Persian Mirrors The Elusive Face of Iran [Paperback]

The book that revealed Iran to the West, now with a new Afterword. Elaine Sciolino updatesPersian Mirrorsto include coverage of the 2005 presidential election in Iran.
As a correspondent forNewsweekandThe New York Times,Sciolino has had more experience covering revolutionary Iran than any other American reporter. She was aboard the airplane that took Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Tehran in 1979 and was there for the revolution, the hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, the rise of President Khatami, the riots of 1999, and the crisis over Iran's nuclear program. InPersian Mirrors,Sciolino takes us into the public and private spaces of Iran, uncovering an alluring and seductive nation where a great battle is raging -- not for control over territory, but for the soul of its people.From Part One

Navigating the Islamic Republic

chapter one:Getting There, Getting In

TAXI DRIVER:I really shouldn't be driving you into Tehran without an order from the Imam. I could get my hands chopped off.

ROBERT REDFURN:Well, I appreciate your accepting a bribe. I really do.

TAXI DRIVER:It's been a while. We don't get too many Westerners in town anymore. The only Americans we've seen in months are the liars and demons of the U.S. press. You hail from the Great Satan yourself, right?

ROBERT REDFURN:Uh, right. New York, actually.

TAXI DRIVER:I can always tell. How long you been working for the C.I.A.?

--DOONESBURYCOMIC STRIP, MAY 30, 1980, IN THE MIDST OF THE HOSTAGE CRISIS

Persia is a country made for wandering onward.

-- VITA SACKVILLE-WEST,PASSENGER TO TEHERAN

I have never liked flying into Iran in the middle of the night. But after too many trips to count, I now have the drill down pat.

It isn't easy to get there from the United States. Tehran is 6,337 miles from Washington, D.C., and no American carrl<