Peripheral Visions

create unbridgeable conflict. The clues are often elusive, like the laughter of a Tehran cab-driver, but the belief that one already knows the rules or that a god-given set of rules exists can quickly create a stalemate.
    In Tehran we organized an interdisciplinary study group of Iranians and Americans. Each of us was present in multiple capacities. We were all living and working in Iran and could be self-observers as well as observers of others. We all had subjective and personal experience to offer as well as training in some field of observation and analysis. The Iranians in the group had more to offer in the way of reminiscence; the foreigners had more to offer by way of contrast, plus a steady harvest of tales of embarrassment and perplexity. The group was quite deliberately modeled on a common Iranian pattern, the dowreh , a kind of group that meets at regular intervals for everything from bridge to political conspiracy to reading poetry—so, if nothing else, Barkev and I were learning the grammar of a different kind of participation. Our particular group met to discuss Iranian national character and, inevitably, to enact it at the same time.
    Nothing was regarded as too trivial. In a story about a man salvaging his friendship with the new husband of his ex-wife, I learned the phrase halalet basheh , which I came to use with cabdrivers. Conversations moved rapidly from subject to subject in a sort of shared free association, including gossip and gleeful anecdotes of childhood mischief, following long strands of metaphor. Verbally we danced together.
    One day when we had gotten going on the subject of quarrels, a member of the group described how, as children, siblings would be qahr with each other: ostentatiously refusing to speak or even to recognize the presence of the other, until some third person interfered. That created a zestful flurry of stories and explanations of terminology, as the conversation moved to anecdotes of qahr behavior between adults, often relatives or neighbors, and to an exploration of the role played by the outsider, someone older and trusted, who can bring about a reconciliation ( ashti ). The conversation wandered to other examples in which physical violence was flamboyantly threatened in some public quarrel and bystanders could be relied upon to come between the combatants.
    We were struck by the contrast with conflict in American society, where often no one has an interest in mediating, so, if the participants cannot agree, no one else will bring them together. Even in marriage, an American husband and wife can quarrel and split up with relatively mild effects on the social fabric, although of course the cumulative effect of many such conflicts is very significant. In Iran the relationship between a husband and wife is scarcely private, for it is likely to affect the day-to-day affairs of multitudes of kin. Handling conflict and resolution by triggering the interference of a third party makes sense in a society where individuals are multiply connected, so that both tiffs and profound conflicts become the business of others. Even in Iran, when two people who are not part of a network quarrel, becoming qahr does not lead to resolution; it simply means they no longer speak to each other and the relationship is over.
    We had a lot of conversation about qahr and ashti and laughter about childhood quarrels, children ostentatiously snubbing their mothers, and so on. Iranians tend to see the refusal to interact as aggressive, but it also sends a signal to concerned third parties that they had better interfere and prevents the speaking of unforgivable words. Argument, debate, face-to-face encounters will only make things worse. Conflict resolution in Iran involves something that might not be expected from observing Iranians in other contexts: a reduction in expressive behavior, an asceticism of emotion reminiscent of the reserve shown on entering a house following a death.
    The traditional forms of a dowreh gave us a framework that was both freeing and constricting, for it was hard to add new people once the group settled down. We used to rotate our meetings from house to house, and I remember talking about qahr in a garden as we drank tea and nibbled at fruit and pastries. Afterwards, Hassan, a British-trained psychiatrist, would prepare a traditional water pipe for Barkev. Tea ended the sequence of the day. Conflict, anger, hurt feelings—these too are subject to cultural rules, even