HVG: It’s strange to think of you stepping up to the podium in an Iranian university wearing a chador.
AH: I didn’t have to wear a chador, although by law it is forbidden to appear in a public place without a headscarf. So I covered my head the moment I got off the aeroplane. I was delighted to receive the invitation to Iran, because I knew it to be a country of culture where more French novels and philosophical works are translated than in Hungary.
HVG: Would they have allowed you into the country if they had known that you were a proponent of Marx’s teachings in the 1970s, that you were a Zionist activist in your youth and that you frequently defend Israel nowadays?
AH: They know very well who I am in Iran, many of my articles have been published there. The Iranian state is indeed anti-Israel, but even this is changing. At the pope’s funeral, President Khatami had a long conversation in Persian with Mose Kacav, the Israeli head of state who was born in Iran – even if they denied this conversation ever took place back home. And most of the middle class people and intellectuals I met were disgusted by the state’s verbal abuse of America and Israel, partly because they themselves aren’t keen on Arab countries. The Jewish community that remains lives peacefully, and the synagogues are still open.
HVG: How freely could you speak during your lectures?
AH: I didn’t want to comment directly on the Iranian system, so I spoke instead about how important the separation of papal and imperial might was in the development of European culture, and I also talked about the democratic transition in Hungary.