'A chance to sing their tears'

The dramatic comeback of Iranian diva Googoosh, silenced since the revolution, climaxed last week at a Persian New Year gala on the Gulf. Azadeh Moaveni caught up with the singer in Dubai
Legendary Iranian singer Googoosh has spent each of the last 21 Persian new years in Tehran, forbidden from singing and virtually banned by authorities in the Islamic Republic from leaving the country. This year, her traditional new year (Norouz) spread decorates a table in a sumptuous Dubai resort, where she stays in between the two concerts that mark the climax of her dramatic, 19-city comeback tour. Leaning forward amidst the exotic orchids and Persian tapestry that fill the room, Googoosh exhales the smoke of her French cigarette and begins to explain what her comeback means to Iran and herself.
From the beginning of the tour in Toronto, Googoosh has sung to packed audiences of Iranian expatriates who cherish her music as a symbol of the Iran they left behind with the 1979 Revolution. But for her Dubai concert, thousands of Iranians streamed across the Gulf for what might be their last chance to see her. While the Iranian government issued Googoosh a passport to leave the country, her return to Iran is a risk the singer has decided not to take.
When Googoosh first took the stage at the open-air Al-Ahli stadium, her Arab fans were as ecstatic as her Iranian ones.
Cries of "Ya halla Googoosh!" (Arabic for "welcome, Googoosh") mingled with "Googoosh, dooset darim" (Persian for "Googoosh, we love you"), as Arab men in white dishdashas and women in everything from slip-dresses to niqabs formed an eclectic mosh pit. Perhaps out of deference to her close proximity to Iran, the once-flamboyant singer wore relatively modest gowns and clearly restrained herself from overly encouraging the crowd -- which was clearly ready to party in the decadent style of the Shah's Iran.
Her emotional comeback tour began taking shape two years ago, when Googoosh, partly motivated by the chance to see her young grandson abroad for the first time, requested a passport and coordinated with the Los Angeles production team that managed the tour. "It has been unbelievable," says producer-manager Massoud Jamali. "I have never seen so many 15-minute ovations, so many cell-phones in the air beaming the concert to families around the world." Offers streamed in from designers from Chanel to Giorgio Armani, eager to dress the famously stylish diva. Fans from local mayors to Celine Dion, from Iranian soccer stars to the Shah's eldest daughter, showed up for her performances and two American cities named the days of the concert "Googoosh Day."
Feeding her fans taste for nostalgia, Googoosh has played mainly old songs at her shows. But her new album, recorded in Canada, departs from her traditional style of Persian pop, incorporating world beat and flamenco. And as reluctant as Googoosh is to talk politics, the album makes bold symbolic statements: the black cover shows Googoosh's face through a veil of mourning and is entitled "Zardosht" (Zoroaster), a nod to Iran's pre-Islamic heritage frowned upon by Muslim clerics.
In the title song, she demands, "Since when can singing be a crime? It was with an anthem that Zoroaster planted this land."
Her trademark songs are of lost love, hardship and pain. They still are, but now echo not only personal suffering, but the pain of the modern Iranian experience: wrenched, rootless lives in exile and families torn apart.
Googoosh herself is well-acquainted with hardship. After her father put her on stage with his dance troupe at the age of three, she appeared in her first movie at eight and began recording at 15. By the time she was 20, already a star, Googoosh reigned over cosmopolitan Tehran's discos and cabarets. After the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a rigid Islamic system that banned female singing, which was deemed seductive. Googoosh went from being a national treasure to a pariah who owed the revolutionary regime money for back-taxes. Many Iranian singers escaped to Los Angeles, singing to the US-based diaspora, but Googoosh stayed on quietly in her Tehran flat, refusing to defect illegally. "I wanted to come out with a passport," she insists. Her life was stripped of glamour, her "public appearances" were limited to stepping out to buy groceries and visiting friends. "I thought it was over," she says. "I worried I would never have the chance, or the ability, to come back."
But her staying only stoked her continued popularity. "She has suffered our pain with us all these years, in this choking regime of the mullahs," explains Amir, 24, an engineer who travelled from Tehran for the Dubai show. "She knows of what she sings." Bootleg tapes and CDs fed the continued appetite of her fan base that spans social classes and religious backgrounds.
Her music is the first thing Tehran policemen often "confiscate" from young people's cars. For a young Iranian generation yearning for the social freedoms its parents enjoyed, Googoosh is a symbol of the life they are denied and still hope to have. "Young people in Iran have no leisure, no privacy, no comfort," she says. "They have to force and fight, like they are doing now, to determine their lives, to build their future and our country, to secure their rights."
In the upcoming June presidential elections, young people frustrated with President Mohamed Khatami's slow pace of change half-jokingly threaten to write in "Googoosh" on the ballot. Googoosh herself sees some possibility for change. "That I could come out and sing on stage is itself a sign of hope," she says.
President Khatami's moderate cultural policies suggest that Googoosh should be able to return to Iran, but extremist clerics have already denounced the tour. A court recently summoned her director-husband Kimiai on charges that one of their films contravened Islamic dress code. Whatever happens, the Googoosh comeback tour, as much as any political development, will mark an epoch in the "new Iran." Fortunately, the singer has already accepted her extraordinary role. As she croons in one of her new songs: "I shall lend my voice to history, oh give me the chance, that I can sing your tears."
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