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…

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.

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.'