Iran - Redefining the Axis of Evil
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING THAT FOR??? That was the first thing my mother said to me when I told her we were going to Iran. ‘It’s dangerous and there are terrorists there’ ‘Its part of the Axis of Evil!’
Reality proved far different from this. Apart from a little bit of extra admin for a 15-day visa, there is no reason Iran shouldn’t be on your holiday check-list next to Italy, Turkey or Thailand.
People and Politics.
On our overland trip from France to NZ with a mate from Wellington and 2 French friends, our first encounter with the Iranian people was on the Trans- Asia train from Ankara, Turkey, to Tehran, Iran’s capital. We were a little hesitant, expecting large beards and cruel looks, unsure of what they would think of us, the ‘white menace’. However passing us in the cramped corridor they all smiled and said ‘Hello’, and wanted to stop and chat about why we were going to Iran. Within 5 minutes we were hurriedly jotting down their email addresses and cities, being invited to come and stay anytime. We were taken aback! These people were more hospitable than Kiwis. Some had near-perfect English and wanted to share photos and know about our families. Others wanted to make overemphasised gestures (perhaps their English was limited) and have tea while sitting in an awkward silence. There seemed to be an inane desire, a little game, to be as hospitable as possible – a notion miles away from their ‘world enemy’ perception..
On the Ground.
Our first taste of Tehran at 5am was from a 1967 Iranian version Hillman Hunter taxi racing through the streets, in and out of traffic, on the wrong side of the road, and honking through red lights at 80kmh. Our taxi-driver went to the wrong hotel (address provided) so after a brief 500m trip to the right one told us we owed him 40% more. At 7 cents a litre for petrol, we told him to go dig his own well! And that was the last time anyone tried to rip us off in Iran, which goes to show there’s crooks in every country.
With all shorts and singlets now completely buried right at the bottom of our bags, we hit the Tehran streets in the afternoon. Although the sun was beating down at 38 degrees, we soon got used to our light cotton pants and seeing women dressed head- to- toe in black. Young girls who wanted to be noticed would give flirty looks and let the headscarf drape over only half of their hair. We were told later that they could be stopped by police and receive lashings.
The roads were a spectacle in themselves. 50% of all cars seemed to be an Iranian made version of the same 1960’s Hillman Hunter we had taken the night before, which left me wondering how BMC ever went broke with millions of the things in Iran. Then again, Iran’s copyright laws are dubious, (we could buy any of the latest Microsoft products for next to nothing at the market) so maybe they just ‘stole’ the design because they liked it? Lights, pedestrian crossings, and lanes seemed to have no impact whatsoever on where you were going. Motorbikes whizzed among the traffic, and more worryingly around us along the people laden footpaths. Tehran is supposed to have the most dangerous roads in the world, so maybe that’s why the motorcyclists were on the footpath?
We did find Tehran a big, bustling, polluted and not very attractive city rather than the contemporary city Iranians see it as. So that night we caught a 10 hour night train for 2euro down to Esfahan.
And into the streets.
Esfahan was miles away from the desert mud houses we were expecting from the centre of the country. We stayed on a huge boulevard with a thick median of trees and grass. Crossing the ornate xxx bridge spanning the xx river, we strolled into the cool of the XXX park adjoining the river. The park was littered with families spread out on large Persian mats, huge tea urns and fruit tobacco pipes, while children slept in the shade. There was a constant bombardment of “Hello, where are you from?’ though the park as we felt we were honoured guests.
Once again it was the people that left the biggest impression on us. In Esfahan’s imposing Imam square we were ushered through to the most beautiful mosque we had ever seen. Greeted with smiles from everywhere, we were dragged into the centre of the dome by an Iranian mother with her family. The husband looked at us with a huge grin on his face and started to flick a 20,000 rial note (1.5 euro) with his finger. In this huge mosque with more than a 100 people in it, the reverberation of the sound could be easily heard; the sound echoed 7 times- the dome of 7 echoes.
Outside it was nearing dusk and we were hungry. One last photo. I turned around to see a big Iranian guy about our age with a huge grin. He just wanted to speak English. Ten minutes later I looked around to see the Frogs in a conversation with a group of students about ideas of the west of Iran (only the frogs would openly discuss this), while Mark was chatting with a friendly carpet salesman. An hour later, in the pitch dark, we were still chatting, joking, and sharing in a relaxed atmosphere, with a huge group that had now formed. Would this happen like this anywhere else in the world?
Real Friends
The real eye-opening experience came a week into our 10-day stopover. We’d been given the contact of a friendly English-speaking Iranian in Yazd by a French friend, and had arranged for him to pick us up from the bus station. Hussein was an English translator in his early thirties. He brought along his best friend Mohammad, a computer science student in his late 20’s.
Mohammad’s beautiful but basic home was perfect. One room for sleeping, a massive lounge also for sleeping, as well as eating and watching TV, and a huge kitchen. He promptly told us this was now ‘our house’. We sat down on the scattered carpets for tea with him, his wife, his two kids of 9 months and 4 years, and Hussein. Soon we were laughing and joking, as they explained the ‘thumbs-up’ gesture was actually rude and phallic meaning, and the ‘ok’ gesture was for women’s privates. Oh crap! With the language barrier we’d used these gestures a lot in Iran. Our first faux pas was to grow bushy beards. We later discovered these were considered offensive and extremist. We now find out we’d offended nearly every shopkeeper we’d ever dealt with. You can’t even rely on sign language when travelling around the world!
Hussein and Mohammad took showing us round seriously. Our first night we watched the sunset from the ‘Tour of Silence’, an old Zoroastrian temple where once someone died, their body was left out on the open on the tower. If the birds picked out your left eye you were a good person. The right, a bad person and you’d go to hell. No matter what happened though you were chucked down a well in the middle after a few days, and this was done right up to the 1950’s! Whizzing through the streets of Yazd we stopped every 500 m or so to pick up cups of sweet lemonade and biscuits from the crowds passing them through car windows. It was Mohammad’s birthday (the prophet, not our guide) and so the extra religious put on a little party for everyone else. 6 cups of lemonade later (literally), we arrived at an ancient underwater reservoir for some ancient Persian ‘wrestling’. To the time of the thunderous drum and bell, a motley crew of a huge Ali baba looking Irnaina, a couple of short stocky guys and 3 kids about 12 started doing pushups then a kind of weight lifting with batons. The size of your baton depended on… well,… the size of your arms.
Although we’d been completely enchanted by Iran, and were now in a very happy family environment, Mohammad and Hussein were brutally honest with how they felt about the rulers of their country. A quick conversation summed up the laws. Dancing? Illegal. Dance music? Illegal. Alcohol? Illegal. Girlfriends? Really illegal. This bought 100 lashings at the police station! Satellite TV, American products, international bank cards? Illegal, illegal, illegal. Everything fun, they said, was illegal.
The People’s Struggle.
After spending more and more time with Mohammad’s family and Hussein, we felt like we were really getting to know them. Mohammad was always smiling and in a good mood, but Hussein was more pensive. The regime in Iran seemed to affect them both a lot. I think Mohammad had decided to live a happy life – Hussein was still searching. We were inundated with questions about girls. Did you have a girlfriend? Did you meet her in a pub? Do her parents know? And then the more candid questions. Could you kiss them in the street? How long before a girl sleeps with you in your country? We had to go with the flow a bit and were even shown porn as we awkwardly smiled and suggested a sports channel (honestly). One night we watched a b-grade American movie with Michael Madsen as a getaway driver. The two Iranians were enthralled, asking when one of the baddies had a laser gun ‘Wow- is that the new technology? Could we buy that from the internet? A blow-up doll appeared in the movie… ‘Wow, can you guys buy one of those?’
Despite our awkward smiles and uncomfortable looks at each other, these questions were more about a sense of freedom than of a prurient nature. They seemed very envious of the way we could lead our lives. Maybe it was naivety on our part, but their lives didn’t seem too bad. In this happy family home it seemed they craved to have our lives. On a purely objective basis we discussed change but they seemed to believe there was no hope. The Mullah, religious leaders, were highly unlikely to hold a vote to see whether they were still the voice of the people since the 1979 revolution. So maybe outside countries could help? An invasion maybe? Would that mean the nice guy we met in Esfahan at the mosque doing his compulsory military service would fight? This gentle giant who hung around the crowded square just to talk to foreigners about their countries? Would that mean this beautiful family with their giggly, cute kids would be involved in a war? It seemed hopeless. Ironically they didn’t see the USA as their arch enemy. They truly wanted to live in the ‘land of the free’.
Our time in Iran has quite easily been the most poignant experience of our trip so far, and well and truly falsified any preconceptions we’d been feed. The contrast between the Iran we fell in love with and the west-hating, nuclear seeking evil that is shown on CNN and BBC would lead you to believe there are two completely different countries. The unabated hospitality and general intrigue in us as people has cemented the Iranian people we met on our brief visit solidly in our memories. We will continue to read international news about the Islamic Republic and their status in the Axis of Evil. But this image of Iran will be miles away from the real people we met, our new friends.
