I have always believed it is unlucky to be superstitious. I pity those who walk around a pavement ladder straight into the path of oncoming traffic and those who spend zealously on losing lottery tickets having witnessed a black cat successfully negotiate a dual carriageway. And indeed those who shun the advances of their perfectly matched small redheaded friend for the wooly promise of a tall dark stranger. But when I was shat on by pigeons twice within moments I had to concede that if any day was auspicious it was going to be that one.
The day had started pretty badly with a hideous hangover, the result of a crazy night out in Damascus with a Saudi and Bahraini in an Iraqi nightclub. And then being rudely thrown out of my hotel due to incompetence and overbooking. Trudging round in the midday heat looking for another hotel with my bags and a stonking headache was not much fun. It appeared that all hotels in the area were full apart from the wonderfully inappropriately named Grand Hotel Syria.
I entered my cell like room which was so narrow that the process of turning around naturally meant dusting the peeling walls. Then walked across the sticky lino to the bathroom and attempted to have a cold shower – lucky because there was no hot water. But neither was there much cold water – a rusty spout emitted a tepid yellowish trickle akin to being peed on, which then petered out just as I was fully lathered. I wiped myself off with a towel, slightly larger than a flannel, that looked and smelled like the last guest had used it to clean out the festering bowl and then swatted cockroaches with it.
But I consoled myself in the knowledge that I was doing my bit for the environment and sustainable travel. I imagined the little card that might have been placed next to the sink. 'Dear guest, millions of litres of detergent pollute our waterways every day…in order to protect the environment please note that towel on the rail means that you are happy to reuse the previous guest's towel again. Towel on the floor means you are happy to reuse the previous guest's towel again but will first use it as a bath mat'.
I was not drying. The air conditioning was like been blown on by someone with a slight temperature and halitosis. But as I threw on a marginally cleaner set of clothes and left my room with the intention of doing some sightseeing, I realized that the previous hotel had actually done me a favour by throwing me out;
'I am a proper traveler after all, not a tourist. By checking into the 'Grand' I am saving 30 dollars a day. That's enough to sit on a beach in Thailand for a week, eating fried rice and juggling fire torches – with change to get my hair dreaded. The aging German tourists can have my room in the overbooked, overpriced 3 star hotel. Who needs cable TV when you can watch a cat tormenting cockroaches in the corridor?'
I sat outside the amazing Umayyad mosque in the heart of Damascus' old town and checked my guidebook for inspiration to wander next, oblivious to the fat, winged vermin perched directly above me…
The first huge splat violated both arm and ear and I froze in denial - while the second got my shorts just over my groin. I don't know if it was two pigeons shitting in near unison, or one pigeon double dumping with the second sphincter contracting deposit finally purging its system. But it didn't make any difference; I sat in startled disgust while warm, chocolate-streaked Mr Whippy ran towards my elbow and a mound of oversoaked tiramisu graced my crotch. And that's lucky? That's got to be fucking unlucky by my reckoning.
There was only so much my last moist wipe could be expected to do so I decided to attempt a slightly better clean up back at the 'Grand'. I conceded it was better to take a taxi, not because the hotel was very far but because I had no idea how to get there, being blessed with the sense of direction of a female bat with no sonar.
'Meter' I insisted, pointing to the dilapidated contraption almost hidden in the pit of the cab.
'Meter no. 100 pounds'. The driver replied glancing at the unfortunate looking damp patch on my shorts.
But I was in true traveler mode and I knew that it should be no more than 20 Syrian pounds. I puffed up and got out of the cab giving him a 'don't insult my street cred, I'm almost a local', kind of look. But I had made a classic schoolboy error; I'd hailed a stationary cab outside a tourist attraction. All travelers know you never do that, so I walked a few metres and hailed a passing one.
Again I insisted on the use of the meter and again I received the same answer; '100 pounds yani'
I was arguing over a tiny amount but it was the principle and I stuck to my guns eventually making it back to my grotty little hotel on foot, having asked several helpful passers-by for directions. It was then that I had the stomach churning revelation that I didn't have my camera. I must have left it somewhere or it'd been stolen. And so soon after the tragedy of having all my pictures and video camera stolen in Tibet. I felt sick.
Then my churning stomach knotted as I realised that I must have left it in the cab, and there was no way the driver was going to return it after my spurning his ride for the sake of two dollars. Just my luck – it must have been two pigeons with the second splat cancelling out the fortunate benefits of the first.
I pictured the driver already tucking into a slap-up dinner in a restaurant next to the secondhand shop – but I walked back to the rank anyway to ask around. I was just giving up all hope when I heard a car behind me screech to a halt and a vaguely familiar voice shout, 'Mister, mister'. I turned around to see the driver brandishing my camera through his open window. 'You looking this?'
Call me fickle but I was now loving both the pigeons and the driver. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to get my camera back but by some stroke of good fortune and goodwill it was now hanging out of a taxi in front of me – the lovely man having driven around for the last half an hour looking for me. I rushed over to claim it, at the same time giving the driver a huge hug and pushing 1000 pounds into his hand. He was now my new best friend and happily took me the two blocks back to the hotel. It must have been the most overpriced taxi ride ever (especially for a traveler) but I thanked the pigeon(s), counting myself extremely lucky that it was such an honest rogue that had tried to rip me off.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Bad hair day
My hair concerns to date haven't generally amounted to more than a gradually receding hairline. That is about to change however, when after six weeks on the rails I am beginning to look like a backpacker and so decide it is time for a quick trim. I find a small salon in Van's downtown where a young barber is sitting with his feet up watching television. I check out his own hair with the mistaken theory that since he has a well groomed head, he would similarly do a good job of mine. Mistaken because I have since realized of course that a barber seldom cuts his own hair…
He ushers me to a chair with one eye still on the TV and I sit down pleased that my international finger and thumb sign for 'please just take this much off' has apparently been understood. He then stands behind me in the time honoured fashion and lifts little clumps of hair from both sides with his fingers, while looking in the mirror. Good start.
But then continuing to watch television, he fastens a cape around my neck almost throttling me and then plunges my head face first into the basin in front as if he's trying to drown me. Shampoo is slapped on and then a pause as I imagine he is transfixed by a good bit of the Egyptian sitcom. He spreads it around my head, washes it off, and then clears my nose with his fingers (thanks for that). I'm pulled back up for air and he makes a half hearted attempt to pat my hair dry with a damp rag.
Without further ado, he starts snipping away seemingly randomly, with great gusto and zero skill, like a child aspiring to play the piano. Indeed he appears to be making it up as he goes along. The scissors then come to a momentary rest on my head as he downs tool for another engrossing bit of TV.
Someone else enters the salon and sits down on the chair next to me. Turkey being a country not known for its love of queuing, the barber leaves me mid cut and goes over to give the other customer a quick nasal hair and ear trim. This leaves me with time to consider my fate and poses a bit of a dilemma. He has now about finished one side of my hair. Do I leave now while only half has been abused or do I wait for him to come back and fuck up the rest of it? In the vain hope that there must be some kind of symmetry in his butchery I sit like a mug and wait for more.
He hacks around at the other side for a few more alarming minutes and then realises that its not even. So he chops again at the original side. And back again. This continues for a few rounds, each time leaving less of my precious hair on my head. It really would be funny if it was someone else's hair. But I'm not laughing as I helplessly watch the whole horror unfold in the mirror in front of me.
While he is chopping away with all the measure and dexterity of an arthritic axe murderer, I have a worrying thought that maybe he is not a hairdresser at all. Perhaps he is actually the guy that would normally only have the pleasure of sweeping up my unwanted hair and bringing me a coffee and a copy of Hello. Perhaps while the actual hairdresser has nipped out for lunch, he has self elevated his status and thought 'I can do this. This is a piece of piss. Toni and Guy here I come. Who needs training?'
If he has been trained, it is at the Frank Abagnale school of hairdressing. He seems to be snipping happily away with the philosophy that as long as my hair looks sufficiently different from when I came in, he will have done a good job and I won't notice the deceit. He then picks up a mirror in order to show me the back, saving the most worrying revelation til last. I really don't want to look. It can't get any worse can it? It can. The clump where my hairline naturally meets in the middle has been completely removed. I have a small hole in the back of my head.
Just when I am deciding if I am going to shun all public life for a month or keep a baseball cap glued to my head, he points to a pot above the mirror. 'Gel?', his eyebrows raise to ask. Well what the hell. Go for it. He slaps on a substance smelling vaguely of petrol and randomly runs his hands through my hair a few times messing it up a bit, like they do. He's thinking, 'I'm pretty good at this, maybe it can get me out of military service'.
I stare at myself in the mirror in paralysed disbelief. I look like electrocuted road kill. This has been a bad hair day of epic misproportions. Yet after he has completely and utterly mutilated my hair, what do I do - in my very English conditioned way? Yes, I give the bastard a tip.
He ushers me to a chair with one eye still on the TV and I sit down pleased that my international finger and thumb sign for 'please just take this much off' has apparently been understood. He then stands behind me in the time honoured fashion and lifts little clumps of hair from both sides with his fingers, while looking in the mirror. Good start.
But then continuing to watch television, he fastens a cape around my neck almost throttling me and then plunges my head face first into the basin in front as if he's trying to drown me. Shampoo is slapped on and then a pause as I imagine he is transfixed by a good bit of the Egyptian sitcom. He spreads it around my head, washes it off, and then clears my nose with his fingers (thanks for that). I'm pulled back up for air and he makes a half hearted attempt to pat my hair dry with a damp rag.
Without further ado, he starts snipping away seemingly randomly, with great gusto and zero skill, like a child aspiring to play the piano. Indeed he appears to be making it up as he goes along. The scissors then come to a momentary rest on my head as he downs tool for another engrossing bit of TV.
Someone else enters the salon and sits down on the chair next to me. Turkey being a country not known for its love of queuing, the barber leaves me mid cut and goes over to give the other customer a quick nasal hair and ear trim. This leaves me with time to consider my fate and poses a bit of a dilemma. He has now about finished one side of my hair. Do I leave now while only half has been abused or do I wait for him to come back and fuck up the rest of it? In the vain hope that there must be some kind of symmetry in his butchery I sit like a mug and wait for more.
He hacks around at the other side for a few more alarming minutes and then realises that its not even. So he chops again at the original side. And back again. This continues for a few rounds, each time leaving less of my precious hair on my head. It really would be funny if it was someone else's hair. But I'm not laughing as I helplessly watch the whole horror unfold in the mirror in front of me.
While he is chopping away with all the measure and dexterity of an arthritic axe murderer, I have a worrying thought that maybe he is not a hairdresser at all. Perhaps he is actually the guy that would normally only have the pleasure of sweeping up my unwanted hair and bringing me a coffee and a copy of Hello. Perhaps while the actual hairdresser has nipped out for lunch, he has self elevated his status and thought 'I can do this. This is a piece of piss. Toni and Guy here I come. Who needs training?'
If he has been trained, it is at the Frank Abagnale school of hairdressing. He seems to be snipping happily away with the philosophy that as long as my hair looks sufficiently different from when I came in, he will have done a good job and I won't notice the deceit. He then picks up a mirror in order to show me the back, saving the most worrying revelation til last. I really don't want to look. It can't get any worse can it? It can. The clump where my hairline naturally meets in the middle has been completely removed. I have a small hole in the back of my head.
Just when I am deciding if I am going to shun all public life for a month or keep a baseball cap glued to my head, he points to a pot above the mirror. 'Gel?', his eyebrows raise to ask. Well what the hell. Go for it. He slaps on a substance smelling vaguely of petrol and randomly runs his hands through my hair a few times messing it up a bit, like they do. He's thinking, 'I'm pretty good at this, maybe it can get me out of military service'.
I stare at myself in the mirror in paralysed disbelief. I look like electrocuted road kill. This has been a bad hair day of epic misproportions. Yet after he has completely and utterly mutilated my hair, what do I do - in my very English conditioned way? Yes, I give the bastard a tip.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
A weekend in Iraq
I am so close to the border with Iraq it would seem rude not to rack up another Rogue State on my Grand Tour of the axis of evil. There is a fine line between intrepid and foolish, I know, but Kurdistan in the north of Iraq is said to be safe, having had its own semi autonomy for the last 20 years. I have no intention of going for a picnic in Basra but it is never-the-less the sort of place you tell your mother you've gone after you get back.
Incidentally, I was even a little concerned about telling my parents I was going to Iran – there had been a lot in the press about American and British tourists being detained and accused of being spies. But I needn't have been. I remember the three way conversation with my mother and father on the phone when I realized my mother doesn't know where Iran is and I could hear my father still turning the pages of the Racing Post, no doubt checking the results of the 4.45 at Doncaster. He replied automatically, with 'Ah very good, Well then. Come and see us soon.' But he clearly hadn't registered.
I jump on a bus heading for the Iraqi border with my usual mix of intrigue and excitement for the unknown - plus a smidgen of trepidation – for although I have been told the place it safe, I haven't talked to anyone who's actually been there. I check into a modest looking hotel in the centre of Dohuk where a Kojak look-a-like points me towards my undistinguished room. Outside, a shabby band of shoe shine boys are plying their trade. They tease me in good humour, as I try to take their photo, obscuring their faces with their rags - artfully combining shining and just managing to bring their rags up to their faces before my camera is poised for the click.
I wander around town, an oddly appealing mix of new and old – ramshackled buildings and brand new developments, traditional tea shops and a gleaming university, old men resplendent in their baggy trousers, ruched belts, and carefully crafted headdresses, and the young in football shirts declaring 'Samsung', 'LG', and 'Fly Emirates'. Along the way I get chatting to Farzaad and Hashmand, English literature students who end up showing me around town, and taking me to their favourite spots. In a park we meet two of their course mates adding the finishing touches to their openly plagiarized English theses. An unspellchecked draft is sitting on the grass in front of me. 'Machiavellian theem in Shakespeare's Homlit'.
'Bullshit', the owner of the document declares, 'no one's going to read it anyway'. Eighteen year old Farzad assures me that he however loves the English language as much as his own. He has written eight novels which he knows are excellent though he hasn't so far found anyone able to read them.
We walk to a pretty tea garden in the centre of town where seemingly the whole male population is playing dominos or cards, and I borrow some cards to show them a few tricks. The shoeshine boys come to see what is going on and before long I have a crowd of people watching a medley of magic. They laugh and clap and urge me to repeat, shoe cleaning equipment strewn and abandoned on the grass around us.
Later, the students take me to their hostel to meet more friends.
'I have a brother in England, living in Wakefield', one of them declares in perfect English.
What is he doing there? I ask. I want to stress 'there' but don't.
'Waiting for asylum. I am considering following him. I can easily fake proof of living in a more dangerous area to help my cause, but it's a thousand dollars, a week in the back of a lorry, and a 50/50 chance of being found. So I'm not totally convinced'.
Back in my room, I settle in for the night. I have specifically chosen a 'quiet' room away from the street and overlooking some innocuous looking wasteland. It turns out however that the wasteland is actually a construction site alive and kicking in the cooler hours of the night. All night a pneumatic drill battles for supremacy with a hammer, until finally in the early hours of the morning the work stops.
Only to be replaced by the dulcet tones of the mosque caller, luring those, who I take it have had more sleep than me, to prayer. I pray for silence. And eventually get it – along with the streaming bright light of the rising sun, flooding into my pokey room through the curtainless window, reflecting off my polyester sheet and straight into my twisted, angry face. Peace in Iraq? Forget it.
I get up and decide that I might as well get on with the day since I am now too frustrated to sleep and anyway, I have only a short time to explore. I walk to the bus station to get a shared taxi to the village of Amadiya. Taxis going virtually everywhere else line up expectantly but the Amadiya rank is conspicuously bare.
I am invited to join a group of serious looking domino players in a tea shop next to the bus station. 'Is there any transport to Amadiya today?' I ask them. 'Yes, insallah. Waiting here'. And a burly man gestures me to the chair beside him. I wait, and watch the game of dominos being hastily played out in front of me. The burly man barely fits into the plastic chair he is occupying – he is throwing down dominos smartly before his pint-sized opponent. His bulging muscles ripple with every play. With each domino thrown he grunts and a moment later his opponent reciprocates. The pace picks up. He is now standing over the table territorially, with the gait of a bulldog, slapping his pieces down aggressively.
And then his phone rings to the theme tune from Titanic. He answers it – his shrill voice further uncovering the macho illusion - and then effetely lights a long, thin, menthol cigarette. They continue their play, slapping and grunting, slapping and grunting - I close my eyes and rest my head on the back of the chair. It sounds like a game of women's tennis. The burly man throws his last piece down in victory – and blows a raspberry towards his bemused opponent.
I give up waiting for a shared taxi and begrudgingly charter my own. The driver hurtles along the winding road, the worry beads attached to the mirror swaying worryingly. In the distance I see a verdant hilltop where the ancient village is somehow clinging. We are approaching Amadiya, a beautiful place with an identity crisis; on each of three road signs we pass it is spelt differently in English.
In the village I ask for directions to the mosque and feel rather embarrassed when I see it towering conspicuously in front of me, owning the village. But no problem; the guy who I asked will take me, and despite it being barely a stone's throw away to where we are standing, he drives me there. Karzand has an electrical business in Dohuk but has come to see his family in Armadiya/Armadi/Armady for a few days. Would I like to see some other places? Yes please. And he drives me from Mosque, to church, to tea shop to cave and to a nearby town with enchanting views over the village.
He wants to drive me back to Dohuk but his parents need the car and so he helps me charter a cab. Half way back the chain smoking driver spies an accident. He doesn't just slow and gawp as seems to be customary in The Middle East, but screeches to a halt at the scene. Not content in viewing from his car, he gets out to survey the crash more closely - and takes photos of the mangled carcasses of the two cars.
Back in Dohuk, after a quick night cap of tea, I meander back to the hotel to try and get a better night's sleep than the previous one. But the door is locked and it seems that no amount of knocking can produce anyone to open it. During my battering and shouting, several random passers-by stop to investigate what is going on. My situation seems the next best thing to rubber necking and they watch me beating the door and calling in vain with great interest.
They then get stuck in. One calls the number of the hotel – nothing. Another tries to break in through a side window, but impossible. Finally another throws a stone at a semi-lit window which induces the only other hotel guest to a startled reverie. He dons his clothes and peers at me from the other side of the glass door – he is the only one in the hotel and there is no key in the lock. He seems just as unhappy at being locked in as I am at being locked out. There are no other hotels in the area and I really don’t want to wake my new student friends, though they did offer repeatedly to have me to stay in their hostel. I stand around wondering what to do and smoke a chain of unrevelatory cigarettes.
Eventually the guilty looking proprietor returns, an hour later. 'No problem', he assures, I have key. Yeh, no problem for you mate, I think…but I am too tired to make a scene and fall in to bed and thank Allah it is Friday, the construction workers' day off.
The border crossing back is painfully slow – I read myself to immigration, via two bag inspections, three passport checks and four car examinations. Men with metal instruments are inspecting the bodies of every car, inserting their instuments into every conceivable space and cavity. They poke and prod and scrape like overzealous dentists. The wheels of some cars are even being extracted. Inside our car the air is hot, as are temperaments and a fight breaks out between the driver and a fellow passenger as the driver wants to charge more to put the air con on.
On the bus back to Mardin, I meet an engineer from Mosul, on his way for a break in Ankara. I ask him what it's like living in Mosul. He says he and his family go out once a month into the mountains not knowing if they will return or not – otherwise they stay cocooned and prisoned in their own house.
And what about the Americans? I ask.
He laughs. 'At first we thought they would help. We welcomed them into our homes. We gave them food. We had our pictures taken with them. And then we realized they were useless'. His laughter increases in intensity, his big jowly cheeks shuddering. 'They are imbeciles. They haven't got a clue about Iraq or Iraqis. Every week they come to my house and ask, Where are the terrorists? And I tell them, they've just nipped out to get ice cream, they'll be back soon'. He is laughing loudly; big animated guffaws, his moustache reverberating.
'But the Americans have done nothing for us. They are here solely for themselves. They come here all gung ho and arrogantly tell us what to do – some of them think they are Iraqi – but they've been working in sandwich shops in Michigan most of their lives and then are given jobs here they have no clue about. It’s a joke'. He laughs heartily again to prove it.
'We only have electricity four or five hours a day', he continues. 'In the summer my family and I have to sleep on the roof. It's scandalous. But what to do. It will get better. It has to…'
That evening I am on a high terrace overlooking the beautiful village of Savur in Turkey revisiting the last whirlwind 48 hours in my mind. As the bloodied sun is setting over the honeyed village below I get talking to a 77 year old German and her 88 year old Pakistani husband who are travelling independently, with rucksacks, round Turkey. They are the first non-local tourists I've spoken to in a month. What's the secret of fulfilling travelling? I ask.
'Travel with an open heart and an open mind, and do it now, she urges. But don't do anything too stupid', he adds with a wink.
Incidentally, I was even a little concerned about telling my parents I was going to Iran – there had been a lot in the press about American and British tourists being detained and accused of being spies. But I needn't have been. I remember the three way conversation with my mother and father on the phone when I realized my mother doesn't know where Iran is and I could hear my father still turning the pages of the Racing Post, no doubt checking the results of the 4.45 at Doncaster. He replied automatically, with 'Ah very good, Well then. Come and see us soon.' But he clearly hadn't registered.
I jump on a bus heading for the Iraqi border with my usual mix of intrigue and excitement for the unknown - plus a smidgen of trepidation – for although I have been told the place it safe, I haven't talked to anyone who's actually been there. I check into a modest looking hotel in the centre of Dohuk where a Kojak look-a-like points me towards my undistinguished room. Outside, a shabby band of shoe shine boys are plying their trade. They tease me in good humour, as I try to take their photo, obscuring their faces with their rags - artfully combining shining and just managing to bring their rags up to their faces before my camera is poised for the click.
I wander around town, an oddly appealing mix of new and old – ramshackled buildings and brand new developments, traditional tea shops and a gleaming university, old men resplendent in their baggy trousers, ruched belts, and carefully crafted headdresses, and the young in football shirts declaring 'Samsung', 'LG', and 'Fly Emirates'. Along the way I get chatting to Farzaad and Hashmand, English literature students who end up showing me around town, and taking me to their favourite spots. In a park we meet two of their course mates adding the finishing touches to their openly plagiarized English theses. An unspellchecked draft is sitting on the grass in front of me. 'Machiavellian theem in Shakespeare's Homlit'.
'Bullshit', the owner of the document declares, 'no one's going to read it anyway'. Eighteen year old Farzad assures me that he however loves the English language as much as his own. He has written eight novels which he knows are excellent though he hasn't so far found anyone able to read them.
We walk to a pretty tea garden in the centre of town where seemingly the whole male population is playing dominos or cards, and I borrow some cards to show them a few tricks. The shoeshine boys come to see what is going on and before long I have a crowd of people watching a medley of magic. They laugh and clap and urge me to repeat, shoe cleaning equipment strewn and abandoned on the grass around us.
Later, the students take me to their hostel to meet more friends.
'I have a brother in England, living in Wakefield', one of them declares in perfect English.
What is he doing there? I ask. I want to stress 'there' but don't.
'Waiting for asylum. I am considering following him. I can easily fake proof of living in a more dangerous area to help my cause, but it's a thousand dollars, a week in the back of a lorry, and a 50/50 chance of being found. So I'm not totally convinced'.
Back in my room, I settle in for the night. I have specifically chosen a 'quiet' room away from the street and overlooking some innocuous looking wasteland. It turns out however that the wasteland is actually a construction site alive and kicking in the cooler hours of the night. All night a pneumatic drill battles for supremacy with a hammer, until finally in the early hours of the morning the work stops.
Only to be replaced by the dulcet tones of the mosque caller, luring those, who I take it have had more sleep than me, to prayer. I pray for silence. And eventually get it – along with the streaming bright light of the rising sun, flooding into my pokey room through the curtainless window, reflecting off my polyester sheet and straight into my twisted, angry face. Peace in Iraq? Forget it.
I get up and decide that I might as well get on with the day since I am now too frustrated to sleep and anyway, I have only a short time to explore. I walk to the bus station to get a shared taxi to the village of Amadiya. Taxis going virtually everywhere else line up expectantly but the Amadiya rank is conspicuously bare.
I am invited to join a group of serious looking domino players in a tea shop next to the bus station. 'Is there any transport to Amadiya today?' I ask them. 'Yes, insallah. Waiting here'. And a burly man gestures me to the chair beside him. I wait, and watch the game of dominos being hastily played out in front of me. The burly man barely fits into the plastic chair he is occupying – he is throwing down dominos smartly before his pint-sized opponent. His bulging muscles ripple with every play. With each domino thrown he grunts and a moment later his opponent reciprocates. The pace picks up. He is now standing over the table territorially, with the gait of a bulldog, slapping his pieces down aggressively.
And then his phone rings to the theme tune from Titanic. He answers it – his shrill voice further uncovering the macho illusion - and then effetely lights a long, thin, menthol cigarette. They continue their play, slapping and grunting, slapping and grunting - I close my eyes and rest my head on the back of the chair. It sounds like a game of women's tennis. The burly man throws his last piece down in victory – and blows a raspberry towards his bemused opponent.
I give up waiting for a shared taxi and begrudgingly charter my own. The driver hurtles along the winding road, the worry beads attached to the mirror swaying worryingly. In the distance I see a verdant hilltop where the ancient village is somehow clinging. We are approaching Amadiya, a beautiful place with an identity crisis; on each of three road signs we pass it is spelt differently in English.
In the village I ask for directions to the mosque and feel rather embarrassed when I see it towering conspicuously in front of me, owning the village. But no problem; the guy who I asked will take me, and despite it being barely a stone's throw away to where we are standing, he drives me there. Karzand has an electrical business in Dohuk but has come to see his family in Armadiya/Armadi/Armady for a few days. Would I like to see some other places? Yes please. And he drives me from Mosque, to church, to tea shop to cave and to a nearby town with enchanting views over the village.
He wants to drive me back to Dohuk but his parents need the car and so he helps me charter a cab. Half way back the chain smoking driver spies an accident. He doesn't just slow and gawp as seems to be customary in The Middle East, but screeches to a halt at the scene. Not content in viewing from his car, he gets out to survey the crash more closely - and takes photos of the mangled carcasses of the two cars.
Back in Dohuk, after a quick night cap of tea, I meander back to the hotel to try and get a better night's sleep than the previous one. But the door is locked and it seems that no amount of knocking can produce anyone to open it. During my battering and shouting, several random passers-by stop to investigate what is going on. My situation seems the next best thing to rubber necking and they watch me beating the door and calling in vain with great interest.
They then get stuck in. One calls the number of the hotel – nothing. Another tries to break in through a side window, but impossible. Finally another throws a stone at a semi-lit window which induces the only other hotel guest to a startled reverie. He dons his clothes and peers at me from the other side of the glass door – he is the only one in the hotel and there is no key in the lock. He seems just as unhappy at being locked in as I am at being locked out. There are no other hotels in the area and I really don’t want to wake my new student friends, though they did offer repeatedly to have me to stay in their hostel. I stand around wondering what to do and smoke a chain of unrevelatory cigarettes.
Eventually the guilty looking proprietor returns, an hour later. 'No problem', he assures, I have key. Yeh, no problem for you mate, I think…but I am too tired to make a scene and fall in to bed and thank Allah it is Friday, the construction workers' day off.
The border crossing back is painfully slow – I read myself to immigration, via two bag inspections, three passport checks and four car examinations. Men with metal instruments are inspecting the bodies of every car, inserting their instuments into every conceivable space and cavity. They poke and prod and scrape like overzealous dentists. The wheels of some cars are even being extracted. Inside our car the air is hot, as are temperaments and a fight breaks out between the driver and a fellow passenger as the driver wants to charge more to put the air con on.
On the bus back to Mardin, I meet an engineer from Mosul, on his way for a break in Ankara. I ask him what it's like living in Mosul. He says he and his family go out once a month into the mountains not knowing if they will return or not – otherwise they stay cocooned and prisoned in their own house.
And what about the Americans? I ask.
He laughs. 'At first we thought they would help. We welcomed them into our homes. We gave them food. We had our pictures taken with them. And then we realized they were useless'. His laughter increases in intensity, his big jowly cheeks shuddering. 'They are imbeciles. They haven't got a clue about Iraq or Iraqis. Every week they come to my house and ask, Where are the terrorists? And I tell them, they've just nipped out to get ice cream, they'll be back soon'. He is laughing loudly; big animated guffaws, his moustache reverberating.
'But the Americans have done nothing for us. They are here solely for themselves. They come here all gung ho and arrogantly tell us what to do – some of them think they are Iraqi – but they've been working in sandwich shops in Michigan most of their lives and then are given jobs here they have no clue about. It’s a joke'. He laughs heartily again to prove it.
'We only have electricity four or five hours a day', he continues. 'In the summer my family and I have to sleep on the roof. It's scandalous. But what to do. It will get better. It has to…'
That evening I am on a high terrace overlooking the beautiful village of Savur in Turkey revisiting the last whirlwind 48 hours in my mind. As the bloodied sun is setting over the honeyed village below I get talking to a 77 year old German and her 88 year old Pakistani husband who are travelling independently, with rucksacks, round Turkey. They are the first non-local tourists I've spoken to in a month. What's the secret of fulfilling travelling? I ask.
'Travel with an open heart and an open mind, and do it now, she urges. But don't do anything too stupid', he adds with a wink.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Sleeping with the enemy
The ticket man at Tehran's train station looks long and hard at the visa page in my passport. And then takes a studied bite of his baby cucumber. Crunching and considering. Shaking on salt. Considering. Crunching. Slowly flicking through the pages of my passport… Could the visa from my recent visit to India which he seems to like very much give him some inspiration or guidance? No, he was going to have to ring the border. Which he does after carefully placing his half eaten cucumber in his pocket. They will call back in a few minutes…
And it was all going so well - rounder than a plump Iranian apricot - but then suddenly it looks in danger of going all rather pear shaped. I knew that overstaying your visa in Iran is best avoided at all cost but given that there is only one train a week to Turkey, I decided to take the risk of overstaying my welcome by one day. ..
It has been two hours and there has been no call from the border. I am sitting in the ticket man's office being routinely mistaken for his lazy apprentice - answering questions about on-board facilities and estimated arrival times with 'Sorry Ingilisi.' I feel slightly embarrassed that after a month in Iran my Farsi doesn't extend beyond that. To add insult to injury the ticket man then tells me that the train from Turkey to Syria, my planned next stop, is not running due to an earthquake in Turkey closing the line.
I finally accept the kind offer of his last flaccid cucumber – more out of something to do than hunger - and chew it mechanically, without tasting. It barely even crunches. He checks that I am not Irish and then tells a joke he apparently heard from another traveler, involving an Irishman in a car who keeps his possessions on his lap rather than in the boot. He can hardly control himself and is doubled up in fits of laughter at his own joke, though I have no idea why it is meant to be funny. Lost in back translation perhaps, or reconstituted transliteration - but at least we are passing the time.
My turn. I tell him a few jokes about the Scottish and he laughs when I explain that they are like the people from Rashd in northern Iran; they have deep pockets and short arms. I think that after two and a half hours he is warming to me.
Eventually the phone rings and a lengthy and lively conversation ensues… You rarely get an answer of no in Iran; it is always a carefully composed semi negative. 'You possibly may not be able to pass border because of your unfortunate extra day'. But he therefore has to concede that maybe I can, and so he lets me on the train to await my fate.
I am led to a compartment in which an Iraqi, an Afghan, and an Iranian are already busy making themselves at home, arranging belongings and pouring tea. (Would I like some? Thank you.) None of us can properly understand each other but we all see the amusement value in the unlikely combination of nationalities we form. The Iraqi immediately mimes the carriage being blown up, the Afghan points to the Iranian and Iraqi sitting next to each other and howls with laughter, and the Iranian alludes briefly to his view on British and American foreign policy ('Tony Blair'; thumb down, 'Bush'; thumb on floor) and then gives us all the high five.
We are all getting on famously until the Iranian is told he must change to another carriage. Another 'foreigner' is to replace him, Not strictly a foreigner at all as it turns out but an Iranian who has spend most of his life living abroad, and now on his way to do a Summer season in Bodrum. Immediately the happy dynamic of our carriage changes. He is deeply bitter and launches into a tirade of unanswered questions pointing to why he left Iran. Where does all the money in Iran go, why do the poor remain uneducated, and why is the train so slow?
I tell him I understand his frustrations and try tackling the safest of his questions by suggesting that, yes, the train is slow but at least it is cheap. 30 dollars for a 20 hour journey – that would barely get you the 20 minutes from Heathrow to central London. But it's no consolation. The Afghan and the Iraqi, sensing the mood, sit in silence, cross legged on their seats and share a jar of pickles. (Please eat. Thank you, I'm fine). I decide to go for a walk around the train.
Above the squat loo at the end of our carriage, a funneled potty has been cheerfully erected on a collapsible frame and loo paper has been provided - so I can feel at home when nature calls. Which it does repeatedly. It can't have been the cucumber?
After dinner in the restaurant car, we turn in for the night and clamber into our berths. I sleep to the rhythmic clatter of the train, broken only by my compartment mates snoring in unison, in their own distinct styles. The Afghan is purring, purring with contented expectation of a new life in Europe. The Iraqi is whistling, whistling with the thrill of Istanbul's night life. And the Iranian is growling.
The next morning I wake and peer through the window to the sight of rolling green hills and a clear blue sky – I am in my element. I have always loved trains. Not in an anorak on, notebook out, I've not seen a 114 on broad gauge since 1982 kind of way, but I've always believed that it is the most civilized and romantic way to travel. I love watching landscapes slowly melt and change, steeling glimpses of other lives, and gently coasting through cities, mountains, valleys, deserts and time.
I remember as a family putting the car on the train at York and travelling up to Inverness for our annual holiday by sleeper. This was actually the best bit of the holiday given that most of the rest was spent thrashing a fishing rod around in the pouring rain, in vain, on a lonely loch, in the middle of nowhere, being bitten by midges, and wishing we were in Disneyland. My sister and I would argue over the top bunk, eventually I would win, we would sleep, and wake up magically in Scotland to the smell of breakfast…
The Iranian awakes from his embittered slumber - wishes me good morning and fetches some tea for us all; he has obviously slept well.
In the next door carriage - (Orange? Banana? Sunflower seeds? Thank you. You welcome) I meet a family of four who are emigrating to New Zealand via a year in Turkey to sort out their papers. Mahvand, the mother tells me there is no future for their children in Iran – she wants them to be free and although she will miss their extended family and friends, she knows it's what they must do. She feels a mixture of sadness and excitement about the future.
In another carriage (Nuts? Tea?) I meet a family on their way to the UN in Istanbul. They are Bahai and are planning to seek asylum on account of their religion. Negar, the daughter explains they are also leaving behind their life in Iran because they feel so unwelcome in an uncompromisingly Muslim country. They are desperate to feel free to practice their faith and be accepted by the rest of society.
Aboozar is going for an interview in Istanbul for a university placement in America. He is a devout Muslim and a 28 year old father of two. He also feels that his liberty is curtailed in Iran but from a very different perspective. He believes that Iran is a corrupted society where those who wish to be good Muslims cannot do so without condescension from others. He says that people mock his wife who chooses to wear the full chador and cites the driving style of his fellow Iranians as evidence of their lack of respect for each other and their distance from Islam. Ironically he feels his family will be freer to practice their religion in the States. But he seems nervous and is painfully self-aware. He repeatedly asks me what I think of his appearance and his chances of success in interview. 'Do I look too formal, too religious, too old man-ish, what do you say – stick-on-the-mud? Should I take off my glasses and wear trainers?'
During the course of the journey, I meet many people with similar stories to tell. The majority are leaving Iran for good and many of them will be seeking political asylum. But some are going on holiday; in another carriage two young students are going to check out Istanbul for the first time. 'What are you going to do in Turkey', I ask. They laugh; 'All the things we can't do in Iran.'
They are sitting opposite a self proclaimed sex tourist who openly admits he's going to Istanbul to make up for his carnal frustrations at home. Their fellow passenger is an Iranian Arab who is taking a break from his two wives who live on consecutive floors of his house. He tells me he is planning on getting another wife when he returns. 'Where will she live? I ask. 'I'll build another floor – Allah Akbar, God is great!' he replies.
Back in our compartment, we shudder to another unexplained stop. I take out the tattered timetable from my pocket which the ticket man in Tehran gave me to read to pass the time. We should be nearing the border. But we're not. The Iranian mocks me for even looking at it. 'It's pure fiction' he says. 'Not worth the cheap paper it's printed on – it'll be more use in the squatter.' The Afghan and Iraqi are again sitting quietly, picking at their pickles. (Please...Eat.)
Lunch is then served in the compartment. The steward hands me a bowl of soup - with his thumb poking in it. But it's no problem; he can lick his digit - which he does - and I can wait for the main course. The main course which looks conspicuously like last night's dinner; the ubiquitous 'chelo kebab' – skewers of meat served over a mountain of rice slicked in butter, and served with crepe paper like bread. I have barely taken my cutlery out of the plastic wrapper when I notice that the Iraqi has already wolfed most of his down, pausing only to open his pot of jelly which he devours mid course.
I am half way through my last skewer when we reach the border and I am summonsed off the train to hand over my documents. Eight vaguely official looking officials crowd around my battered old passport and it is handed round in turn for inspection, like a recently unearthed relic.
I get back on the train and wait. Eventually our carriage is led to the restaurant car where the officials are sitting round a mound of passports, mine left conspicuously abandoned on the side. The other passengers wait patiently in turn for their stamped passports. I'm told to sit at the back by the portly chief official who looks at me with his deep-set piggy eyes and scowls. His distorted face grimaces in disgust while his snubbed nose sneers. He reminds me of a Toulouse Lautrec portrait.
The women are expectantly adjusting their scarves; many are waiting to be free of them and the constant rearranging involved in wearing one. And free from the strictures of post revolutionary Iranian life. To me, the symbol of my own freedom is my passport, my most valued possession and my license to travel, and I now feel rather uncomfortable without it.
The rest of the train have all had their passports stamped and handed back in turn and so the restaurant car is now empty - apart from the chief official who is languidly drinking tea - using my passport as a coaster. He was born to be an immigration official - or a driving examiner, I decide. He clearly has a very small penis… He walks past me without acknowledging me… And what little he has doesn't work.
Eventually the train's electrician who is the only one who can speak English sheds some light on the situation. 'Don’t worry he is just trying to make you nervy'. 'It is a problem', he confirms, 'but every problem in Iran has a value'. And this, it seems, should be no more than a 30 dollar problem. But I am welcome in Iran and he tells me he has a brother living in Trafalgar square. I briefly picture his brother covered in pigeon shit on top of Nelson's Column - but at that moment the chief official waves my passport at me. 'Come you here', he orders in his wounded pidgin English. I hand over 30 dollars and finally my stamped passport is thrown on the table in front of me. It seems strange that the only time I've been made to feel any less than completely welcome since I arrived in Iran is at the very point of departure.
Eventually we are moving… Only to lurch to a screeching halt a few hundred metres down the track. We reverse back to the Iranian border as we have forgotten the Turkish conductor. Who boards to check our tickets for the fourth time. Again we move and I initiate a round of applause in the restaurant car – somehow I feel it takes some of the heat off me for my part in this latest delay - but from the platform I see the chief official looking at me, his piggy eyes unnaturally widened and almost leaving their sockets. I'm very happy that we are moving.
At the Turkish border we all get off the train to sort out our visas. Many of the women throw off their headscarves with joy. I speak to Mahvand who tells me it is the first time in her adult life she has been without her scarf in public. She sheds a tear, 'I'm so happy, I can't believe it. So happy for my children'.
Caught up in the flood of mixed emotions, I almost forget to get my Turkish visa. I am the last one at the visa counter and I offer 100 dollars to the immigration official. But they don't have change. I have pounds sterling and Iranian pounds but they only accept euros and dollars. Shit. I really don't want to hold up the train again. Nobody else has change for 100 dollars and no one wants Iranian pounds or sterling. Eventually the snack booth man agrees to change my Iranian money into lire so I can in turn change it for dollars with a helpful passenger. All too complicated for my innumerate mind to fathom in haste, but with 20 dollars in my hand I run back to the immigration counter to exchange it for my visa.
Back on the train, the atmosphere has completely changed - you can feel a real sense of relief and jubilation. Muted discussions have become shrieks of laughter. People deliver tea and snacks to strangers in other carriages. Music blares. (And this is before those heading on to Istanbul crack open the beer on the Turkish train).
Eventually we pull into Van but I realize I've missed my stop – this is Lake Van where those heading on will be getting the ferry before boarding the Turkish train the other side. I needed Van City and the train steward in my carriage was meant to tell me to get off there, but he forgot. So they offer to take me back in the train to Van City, thirty minutes back in the direction we've just come, as the only passenger. The steward appears to feel slightly guilty and, after trying in vain to engage me in some English premiership football chat, he sheepishly hands me half an orange.
Finally I fizzle to a halt at Van City station, 28 hours after having set off, with, mercifully, two more stamps in my passport, and an eclectic mix of new friends.
And it was all going so well - rounder than a plump Iranian apricot - but then suddenly it looks in danger of going all rather pear shaped. I knew that overstaying your visa in Iran is best avoided at all cost but given that there is only one train a week to Turkey, I decided to take the risk of overstaying my welcome by one day. ..
It has been two hours and there has been no call from the border. I am sitting in the ticket man's office being routinely mistaken for his lazy apprentice - answering questions about on-board facilities and estimated arrival times with 'Sorry Ingilisi.' I feel slightly embarrassed that after a month in Iran my Farsi doesn't extend beyond that. To add insult to injury the ticket man then tells me that the train from Turkey to Syria, my planned next stop, is not running due to an earthquake in Turkey closing the line.
I finally accept the kind offer of his last flaccid cucumber – more out of something to do than hunger - and chew it mechanically, without tasting. It barely even crunches. He checks that I am not Irish and then tells a joke he apparently heard from another traveler, involving an Irishman in a car who keeps his possessions on his lap rather than in the boot. He can hardly control himself and is doubled up in fits of laughter at his own joke, though I have no idea why it is meant to be funny. Lost in back translation perhaps, or reconstituted transliteration - but at least we are passing the time.
My turn. I tell him a few jokes about the Scottish and he laughs when I explain that they are like the people from Rashd in northern Iran; they have deep pockets and short arms. I think that after two and a half hours he is warming to me.
Eventually the phone rings and a lengthy and lively conversation ensues… You rarely get an answer of no in Iran; it is always a carefully composed semi negative. 'You possibly may not be able to pass border because of your unfortunate extra day'. But he therefore has to concede that maybe I can, and so he lets me on the train to await my fate.
I am led to a compartment in which an Iraqi, an Afghan, and an Iranian are already busy making themselves at home, arranging belongings and pouring tea. (Would I like some? Thank you.) None of us can properly understand each other but we all see the amusement value in the unlikely combination of nationalities we form. The Iraqi immediately mimes the carriage being blown up, the Afghan points to the Iranian and Iraqi sitting next to each other and howls with laughter, and the Iranian alludes briefly to his view on British and American foreign policy ('Tony Blair'; thumb down, 'Bush'; thumb on floor) and then gives us all the high five.
We are all getting on famously until the Iranian is told he must change to another carriage. Another 'foreigner' is to replace him, Not strictly a foreigner at all as it turns out but an Iranian who has spend most of his life living abroad, and now on his way to do a Summer season in Bodrum. Immediately the happy dynamic of our carriage changes. He is deeply bitter and launches into a tirade of unanswered questions pointing to why he left Iran. Where does all the money in Iran go, why do the poor remain uneducated, and why is the train so slow?
I tell him I understand his frustrations and try tackling the safest of his questions by suggesting that, yes, the train is slow but at least it is cheap. 30 dollars for a 20 hour journey – that would barely get you the 20 minutes from Heathrow to central London. But it's no consolation. The Afghan and the Iraqi, sensing the mood, sit in silence, cross legged on their seats and share a jar of pickles. (Please eat. Thank you, I'm fine). I decide to go for a walk around the train.
Above the squat loo at the end of our carriage, a funneled potty has been cheerfully erected on a collapsible frame and loo paper has been provided - so I can feel at home when nature calls. Which it does repeatedly. It can't have been the cucumber?
After dinner in the restaurant car, we turn in for the night and clamber into our berths. I sleep to the rhythmic clatter of the train, broken only by my compartment mates snoring in unison, in their own distinct styles. The Afghan is purring, purring with contented expectation of a new life in Europe. The Iraqi is whistling, whistling with the thrill of Istanbul's night life. And the Iranian is growling.
The next morning I wake and peer through the window to the sight of rolling green hills and a clear blue sky – I am in my element. I have always loved trains. Not in an anorak on, notebook out, I've not seen a 114 on broad gauge since 1982 kind of way, but I've always believed that it is the most civilized and romantic way to travel. I love watching landscapes slowly melt and change, steeling glimpses of other lives, and gently coasting through cities, mountains, valleys, deserts and time.
I remember as a family putting the car on the train at York and travelling up to Inverness for our annual holiday by sleeper. This was actually the best bit of the holiday given that most of the rest was spent thrashing a fishing rod around in the pouring rain, in vain, on a lonely loch, in the middle of nowhere, being bitten by midges, and wishing we were in Disneyland. My sister and I would argue over the top bunk, eventually I would win, we would sleep, and wake up magically in Scotland to the smell of breakfast…
The Iranian awakes from his embittered slumber - wishes me good morning and fetches some tea for us all; he has obviously slept well.
In the next door carriage - (Orange? Banana? Sunflower seeds? Thank you. You welcome) I meet a family of four who are emigrating to New Zealand via a year in Turkey to sort out their papers. Mahvand, the mother tells me there is no future for their children in Iran – she wants them to be free and although she will miss their extended family and friends, she knows it's what they must do. She feels a mixture of sadness and excitement about the future.
In another carriage (Nuts? Tea?) I meet a family on their way to the UN in Istanbul. They are Bahai and are planning to seek asylum on account of their religion. Negar, the daughter explains they are also leaving behind their life in Iran because they feel so unwelcome in an uncompromisingly Muslim country. They are desperate to feel free to practice their faith and be accepted by the rest of society.
Aboozar is going for an interview in Istanbul for a university placement in America. He is a devout Muslim and a 28 year old father of two. He also feels that his liberty is curtailed in Iran but from a very different perspective. He believes that Iran is a corrupted society where those who wish to be good Muslims cannot do so without condescension from others. He says that people mock his wife who chooses to wear the full chador and cites the driving style of his fellow Iranians as evidence of their lack of respect for each other and their distance from Islam. Ironically he feels his family will be freer to practice their religion in the States. But he seems nervous and is painfully self-aware. He repeatedly asks me what I think of his appearance and his chances of success in interview. 'Do I look too formal, too religious, too old man-ish, what do you say – stick-on-the-mud? Should I take off my glasses and wear trainers?'
During the course of the journey, I meet many people with similar stories to tell. The majority are leaving Iran for good and many of them will be seeking political asylum. But some are going on holiday; in another carriage two young students are going to check out Istanbul for the first time. 'What are you going to do in Turkey', I ask. They laugh; 'All the things we can't do in Iran.'
They are sitting opposite a self proclaimed sex tourist who openly admits he's going to Istanbul to make up for his carnal frustrations at home. Their fellow passenger is an Iranian Arab who is taking a break from his two wives who live on consecutive floors of his house. He tells me he is planning on getting another wife when he returns. 'Where will she live? I ask. 'I'll build another floor – Allah Akbar, God is great!' he replies.
Back in our compartment, we shudder to another unexplained stop. I take out the tattered timetable from my pocket which the ticket man in Tehran gave me to read to pass the time. We should be nearing the border. But we're not. The Iranian mocks me for even looking at it. 'It's pure fiction' he says. 'Not worth the cheap paper it's printed on – it'll be more use in the squatter.' The Afghan and Iraqi are again sitting quietly, picking at their pickles. (Please...Eat.)
Lunch is then served in the compartment. The steward hands me a bowl of soup - with his thumb poking in it. But it's no problem; he can lick his digit - which he does - and I can wait for the main course. The main course which looks conspicuously like last night's dinner; the ubiquitous 'chelo kebab' – skewers of meat served over a mountain of rice slicked in butter, and served with crepe paper like bread. I have barely taken my cutlery out of the plastic wrapper when I notice that the Iraqi has already wolfed most of his down, pausing only to open his pot of jelly which he devours mid course.
I am half way through my last skewer when we reach the border and I am summonsed off the train to hand over my documents. Eight vaguely official looking officials crowd around my battered old passport and it is handed round in turn for inspection, like a recently unearthed relic.
I get back on the train and wait. Eventually our carriage is led to the restaurant car where the officials are sitting round a mound of passports, mine left conspicuously abandoned on the side. The other passengers wait patiently in turn for their stamped passports. I'm told to sit at the back by the portly chief official who looks at me with his deep-set piggy eyes and scowls. His distorted face grimaces in disgust while his snubbed nose sneers. He reminds me of a Toulouse Lautrec portrait.
The women are expectantly adjusting their scarves; many are waiting to be free of them and the constant rearranging involved in wearing one. And free from the strictures of post revolutionary Iranian life. To me, the symbol of my own freedom is my passport, my most valued possession and my license to travel, and I now feel rather uncomfortable without it.
The rest of the train have all had their passports stamped and handed back in turn and so the restaurant car is now empty - apart from the chief official who is languidly drinking tea - using my passport as a coaster. He was born to be an immigration official - or a driving examiner, I decide. He clearly has a very small penis… He walks past me without acknowledging me… And what little he has doesn't work.
Eventually the train's electrician who is the only one who can speak English sheds some light on the situation. 'Don’t worry he is just trying to make you nervy'. 'It is a problem', he confirms, 'but every problem in Iran has a value'. And this, it seems, should be no more than a 30 dollar problem. But I am welcome in Iran and he tells me he has a brother living in Trafalgar square. I briefly picture his brother covered in pigeon shit on top of Nelson's Column - but at that moment the chief official waves my passport at me. 'Come you here', he orders in his wounded pidgin English. I hand over 30 dollars and finally my stamped passport is thrown on the table in front of me. It seems strange that the only time I've been made to feel any less than completely welcome since I arrived in Iran is at the very point of departure.
Eventually we are moving… Only to lurch to a screeching halt a few hundred metres down the track. We reverse back to the Iranian border as we have forgotten the Turkish conductor. Who boards to check our tickets for the fourth time. Again we move and I initiate a round of applause in the restaurant car – somehow I feel it takes some of the heat off me for my part in this latest delay - but from the platform I see the chief official looking at me, his piggy eyes unnaturally widened and almost leaving their sockets. I'm very happy that we are moving.
At the Turkish border we all get off the train to sort out our visas. Many of the women throw off their headscarves with joy. I speak to Mahvand who tells me it is the first time in her adult life she has been without her scarf in public. She sheds a tear, 'I'm so happy, I can't believe it. So happy for my children'.
Caught up in the flood of mixed emotions, I almost forget to get my Turkish visa. I am the last one at the visa counter and I offer 100 dollars to the immigration official. But they don't have change. I have pounds sterling and Iranian pounds but they only accept euros and dollars. Shit. I really don't want to hold up the train again. Nobody else has change for 100 dollars and no one wants Iranian pounds or sterling. Eventually the snack booth man agrees to change my Iranian money into lire so I can in turn change it for dollars with a helpful passenger. All too complicated for my innumerate mind to fathom in haste, but with 20 dollars in my hand I run back to the immigration counter to exchange it for my visa.
Back on the train, the atmosphere has completely changed - you can feel a real sense of relief and jubilation. Muted discussions have become shrieks of laughter. People deliver tea and snacks to strangers in other carriages. Music blares. (And this is before those heading on to Istanbul crack open the beer on the Turkish train).
Eventually we pull into Van but I realize I've missed my stop – this is Lake Van where those heading on will be getting the ferry before boarding the Turkish train the other side. I needed Van City and the train steward in my carriage was meant to tell me to get off there, but he forgot. So they offer to take me back in the train to Van City, thirty minutes back in the direction we've just come, as the only passenger. The steward appears to feel slightly guilty and, after trying in vain to engage me in some English premiership football chat, he sheepishly hands me half an orange.
Finally I fizzle to a halt at Van City station, 28 hours after having set off, with, mercifully, two more stamps in my passport, and an eclectic mix of new friends.
Nose Job Nation
It is Friday night in Rasht and the young are out to see and be seen. The girls' scarves are so far back they are defying gravity, and the definition of covered. Make up is thick, and many a nose has the tell tale sign of a recent remodel. For Rasht is probably the nose job capital of the world.
It was initially in Esfahan that I became aware of the phenomenon. I kept bumping into a guy with a white plaster on his nose at every turn on the street. I was sure he was following me but it was only later that I realized that they were in fact different people, something that I had assumed was too much of a coincidence. But in Iran more than 100,000 people a year go under the cosmetic surgeon's knife, many of those for a new hooter, and customers are increasingly men.
Whereas in the West we would normally lie low for the few weeks that our new noses are healing or cunningly get it done under the guise of a 'sinus' operation, in Iran it is something of a status symbol and people are quite happy for you to see their new schnozzles in the early stages of recovery. In fact it is said that some people keep the plasters on for far longer than is necessary just so you can see they've had it done.
I am walking through the trendy area of Rasht, with Hamidreza, a graphic designer I met at a party in Tehran. He lives in Rasht, a natural stopover on the way to the beautiful village of Massuleh and offered to have me to stay at his parent's house. He seems to know everyone around town and we meet friends for coffee and scout the trendy boutiques containing fake designer clothes – and 'original fakes' which are fakes made in Turkey rather than in Iran.
Then I'm invited to one of his friend's English classes where I talk to the students about life in England and Dubai. Many of them are looking to leave Iran at least for a few years, and England, perhaps only because I am there, appears to be one of the top destinations. They fire questions at me but have to fight to be heard against their teacher who talks constantly and rapidly in his version of English, which is almost unintelligible. I wonder that his students have picked up any English at all under his tuition.
Back at the house the mother insists on making me eat like a grandmother feeding an only grandson she hasn't seen for years.
'Pass him the cake, Hamid'.
'I'm fine thanks, we had a late lunch'.
'Well would he like a chocolate? Maybe he doesn't like chocolate. How about nuts? Hamid, he must eat something…dates? What would he like for dinner?'
Dinner, eaten soon after lunch, is an amazing spread of Rasht specialties which we enjoy with the rest of the family and, being a guest, I am given copious platefuls of it all. I am safe in the knowledge that the spirit of Iranian hospitality is alive and well, even in the north.
Over dinner I broach the subject of nose jobs and I salute the deft workmanship of the Rasht surgeons who have clearly been very busy. Then admire the lovely natural noses of the extended family – before Hamid quickly changes the subject - perhaps some of those on display around the table aren't quite as natural as I had thought…
It was initially in Esfahan that I became aware of the phenomenon. I kept bumping into a guy with a white plaster on his nose at every turn on the street. I was sure he was following me but it was only later that I realized that they were in fact different people, something that I had assumed was too much of a coincidence. But in Iran more than 100,000 people a year go under the cosmetic surgeon's knife, many of those for a new hooter, and customers are increasingly men.
Whereas in the West we would normally lie low for the few weeks that our new noses are healing or cunningly get it done under the guise of a 'sinus' operation, in Iran it is something of a status symbol and people are quite happy for you to see their new schnozzles in the early stages of recovery. In fact it is said that some people keep the plasters on for far longer than is necessary just so you can see they've had it done.
I am walking through the trendy area of Rasht, with Hamidreza, a graphic designer I met at a party in Tehran. He lives in Rasht, a natural stopover on the way to the beautiful village of Massuleh and offered to have me to stay at his parent's house. He seems to know everyone around town and we meet friends for coffee and scout the trendy boutiques containing fake designer clothes – and 'original fakes' which are fakes made in Turkey rather than in Iran.
Then I'm invited to one of his friend's English classes where I talk to the students about life in England and Dubai. Many of them are looking to leave Iran at least for a few years, and England, perhaps only because I am there, appears to be one of the top destinations. They fire questions at me but have to fight to be heard against their teacher who talks constantly and rapidly in his version of English, which is almost unintelligible. I wonder that his students have picked up any English at all under his tuition.
Back at the house the mother insists on making me eat like a grandmother feeding an only grandson she hasn't seen for years.
'Pass him the cake, Hamid'.
'I'm fine thanks, we had a late lunch'.
'Well would he like a chocolate? Maybe he doesn't like chocolate. How about nuts? Hamid, he must eat something…dates? What would he like for dinner?'
Dinner, eaten soon after lunch, is an amazing spread of Rasht specialties which we enjoy with the rest of the family and, being a guest, I am given copious platefuls of it all. I am safe in the knowledge that the spirit of Iranian hospitality is alive and well, even in the north.
Over dinner I broach the subject of nose jobs and I salute the deft workmanship of the Rasht surgeons who have clearly been very busy. Then admire the lovely natural noses of the extended family – before Hamid quickly changes the subject - perhaps some of those on display around the table aren't quite as natural as I had thought…
How the other half live
'More Vodka'?
'No that's great thanks'. And it is. It's my first drink in three weeks. A perfectly mixed Bloody Mary and its going down a treat.
Nousha is a friend of a friend from Dubai who lives in the shiny Northern suburbs of Tehran and has kindly invited me up to get a taste of another kind of life in Iran.
'Canapé'? And she hands me a tray of beautifully arranged nibbles containing quails eggs, asparagus, French cheeses and proper pork salami. Iranian food is good but this is such a welcome diversion after two weeks of eating nothing else.
'Sorry there aren't more of us this evening, but some of my friends, well, how shall I put it, are on the other side, for being caught drinking at a party last night', my host explains.
Suddenly my Bloody Mary is not going down too well after all.
'They are trying to pay their way out at the moment but the fools tried to object initially – you have to know when to play the game – they were too arrogant to play it. They were probably flogged...'
I choke on my drink.
'Too much Tabasco? …But don't worry, you are perfectly safe here, I never hold large gatherings which attract the attention of the religious police'.
I'm introduced to her friend who comes from a family that used to be one of the biggest wine growers in Iran. They had all their land and assets confiscated in the revolution. But she seems unfazed by history and is happily slurping her way through a bottle of someone else's Shiraz. Now she spends her time between private parties in Tehran and the club scene of London and, well into her 50s, delights in telling me she can out-party any twenty something.
Including the twenty somethings who have also been invited this evening – a group of male socialites who have just been to the launch party of something though none of them have any idea what was being launched. They talk instead about their many girlfriends and the challenge of finding a good one, and given the fact that most live with their parents, where to go with her when they have one.
An immaculately dressed lady hands me another canapé – she owns a Montessori school nearby. Doesn't she have to get up early tomorrow for school? 'Own sweety, own - not manage'.
We are in a stunning three level apartment nestled in the foothills of the mountains, towering over the city below – and the walls are adorned by an amazing collection of Iranian contemporary art. It feels a million miles away from the Tehran where I am staying in the downtown, and indeed it was quite an adventure getting there…
We hurtle up the hill away from my hotel at breakneck speed as the idiom obsessed taxi driver looks at the address. 'It's a pieces of cake' he assures me.
A car somehow manages to overtake us on a blind corner. 'More hasty less speed', he shouts through his window.
'Why do people drive like that?' I ask after taking a deep breath and recomposing myself.
Does the leopard change his spots? He replies taking both hands off the wheel to seemingly express that the question is ludicrous.
Shortly afterwards, a motorbike hurls up the road towards in our lane. 'Everything good in its season', he remarks as it pulls out of our way just at the last minute, missing us 'by the whisker'.
He misses a turn on a dual carriageway and reverses back to it. 'When in Rome do as Romans', he winks.
We have been driving round perilously for more than an hour when I begin to recognize some of the places we have already been. We are clearly lost. But the driver is unfazed and we continue to drive around the hills blindly. 'Don't worry, I know Tehran like back of my hand', he claims shortly before slowing to ask directions.
We are nearly there apparently, but I shouldn't 'count my hens'...
…Inside I recount the journey there and ask the other revelers why it is that everyone drives so badly in Iran. I observe that mirrors are used only to check beard growth and indicators are only ever used in tandem, as hazard lights, to aid rubber necking. And that people will spend minutes arguing over who should go through the door first but are quite happy to cut up their fellow road users and put their lives at risk without a second thought.
Someone suggests that it is their way of letting out their pent up frustrations – an outlet for the severely restricted way of life. An expat I met the previous day working for a European trade commission, told me it is precisely because they are so suffocated by their politeness in company, that when they are driving it is totally anonymous and people feel free to behave how they want. He added that if you manage to make eye contact with anyone driving badly on the road they will snap out of it as the connection has broken the anonymity.
A guy on the train to Turkey however told me rather cynically that this is the real Iranian, red in tooth and claw, and that all the niceties you see in a social situation are purely a façade.
Whatever the reason, all I can say it is the most unnerving part of being in Iran – every other supposed threat is seemingly a gross exaggeration – but the roads are a very real danger with one of the highest mortality rates in the world. However you just have to get used to it and admire their skill as they carve out five lanes where there are three marked and weave in and out of each other with, for the most part, deftness and skill, and a lot horn honking.
It is two o'clock in the morning and the vodka has run dry. But not a problem; a quick phone call and minutes later two huge bottles Grey Goose miraculously arrive at the door.
'You can get whatever you like here, darling, as long as you know where to look – we need it – it is our means of survival'.
Most people talk about the political situation with a mixture of frustration and helplessness. It is clear that there is huge resentment and frustration but there is little at least in the short term that can be done about it. They are expecting demonstrations on the anniversary of the election last year but after the brutal treatment of the protesters they aren't imagining very many will turn out. Everyone from taxi drivers to students to the professionals (and professional partygoers) I have met will immediately air their views on the situation vociferously, and there is a widely held view that as long as the religious and political agendas are so interconnected nothing is really going to change. So many seek solace in the finer things in life…
I was told, never talk about Politics, religion or sex, especially in Iran. However, I've been here three weeks and rarely been able to talk about anything else. Apart from the driving of course.
'No that's great thanks'. And it is. It's my first drink in three weeks. A perfectly mixed Bloody Mary and its going down a treat.
Nousha is a friend of a friend from Dubai who lives in the shiny Northern suburbs of Tehran and has kindly invited me up to get a taste of another kind of life in Iran.
'Canapé'? And she hands me a tray of beautifully arranged nibbles containing quails eggs, asparagus, French cheeses and proper pork salami. Iranian food is good but this is such a welcome diversion after two weeks of eating nothing else.
'Sorry there aren't more of us this evening, but some of my friends, well, how shall I put it, are on the other side, for being caught drinking at a party last night', my host explains.
Suddenly my Bloody Mary is not going down too well after all.
'They are trying to pay their way out at the moment but the fools tried to object initially – you have to know when to play the game – they were too arrogant to play it. They were probably flogged...'
I choke on my drink.
'Too much Tabasco? …But don't worry, you are perfectly safe here, I never hold large gatherings which attract the attention of the religious police'.
I'm introduced to her friend who comes from a family that used to be one of the biggest wine growers in Iran. They had all their land and assets confiscated in the revolution. But she seems unfazed by history and is happily slurping her way through a bottle of someone else's Shiraz. Now she spends her time between private parties in Tehran and the club scene of London and, well into her 50s, delights in telling me she can out-party any twenty something.
Including the twenty somethings who have also been invited this evening – a group of male socialites who have just been to the launch party of something though none of them have any idea what was being launched. They talk instead about their many girlfriends and the challenge of finding a good one, and given the fact that most live with their parents, where to go with her when they have one.
An immaculately dressed lady hands me another canapé – she owns a Montessori school nearby. Doesn't she have to get up early tomorrow for school? 'Own sweety, own - not manage'.
We are in a stunning three level apartment nestled in the foothills of the mountains, towering over the city below – and the walls are adorned by an amazing collection of Iranian contemporary art. It feels a million miles away from the Tehran where I am staying in the downtown, and indeed it was quite an adventure getting there…
We hurtle up the hill away from my hotel at breakneck speed as the idiom obsessed taxi driver looks at the address. 'It's a pieces of cake' he assures me.
A car somehow manages to overtake us on a blind corner. 'More hasty less speed', he shouts through his window.
'Why do people drive like that?' I ask after taking a deep breath and recomposing myself.
Does the leopard change his spots? He replies taking both hands off the wheel to seemingly express that the question is ludicrous.
Shortly afterwards, a motorbike hurls up the road towards in our lane. 'Everything good in its season', he remarks as it pulls out of our way just at the last minute, missing us 'by the whisker'.
He misses a turn on a dual carriageway and reverses back to it. 'When in Rome do as Romans', he winks.
We have been driving round perilously for more than an hour when I begin to recognize some of the places we have already been. We are clearly lost. But the driver is unfazed and we continue to drive around the hills blindly. 'Don't worry, I know Tehran like back of my hand', he claims shortly before slowing to ask directions.
We are nearly there apparently, but I shouldn't 'count my hens'...
…Inside I recount the journey there and ask the other revelers why it is that everyone drives so badly in Iran. I observe that mirrors are used only to check beard growth and indicators are only ever used in tandem, as hazard lights, to aid rubber necking. And that people will spend minutes arguing over who should go through the door first but are quite happy to cut up their fellow road users and put their lives at risk without a second thought.
Someone suggests that it is their way of letting out their pent up frustrations – an outlet for the severely restricted way of life. An expat I met the previous day working for a European trade commission, told me it is precisely because they are so suffocated by their politeness in company, that when they are driving it is totally anonymous and people feel free to behave how they want. He added that if you manage to make eye contact with anyone driving badly on the road they will snap out of it as the connection has broken the anonymity.
A guy on the train to Turkey however told me rather cynically that this is the real Iranian, red in tooth and claw, and that all the niceties you see in a social situation are purely a façade.
Whatever the reason, all I can say it is the most unnerving part of being in Iran – every other supposed threat is seemingly a gross exaggeration – but the roads are a very real danger with one of the highest mortality rates in the world. However you just have to get used to it and admire their skill as they carve out five lanes where there are three marked and weave in and out of each other with, for the most part, deftness and skill, and a lot horn honking.
It is two o'clock in the morning and the vodka has run dry. But not a problem; a quick phone call and minutes later two huge bottles Grey Goose miraculously arrive at the door.
'You can get whatever you like here, darling, as long as you know where to look – we need it – it is our means of survival'.
Most people talk about the political situation with a mixture of frustration and helplessness. It is clear that there is huge resentment and frustration but there is little at least in the short term that can be done about it. They are expecting demonstrations on the anniversary of the election last year but after the brutal treatment of the protesters they aren't imagining very many will turn out. Everyone from taxi drivers to students to the professionals (and professional partygoers) I have met will immediately air their views on the situation vociferously, and there is a widely held view that as long as the religious and political agendas are so interconnected nothing is really going to change. So many seek solace in the finer things in life…
I was told, never talk about Politics, religion or sex, especially in Iran. However, I've been here three weeks and rarely been able to talk about anything else. Apart from the driving of course.
Carpet Spurn
SCENE 1
We open on the magnificent Iman square, Esfahan, where Hamish has just filled his second memory card before realising he's been taking all his pictures with a disastrously inappropriate film speed and spots on the sensor. He is seriously unhappy. We see him scowl and utter various incomprehensible words under his breath.
Enter fourth carpet salesman of the hour.
CS4 Hi. Where you from?
Hamish What?
CS4 Where you from?
Hamish Oh, England.
CS4 David Beckham. Toby Blair.
Hamish (feeling sorry for poor Gordon who hasn't even made it into the Iranian consciousness before he is out) Yes.
CR4 My name is Ali.
Hamish Hi Ali.
CS4 Esfahan beautiful right.
Hamish Yes, beautiful.
CS4 You welcome. I have brother in Manchester and aunt in Liverpool.
Hamish (Thinks: Of course you do. Every carper seller has at least one family member in a Premiership division football city. They rarely live anywhere else).
CS4 The weather is perfect in Esfahan yes?
Hamish Yes.
CS4 England raining, right?
Hamish Right.
CS4 How many days you have stay in Esfahan. Two or three?
Hamish Yes, two or three.
CS4 Have you been Imam mosque.
Hamish Yes.
CS4 Beautiful, yes?
Hamish Yes.
CS4 My brother has shop.
Hamish (raising eyebrows) Right. (Not the one living in Manchester. Every carpet seller has at least two brothers; one by chance living surprisingly close to you and the other with a shop)
CS4 It’s carpet shop. Come see. No need buy. Just looking.
Hamish (dismissively) I'm ok thanks.
CS4 No need buy. Just looking. But not expensive.
Hamish (voice slightly raised) No thanks.
CS4 Would you like to come and just looking.
Hamish (holding back. Just) No, Really I'm fine.
CS4 Tea?
Hamish NO!
CS4 Maybe tomorrow?
Hamish (Looks daggers)
CS4 (Slopes off towards another tourist)
SCENE 2
Two minutes later, Hamish has returned from the closed Ali Qapu Palace where he was to have taken the money shot of the Imam Mosque from the roof in the perfect late afternoon sun. He is looking slightly less happy than he was two minutes ago.
Enter 5th carpet seller of the hour.
CS5 (Clears throat). Hi. Where you from?
Hamish England.
CS5 Oh England. David Beckham. Margaret Thatcher.
Hamish Right.
CS5 I'm Ahmad.
Hamish Hi Ahmad.
CS5 I have a brother in Grimsby.
Hamish (Grimsby, that's second division?) (lacking enthusiasm) Great.
CS5 Yes, Grimsby near Chelsea.
Hamish And you have another brother with a carpet shop, right.
CS5 Right.
Hamish But I don't need to buy anything right?
CS5 Right.
Hamish Just looking.
CS5 Oh. Yes. Just looking……So you don't want carpet then?
Hamish (very audibly) No I'm fine thanks.
CS5 (tentatively): How about a guide?
Hamish AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
CS4 (scuttles off into bazaar).
We open on the magnificent Iman square, Esfahan, where Hamish has just filled his second memory card before realising he's been taking all his pictures with a disastrously inappropriate film speed and spots on the sensor. He is seriously unhappy. We see him scowl and utter various incomprehensible words under his breath.
Enter fourth carpet salesman of the hour.
CS4 Hi. Where you from?
Hamish What?
CS4 Where you from?
Hamish Oh, England.
CS4 David Beckham. Toby Blair.
Hamish (feeling sorry for poor Gordon who hasn't even made it into the Iranian consciousness before he is out) Yes.
CR4 My name is Ali.
Hamish Hi Ali.
CS4 Esfahan beautiful right.
Hamish Yes, beautiful.
CS4 You welcome. I have brother in Manchester and aunt in Liverpool.
Hamish (Thinks: Of course you do. Every carper seller has at least one family member in a Premiership division football city. They rarely live anywhere else).
CS4 The weather is perfect in Esfahan yes?
Hamish Yes.
CS4 England raining, right?
Hamish Right.
CS4 How many days you have stay in Esfahan. Two or three?
Hamish Yes, two or three.
CS4 Have you been Imam mosque.
Hamish Yes.
CS4 Beautiful, yes?
Hamish Yes.
CS4 My brother has shop.
Hamish (raising eyebrows) Right. (Not the one living in Manchester. Every carpet seller has at least two brothers; one by chance living surprisingly close to you and the other with a shop)
CS4 It’s carpet shop. Come see. No need buy. Just looking.
Hamish (dismissively) I'm ok thanks.
CS4 No need buy. Just looking. But not expensive.
Hamish (voice slightly raised) No thanks.
CS4 Would you like to come and just looking.
Hamish (holding back. Just) No, Really I'm fine.
CS4 Tea?
Hamish NO!
CS4 Maybe tomorrow?
Hamish (Looks daggers)
CS4 (Slopes off towards another tourist)
SCENE 2
Two minutes later, Hamish has returned from the closed Ali Qapu Palace where he was to have taken the money shot of the Imam Mosque from the roof in the perfect late afternoon sun. He is looking slightly less happy than he was two minutes ago.
Enter 5th carpet seller of the hour.
CS5 (Clears throat). Hi. Where you from?
Hamish England.
CS5 Oh England. David Beckham. Margaret Thatcher.
Hamish Right.
CS5 I'm Ahmad.
Hamish Hi Ahmad.
CS5 I have a brother in Grimsby.
Hamish (Grimsby, that's second division?) (lacking enthusiasm) Great.
CS5 Yes, Grimsby near Chelsea.
Hamish And you have another brother with a carpet shop, right.
CS5 Right.
Hamish But I don't need to buy anything right?
CS5 Right.
Hamish Just looking.
CS5 Oh. Yes. Just looking……So you don't want carpet then?
Hamish (very audibly) No I'm fine thanks.
CS5 (tentatively): How about a guide?
Hamish AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
CS4 (scuttles off into bazaar).
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Flirting with Islam
Bluetooth seems to be a way of life in Iran. It is used to pass round anything anyone within a 20 metre distance of you thinks you might be interested in. Switch your phone to Bluetooth in any bus, train, or café and you will be immediately bombarded with images, video clips and messages of varying kinds; messages to pass the time and messages to flirt. For in a staunchly Islamic country, where opportunities for interacting with the opposite sex are severely restricted, it sits alongside the internet and parading up and down designated streets in cars, as the main vehicles to do this.
From the phone name, and with a little eye contact you can usually work out who a given message is from. This image was sent to me on the bus to Esfahan, I think by the blushing girl in a full chador three seats behind me…
From the phone name, and with a little eye contact you can usually work out who a given message is from. This image was sent to me on the bus to Esfahan, I think by the blushing girl in a full chador three seats behind me…
Friday, May 7, 2010
Ice cream culture in Esfahan
People queue for food for two reasons – either because it is in chronically short supply as for a disheveled rabble outside a Soviet bread shop. Or because it is extremely good.
Walking past a snaking queue near the beautiful Khaju bridge in Esfhan, I naturally had to find out what the fuss was about. The queue led to a small shop inside which several begloved keepers were spooning rich yellow ice cream onto small trays. Politely declining several offers from people who wanted to buy some for me, I waited patiently in line to be served.
It was delicious; thick, creamy, saffron flavoured. I got talking to the family of four, next to me in the queue, who were on their weekly ice cream pilgrimage. The 17 year old son plays the violin for the Esfahan Philharmonic orchestra. Would I like to hear him play? Why not. So after greedily devouring our ice cream we made the short walk over the bridge to their apartment the other side.
Before the mother had even taken off her coat the table was filled with food and my own impromptu concert had begun. The mobile clip below is a traditional Armenian piece, with the father accompanying his son on piano.
It did feel rather surreal being in the sitting room of a family who I'd met just 15 minutes before, smothered in food, and listening to a concert with an audience of just me. But then, of course, Iran never ceases to amaze.
Walking past a snaking queue near the beautiful Khaju bridge in Esfhan, I naturally had to find out what the fuss was about. The queue led to a small shop inside which several begloved keepers were spooning rich yellow ice cream onto small trays. Politely declining several offers from people who wanted to buy some for me, I waited patiently in line to be served.
It was delicious; thick, creamy, saffron flavoured. I got talking to the family of four, next to me in the queue, who were on their weekly ice cream pilgrimage. The 17 year old son plays the violin for the Esfahan Philharmonic orchestra. Would I like to hear him play? Why not. So after greedily devouring our ice cream we made the short walk over the bridge to their apartment the other side.
Before the mother had even taken off her coat the table was filled with food and my own impromptu concert had begun. The mobile clip below is a traditional Armenian piece, with the father accompanying his son on piano.
It did feel rather surreal being in the sitting room of a family who I'd met just 15 minutes before, smothered in food, and listening to a concert with an audience of just me. But then, of course, Iran never ceases to amaze.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Amir and friends
'This way not safe. I help you'.
I have been happily lost in the bazaar for several hours when I meet Amir.
'Where you want go…?'
I don't really want to go anywhere in particular. Am quite content just walking round the city without a map and seeing where I end up. Something I love doing in new places to get a feel for them when I first arrive.
'Oh, I'm fine thanks', I reply.
'I show you your home. But better you come my home. I have first errand and then we have dinner with my friends'.
It still looked like it was going to be impossible to buy my own dinner in Iran.
Amir is a Space Engineering student. Although Iran apparently has an ambitious space programme, he doubts its progress and wants to work in Europe one day. But the government prevents scholarship students from leaving the country.
'I will have to go without law'
We talk as we walk along a narrow, winding street to an unassuming door. Inside there is a small courtyard filled with purple flowers, bathed in the rich afternoon light. The door to his room is locked and his room-mate has lost the key - so he pragmatically and effortlessly breaks open the padlock with a stone. The cave-like room is small but cozy, a low ceiling with shelves carved out of the stone.
His errand turns out to be sending a package to his friend in a nearby town. He opens the box of a mobile phone, and carefully sticks a bag of four ecstasy tablets to the underside of the tray. He then sits the mobile back in the tray, replaces the lid and neatly tapes up the box.
'I not like but my friends want party', he explains.
We take a shared taxi to the bus station to deliver the package to an open-minded bus driver friend.
Back at his room, his room-mates have arrived back from their work on a construction site. They are two Afghan refugees; 19 year old Mostapa and 25 year old Arash.
'Welcome', they smile.
Mostapa is preparing dinner on a small gas stove in the middle of the room. Arash lays a piece of plastic on the carpet and Mostapa brings over the communal dish of food he has whipped up in the brief hour they have been back.
'Sorry not good', he apologises as he lays it down in front of me.
But it is. His simple meal of eggs poached in a tomato stew is amazing.
We use our bread to scoop up the stew while most of the egg keeps being pushed over to my side of the dish.
After dinner they dance to Afghan music before honouring their guest with George Michael's Careless Whisper and Isty bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini played on their souped-up VCD player.
I ask the guys how long they've been in Iran and how did they get here. Amir translates. They arrived last year having paid a thousand dollars each to be smuggled across the border. They don't know when they will see their family again but they are clearly having a good time here with seven girlfriends between them.
Arash proudly shows me a bunch of plastic flowers he has just received from one of his two. He laughs when I joke that he could enjoy the flowers for a while and then give them to the other one.
Mostapa has five girlfriends. He says he has a favourite but is still keeping his options open. I ask him whether that means he has one for every day of the week and the weekend off. Yes, something like that, he laughs.
The Iranians simultaneously welcome, tolerate and resent the huge influx of Afghans in their country. But it is clear that there is real acceptance and integration amongst some of the younger generations at least.
It was probably well into the second day of hanging out with Amir that I realized I wasn't going to suddenly get some emotional story about a sick family member who needs money for life saving medication. It is sometimes hard to believe that this kind of hospitality can be genuine and that Amir is just a very nice guy. Indeed travelling has made me sometimes overly cynical – especially having visited India earlier in the month where desperate poverty has created a breed of opportunists out to make a buck from tourists by fair means or foul. Which is sad as it can risk undermining genuine friendliness.
On my third day in Shiraz Amir meets me at my hotel and we set off to the famed site of Persepolis. On the way we stop for lunch at a small village where his toothless 'Aunt' and her distinctly more elderly husband are farmers. Sitting on the floor of their house we engage in a little small talk and I am bombarded with questions. Why am I travelling alone? Am I married? How is Iran? How are the people of Iran? How old am I?
I answer and then she turns her weathered face towards her withered husband;
'He is 88', she boasts like a transparent Anna Nicole Smith.
I am then introduced to their 15 year old son. (So I've got a bit of time yet then).
We first sit down for the ritual of tea. The Aunt pours us all a cup and then one for herself. As is customary she takes a sugar cube between her gums and noisily sucks her tea through it. She looks like a startled turtle.
Later that night, having arrived back from Persepolis, I am determined to take the guys out for dinner to repay some of their kindness. But we have been invited to an Afghan wedding and we will eat there.
We first go to the main square to pick up some more friends and have hubbly bubbly. Entrenched in Persian male culture is the tradition of insulting greetings. And the better you know someone the ruder you can be. Their friends rock up on their motorbikes and the initial exchanges, loosely translated, go something like this;
'Hey big nose, is an elephant missing its trunk'
'Whatever, pencil dick, found anywhere small enough to stick it yet?'
'What's up homo, have you just been in Qazvin?'…
Iranians love their regional stereotyping; Qazvin is full of gays, Shahreza is the capital of pedophilia, and anyone too near the Turkish border is as retarded as the Turks.
Pleasantries over, they get onto the serious business of smoking.
And then onto the wedding. It is a friend of Arash who is getting married. We enter a courtyard filled with men of all generations. Of course, it being a Muslim wedding, the women are all at another wedding party elsewhere. The groom sits awkwardly on a chair at the front, in a shiny suit, while his guests eat ravenously on the floor.
After dinner a band plays and Arash starts the dancing off. I am just getting into my favourite Afghan moves when a fight breaks out and someone is stabbed.
'Too much alcohol' Amir explains (not a problem I've had so far in Iran sadly) and the party is disbanded. On the way home we hear that Arash has tried to intervene in the fight and himself been cut in the arm. But he is ok, Amir assures.
The next day Amir escorts me to the bus station to go to Esfahan and Arash meets us there as a surprise. He pulls up his shirt and shows his wound, a large gash the whole way down his arm.
We say our farewells. I have only known them for three days but I will certainly remember them. Amir looks at me with his piercing brown eyes and says simply 'I will miss you'.
I would love to think it's my inimitable charm(!) that has brought me such wonderful hospitality in Iran, everywhere I have been – but it is of course their innate generosity of spirit together with a widespread belief that guests, and therefore foreigners, are a gift from God.
You have to go to Persepolis people said. It's beautiful, amazing, a wonder of the world. Yes it was amazing, awe-inspiring and it invites your imagination to rebuild it to its former glory. But for me the real beauty of Iran is its people.
On the bus I receive a text in English from Sara, the girl from the train to Yazd.
'Life is like mirror. We get best result when we smile at it.'
I have been happily lost in the bazaar for several hours when I meet Amir.
'Where you want go…?'
I don't really want to go anywhere in particular. Am quite content just walking round the city without a map and seeing where I end up. Something I love doing in new places to get a feel for them when I first arrive.
'Oh, I'm fine thanks', I reply.
'I show you your home. But better you come my home. I have first errand and then we have dinner with my friends'.
It still looked like it was going to be impossible to buy my own dinner in Iran.
Amir is a Space Engineering student. Although Iran apparently has an ambitious space programme, he doubts its progress and wants to work in Europe one day. But the government prevents scholarship students from leaving the country.
'I will have to go without law'
We talk as we walk along a narrow, winding street to an unassuming door. Inside there is a small courtyard filled with purple flowers, bathed in the rich afternoon light. The door to his room is locked and his room-mate has lost the key - so he pragmatically and effortlessly breaks open the padlock with a stone. The cave-like room is small but cozy, a low ceiling with shelves carved out of the stone.
His errand turns out to be sending a package to his friend in a nearby town. He opens the box of a mobile phone, and carefully sticks a bag of four ecstasy tablets to the underside of the tray. He then sits the mobile back in the tray, replaces the lid and neatly tapes up the box.
'I not like but my friends want party', he explains.
We take a shared taxi to the bus station to deliver the package to an open-minded bus driver friend.
Back at his room, his room-mates have arrived back from their work on a construction site. They are two Afghan refugees; 19 year old Mostapa and 25 year old Arash.
'Welcome', they smile.
Mostapa is preparing dinner on a small gas stove in the middle of the room. Arash lays a piece of plastic on the carpet and Mostapa brings over the communal dish of food he has whipped up in the brief hour they have been back.
'Sorry not good', he apologises as he lays it down in front of me.
But it is. His simple meal of eggs poached in a tomato stew is amazing.
We use our bread to scoop up the stew while most of the egg keeps being pushed over to my side of the dish.
After dinner they dance to Afghan music before honouring their guest with George Michael's Careless Whisper and Isty bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini played on their souped-up VCD player.
I ask the guys how long they've been in Iran and how did they get here. Amir translates. They arrived last year having paid a thousand dollars each to be smuggled across the border. They don't know when they will see their family again but they are clearly having a good time here with seven girlfriends between them.
Arash proudly shows me a bunch of plastic flowers he has just received from one of his two. He laughs when I joke that he could enjoy the flowers for a while and then give them to the other one.
Mostapa has five girlfriends. He says he has a favourite but is still keeping his options open. I ask him whether that means he has one for every day of the week and the weekend off. Yes, something like that, he laughs.
The Iranians simultaneously welcome, tolerate and resent the huge influx of Afghans in their country. But it is clear that there is real acceptance and integration amongst some of the younger generations at least.
It was probably well into the second day of hanging out with Amir that I realized I wasn't going to suddenly get some emotional story about a sick family member who needs money for life saving medication. It is sometimes hard to believe that this kind of hospitality can be genuine and that Amir is just a very nice guy. Indeed travelling has made me sometimes overly cynical – especially having visited India earlier in the month where desperate poverty has created a breed of opportunists out to make a buck from tourists by fair means or foul. Which is sad as it can risk undermining genuine friendliness.
On my third day in Shiraz Amir meets me at my hotel and we set off to the famed site of Persepolis. On the way we stop for lunch at a small village where his toothless 'Aunt' and her distinctly more elderly husband are farmers. Sitting on the floor of their house we engage in a little small talk and I am bombarded with questions. Why am I travelling alone? Am I married? How is Iran? How are the people of Iran? How old am I?
I answer and then she turns her weathered face towards her withered husband;
'He is 88', she boasts like a transparent Anna Nicole Smith.
I am then introduced to their 15 year old son. (So I've got a bit of time yet then).
We first sit down for the ritual of tea. The Aunt pours us all a cup and then one for herself. As is customary she takes a sugar cube between her gums and noisily sucks her tea through it. She looks like a startled turtle.
Later that night, having arrived back from Persepolis, I am determined to take the guys out for dinner to repay some of their kindness. But we have been invited to an Afghan wedding and we will eat there.
We first go to the main square to pick up some more friends and have hubbly bubbly. Entrenched in Persian male culture is the tradition of insulting greetings. And the better you know someone the ruder you can be. Their friends rock up on their motorbikes and the initial exchanges, loosely translated, go something like this;
'Hey big nose, is an elephant missing its trunk'
'Whatever, pencil dick, found anywhere small enough to stick it yet?'
'What's up homo, have you just been in Qazvin?'…
Iranians love their regional stereotyping; Qazvin is full of gays, Shahreza is the capital of pedophilia, and anyone too near the Turkish border is as retarded as the Turks.
Pleasantries over, they get onto the serious business of smoking.
And then onto the wedding. It is a friend of Arash who is getting married. We enter a courtyard filled with men of all generations. Of course, it being a Muslim wedding, the women are all at another wedding party elsewhere. The groom sits awkwardly on a chair at the front, in a shiny suit, while his guests eat ravenously on the floor.
After dinner a band plays and Arash starts the dancing off. I am just getting into my favourite Afghan moves when a fight breaks out and someone is stabbed.
'Too much alcohol' Amir explains (not a problem I've had so far in Iran sadly) and the party is disbanded. On the way home we hear that Arash has tried to intervene in the fight and himself been cut in the arm. But he is ok, Amir assures.
The next day Amir escorts me to the bus station to go to Esfahan and Arash meets us there as a surprise. He pulls up his shirt and shows his wound, a large gash the whole way down his arm.
We say our farewells. I have only known them for three days but I will certainly remember them. Amir looks at me with his piercing brown eyes and says simply 'I will miss you'.
I would love to think it's my inimitable charm(!) that has brought me such wonderful hospitality in Iran, everywhere I have been – but it is of course their innate generosity of spirit together with a widespread belief that guests, and therefore foreigners, are a gift from God.
You have to go to Persepolis people said. It's beautiful, amazing, a wonder of the world. Yes it was amazing, awe-inspiring and it invites your imagination to rebuild it to its former glory. But for me the real beauty of Iran is its people.
On the bus I receive a text in English from Sara, the girl from the train to Yazd.
'Life is like mirror. We get best result when we smile at it.'
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The one star Esteghlal Hotel
'Salam… Salam'.
It is around 5 o'clock in the morning when I knock on the door of the one star Esteghlal Hotel in Shiraz.
'Salam. Salam'.
Eventually a balding head pokes out of the window two floors above.
'What you want?' (clearly my Farsi accent still needs a bit of work then.)
'You have a room?'
'Yes'
'Can I check in?'
'No…
…Too early. I sleeping. Come back later', the balding head suggests.
'But I've just been on the bus from Yazd. I'm really tired. Please give me a...'
'You from where?'
'England'.
'All right mate. 20 dollar'.
A bit of street to window bargaining then ensues.
'Ok 15 dollar'.
The squat night receptionist grudgingly opens the door and leads me up a dilapidated staircase. He watches me struggling with my suitcase and seems to relish pointing out the obvious…
'Heavy'.
He shows me into my room and then casually asks…
'You want first to drop kids off at the pool? Bathroom this way'.
I can't believe what he's just said. Limited English and then he comes out with that.
'Err, no I'm ok thanks'.
'Good night mate. Have good sleep', he adds graciously.
And then squeezes my nipple.
Did he really just do that? I'm too disoriented and tired to either reply or object. I close the wafer-thin door and fall immediately onto the wafer-thin bed.
Eight incredibly long hours trying to get comfortable and/or sleep on the overnight bus from Yazd to Shiraz has taken its toll. I spent the journey dispelling the illusion that spreading your body over two plastic seats – because there is no one sitting next to you – must logically be more comfortable than sitting on just one. By the end of it I had proved that no amount of awkward contortions and leg/arm/buttock position combinations can ever make it comfortable. So it is a welcome relief to be finally in bed.
But then I realize I am not alone. And I can hear everything…
Every morning throat clearance. Every passionate manoeuvre. Every unconscious fart.
Room number 26 has already been to the loo twice. Surely they don't need to go again. Please turn off that bloody music, it's only 6am. Was that really someone being sick or just coughing their guts up? Now is not the time for a marital dispute. Please…
Sleep is going to be tough. But I bury my head in my pillow and try. I'd forgotten the joys of budget travel...
That afternoon I take a shower. Before realizing that it is not the sort of hotel to provide a towel. I reach instinctively to the empty towel rail and then conclude that I'm either going to have to drip dry or abuse one of my few remaining clean t-shirts.
But it was in Yazd that my backpacker status was initially questioned. I was branded a 'flashpacker'. If I hadn't lost all credibility from the diehard travelers when I walked into the Silk Road hotel courtyard with my Tumi suitcase rather than rucksack, I certainly did when word got round that I travel with my own goose down pillow.
It is around 5 o'clock in the morning when I knock on the door of the one star Esteghlal Hotel in Shiraz.
'Salam. Salam'.
Eventually a balding head pokes out of the window two floors above.
'What you want?' (clearly my Farsi accent still needs a bit of work then.)
'You have a room?'
'Yes'
'Can I check in?'
'No…
…Too early. I sleeping. Come back later', the balding head suggests.
'But I've just been on the bus from Yazd. I'm really tired. Please give me a...'
'You from where?'
'England'.
'All right mate. 20 dollar'.
A bit of street to window bargaining then ensues.
'Ok 15 dollar'.
The squat night receptionist grudgingly opens the door and leads me up a dilapidated staircase. He watches me struggling with my suitcase and seems to relish pointing out the obvious…
'Heavy'.
He shows me into my room and then casually asks…
'You want first to drop kids off at the pool? Bathroom this way'.
I can't believe what he's just said. Limited English and then he comes out with that.
'Err, no I'm ok thanks'.
'Good night mate. Have good sleep', he adds graciously.
And then squeezes my nipple.
Did he really just do that? I'm too disoriented and tired to either reply or object. I close the wafer-thin door and fall immediately onto the wafer-thin bed.
Eight incredibly long hours trying to get comfortable and/or sleep on the overnight bus from Yazd to Shiraz has taken its toll. I spent the journey dispelling the illusion that spreading your body over two plastic seats – because there is no one sitting next to you – must logically be more comfortable than sitting on just one. By the end of it I had proved that no amount of awkward contortions and leg/arm/buttock position combinations can ever make it comfortable. So it is a welcome relief to be finally in bed.
But then I realize I am not alone. And I can hear everything…
Every morning throat clearance. Every passionate manoeuvre. Every unconscious fart.
Room number 26 has already been to the loo twice. Surely they don't need to go again. Please turn off that bloody music, it's only 6am. Was that really someone being sick or just coughing their guts up? Now is not the time for a marital dispute. Please…
Sleep is going to be tough. But I bury my head in my pillow and try. I'd forgotten the joys of budget travel...
That afternoon I take a shower. Before realizing that it is not the sort of hotel to provide a towel. I reach instinctively to the empty towel rail and then conclude that I'm either going to have to drip dry or abuse one of my few remaining clean t-shirts.
But it was in Yazd that my backpacker status was initially questioned. I was branded a 'flashpacker'. If I hadn't lost all credibility from the diehard travelers when I walked into the Silk Road hotel courtyard with my Tumi suitcase rather than rucksack, I certainly did when word got round that I travel with my own goose down pillow.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
The ice cream parlour
This is the menu from an ice cream parlour the two girls I met on the train from Yazd took me to on our trip around town. Note the interesting flavour fourth from bottom. I had never had 'pussy' flavoured ice cream before and it wasn't bad. But the hairs did get caught in my teeth.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
A Persian Welcome
I have been in Iran for barely five days but have already received a marriage proposal, a paid offer to be a sperm donor for a sterile Iranian man desperate to start a family, and 8 dinner invitations from complete strangers. It is an extraordinary and quite wonderful place.
It had been two months sorting out my visa due to the Iranian authorities' current distrust of the British, and it was quite a bureaucratic adventure getting there including having to go to Dubai CID for my fingerprints to be taken. But eventually my ditsy yet clearly capable travel agent came up with the goods.
The ferry from Sharjah to Bandah Lengeh was pretty straightforward and I had my own professional queue barger to help me through the departure process, an Iranian merchant who felt that as the only non-Iranian passenger, and with a modest suitcase compared to the other passengers' kitchen sinks, I shouldn't have to wait. He insisted on ushering me, rather embarrassingly, to the front of every queue along-side burqa clad Bandari ladies.
As we left port, I was filled with a surge of mixed feelings – excitement and anticipation, yet a certain sadness to be leaving my friends and the place that had been home for six years. But the realization of having no real commitments in the immediate future apart from a couple of weddings in the diary was incredibly liberating. And my long-held idea to travel back to England by train through Iran, Turkey and Eastern Europe was starting to become a reality.
The crossing was uneventful apart from a seasick, wizened old dear who spent most of the trip barfing through her burqa.
For some reason I always feel incredibly guilty going through customs, though I invariably have little more to declare than dirty washing. Indeed arriving in Bandar Lengeh I felt like I was harboring Osama bin Laden in my suitcase. But I was waved through politely without a second glance.
Bandar Lengeh is a bit of a one camel town. So I quickly found a shared taxi to Banda Abbas, the start of the train line, and a two hour journey along an attractive coastal road.
I don't think I have ever met a more hospitable or friendly race. People are determined to ensure you feel welcome in their country and seem to go out of their way to help, sometimes literally - a girl who had shared my taxi insisted on walking me several kilometres to my hotel in Bandar Abbas. I just assumed it must have been on her way but later found out that she lived in totally the other direction. As we walked she told me how she was a journalist working for a newspaper and that three days before she had been beaten by the authorities for writing something they didn't like.
Later that evening, I was seen to be having trouble hailing a cab – none of them seemed to want to stop - so a policeman unashamedly flagged down a cab under the guise of pulling him over for something and ordered him to take me to the restaurant!
The train to Yazd was pretty comfortable and I spent most of the 12 hour journey in the restaurant car being bought cups of tea and surrounded by various people who were intrigued to know what I was doing. The idea that I might want to take the train home to England was a concept they couldn't really understand when flying is clearly so much quicker.
Two beautiful Iranian girls were eager to know which of them was the most attractive. My diplomatic answer that they were both stunning didn't wash so one took it on herself to decide for me. Despite the fact that her English was little better than my non-existent Farsi we managed to have some good banter playing a mix of Pictionary and Charades. She decided that once she had finished her studies she would marry me. And my marriage value of a thousand camels was accepted in principle (though she did point out that my camel looked more like a giraffe).
In the early hours of the morning we arrived at the ancient desert city of Yazd, the third place I have been – along with Sanaa and Aleppo - which claims to be the oldest city in the world with continued inhabitance. We took the girls home first in a shared taxi and the poor mother was prized out of bed to be introduced to me. I was taken on to my guesthouse and the driver proudly showed me a picture of his twin baby daughters before dropping me off and planting me huge kisses on either cheek. 'Welcome in Iran', he beamed.
The girls met me the following day and showed me round town, introduced me to their friends and insisted on paying for dinner - something that appears to be generally impossible to prevent here, such is the spirit of Iranian hospitality.
I have spent the last three days in a wonderfully chilled guesthouse in the company of a diverse mixture of travelers - a German couple who are cycling through Iran, a Swiss guy who sold his business and is travelling round the world for 5 years on his motorbike, an ex policeman taking Farsi lessons, a 20 year old Dutch student on his way overland to Pakistan, a Canadian grassroots journalist looking for stories, and a train driver from Bournemouth with a degree in Middle East Politics, on a sabbatical from South West Trains.
The one thing these people have in common is a seeming inability to leave the understated charm of the Silk Road hotel. All claim to be leaving 'tomorrow' yet are invariably there for a leisurely breakfast in the hotel courtyard every morning. And despite so many seemingly adventurous spirits, it appears to be an effort for any of them to do anything more constructive than order a cup of tea. Leaving the courtyard confines is a rare occurrence – though an expedition to the butchers round the corner to pick up a camel burger has occasionally been known.
There is something completely captivating about the place but I am going to have to tear myself away and am planning to leave the train route for a quick diversion to Shiraz and Persepolis, an 8 hour bus journey away.
It had been two months sorting out my visa due to the Iranian authorities' current distrust of the British, and it was quite a bureaucratic adventure getting there including having to go to Dubai CID for my fingerprints to be taken. But eventually my ditsy yet clearly capable travel agent came up with the goods.
The ferry from Sharjah to Bandah Lengeh was pretty straightforward and I had my own professional queue barger to help me through the departure process, an Iranian merchant who felt that as the only non-Iranian passenger, and with a modest suitcase compared to the other passengers' kitchen sinks, I shouldn't have to wait. He insisted on ushering me, rather embarrassingly, to the front of every queue along-side burqa clad Bandari ladies.
As we left port, I was filled with a surge of mixed feelings – excitement and anticipation, yet a certain sadness to be leaving my friends and the place that had been home for six years. But the realization of having no real commitments in the immediate future apart from a couple of weddings in the diary was incredibly liberating. And my long-held idea to travel back to England by train through Iran, Turkey and Eastern Europe was starting to become a reality.
The crossing was uneventful apart from a seasick, wizened old dear who spent most of the trip barfing through her burqa.
For some reason I always feel incredibly guilty going through customs, though I invariably have little more to declare than dirty washing. Indeed arriving in Bandar Lengeh I felt like I was harboring Osama bin Laden in my suitcase. But I was waved through politely without a second glance.
Bandar Lengeh is a bit of a one camel town. So I quickly found a shared taxi to Banda Abbas, the start of the train line, and a two hour journey along an attractive coastal road.
I don't think I have ever met a more hospitable or friendly race. People are determined to ensure you feel welcome in their country and seem to go out of their way to help, sometimes literally - a girl who had shared my taxi insisted on walking me several kilometres to my hotel in Bandar Abbas. I just assumed it must have been on her way but later found out that she lived in totally the other direction. As we walked she told me how she was a journalist working for a newspaper and that three days before she had been beaten by the authorities for writing something they didn't like.
Later that evening, I was seen to be having trouble hailing a cab – none of them seemed to want to stop - so a policeman unashamedly flagged down a cab under the guise of pulling him over for something and ordered him to take me to the restaurant!
The train to Yazd was pretty comfortable and I spent most of the 12 hour journey in the restaurant car being bought cups of tea and surrounded by various people who were intrigued to know what I was doing. The idea that I might want to take the train home to England was a concept they couldn't really understand when flying is clearly so much quicker.
Two beautiful Iranian girls were eager to know which of them was the most attractive. My diplomatic answer that they were both stunning didn't wash so one took it on herself to decide for me. Despite the fact that her English was little better than my non-existent Farsi we managed to have some good banter playing a mix of Pictionary and Charades. She decided that once she had finished her studies she would marry me. And my marriage value of a thousand camels was accepted in principle (though she did point out that my camel looked more like a giraffe).
In the early hours of the morning we arrived at the ancient desert city of Yazd, the third place I have been – along with Sanaa and Aleppo - which claims to be the oldest city in the world with continued inhabitance. We took the girls home first in a shared taxi and the poor mother was prized out of bed to be introduced to me. I was taken on to my guesthouse and the driver proudly showed me a picture of his twin baby daughters before dropping me off and planting me huge kisses on either cheek. 'Welcome in Iran', he beamed.
The girls met me the following day and showed me round town, introduced me to their friends and insisted on paying for dinner - something that appears to be generally impossible to prevent here, such is the spirit of Iranian hospitality.
I have spent the last three days in a wonderfully chilled guesthouse in the company of a diverse mixture of travelers - a German couple who are cycling through Iran, a Swiss guy who sold his business and is travelling round the world for 5 years on his motorbike, an ex policeman taking Farsi lessons, a 20 year old Dutch student on his way overland to Pakistan, a Canadian grassroots journalist looking for stories, and a train driver from Bournemouth with a degree in Middle East Politics, on a sabbatical from South West Trains.
The one thing these people have in common is a seeming inability to leave the understated charm of the Silk Road hotel. All claim to be leaving 'tomorrow' yet are invariably there for a leisurely breakfast in the hotel courtyard every morning. And despite so many seemingly adventurous spirits, it appears to be an effort for any of them to do anything more constructive than order a cup of tea. Leaving the courtyard confines is a rare occurrence – though an expedition to the butchers round the corner to pick up a camel burger has occasionally been known.
There is something completely captivating about the place but I am going to have to tear myself away and am planning to leave the train route for a quick diversion to Shiraz and Persepolis, an 8 hour bus journey away.
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