Inside modern Iran, where porn and prostitution are rampant

To live in Tehran, writes British-Iranian journalist Ramita Navai in this collection of true stories, requires one essential skill: lying.

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“Morals don’t come into it,” Navai writes. “Lying in Tehran is about survival . . . when the truth is shared in Tehran, it is an act of extreme trust or absolute desperation.”

“City of Lies” features eight sprawling tales (all names have been changed, as have certain details, and several characters are composites). Each focuses on an individual, but Navai uses these personal stories to observe how people live, love and survive in a society ruled by fundamentalists.

Iranian youth read “Harry Potter,” watch Hollywood films like “The Bling Ring,” smoke joints and listen to Metallica and Radiohead — all the while knowing that one misstep can ruin their reputations and lives, including the possibility of prison or death. For women, sex outside marriage could mean “up to 100 lashes.” If convicted of adultery, a woman could be executed.

Crystal meth, ‘dog sweat’ and divorce

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A young woman smokes marijuana on the hidden side of a park in Tehran in February, 2014.Photo: Barcroft

“Somayeh” (each story is named after its central character) concerns a 17-year-old girl, her father, Haj Agha, and her mother, Fatemeh.

Somayeh and her classmates were virgins, but “a handful had experienced illicit encounters, mostly with their cousins, who were the only males they were allowed to be in contact with,” Navai writes.

When the conservative Somayeh met her 26-year-old cousin Amir-Ali, a well-built young man with a surgically perfected nose (according to Navai, plastic surgery is remarkably common in Tehran), the attraction was instant and mutual.

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Expensive clothes, fancy cars and mood-altering substances are surprisingly common in Iran.Photo: Getty Images

For the most part, Amir-Ali and his friends hung out with prostitutes and spent their weekends smoking pot and “sheesheh” — or crystal meth, the country’s most popular illegal drug after opium.

There were attempts at sex with regular girls as well, with varying degrees of success.

“Sometimes they would have ‘la-paee,’ ‘between the legs’ thigh sex, [where] he would pump vigorously between a girl’s clenched thighs,” writs Navai. “La-paee sex was the most popular form of sex among teenagers and girls in their early 20s from religious families.”

Occasionally, the boys would “get lucky,” but it was “nearly always anal sex so the girl’s hymen would remain untouched and she would still be a virgin for her wedding night.”

Navai says that marriage between cousins is “considered lucky and heaven-sent, a strengthening of families that brought unity.” Amir-Ali’s mother caught him looking at his cousin, pulled him aside, and warned him not to mess around with family unless he was serious. He said that he was, and a wedding was planned.