.

If you ask me what it is like to work for the press I have to answer that it does not matter whether you are a secretary, the editor-in-chief, a reporter or the tea server. You never feel safe. You can never be sure that you will get paid on time, or at all. You can never be sure the publication will survive and that you’ll have a job. Everything hangs by a thread—both the publication itself and the livelihoods of the people who produce it. 

***

Journalism is a hazardous profession in Iran, and it can be even more dangerous when trying to report the truth about the government and Iran’s establishment figures. Censorship, Iranian Style is a collection of stories by 18 Iranian journalists, writers and cartoonists who have experienced censorship — under the Islamic government, as well as under the Shah’s regime prior to the 1979 Revolution. Their tales of being silenced, harassed and imprisoned provide a solid understanding of the everyday bravery and courage of Iranian journalists, and give a new perspective on the menacing and warped mentality of Iranian censor officials. 

 

More stories in this series:

“I could not document history”, by Hasan Sarbakhshian

When Stories Kill, by Niloufar Rostami

The Seven Obstacles to Publishing Books in Iran, by Ebrahim Nabavi

All Beards Are Sacred, by Touka Neyestani

The Working Journalist in an Atmosphere of Terror, by Isa Saharkhiz

The Midnight Watch, by Ehsan Mehrabi

Censorship, As Ordinary as Breathing, by Mana Nayestani

The Tragicomedy of Censorship in Iran, by Masoud Behnoud

The Islamic Sex-Ed Calendar, by Reza Haghighatnejad

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Stories from Students’ Protests, by Siamak Ghaderi

My Husband Was a Tasty Morsel for the Regime, by Mehrangiz Kar