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me,” he said loudly when people yelled at him. “These young people today, they have no manners!” he offered sarcastically, then turned to me and winked. When we couldn’t drive on the sidewalk, Davood masterfully navigated through the slightest gap between cars and sometimes, to my horror, trucks.
    The effect of years of chaos and insecurity, war and revolution, can easily be seen in the way Iranians drive: these generally courteous people turn into monsters behind the wheel. They rarely allow another car the right of way and honk their horns as soon as a pedestrian steps into the street. Road rage—even using machetes against other drivers—is not unheard of in Iran. As a friend of mine once put it, “The disgraceful way we driveis like crapping on more than twenty-five hundred years of Persian history, arts, and culture.”
    As he drove, Davood told me that he had been kicked out of university in his native city of Tabriz. “I installed satellite dishes in people’s houses to make money,” he said. Owning a satellite dish is a crime in the Islamic Republic, but many people hide dishes on their balconies and rooftops. Davood was arrested and fined the equivalent of $3,000. The police also notified the university, and he was expelled. Even so, he considered himself lucky. Those who install satellite equipment can be sentenced to many years in prison.
    Since then, Davood had been trying to earn a living with his motorcycle in Tehran, but he was having a hard time making ends meet. That did not, however, stop him from looking stylish. His shoulder-length hair was wet with gel, and his goatee was immaculately trimmed. He had undone the top three buttons of his white shirt. If he were a bit slimmer, he could have passed for an Iranian Ethan Hawke.
    I told Davood to take his time when we reached Vanak Square, which was still covered with green leaflets and banners from the night before. Street sweepers in orange overalls were trying to clean up the mess, and at every intersection, Mousavi campaign volunteers—mostly men and women in their twenties—were distributing more leaflets. As we passed, I took one from the hand of a young woman.
Khodafez, Dictator
, it said over a picture of Ahmadinejad. Good-bye, Dictator.
    “Are you glad to be back home?” Davood shouted over the noise of the crowds and traffic. Knowing he could charge me twice the normal rate if he found out that I lived abroad, I had told him that I had been visiting Europe on business for a few weeks.
    “Yes,” I said, “very much.” The truth was, I had never been so thrilled about being in Tehran. I’d first moved away in 1986, just a few months after graduating from high school, and sincethen, I had never wanted to live permanently in the country of my birth. When I left, Iran was six years into the war with Iraq, and all men were required to serve in the military. I didn’t believe in the war, and knew I had to get out of the country. With the help of a smuggler, I snuck into neighboring Pakistan and made my way to Canada, where I studied film and journalism and, while retaining my Iranian citizenship, eventually became a Canadian citizen as well.
    Once I’d begun my career as a reporter, I had been spending more and more time in Tehran and had grown to love working there more than anywhere else in the world, but I still felt that the city was not a place where I’d ever choose to settle down. Successive Iranian governments had destroyed many beautiful traditional houses with Persian gardens and had built gaudy, quasi-modern high-rises in their place. The mountains that surround the city trap the smog, and with a population of twelve million people and thousands of cars and motorcycles crowding the streets, Tehran is among the most polluted cities in the world. On the back of Davood’s motorcycle, I could feel the heat of carbon monoxide on my face and taste the diesel fumes on my lips. But as we whizzed between the cars, while young men