The Blind Honor Code of Old Tehran's Dashmashis

In volume four of "Old Tehran," Jafar Shahri exposes the behavioral contradictions of the dashmashis and their blind honor-based prejudices: men who would draw a dagger if anyone in their own alley so much as glanced at a neighborhood woman, yet in other districts would chase after other men's wives, and out of extreme caution would not even utter their own wives' names.

According to ambassador Arjan; In old Tehran, honorable zeal had no clear boundaries. Men with thick necks and dashes would pull a knife if someone looked at a local woman or girl. The same people who were looking for people's wives in other neighborhoods, did not even mention their wife's name in their street and called her "Menzel" or "Hasan's mother". This situation was more intense among the common people and the illiterate. Their reason depended on their feelings, and with an ugly word or an inappropriate look, they lost control of their intelligence. At night, they would spend the night with a certain woman in Ashrtakdeh, and the next day they would defend her as if she were their mother or sister. The bigotry reached the neighborhood, mosque, group, Zurkhana and even Naqal and ghazal singers, and sometimes it led to mass raids and clashes. All this was at a time when the hijab had not yet been discovered and the word honor still had a different color. What follows is Jafar Shahri's description of this period:

"In terms of zeal and bigotry, perhaps Tehranis can be placed at the highest levels in terms of intensity and intensity, although nervousness itself, if it is from the aspect of immediate stimulation and emotion and is outside of logic and reason, is considered the most uncultivated trait, an example is the dry religious prejudices of some ethnic groups and tribes in accepting their creed and profession and considering it the most acceptable and disliking and rejecting the opinions and acceptance of others and what blood has been shed over it. In this explanation, for example, in this same Shia, our own Sunnism, because this group poured their ablution water from the top of the elbow, that group drew it from the bottom to the top, they were considered infidels, they became bloodthirsty, and it was enough for them to be provoked by an unclean lion, so that they unknowingly fell into each other's lives to destroy themselves and the other party. Make war!

Many a time, the Tehranis used indescribable zeal in prejudice, especially in honor prejudice, to the point where there were more fights, local quarrels, and rioting over the same issue, even though the same people who, for example, in their alleys and places and passing by, would eat their bellies when someone called a woman or a girl a tease, would themselves go after other women and girls in another alley or neighborhood, but What happened if someone left a glance at someone's honor, they would lose their temper and if someone openly spoke about someone's wife, they would pull a machete on her and even in the heat of the day, they would fight with each other. They were so fanatical that even when they met their wife and children in the street who had come to buy or need something, they did not introduce themselves, even if someone pointed them out and recognized them from his belongings. Or they used to call Hussain's sister, and probably because of this, many women and children who had not heard their mother's real name since childhood did not know her name.

Although this was the case among all the people of Sari, it was more prevalent among the wealthy, uneducated, and common classes, because their intellect and prejudice depended on their emotions, and with a little accident, they lost control of their consciousness and became emotional, and it was this transformation that made them dangerous to the point of being a murderer. For example, there were many nights in the Ashartakdehs with a special woman, good and bad, and as soon as the woman felt attracted to each other, they became friends, that is, they became friends. And the bazaar, cafe, and restaurant were so prejudiced about them that you would say that they are their mother, sister, or married, and Mary's seamless shirt, which no one has touched yet, is full of butterflies, which becomes dust with the touch and pressure of a finger.

Personal friend: A bad woman who was named as a special friend of a particular man had no right to have any other friend except him. Of course, this is not related to the woman's job, who at the same time provided her income through prostitution; The income that was given to the same friend completely and without caste. A personal friend should not be confused with (Nashandeh) and Nashandeh were evildoers who gave themselves to a man with a promise or an oath, lived with him like an official woman but without marriage, who met in the same bad neighborhoods. The difference between a friend and a personal friend was that the man is responsible for his expenses and the woman should not make any mistakes.

A woman and a girl whose decency they wanted to praise were called Maryam's seamless shirt, although sometimes they used it sarcastically and in women's disputes in its opposite direction; In this regard, they thought that Maryam Masih's shirt did not have a seam, in the sense that while the needle did not even touch her shirt, she did not touch herself in the first way.

Also, they were prejudiced about the neighborhood and the name of the neighborhood, the passage, the alley, the children of their neighborhoods, the mosque, the pulpit, the class, the science, the sportsman, the bully, the messenger, the orator, the praiser, the lamenter, the ghazal singer, the singer, the wife and the children of their friends and comrades, and everything that is related to their living environment. It resulted in many groups that fell into each other's lives, and the smallest example is the following story, which is applied by one of them to a woman who owns a house in the direction of jealousy.

In the example of one of Lashush, who was one of the bar vendors in the square, because it is a matter of honor, he treats the stomach of the evil-eyed one: in this way, he was gambling in a house one night when something happened to him in the yard, and as soon as he left, he came back in the corridor and was confronted by one of his opponents, who said to himself (what a piece of chami), which means what an interesting piece, and because he asked the connection of his words and answered I can say the landlady. As soon as he heard this, he pulled out his guaranteed knife from his pocket and plunged the tip of the blade into his stomach, saying that no one looks at Rafiq's wife and children as unclean!

Of course, maybe that woman was deliberately forced by the potter (landlord) to entertain the gamblers, and maybe he ordered her to make up and flirt in order to distract them so that they would lose to their accomplices, but whatever it was, this was the least example that was given in this case and the simplest punishment that was used in this field, and maybe because of these issues, she was sent to neighborhoods with the support of the parties. They would die. This just happened at a time when more than a quarter of a century had passed from these games of jealousy and jealousy, the discovery of the hijab and the freedom of women and their inbreeding with men, the word honor and the word zeal and prejudices of honor and the like had completely faded away. Brother and the like, they were the targets of his punishment arrows, their bloody trousers were hanging from the arches of the bazaar and pass or from the top of the garland of their local mosque.