Dave’s Reise nach Osten

And here comes the true cultural shock: Let’s talk about marriage.

Maybe you have read that it it is possible in Iran to marry for 48 hours. Well, here is the story.

The following is a condensate of some talks I had with Iranian people.

When we go to Mekka and speak with the men from Saudi-Arabia, they are shaking their heads when they hear that we have only one wive. “Four, man, take four!” is what they say.

At the time of Mohammed, a lot of men died in wars and a woman had no legal protection if not married. So it was very important for the women that they were married. But with not enough men around it was a good invention that one man could take care for more than one wife. And that was not for fun, he maybe took care of an old widow.
But the Saudi-Arabis took the rule and use it for fun…[1]

We have that one family in our town, they are two wives and one man. Everybody is wondering how this family is working, but nobody has contact with them. The wives don’t want their husbands to learn something from that man.

But there are situation that are different:
There is this neighbour couple, he is about 60 and she 70, he is fit and she already senile. She cannot really take care of him anymore. In one of her clear moments, she was asking her neighbours if they cannot find a woman for her husband, he needs someone who can take care of him.
Seriously. They think that way.

Before another example, let’s have a look at the law:

The Law

There is the official marriage. With name changing and everything. And then there is the religious marriage. You can do one without the other one. And now comes the funny thing: The religious marriage can have a time limit. This is based on one phrase in the Koran that is discussable [1]. It says something like: ‘You can take a wife to your home for some time.’ Some muslims see that relating to a servant that you can fixly integrate in your household for some time by marrying her, others think it relates to short time marriage. Anyway, this is possible now in Iran. You can go to a Mullah, pay some money (about 60 Dollar), speak some sentences and you are married for as long as you want: a year, a month, 48 hours or forever. (The thing has a constraint, the koran expects divorced women to first have their menstruation twice before marrying again.)
You may ask: What could a short time marriage be good for? Well, sex without marriage is illegal. You can get killed for that in Iran. It is just very funny for an outsider that the marriage does not have to be an official official one, a religious one is official enough. Seems like a religious marriage is some semi-official marriage with more flexibility but full protection of your sexual intercourse by the law. Crazy, isn’t it.

So, back to this little town:

There is a widow. She for sure wants to be with someone again. Not only for a relationship, but also economically it would be good. There are some man queueing up, but they all are married already. No unmarried men over 40 around. Most of them just want to marry her for one year. She will only accept a proposal from someone that marries her forever.

Now she got married again. I asked how this is going to work: They will see each other about once a week and she will get some money from him, the rest of the time he will spend with his family. The whole thing will be a big secret, because people would speak bad about you.
There are only few men thinking about marrying a second time, maybe one percent does even consider this, and this thinking is not liked in the community.

So what is the widows idea about that? “You have to take what you get.”
And I asked her son what he thinks about it: “You told me people here don’t like men that take a second wife. Men like the new husband of your mother. But you support him. Why?”
“He supports my mummy, so I support him”.

So, how can we as westerner think of the whole thing? Having a lover in Iran can kill you. Having a second wife can be like having a lover, equally disregarded by the society. And having a marriage on time can be thought of like having a boyfriend/girlfriend after you reached a certain age – just makes the whole thing legal. Still it is very strange what behaviour is excused here with religion.
But what looks very strange on first sight, is not so strange anymore after a closer look. People are also mostly living monogamous. But there are always some other relations around. And because of a different law systems and culture, the relations out of the norm find complete different niches to exist in Iran.

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[1] Christians well versed in the bible can understand that well. Take one discussable sentence (or even just a word!) in a holy book and you can end up having two different theologies, split-up communities and so on