Isfahan

After Yazd, the next town was Isfahan (or Esfahan as some like to spell it), which is the highlight of any foreign tourist’s trip to Iran. Isfahan used to be the capital of Iran, before Tehran, and if Tehran is the brains, Isfahan is the heart and soul of Iran. Sort of like Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg to Capetown, or Milan to Rome.

But before we got to Isfahan we had to go to the Yazd bus station to catch our bus.  After my taxi rides, I was both looking forward to being in a bus and not looking forward to being in a bus. The reason why I was looking forward to the bus was that the bus was somewhat bigger than the rickety taxis I’d been traveling in and, unless it rolled off of a cliff, it couldn’t get me too badly injured or killed on the highway. The reason why I was not looking forward to the bus was that I had no idea whether or not the busses in Iran were any good. I’d been on some awful bus rides in my past, including a 24-hour long one in Brazil where all the passengers shut the windows and chain smoked, so I prepared myself of the worst for this 3 hour ride.

Ya Hussein!

Cover Girl

Lina and I arrived at the Yazd bus station and I was impressed to find it very clean and inviting. I don’t think I’ve ever been to the bus station in Miami, and for good reason. This one had neat little kiosks and stores, friendly men and women at the spic and span counters and even a helpful advertisement urging women to keep their heads covered (as if they had a choice)!

Our bus line was called VIP and had giant lettering on the windshield saying “Ya Hossein.”  Hossein was one of the important Shiite Imams, so any bus with his invocation was certainly not about to plunge off of a cliff.  I boarded the bus with a bit of trepidation, but was more than pleasantly surprised when I sat down in a seat that would make any American airplane passenger green with envy.  Is there such a thing as too much legroom?  I guess there is, because I couldn’t even rest my legs on the seat in front of me.  And I mistakenly bought drinks for the trip, because a nice little man was on the bus for the sole purpose of providing us with not just beverages, but candy and cake as well.  It was an awesome bus trip until the police roadblock.  Which meant we all had to exit and show our papers to surly youngster who saw my U.S. passport and looked at me with a stink-eye, not like the usual Iranians who fawned all over me when they saw my passport. Nothing happened but thoughts of being detained in a roach infested jail flashed through my mind.

We arrive in the Isfahan bus terminal and grab a taxi to take us to our hotel, and that is where things kind of went downhill. The neighborhoods kept getting worse and worse and I found myself in a semi-industrial area thinking that this is not the princely city I was supposed to be in. We turned off a main street into a neighborhood of mud houses and potholed streets and there in front of us loomed our hotel, which was called the Ebne Sina Boutique Hotel.  In the 90s, you could slap the word “boutique” onto something and elevate a dump by a few notches to idiotic consumers. Today that word is “artisanal” or “locally sourced,”or “farm to table.” But Iranians still used the word “boutique.”   “Thank God that Oscar didn’t come on this trip with me” was all I was thinking because he would have really hated this hotel.  But I was in a good mood and was in the royal city and didn’t intend to spend a lot of time there anyway. But this really was a dumpy hotel, made worse by the horrible location in the middle of a slum.

I set out to explore Isfahan and found myself in this crappy neighborhood wondering how to get into the main part of the city.  About a half a kilometer meandering through vacant lots and auto parts stores put us in the very back of the famous Isfahan bazaar. This is a huge bazaar.  It’s the Mall-of America of Iranian bazaars, so it required a lot of walking to get to the front, which is where the good part of Isfahan was. I was to spend the next 2 days walking up and down that bazaar to get to the nice part of town, so I did get to know if fairly well.
Iranian bazaars are well organized in to sections. The Isfahan bazaar stared (from the rear) with the cheap clothing, then it morphed into fabric, then more expensive clothing, then cookware, then spices, then dried fruits, then candy, then small appliances, then jewelry and then handicrafts. It was about a 45 minute walk from one end to the other and after meandering though this maze of stalls and alleys and cacophony, I stumbled out into this amazingly huge square. This is maybe the most famous sight in Iran – a giant square flanked with mosques and palaces and full of people. Stepping into this square after the maze of the bazaar feels like you are truly in a royal place.

Isfahan Bazaar or bust!

Off the square was one of the most beautiful mosques in the world – the Royal Mosque. The whole of the interior, including the dome, is inlayed with blue tile. If this were Italy or France, there would have been 2 hour long lines to get in, but inside there were maybe 16 visitors – mainly Iranian tourists and some frumpy European women in babushkas and housecoats.  The same was true for all the mosques in this square. These mosques were comparable to great cathedrals in their age, their grandeur and this significance.  I was thinking that if this country weren’t so fucked up, it would be a tourist magnet with all these historic and beautiful sights.

After the square I wanted to see the famous Isfahan bridge (over the Zayandeh River). This bridge is in all the (not too many) Iranian tourist brochures and resembles the famous Ponte Vecchio over the Arno River in Florence.  It was a long walk to the bridge, through the main part of the city, which was very lively and vibrant – full of stores and restaurants and cafes  including my favorite – Kentucky House. We got to the bridge and I was a bit dumbstruck – not because I was in awe of the drama of this ancient bridge, but because the river was completely dry – not a drop of water. This was not due to global warming, but because the government had diverted the flow of the river to somewhere else, leaving Esfahan and its famous bridge, without even a babbling brook, much less a river. In the U.S. we have our bridge to nowhere, but in Iran they now have a bridge over nothing.  The fact that there was no river definitely detracted from the effect of this ancient bridge but it was still quite the attraction and was full of people milling about. We crossed to the other side, which was the more upscale section of town. We ate in a really great place for dinner and then slowly made our way back to the bad side of town to the hotel.

Bridge over nothing.

Once back at the hotel, I braced myself for the daily battle with the wifi. Of course there was no signal in my room, so I headed to the lobby and sat there, where I was able to log into a sort-of signal.  The minute I sat down a little girl who was probably 9 or 10 years old in a hijab came up to me and started talking.  She couldn’t understand the fact that I had no idea what she was saying and kept conversing with me. Five minutes later we were best friends and she wouldn’t leave me alone and enthusiastically posed for photos. Apparently this little girl lived in the hotel because her mother and father were maids, and she loved to hang out in the lobby with guests. I had to finally pull myself away from her because I need to go to bed.

Say hello to my little friend

Yazd

That night in Zeinoudin I went to sleep in my compartment/room  but was later awoken by extremely loud snoring. Yes, this was one of the charms of communal sleeping in a caravanserai.  I suspected it was one of the old overweight Frenchmen but it turned out to be an Iranian who fessed up to it the next morning after being outed in a whisper campaign by other drowsy lodgers. We were ready to leave Zeinoudin at around 8 a.m. and the next destination was Yazd, a medium sized city between Kerman and Isfahan. I drove to Yazd with the two Dutch 20-something backpackers who were in the midst of a 13 month world tour.  Already they had been to at least 30 countries.  Even if I could take 13 months off, I don’t think that I would want to.  For me 2 weeks is enough and then I want to go home. These Dutch people were not filthy hippie backpackers, which is what you’d expect of young tourists doing a world tour on a budget.  They were well dressed and clean shaven and very proper.  They were doing Iranian home-stays with real Iranian families, which I thought in some respects was a very cool idea.

We got to the outskirts of Yazd and stopped at these 2 Zoroastrian burial mounds, which were very high hills in the desert.  Atop the hills were the places where the followers of the Zoroastrian religion would place the dead folks. I climbed up both of them. After that, we went to the main Zoroastrian Fire temple in Yazd.  This was one of the main temples of Zoroastrianism in Iran and had lots of visitors.  I had heard the term “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” but had no idea from whence it came.  Now I at least know that Zarathustra is some kind of Zoroastrian deity.  But I still don’t know of what he spake – I will google it after this entry.

Fire in the temple

Yazd turned out to be my favorite Iranian city.  Why was it my favorite?  Lots of reasons.  The hotel was a very quaint old house with a center courtyard and had good food and was right in the middle of the city.  My room was small but very pleasant and overlooked the roofs of Yazd. The streets were narrow and not heavily trafficked so getting hit by a car wasn’t an issue. There were lots of historic sights within a close walking distance and the people were great. It was Friday so most stores were closed, giving the city a very mellow vibe. Oh – and the wifi was excellent!

Window of my hotel room in Yazd.

I basically meandered around the city that morning, visiting the mosque and other sites. This being Friday, the mosque was semi-crowded and at first I was intimidated to enter with all the guys around me kneeling and standing and kneeling and standing, but they didn’t seem to mind me wandering in their midst. Watching the Shiite religious service was interesting.  One of the elements of the Shiite mosque is that the Imam stands not on a raised pulpit but in a lowered pit so that his head is on the same level of the kneeling congregants. That way he is on their same level and not superior to them.

The main mosque in Yazd was only 1 block from my hotel, and was one of the most beautiful in Iran.  It was a very awe inspiring place and I returned to it several times that day.

Yadz Mosque

Later in the day we went to the Yazd Water Museum, which shows you how the people dealt with the lack of water as well as the heat. To get the water, what the locals did was dig deep water holes called Qanats.  To cool off, they built wind-cachers, which look like church steeples. The windcatchers funneled air down into the qanats where the water cooled off the air, thereby cooling the houses. Kind of ingenious.  The city of Yazd is full of these windcatchers, towering over everything.

The water museum was more crowded than I expected – I mean who goes to a water museum in the middle of a Friday afternoon?  But it was full of Iranian families.  I guess in a country without bars or clubs or gay pride parades or bacon bits there’s not a whole hell of a lot to do to amuse one’s self other than going to the local water museum.  My presence became a minor cause celebre at this museum and I could see people whispering about me – but in a good way.  I guess word got through that there was an American in the Water Museum and everyone wanted a piece of him.  I thought that maybe they mistook me for a celebrity, which made me think of the Hi Fashion song called “I’m Not Madonna:”

“Everyone thinks I’m Madonna,
It’s getting kind of crass
People stop and stare at me when I’m in Pilates class
And what really burns me up, and I hate to be a venter
Are the autograph requests I get when I’m at the Kabbalah Center”

Water Museum People – I may look like him, but I’m not Zach Efron –  so just stop.  They wanted to take their picture with me so I consented.  You have to be nice to your fans otherwise they’ll turn on you and switch loyalties to some other hottie.

Me with my fans at the Yazd Water Museum

I managed to get out of the Yazd Water Museum before the paparazzi arrived.  After the Yazd Water Museum, I went to some rug stores.  Yazd was supposedly the best city to buy Persian rugs.  I liked looking at them and all the shopowners were nice and offered tea and let me go onto their roofs to get views of the city, but I wasn’t really interested in buying a carpet even though I could see how much craft and skill went into those rugs – they just didn’t go with our house. But like tea and Shiite Islam, carpets are a huge part of Iranian culture.  Pretty much every Iranian house has several of these rugs, and of course the mosques are covered with them – wall to wall – literally.

Carpet Store in Yadz

Another wonderful thing I discovered in Yazd were the sweets. Its either the dessert capital or the candy capital of Iran – I can’t remember which one, but either one of them worked for me. I decided to buy the famous Yazd pistachio-ey crumbly cakey treat (forgot the actual name) to bring back to the U.S. but of course ended up devouring all of these delightful balls of goodness on my own in about 2 hours, so whoever in the U.S. they were planned for must go to Iran themselves to experience them.

Friday night in Yazd was less than remarkable. In fact it was completely dead.  This was not a small town and I was right smack in the center of it, but there was nobody out save some solitary shopkeepers, one of whom I swear was trying to hit on me (but maybe was just being hospitable). So I just went back to the hotel and enjoyed the extra-strong wifi and sent some emails – with attachments even!  Allah was smiling on me today.

Yazd Mosque at night

people dealt with the scarcity

Pondering the Mysteries of the Desert

Inside Zeinoudin

Interior of Zeinoudin

Exterior of Zeinoudin

Zeinoudin corridor – rooms are behind the carpets.

The title for the day I took directly from the itinerary that the travel agency emailed to me;  “Today you will travel to Zeinoudin Caravanserai and ponder the mysteries of the desert.” I learned that a caravanserai was an old-timey motel where you parked your camel and ate and slept before you continued your Silk Road journey from Europe to China or China to Europe. I truly had no expectations of the caravaneserai prior to leaving Kerman, just that I would be spending the night there.

That morning, I had my breakfast (without Nescafe) and wandered around Kerman and then met up with Lina. We were picked up by a nice elderly taxi driver was to drive us to Zeinoudin, whiich was located in the desert between Kerman and Yazd.  They would drop me there and I’d spend the night at which point I would ponder the mysteries of the desert.

How romantic to ponder the mysteries of the desert! I thought of Lawrence or Arabia.  But then Priscilla Queen of the Desert came to mind.

We get into the car and start heading out of Kerman and I ask the driver about the AC.  He pretends to fiddle with it and then finally fesses up and tells me its broken.  Then why the big charade of trying to fiddle with it, I ponder?  Its all fine because we only have 250 kms to the caravanserai, not 600 like 2 days ago.  I can deal with 250 at this point.  About 100 miles in we stopped for bread and tea at a roadside bakery and then continued on.

A few hours later around 2 or 3 p.m. the driver makes an abrupt left turn off the highway and into the sandy median strip. He then crosses the median, and I’m wondering what the hell is this about. Before I can even say anything, he leaves the median and makes a right turn smack into the lane of oncoming traffic and proceeds down that lane as if he has every right to be there.  Please realize that this is a major highway, full of trucks and buses who may not be paying attention to tiny yellow taxis heading their way in the wrong direction. I start yelling to Lina “Jesus Christ – will you tell him to get hell out of this lane  – I don’t fucking want to die right now.” Lina told him what I said, presumably minus the expletives, and the guy reluctantly drove back across the median into the correct lane until he reached an exit about a mile down the highway.  He got off at the exit and then back onto the highway, backtracking in the direction from where we came.  After about a quarter mile into our backtracking, he exited on the little dirt road which was the road to Zeinoudin.

So, figured out what this guy was doing (in addition to trying to kill me); He was trying to save a couple of minutes by avoiding going to the next exit and backtracking. He figured that he’d just drive in the wrong lane for a while until the dirt road appeared on his left. Even for Iran, this driving technique seemed a bit extreme.

We traveled down the dirt road until we came upon a large, circular sand-colored structure.  This was the caravanserai. We knocked on the large wooden door door and a boy with traditional Baluchistan clothing opened and invited us in. The interior was about 30 degrees cooler than outside.  Three or four Baluchis in traditional garb greeted me and registered me and then took me to my “room,” which was really just a raised platform with traditional Iranian mattresses on it the floor.

Zeinoudin contained about 20 of these rooms, which were arranged in a circle on the outside of the structure. Each room was separated from the other rooms by hanging Persian carpets so there was visual privacy but a communal atmosphere where you could hear the goings on of the other guests. There were no real doors or locks and I knew that Oscar, being a mistrustful Colombian, would have not have been keen on this arrangement.  The middle of the structure was an open atrium and on the opposite side of the entry was an indoor eating area.  There were two sets of staircases to the roof, where the contemplation of the mysteries were supposed to occur. Zeinoudin was now just for tourists but there weren’t that may present this early in the day.

Zeinoudin was built in the 16th century and was one of hundreds of caravanserais scattered through Iran, most of which don’t survive. The main Silk Road had at lease one of them every 30 miles, as 30 miles was as far as you could travel in a day by foot or horse or camel. As it was still hot, I decided to go to my room and read. It was amazing to me how cool the interior of the place was compared to the 100 degree temperatures outside. After about 2 hours of reading and napping, I decided to circulate again and even though it was 5 p.m. there still weren’t too many people around and it was still too hot to hang out on the roof.  I was thinking that this caravanserai would be more interesting if it had a pool and spa and maybe some massage tables and a bar.

Or course there was no wifi. but that was kind of a relief because it alleviated any aggravation of trying to connect.  It would have, however, been more compelling to pass the time pondering the mysteries of the dessert if I had the ability to subsequently post such ponderings on Facebook, rather than just keep them to myself.   But since that was not to be, I will use this forum to post my ponderings of the mysteries of the desert:

Pondering #1:  The desert is hot.

Pondering #2:  The desert is also dry.

Pondering #3: And there aren’t too many people around.

Pondering #4: And the people who are around didn’t speak English so I can’t speak to them.

Ponderings #4, 5 & 6:  There are some mountains in the desert far away. And cacti. And not much else.

Later in the day a group of elderly French tourists arrived and then a Dutch couple.  When it cooled off the tourists went up to the roof to watch the sun set. I heard English in a corner so I went over to the group of English speakers and broke the ice asking them to take a photo of me.  They were from Canberra, Australia – two couples in their 60s. We started talking about travel and Iran and they turned out to be advanced world travelers who had been pretty much everywhere. One of them used to work for the U.N. and had lived in New York and the other couple had lived in Washington DC in the 1980s. They were recounting their Mideast travels and one of them mentioned traveling to “the country next to Palestine.”  I said “you mean Israel?” and she said “shhh – we heard that you weren’t supposed to say that word here.”  I knew the Government of Iran wasn’t too enamored with Israel, but I didn’t realize that the word itself was like Lord Voldemort.

At least I had people to eat dinner with now. I didn’t want to sit there all by myself while the other people ate in couples or groups. Dinner was traditional Iranian – kebabs, eggplant salad, flatbread, yogurt, cucumber and tomato salad. The Australians were very friendly and talkative and well-versed in U.S. politics. After dinner I went back up onto the roof. There were lots of stars in the sky that night and the desert air was clear and everything was silent.

I still did not, however, uncover any additional mysteries about the desert in spite of many minutes of pondering. Likewise, I hadn’t yet uncovered any mysteries about myself during this solo journey of supposed discovery – except maybe that I’m totally dependent on the Internet, and that even though I’m not into women, I don’t like seeing them covered up, especially in the desert heat.

Kerman and Mahan – 2 Pleasant Surprises

Sufi Temple

Kerman Mosque

I couldn’t sleep.  I was feeling bad about the ride, and angry at myself not just for misjudging the distance to Kerman but for spending an ungodly amount of money on this trip and taking 2 weeks off from my work for this journey of supposed self-discovery, which was nothing more than a pathetic midlife crisis.  And I needed Internet, not just to post photos on Facebook but because I had some pressing office issues.  So, I wandered around the hotel holding my laptop like a divining rod in front of me searching for the elusive strong wifi signal. What was up with the Internet in this place?  I had gone to the TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet forums but nowhere was it mentioned that you can’t get Internet anywhere.  How in the fuck did these Tripadvisor people post photos and videos of Iran when it takes me 10 minutes and 10 attempts to send one fucking email?  I blamed the Imans who ran the country for keeping the people at 1995 internet speed.  I certainly don’t believe in American exceptionalism, but at this point I began to really appreciate the things we take for granted as Americans – the Internet, women dressing like sluts, free speech, no mandatory religious observance, alcohol, pork, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, etc.

On the next day, the plan was to tour around Kerman.  But first was breakfast.  I’m one of those people who needs coffee in order to get my body going in the morning. At home, I don’t just drink regular coffee but Panther Coffee which is famous in Miami for being awesome – small batch, roasted daily and all that crap. I have an amazing burr grinder and an equally amazing espresso machine, which produces great cappuccinos and espressos and once i a while I can even make latte art in the cup.  The point is that I can’t start my morning without coffee.  Now, Iran is a tea country and coffee is but a mere afterthought, which means that in any hotel breakfast room there sits a giant ornate tea samovar which is constantly being replenished, and next to it, almost as an afterthought, sits a measly little jar of Nescafe.  I am a coffee snob but I can deal with Nescafe in a pinch, as long as its heavily sugared and milked, but this hotel didn’t even have that jar of Nescafe, so I was forced to start my morning with tea, which I wasn’t happy about.

After the drive on the previous day and the crappy hotel with no wifi and not even a jar of Nescafe, I didn’t hold out much hope for the city of Kerman.  However, Kerman turned out to be one of my favorite Iranian experiences and worth the long drive. Its bazaar was huge and full of interesting stalls and characters.  There were lots of men from Baluchistan dressed in billowing blue and white oufits and women with all different types of clothing and many were curious about me, asking where I’m from and how I like Iran. There were many people who looked Pakistani or Afghani here. One thing I noticed about the women is that many of the ones wearing chadors (the black sheets which covered everything but the face) was that they held the corner of the chador in their teeth.  I asked Lina what was up with that, and she explained that by holding the chador in your teeth, you freed up both hands, otherwise you’d have to use one hand to hold the chador. I asked her how these poor women could talk with a sheet in their mouths, and she just laughed. Everywhere I went in this bazaar I was offered candy, or dried fruit or nuts or tea.  People practically forced gifts on me just for the “privilege” of having me, some random American, in their store. And I know for a fact that these shopkeepers were not just trying to sell me stuff – they were just genuinely hospitable and friendly.

We went with a local guy named Mahmoud who at first pretended that he didn’t speak English, but it turned out that his English was almost perfect. I asked him how he learned to speak so well and he said by watching “Friends” and that he’d watched each episode about 10 times.  He also watched How I Met Your Mother, and Breaking Bad. Then he said to me “I have a question – what is the meaning of ‘paisan’?”  I said that it must have been something Joey said and he said, “no Chandler called Joey a paisan,” and I explained that it was an Italian equivalent to a bro or a dude but don’t go calling people that because it sounds stupid. We then spent a good hour walking around he bazaar talking about various Friends episodes. Who knew that I’d be dissecting the lives of Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey in Kerman, Iran?  He then asked what new shows I’d recommend and I went out on a limb and said Modern Family and Lina chimed in and told him what an excellent show it is. Is Lina trying to tell me something? Mahmoud also asked me about Obama and he couldn’t believe that there were many Americans who hated him. He thought everyone in America was pro-Obama.   If only.

In the center of the Kerman Baazar, and in pretty much all bazaars in Iran, was the former Caravanserai which had been converted into a tea shop.  This part used to serve as a motel for the people from the hinterlands who came and bought and/or sold merchandise in the bazaar but now its mainly for locals who want to stop and have a glass of tea and something to eat – kinda like a food court.  We had some tea and Kerman sweets there and then went to the Kerman mosque, which was a gigantic place and very old and dramatic.

Mahmoud then took us to the Zoroastrian neighborhood in town where the was a Zoroastrian fire temple. Just the term “fire temple” sounded really cool and made me think of natives on Gilligans Island tricking the cast into visiting their “fire temple” where they would roast them and eat them.  It turns out that the fire temple is the term for the Zoroastrian house of worship.  The reason these houses of worship are called this is because they all contain an everlasting fire that is not supposed to go out, kind of like the “ner tamid” in a synagogue.  The fire is actually a real fire burning in an urn of hot coals that the Zoroastrian temple-keepers manage to keep going all the time and rests behind a glass wall.  The one I visited supposedly had been burning unabated for several centuries.  It looks pretty cool but the temple itself was a 60s-ish structure that reminded me of some American synagogues built in the same era. There are only about  25,000 Zoroastrians left in Iran because most of them have emigrated to the USA or India but the populations in those countries aren’t very high either and the total world population is only about 200,000.

We then went to the Kerman Contemporary Art Museum, which I really liked.  I was stunned that a provincial city like Kerman would have such a large art museum devoted to Iranian modern art.  After  that, we hopped in Mahmoud’s car and drove to a town called Mahan which was about 30 miles southeast of Kerman.  On the way, Mahmoud pointed out a building on a hill surrounded by barbed wire and said to me “guess what that is?” I guessed military.  And he said  “Revolutionary Guard.”  I asked them what do they think of the Revolutionary Guard and practically before I could finish the question Lina blurted out, “I hate them,” and Mahmoud laughed.

Just outside Mahan was one of the most famous Persian Gardens in Iran.  This one is one of the best examples of Persian landscape architecture because it is designed on a hill and has water running down in the middle and on both sides and is a UNESCO world heritage site.  On the top is a traditional restaurant where we ate lunch on traditional Iranian mats.  This was one of my favorite meals in Iran because the food was really good and we were overlooking this spectacular garden. After the garden we went to a huge Sufi temple in Mahan and roamed around there for a while.  Even thought I’m not a very spiritual person, the Sufi temple in Mahan was very inspiring and peaceful. At this point, I’m able to differentiate between the various branches of Islam – Suni, Shiite, and Sufis.

So, it was around 5 p.m. when I was dropped off at my hotel and I decided to wander around Kerman a bit.  More than any other city in Iran, the Kerman people approached me and asked me where I was from.  After I told them I was from America at least 3 groups of people asked if they could take their pictures with me. I thought of how ironic it is that the vast majority of Americans have this notion that Iranians hate us, when here I am being treated like a minor celebrity just for being American. So, Kerman turned out to be a really nice city, with lots to see and extremely friendly people.  By the end of the day, I didn’t even mind the hotel and was forgetting about the drive the previous day.

Day 4: Persepolis and east to Kerman

So, last night I met this group of Iranians who took me out to dinner at a really nice restaurant.  I told them I would be going to Kerman the following day and they gave each other worried looks and then admonished me not go to Kerman because there are drug traffickers from Pakistan and Afghanistan in that area of eastern Iran. I mentioned this to Lina and she kind of scoffed.

“I’ve been to Kerman a bunch of times this year and its fine.  There are police on the roads and its very safe.  The only part that isn’t safe is east of Kerman closer to the border of Pakistan but we’re not going in that direction.  Shiraz people always say that Kerman is full of drug traffickers but its not true.”

Ok, LIna, I’ll believe you this time, but if I get kidnapped by drug traffickers, I don’t think that the government of Iran is gonna place the rescue of some Gay American Jew high on its list of priorities.

I was just getting a bit more at ease in Iran, but this talk of Pakistani and Afghani drug cartels made me a little uncomfortable about going to Kerman.  On the map, Kerman is in the eastern-ish part of the country, but still a pretty far distance from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Were these Shiraz people being overprotective of me because I’m American or did they have real reason to be worried?

But I was also uncomfortable about another reason; the previous night, at dinner with this super nice Iranian family, they asked me the inevitable, “are you married?”  At least I didn’t have to lie, and I said, yes, because yes was the truth.  After being with Oscar for 11 years, we got married on August 29th in Shrewsbury, Mass. The Iranians were very happy that I was married but I also didn’t want to make them uncomfortable, so I referred to Oscar only as “my spouse,” rather than as “Oscar” or “my husband.”  Maybe they were totally cool about gay stuff, but this was Iran and even the nicest and most progressive people may have been affected by the not-so-gay-friendly Iranian government. In my life in the U.S., I had totally moved beyond having to be coy about being gay, but I didn’t know the Iranian protocol so I stayed neutral which made me feel bad.

The next morning I’m in the hotel courtyard scrunched up against the wall of the office, because that’s where they kept the modem and that’s where the highest concentration of wifi molecules happened to congregate until they died about 2 feet further out. After waiting for about 10 excruciating minutes for my email to download (remember, this is worse than 1996 dial-up), I get an email from Chase Bank apprising me that my account had been frozen due to my accessing it online from a sanctioned country.  That was a first for me.

Today I go to Persepolis, the symbol of the Persian Empire and its only about 30 minutes from Shiraz. Persepolis is to Iran what Machu Picchu is to Peru or what Angkor Wat is to Cambodia or what the Pyramids are to Egypt. A nice guy named Amir picks me up in his Paykan, which is an Iranian-made car and kind of a cross between a 1980 Fiat and a 1985 Lada and they are everywhere in Iran.  Actually, almost all of the cars in Iran are Iranian made – either their own brands or domestic Peugots.

Compare to other ruins I’d been to, like Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Chichen Itza in Mexico, Persepolis was smaller, older and way less crowded. Angkor Wat and Chichen Itza are about 1,000 years old but Persepolis is more like 2,500.  It leaves you in no doubt how grand this empire was. The ruin itself was just a small portion of the 4 cities which comprised the capitals of the Persian Empire, and was built as a spring palace for the Persian kings; Darius, Xerxes and Cyrus. Having Lina, the scholar of ancient Persian literature and language, was a big bonus because she could tell me about the meaning of all the bas-reliefs and sculptures.  The Persian Empire extended from Bulgaria in the west to India in the east, and south to Ethiopia and north to Kazakhstan and the bas reliefs on the walls showed all the subjects from these various provinces dressed in their traditional costumes, paying tribute to the kings. Lina pointed out which ones were the Macedonians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Turkmen, the Azeris, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Baluchis and the Pashtuns.  Pretty cool.

LIna taught me about Zoroastrianism, the state religion of ancient Persia, which was the first monotheistic religion – even before Judaism- and it is still practiced in the country. She also pointed out all the religious and cultural symbols embedded everywhere in the ruins.  In 330 BC, Alexander the Great attacked Persepolis, burnt it to the ground and thereafter, Iran became a part the Greek Empire.

Persepolis was the high point of the day but it got worse and worse after we left.  The problem is that I really misjudged the distance to Kerman when I opted to go there.  Its like over 600 kilometers. And driving through the hot desert in an un-airconditioned car from the 1970s that’s blasting Iranian music may be a novelty for 30 minutes but after 2 hours it gets a bit tedious. And after 6 hours hours it makes you homicidal and after 8 and a half hours it turns you suicidal.

But the driver was a really nice guy, who, after 2 hours took us to his family’s farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere and we ate raisins, figs and plums that had been drying in the sun.  Have you ever eaten real sun-dried fruit?  I didn’t realize that there was such a big difference between fruit that has actually dried in the sun and fruit that has been dried through whatever industrial processes they use in the USA.  Would you be shocked to learn that sun-dried fruit that is dried in actual sun is way better?  I gorged on this stuff and we also picked and ate walnuts and peaches. But that was only 2 hours in.

The following 6.5 hours I try to forget.  It consisted of sitting in a hot, noisy car with Amir getting lost, asking for directions, making u-turns and getting lost again.  I made an effort to read, but the music combined with the loudness of the car with the windows open on the freeway was too distracting. And don’t forget this is Iran, land of schizoid drivers who lose all sense of decency when they get behind the wheel, so I’m dealing with what in America we would consider near-death situations about every 20 seconds. And no signs pointing to Kerman.  I blamed myself for opting to go to Kerman and wondered why I even came to Iran and vowed never to go to another third world country. I didn’t want to be driving around in the dark with these demented drivers but evening was settling in which put me in a fouler mood.

We left Persepolis around noon and pulled into Kerman at about 8:45 p.m. and I was too happy to be out of that car to notice that the hotel looked like a Soviet Intourist hotel from the Brezhnev Era –  but without the charm.  I got into my room and of course the wifi was like 1 nasty, flickering, mocking bar.   But on the bright side – the room had not one but two snazzy prayer rugs. Goodnight.

Persepolis

DAY 3 – SHIRAZ

My Tehran introduction to the Islamic Republic was ending and I was set to fly south to Shiraz at 7:15 a.m. on day 3.  I would be back in Tehran for 2 days at the end.  Iranians told me to skip Tehran altogether, deriding it as a traffic-clogged charmless mess, which it was, but I liked its lack of pretense.  It was ugly for sure, and unplanned, and its smog burnt my throat, but it was also the only city in the country where there was a semblance of the familiar. I’m not talking about McDonalds, Gap, or Starbucks, which there were none of, but about store signs in English and gyms and supermarkets and malls.  Outside of Tehran the terrain changed and I lost all sense of the familiar.  10 days later I was in a 17^th century Armenian church in Esfahan, and I was puzzled by just how oddly comforting it was to see Jesus and saints. This was the moment when I realized just how totally alien this place was. When ancient Armenian saints and crucifixes make you feel at home, and you’re neither Armenian nor Christian nor from the 17^th century, you know that you’re far from your comfort zone.  The Iranian provinces were going to be the most alien place I’d ever encountered.

I was to meet Lina at Terminal 4 of Mehrabad, the domestic airport which used to be only Tehran airport until they built Imam Khomeini in the 2000s.  I got to Terminal 4 and looked for her in the sea of headscarves but no Lina.  I waited for about 15 minutes and found the 7:15 flight to Shiraz on Iran Aseman Air and there was Lina in front of me in the line. She kissed me hello, which I thought was over-the-line here but I guess not.

We boarded the Iran Aseman Air flight and of course we were accompanied by the 2 Ayatollas whose large photos were smack in the front of the main passenger compartment. Every single commercial establishment in Iran, except for private offices which don’t deal with the public too much, are required to display photos of the Ayatollas.  The flight took about an hour and a half and we even got a not-too-shabby breakfast which I told Lina was but a relic of happier traveling times long since vanished in the U.S. We deplaned in a much different part of the country.

Shiraz is Iran’s 5^th largest city and considered its cultural heart, where ancient Persian poets wrote and gardens were cultivated and is now considered its most liberal city. It is also where Shiraz grapes which make Shiraz wine come from.  Since 1979 there has been no (legal) winemaking in the Shiraz region but the grapes still exist and I was told that wine is still made clandestinely and if a restaurant owner knows and trusts you, he’ll give you some homemade Shiraz wine. I was planning to meet some friends of friends there so I was excited to get together with real Iranians. Lina drove me to my hotel, which was in the casbah-like old section, where she had to do lots of back and forth maneuvering to get around the narrow corners of these streets that were built pre-auto. The hotel was a combination youth hostel with shared bathrooms and “boutique” hotel with private rooms and private bathrooms, and luckily I was not in the hostel part. It was a converted mansion and I appreciated the quirkiness of the rooms and layout, and again I was glad that I didn’t drag Oscar into this because I knew that this hotel would not have been his cup of tea. And speaking of cups of tea, everywhere I went in Iran, whether it was in a person’s home, office, or hotel, I was offered tea, normally poured from a giant brass samovar. Although I would have preferred coffee, and was sorely missing my good U.S. coffee for the whole 2 week period, I think it’s a charming custom to offer tea to anyone who comes to your place which sometimes this would be a sweet rosewater tea.

I saw some foreign tourists in the courtyard.  There aren’t very many western tourists in Iran but they are easy to spot because the women haven’t gotten the hang of hijab and they just look really frumpy. Iranian women – they know how to rock a scarf and a manteau but none of the western women I saw could quite get the knack of it.  If I were a western woman and was planning a trip to Iran, I’d find some online Muslim or Indian store, of which there must be many in the U.S. and buy a couple of decent outfits, as opposed to just packing my ugliest pullover and babushka scarf.

So then, I ventured out into Shiraz hoping to locate the famous bazaar and got lost in about 5 seconds whereupon another friendly Iranian approached and asked where I was going, in English of course.  I told him I was trying to find the bazaar and he proceeded to take me there. After the obligatory “where are you from?” “America”  (I don’t normally say “America” but instead “USA” but Iranians only say “America,” so I gave in). He proceeded to tell me how much he liked American cars and television and that he wished that they had American cars in Iran and how the stupid fucking assholes ruling this fucking country (his words, not mine) won’t let them import American cars. He asked me what I thought about Iran and said that the Iranians are the friendliest and nicest in the world.

I have to say now that this was not a lie or an exaggeration on my part.  After going to many countries, Iranians were truly the friendliest people I’ve ever encountered.  In my opinion, these are my top 5:

1. Iran
2. Colombia
3. Suriname
4. Chile
5. Mexico

This guy took me all the way to the bazaar and asked me if I wanted to meet his family later, but I already had plans to meet other Iranians that night. The bazaar was very much what you would think a middle eastern bazaar to be like.  There were spice stores, dried fruit stores, clothing stores, carpet stores, tea shops and furniture shops. The bazaar branched out in different directions and I wished that I could have done a Hansel and Gretel dropping breadcrumbs or something on the floor so I could find my way back.

I did find my way back with difficulty and managed to meet Lina who took me to a bunch of historic places in her city. Shiraz is hotter than Tehran and everything closes from about noon to 4 p.m. for Iranian siesta. We took that time to eat in a really cool restaurant where they played traditional music, and this wasn’t a tourist place at all – from what I saw it was only Iranians. We then ate the traditional Shiraz ice cream which was more like frozen rice vermicelli in lemon juice, which sounds odd but was oddly delicious.

We visited some Persian gardens and palaces and mosques which were all enchanting and which gave me the feel for the antiquity of this culture. Like Europeans, Iranians live their history just by being present in their ancient environments.

Then it was time to meet with my Iranian friends of a U.S. friend.  We were scheduled to get together for drinks at a restaurant.  At the entrance I had a whole family waiting for me who whisked me to a table and recommended a rosewater tea.  Of course, in Iran, drinks at a public establishment means no alcohol. They were so endearing.  One was a professor of film and another a professor of Arabic and their English was fluent – even their 15 year old son spoke pretty well. The professor of Arabic said that her lifelong dream was to live in the U.S. which made me sad but also so happy that I happened to be lucky enough to be born in the U.S.  We ended up having dinner at this restaurant, which was an old converted mansion and they insisted on treating me. We agreed to continue to stay in touch.

I then returned to the hotel, and got ready for the long trip to Persepolis and then Kerman the next day.

Pickles in Shiraz Bazaar

Shiraz garden

Shiraz palace

My new friends

Day 2: Central Tehran

Tehran Subway Station

Tehran Metro Station

Me in the National Museum

Men’s section of the bus

Scowling Ayatollah

Tehran Metro

Today I got to see the real Tehran, not just the wealthy northside. I went downstairs to eat the Esteglal breakfast buffet and the dining room was full of Chinese people.  They didn’t emit a tourist vibe, looking more like they were on business; filling the void left by western sanctions and probably making a ton of money. I got my food and sat down at a table and immediately some Chinese guy joined me.

“Do I know you?” I wondered

Did I just walk into a speed-dating session?  This dining room was crowded but not full, so why did this (not cute) dude have to sit right across from me at a 2-top? To make the situation more uncomfortable, he slurped and slobbered his way through his breakfast and I was totally grossed out. He made no attempt to spark a conversation, so neither did I. Travelling alone was going to be different, for sure.

Lina met me at the hotel and we decided to go into central Tehran to see the National Museum and the Jewels Museum. As we ventured into the thick of the city I was beginning to grasp the size of Tehran, a city of 13 million and realized that I was in one of the world’s larger metropolises.  I told her I wanted to take the metro, not a cab, so we made our way to the nearest metro station. The metro station was amazing.  I’ve never gone down so deep into a subway before.  The Washington DC metro goes really deep down, but that was nothing compared to Tehran.  We descended via 4 long, long escalators before finally reaching the tracks – we must have been 15 stories below street level.  This was an ultra-modern and clean metro too.  And it was heavily trafficked. The metro gave Tehran the feel of a giant, well-run city.  We got to the track and the train appeared right away.  Of course he first thing I noticed on the train was that the 2 front cars said “women only,” in English and Farsi and I figured that Lina would have to get in one of those cars and we’d be separated.  But she stayed with me as the doors opened.

“Don’t you have to sit in the women’s car,”

“No,” she replied, “that’s totally optional – only if you want to.”

I was kind of relieved about that as we got into the train. Tehran had the feel of any large city in the world where you could have a degree of anonymity if you wanted.  It felt like the gender role constraints of the Muslim world would be a bit weaker here.  There were women working in the subway stations, driving cabs and selling things in stores.

So we got into the unisex car, which had plenty of women in it.  If you’re a “modest” woman, you have the option of sitting in the segregated car, but I guess most Tehran women are freewheeling sluts who licentiously sit next to men on the Metro. We were on the subway for at least 30 minutes when we got off somewhere in the central part of Tehran.

This part of Central Tehran was grittier than the north and was a mixture of offices, warehouses and government buildings, and for what I was taught was a totalitarian police state, the central section of the capital city of this police state felt pretty relaxed. Except for the constant crazy traffic.

The first stop was at the National Museum of Iran, which was kind of like the Smithsonian of the country.  Yet, for a country with 3,000 years of history, the museum wasn’t nearly as big as I thought it should be.  The reason for its small size, I learned, was because most of the national archeological treasures had been looted by us, meaning us Westerners, and are displayed in places like the Louvre, the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The Iranians get to see only the shitty leftovers that our archaeologists didn’t consider worth stealing.   I’m exaggerating a bit – about the collection – the museum did have some awesome artifacts.

The next stop was the Jewelry Museum. We took a bus there and this would be my first Iranian bus experience. The bus was informally divided in half – the women in the back and men in the front. Lina and I sat together in the front though, and I asked her if it was ok for us to do this. She told me confidently that it was totally ok – and that the segregation laws aren’t strictly enforced, especially if a man and a woman are riding together.  And I did see plenty of women in the front of the bus, but no men in the back.  Could these Tehran women be practicing a discreet form of civil disobedience by quietly appropriating the men’s sections of public transportation?

The Jewelry Museum was remarkable. I’m not into jewelry but the stuff there was stunning and huge and spanned from the Babylonian period to the last Shah. You had to be on a tour so I chose an English tour.  Lina stayed behind because she’s been there many times before, but as we were splitting up, a woman approached her and said “your nose is so pretty – did you get it done?”  Lina replied, “thanks but its real.”  Nose jobs.  These are the most common surgeries in Iran and I had already seen evidence of at least 3 of them by the 2^nd day in the form of nose bandages.  Iranian women don’t cloister themselves after getting rhinoplasty, and you see them out and about with their noses all bandaged up.  Later I learned that nose jobs are way more common than boob jobs, and for good reason – boobs are locked up underneath a manteau or chador in Iran but the face is open for the world to see.  Plus, in a country with separate beaches, pools and  gyms, why bother with boob jobs or butt lifts? – save your resources for the visible parts like the nose.

After the jewelry museum we went out to one of Lina’s favorite restaurants in Central Tehran, which was a hipster place with photos of American music and movie stars.  There was James Dean, Elvis, Al Pacino, Woody Allen and Marilyn gazing down at guys with nose rings and girls with precariously perched headscarves.  The food was rustic Iranian and I ate a really good lamb stew with a yogurt-cucumber drink.

Today I’m feeling a bit obsessive about the status and separation of women, asking Lina about the women’s only subway cars, semi-segregated busses, headscarves and nose jobs, but that is what visiting Iran does to a westerner. I’m wondering if regular Iranians are obsessed with this too, or whether all the restrictions are just so intrinsic to them that they don’t merit any reflection. I thought about how orthodox Judaism has many similarities to this culture; segregation of the sexes, enforced modesty, etc. (although orthodox men have to dress even more outlandish than the women and Muslim men can wear whatever they want – big difference!)  It made me wonder why these people think that God really gives a shit about the length of their skirts or what kind of animal they eat . So far, Iran was failing to transform me into a more religious person.  Then again, Israel had failed twice before – each time I went there I left feeling more unreligious.  And all this religion-think was causing the Dead Kennedys to go through my head all day  – “All religions suck, all religions make me sick, all religions make me wanna throw up, they say they have the answer, they don’t even know the question, they’re just a bunch of liars, they only want your money, they only want your consciousness….”

After lunch it was around 5 p.m. and we parted.  I spent the rest of the day wandering about Central Tehran until I was ready to go back to the hotel.  I managed to hail a cab and showed the cabbie my hotel name and address in Farsi so he could read where it was and he acted like he knew how to get there.  However, a few minutes into the cab ride, it was apparent that he had no idea where the hotel was, so he pulled over and asked a pedestrian – a man probably around age 70.  But then, before I could say anything, this guy opened the cab door and plopped into the back seat of the cab with me as the cab took off.

He greeted me in English

“Where are you from?”

“USA”

“Amreeka?”

“Yes, America.”

“Oh, hello! When did you arrive in Tehran?”

“Yesterday.”

My first thought – This some kind of set-up.  In most places you would never let the cabbie pick up another passenger – isn’t that always a prelude to a robbery?  Oscar, my crime-obsessed Colombian, would be having a freak-out right now. And frankly, I would even be nervous if this happened in Miami, but did I really have a choice?  The guy just bounced in before I could say anything.

“Welcome to Iran.  You know, we love America here in Iran.” the old guy said to me as the cabbie grinned and nodded.

“Thanks.”

“I love American people.  I lived in America for many years,” and he then recounted his life in Michigan where he worked as an engineer.

The cabbie asked the guy something in Farsi and the old guy said to me, “he wants to know what you think about Iran so far?”

“Its really nice and the people are super friendly,” I said.

“Esteglal hotel is one of the nicest in Tehran.  It used to be Hilton and President Jimmy Carter even stayed there when he was visiting our Shah.”

Our Shah, I thought?  I guess not everyone thinks of him as the devil.

I then began to recognize the surroundings and saw the tower of the Esteglal in front of me and realized that I wasn’t going to be mugged and I felt kind of guilty for being suspicious of these guys who were just trying to help.  The cabbie pulled into the hotel and the old guy got out and said “I truly hope you enjoy your stay in Tehran and that you get to see more of our country.  Iranians and Americans – we should be friends, and I hope that you tell your friends and family to come and visit Iran.”

The cabbie nodded in agreement and got out of the cab and came around to shake my hand and said to me in very deliberate English which he probably practiced during the ride,”welcome to Iran.”

That sure as hell wouldn’t have happened in a cab ride in Paris or pretty much any other

Tehran Hipster Restaurant

Olive Store

place in the world, right?  And it touched me to the point that a few tears welled up in my eyes as I entered the Esteglal, where I was greeted by smiling Grandpa Khomeini.

Day 1 in Iran: Welcome to Tehran

Olive store in Tehran

Ice cream menu

Khomeini’s Tomb

DAY 1, WELCOME TO TEHRAN

I was the last person from my flight to get through Immigration so my luggage was all alone on the carousel.  I picked it up and went to Customs, and there was no officer there to inspect me.  So much for Iranian vigilance. I could have brought in 10 bottles of Bacardi and sold them to pay for my trip!  I looked for a driver and there he was –  standing in the waiting area holding a sign with my name on it. Praise Jesus!  I was slightly worried that this piece wouldn’t fall into place but it did. I went with him outside into the chilly Tehran 5:00 a.m. morning. I got into the cab and we left the airport.

10 minutes into the increasingly harrowing cab ride, I saw a gleaming structure surrounded by lights with buses parked in front.  Why are all those buses there at 5 a.m? I tapped the driver’s shoulder and gestured to it, and he told me what it was but the only word I understood was Khomeini, and I instantly realized that it was Khomeini’s tomb – yes that Khomenei, the one who held our hostages, made Ronald Reagan president and forced Salman Rushdie into hiding for, 12 years  – or more maybe? A fitting introduction to the country and seen by virtually every traveler going from the airport to central Tehran.

The cabbie was driving like a madman.  He swerved past a car and gave the old lady driver (yes women drive in Iran) the Iranian equivalent to the finger. He weaved in and out of lanes and barreled through the Tehran expressways at about 130 kms per hour and I was freaking out wondering if this guy was on meth (do they have meth in Iran?) and thinking that this dude is going to fucking kill me and there’s no American embassy to ship my body back home. Now Sofia Vergara was going to come to Iran not to rescue me but to identify my corpse for shipping it home in a body bag. After many more cab rides in Iran, I would fondly remember this as one of the more relaxing rides in a country of lunatic drivers. We lurched into the hotel driveway 45 minutes later and all I wanted to do was sleep.

The staff at the Hotel Esteglal were a bit on the surly side and made me pay for a half a day but I willingly paid because I hadn’t been in a bed for 48 hours and was exhausted. They kept my passport, which I was nervous about at first, but that is a thing they do in Iran.

This used to be the Tehran Hilton, and  the lobby looked like the type of place where the Shah and Brigitte Bardot drank Harvey Wallbangers and danced the hustle in 1977. During the 1979 Islamic Revolution the hotel was nationalized, renamed the “Esteglal” which means “Independence,” and it looked like it had been preserved in amber ever since. Except for the large framed photos of the 2 Ayatollas – Khomeini and Khamenei – right above the main entrance threshold, and the large sign pointing to the prayer room.  This wasn’t the scowling Khomeini that we used to see growing up but a semi-smiling one, who, if you squinted hard enough, could even be your stern but soft-hearted Grandpa. It was now about 7 a.m. and I had 5 hours until I was to meet the guy from the agency who would take my money.  I slept.

At noon, the phone rang and it was the agency guy.  I went downstairs and handed over my cash.  He told me that my guide Lina (not her real name) would be meeting me at around 2 p.m., giving me 2 more hours of sleep.  Lina rang me at 2 and said “hello, this is Lina your guide.  I’m downstairs.”  I went down and a very pretty petite woman with a cotton headscarf covering about half of her hair and a short “manteau” came up to me and asked if I was Mister Barry.  I told her I was and she introduced herself.  I was happy that my guide was a woman because I wouldn’t have to worry about dealing with a straight man’s macho comments and questions about my sexuality.  I would be spending a good part of the next 12 days with Lina so I was hoping that we would get along.

The reason I would spending so much time with Lina was because Iranian law requires us Americans to be accompanied, or minded as some would say, at all times. This means if you follow the letter of the law, you cannot step outside your hotel without the guide at your side, but I soon realized that these rules are far from strictly adhered to and I was able to freely wander as much or as little as I wanted.

Lina told me that we were going to walk around the north of Tehran and get something to eat. We got to the first intersection outside our hotel, which looked like the intersection of 2 giant expressways smashed into a single traffic circle.  This was the junction of the Chamran Highway, a major east-west expressway and Valiasr Street, the longest north/south avenue in Tehran.  Crossing this intersection was my first lesson in the Tehran Shuffle. This is the dance you perform crossing the street in Tehran, and to a certain extent in other Iranian cities.  Iran is the most pedestrian unfriendly place I’ve ever visited and that includes Texas. The drivers just don’t give a fuck about pedestrians because they’re too busy fighting each other.  So, in order to make your way through an intersection as a walker, you just have to forget everything you take for granted in the U.S., like having a “walk” signal or waiting for a driver to motion for you to pass, or assuming that pedestrians have the right-of-way, or thinking that you won’t die.  You have to confront your fears of being roadkill, and then, channeling Mr. Magoo with a combination of bravado and blindness, you venture out into the traffic, shuffle between the moving cars, holding your hand towards the oncoming traffic in a “stop” gesture, as if that hand had telekinetic powers to actually stop the cars that are barreling towards you, until you have made it to the tiny traffic island or median strip where you regain your composure and fortify yourself for the 2^nd half of the intersection.  I found that doing the Tehran shuffle with a group of Iranians was more reassuring than doing it on your own and by letting them go slightly ahead of you, it gave them a greater chance of being hit first, which would likely soften the blow to you, unless you strayed too far back and got clipped from behind. I found it illuminating that the Iranian government pays so much effort to enforcing hijab, but very little to enforcing traffic laws.  It took me the entire 14 days to perfect my Tehran shuffle, but at the end I was kind of enjoying the thrill.

As we walked north on Valiasr Street, a lovely sycamore-lined street with rivulets from the mountains flowing along its embankments, we got to know each other a bit.  She was from Shiraz, had studied ancient Persian languages and literature at the University of Tehran and had been a tour guide for 6 years.  She was authorized to take Americans based on her experience and credentials, and not all tour guides had such authorization.  I thought it was pretty cool that she had the ancient Persian background and it did prove very helpful throughout the trip. Her English was fluent, but formal and I learned that she liked having Americans because we helped her with her American English, unlike Chinese or German groups whose English wasn’t native. She told me that Iranians preferred to speak American English, as opposed to British or Australian.

We went to a mini-bazaar and I bought dried fruit and olives in pomegranate puree, and then went to an ice cream store where I tried saffron ice cream, a Tehran thing. So far, Tehran was pretty cool.

The first thing that any foreign visitor to Tehran notices, aside from the horrible traffic, was the variety of hijab.  Lina told me that hijab was not the word for just a headscarf, but refers to the entire body covering. What hijab was in the north of Tehran was the scarf plus a manteau. In more conservative areas it was the black chador and there was lots of in-between. The women in the north of Tehran seemed to push hijab to the limits by knotting their hair into a bun, then anchoring the scarf on it so it perched as far back on the head as possible, thereby exposing all their front hair. The manteau is the covering that is meant to hide the curvature of the body and is supposed to drape low enough to cover the rear end.  However, many women I saw had their manteaux tightly belted, showing as much curvature as they could. I think the general rule is that the scarf and manteaux are supposed to be plain and drab but many north Tehran women’s coverings were just the opposite; brightly colored, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton even Romero Britto, the tacky Miami faux artist who I hate.  I started my trip with a curious attitude towards hijab, then at times attempted to respect it as a cultural thing, but devolved into hating hijab.

We walked all over northern Tehran, many parts of which had an aura of faded elegance. There were some faintly Parisian-style buildings and others that looked like they could have been in Madrid or Buenos Aires and lots of big modern high-rises.  But they were punctuated by vacant storefronts and many partially built structures that looked like construction was suspended on them months or years prior. Lina was teaching me the Persian numbers, which were the same as Arabic ones.  I never quite learned them.

We ended up where Tehran met the mountains in what had been a village, but was now fully enveloped by the city and a place where Tehranis come to eat and shop. We ate at a restaurant there where I had the first of my many lamb kebabs. During our conversation, I made the big Jew reveal and Lina was really cool about it saying that Shiraz where she is from, has the biggest Jewish community in Iran.  Now, I’m a 100% atheist and have no interest in practicing religion so I qualified it by saying that I was completely not-religious and she said “me too,” which was cool of her. I was getting more and more confident about being with this woman for the next 2 weeks.

We finished dinner and we had to split up because she was staying in Central Tehran and I was going to walk back to my hotel.  Just before she stepped into her cab she issued this warning:

“People here are really curious about foreigners – don’t tell them you’re American.”

“Huh?”

“Tell them you’re from France.”

“Bu what if they try to speak to me in French?”

“Hardly anybody here speaks French.”

“What about if I tell them I’m Canadian – isn’t that a bit more plausible?”

I wasn’t sure if she was doing this for my protection or so that she wouldn’t get into trouble for leaving her American charge alone on the streets of Tehran, but I had promised my family before I left to follow the orders of my guide during the trip, so we both agreed that my fake nationality for my walk home would be Canadian.  Like in Argo. And as I was walking home I honed by Canadian persona.  I decided to not be from Montreal in case someone knew French; I wouldn’t be from Toronto because there were too many Iranians living there; I had never been to Edmonton, Winnipeg or Halifax so those were out; I had read The Shipping News so Newfoundland came to mind but in the end I chose Vancouver.  But I never got to use my pretend Canadian identity because the only contact I had during that walk was with some lost guy who, thinking I was Iranian, asked me directions in Farsi, to which I replied with an I-don’t-have-any-idea shrug.  I then resolved to not conceal my identity for the remainder of the trip, and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be.  Anyway, one of the main points of this trip was to see Iran as an American so pretending to be Canadian seemed, kind of beside the point.

I got back to the Esteglal and went to my room where I proceeded to struggle with the wifi, a recurring theme throughout the trip.  I’ve experienced slow wifi, but this was as bad as dial-up in the 1990s.  I managed to get onto Facebook with the VPN on my laptop but couldn’t connect on my I-phone, even though the VPN icon appeared on the screen. But it was the sluggishness of the wifi that was exasperating.  I assumed that it was just the location of my room but I soon discovered that all of Iran has slow bandwidth.  I figured out that the wifi was slightly stronger in the bathroom so I set up shop there for a new minutes. I attempted to upload some photos to Facebook but it wasn’t working. I was tired anyway and as my photos were uploading, I dozed off watching upload circle spinning on my screen

Tehran traffic

.

Part 1, Deciding to Go to Iran

My wedding photo

My Iran Visa

Me at Persepolis

MY IRAN HONEYMOON (BY MYSELF)

 

PART 1, GETTING TO IRAN

 

“You going to Iran is like you traveling to Nazi Germany in the 30’s” was but one plea from the many interested parties trying to convince me not to travel to Iran.  This actual entreaty happened to come from my mother, who I placed in much distress twenty-some years prior when I was roaming Brazil and didn’t check in with her for over a month. She brings up that incident with a fair amount of regularity.

“You are gay, Jewish, and American you’re going to Iran?” asked many astonished friends. Yes, that was true, but only the American part could be easily documented, I explained.

“You’ve been to Israel so they won’t let you in, so why bother even trying to go” some people told me.  I’d heard about this, but had no Israel stamps in my current passport, as the last time I entered Israel was in 1990 so I figured there was no way the Iranian authorities would know about my ever being in Israel.

“Why would you support that horrible Iranian government that hates the U.S and Israel?” asked others. I explained that I was not travelling there as a show of solidarity with the government of Iran, but to see the country and get to know the people.

Instead of failing to convince me not to go to Iran, the worrywarts and the naysayers only made Iran seem more enticing. So I set about to purchase a ticket for September 11^th arriving on the 13^th in Tehran.  (The fact that I was departing the U.S. on September 11^th was truly a coincidence and totally unintentional, but my mother branded it “a slap in the face” even though we both knew that Iran had nothing to do with September 11^th.)

Before I describe my Iran trip as a gay American Jew, some background.  I had wanted to go to Iran for years. I’d seen Iranian films, had Iranian clients (I’m an immigration lawyer) and have some Iranian friends and liked to travel to places where Americans don’t go.  I lived in Chile during Pinochet’s regime, went to Colombia several times in the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was quite a dangerous place, visited Cuba in 2003 and Myanmar in 2006. So going to a country, where as a teenager during the hostage crisis I heard on a daily basis the chant/rant “death to America” piqued my curiosity. I knew that Iran was an ancient, historic and rich civilization and had tremendous sights, including Persepolis, which is one of the finest ancient ruins in the world. I also was aware that the Iranian people were very welcoming to foreigners, even Americans.

During the summer of 2014, I was getting a travel bug.  I had no travel plans except to attend my wedding in Massachusetts on Labor day weekend and wanted to travel beyond Worcester, MA.  Oscar, my now-husband, and I decided to finally get married after being together for 11 years and since my sister in Massachusetts was having a 50^th birthday party there over labor day, we decided to get married there.  The wedding was great – people came from all over, including Oscar’s family from Medellin, Colombia.

However, prior to the wedding, I was semi-secretly planning this trip to Iran. I found a travel agency which could get me a visa number and plan a trip for me.

As U.S. citizens, we can’t just take a passport and enter into Iran. You first need to find a travel agency.  The agency has to be approved by the Iranian government to sponsor Americans. The agency must arrange a trip plan, submit the itinerary to the Ministry of Exterior (Iran’s equivalent to the State Department), and the Ministry issues a visa number and then transmits said number to the Iranian Interests Section at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, DC.  Only after that, can you apply for the actual Iranian visa. The process appears daunting and is made me think of Lord of the Rings when Boromir spoke about the land of Mordor;

“One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just Orcs. There is an evil there that does not sleep. The great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.”

Getting into Iran proved way easier than getting into Mordor (but the pollution in Tehran was a poisonous fume for sure – more on that later).  I am not going to name the agency I used, nor the guide, because I do not want to expose any Iranians to any problems with their government due to what I am writing here.  This particular agency was able to obtain the visa number really quickly. When the agency emailed me that the visa number was available from the Ministry and that I could apply for the visa, I started to get cold feet. Am I really doing this? Isn’t this a dangerous extravagance?  Well, I thought, there was no harm in applying for the visa.  The worst that could happen is that the visa would be denied. And, I thought, even if they approve the visa there I don’t need to actually use it – I just stay home.  So, I sent my passport to the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, DC with  a $90 money order in late July 30, 2014.  Then, I started planning the wedding party.

Around August 10^th I received my passport back with a visa from the Islamic Republic of Iran, single entry, valid for 3 months.  This was so much quicker than the stories of people I read about on line. I guess I have to go now, so I thought. Now my next chore was to buy the tickets.  Qatar Airlines started service from Miami in June 2014, which was a fairly convenient way of getting to Tehran.  You fly 14 hours from Miami to Doha, have a 5 hour layover and then Doha to Tehran, which is a 2-hour flight. The flight leaves Miami at 9:00 p.m., which left me plenty of time to go to work and then from my Brickell area office you take the Miami Metrorail to the airport. The ticket was cheaper than I thought – around $900 round trip.

The tour company mapped out the whole tour for me, with hotels, airplane and bus tickets. I was to start in Tehran and then fly south to Shiraz.  Then it was east to Kerman, then northwest, stopping in a desert Caravanserai, then in Yazd, Isfahan and Keshan before returning to Tehran.  The whole thing was about 2 weeks. I knew very little about those places and started looking into them.  I downloaded Lonely Planet and the Brandt Iran Guide.

My wedding was scheduled for August 29^th, and we were flying to Worcester on the 28^th with a Miami mini-entourage. That was exactly 2 weeks before my planned trip and I had to get the tickets by the 28^th in order to get the cheap price.  I was in a quandary as we drove to the Fort Lauderdale airport to board our Jet Blue flight to Worcester, MA for the wedding.  As I waited at the gate, with my husband-to-be, his sister, his niece and my best friend, I had a debate with myself – to go or not to go. The Qatar Airways app was open on my I-phone and all I had to do was press “purchase” and the deed would be done. If I didn’t press the button that evening, the price would probably double, I would have to cancel the trip, the Agency would cancel my visa and perhaps I would never see Iran. But if I did press the button, I would be committed to go there, or forfeit $900 plus the visa fee.

Just before boarding to Worcester, I pressed the purchase button. I would wait until after the wedding to tell Oscar that I would definitely be going on a honeymoon to Iran – by myself.  He knew I was thinking about going but didn’t know the extent to which I had advanced in the travel arrangements. Oscar lets me do what I want and doesn’t get upset when I do crazy stuff – that’s why he is such a great husband.

Now I had to go to my wedding.  It was small but awesome and will always be one of the best days of my life. At the wedding I told people about my upcoming Iran trip and they were pretty stunned. A friend told Oscar and we could make a new movie – “Not without my Husband,” and Oscar would be played by Sofia Vergara who comes running to Iran to rescue me.

Since the tour was plotted out for my by the agency, there weren’t a lot of preparations I had to make.  The only thing that I really needed to do was plan my reading material for the long bus rides and get a VPN. A VPN, or virtual private network, is a way for drug traffickers, child pornographers and Iranians to hide their IP addresses. What a VPN does is trick the internet into thinking that your computer is in a different place than where it actually is by registering with an IP address in another location.  Of course drug dealers and child pornographers want to hide their IP addresses to avoid getting caught by the law Iranians use them to make their computers think they are outside Iran so they can access blocked sites like Facebook and Twitter.  I needed a VPN because I had no idea what sites would be blocked.  If my email was blocked, I would be screwed because there was no way I just just disconnect myself from my clients and my office for 2 weeks. Plus, I wanted to use Facebook to post photos and videos of the trip. So I signed up with HIdemyass.com for a month. I read that it was one of the most reliable.  I did a home text by hooking into a Croatian IP address and 2 seconds later my Google homepage had changed from English to Croatian and my Youtube was broadcasting ads in Croatian (or is it Serbo-Croatian?).  Anyway, it worked and I now assumed that I could use my computer in Iran, with no problem.  That was not always to be the case.

Two weeks after the wedding, September 11, 2104, was my travel date.  I was equipped with $2,400 in cash to pay the tour company (You pay on arrival in Iran;  due to sanctions, there is no way to wire money there). I had an additional $2,000 in cash for expenses and emergencies. Miami International Airport was fairly quiet at 7:00 p.m. when I arrived.  I checked in, waited for no more than 5 minutes at the security line and went to the gate, passing through a couple of duty-free stores to spritz some cologne on myself before the 14 hour flight. At the gate, I saw what would be a first – a TSA agent (although it could have been CBP- I didn’t get a good look at the uniform) was asking questions to people boarding the aircraft.  I wasn’t sure if this was a Qatar thing or a September 11^th thing. He asked me where I was going and I said Iran and he asked why and I said for tourism and he let me pass. The immigration lawyer in my brain thought about questioning his regulatory authority to engage in this line of inquiry and whether I was required to answer.  After all, I was not entering the U.S., and I wasn’t suspected of any crimes. However, by the time he would have explained to me his regulatory authority in the CBP office, my Qatar Airways flight would have been over Virginia and I would still have been in the CBP office.  For that reason I rightly decided not to engage him.

14 hours later, I disembarked in Doha. The time was around 7 p.m. Friday.  My flight to Tehran wasn’t leaving until about midnight giving me some time to explore. Hammad International Airport looks brand new and is beautiful, staffed by a multi-national, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural workforce. Miami International looks like a bus station in comparison. It was a great airport to pass 4 hours in and re-charge my electronic devices but as my time drew to a close there, I was getting nervous. I knew that I could still turn around and go back to Miami. There was a flight back to the U.S. the next morning.  My nervousness increased on the long walk to the Tehran gate.  As I was walking I passed many gates to decent places – London, Vienna, Paris, Bangkok and I questioned by judgment.  Even the departure gates to Nairobi and Dar Es Saalam seemed way less forbidding than the place I was going to.  Would turning around and going back be the better part of valor?  My heart was pounding.

The Tehran flight was ready for boarding when I arrived.  It could have easily been a flight from Miami to Bogota – the people even looked Latin, and hardly a headscarf in sight, a big difference from the gates boarding to other Gulf States which were full of women in head-to-toe black abayas with only their eyes peeping out. I peeked at some of their passports and they all appeared to be Iranian. I couldn’t detect any Americans. I boarded the gate, got onto the bus, walked up the stairs to the plane, sat if my seat, fastened by seatbelt and the door shut.  I was really going to Iran and that was that.  It was done.  The flight was uneventful but before the gate opened in Tehran, the women adjusted their scarves. This was something of course I expected so I was not exactly shocked.  You have to be completely ignorant to not know that all women in Iran (and girls past the age of about 9), regardless of their religion, are required to wear “hijab” when in public. I soon learned that public meant basically everywhere except for the inside of your house and in sex-segregated spaces like the gym or the beauty parlor.

I disembarked in Imam Khomenei Airport and the first thought that occurred to me was that there is no U.S. embassy here and no bank system connected to the U.S. here, so if I lose my passport or get robbed, I’m fucked.  The only way out for me would be to do a Sally-Field-Not-Without-My-Daughter-run-for-the-Turkish-border.  The immigration line for foreigners was lengthy.  A line of Indians from a previous flight appeared to be wrapping up, but the going was slow. It took a good hour until it was my turn and by then the line for Iranians had already finished. The Immigration agent looked friendly enough but he didn’t speak English.  He kept saying “Indiana” to me, and after 3 “Indianas” I realized that he was looking at my place of birth, which on the passport says Indiana, USA. I told him I was born in Indiana but he didn’t seem to get it.  He got out of his booth and signaled me to follow him.  I was trying to not panic but in a flash I  pictured myself being taken to an Iranian holding pen in a cinderblock building somewhere along the perimeter of the airport.  Luckily, we only went as far has his colleague in the next immigration booth and the colleague appeared to chastise my agent saying something in Farsi like “you idiot – Indiana is in the USA.”  I guess he thought I was born in another country – India perhaps.  After that got cleared up, he stamped my passport and I was free to go.

Sigh of relief. I made it into Iran. Frodo’s entry into Mordor was way more complicated.  Now the fun starts.