I greet you, my dearest readers, salam from the land of Persia - the coveted part of our journey and to date, probably the most challenging kick of this leg.
You get to read as much from publications, watch too much from Hollywood reproductions, overdose on news channels. Iran stands to be one of the most misunderstood and yet to be discovered places on the uncharted path for those suffering from travelicitis. Ah, the only cure? Blast straight through without over-analysing it.
That was exactly what we did. Initially, this country wasn't part of the plan (regretfully, due to time constraint, we had to shelve Africa and South America to a special category tagged "to be done soon in the future") but as all things had been since we handed over the keys to our home to trusted families, most of them had a sense of morphing into just what we didn't plan and definitely wouldn't have planned any better.
As we left the last port in Turkey - Van - it was a dusty walk balancing our packs and avoiding throwing ourselves into the many potholes from the city's thriving construction. Making our way further down towards the otobus meeting place defined by a stand-alone shack with a mix of Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish men furiously burning their lungs in the morning heat through rich tea and equally outstanding in potency cigarettes, we found two sorry-looking stools to sit on while we waited for our bus to head towards the border town, Dogubayazit. Beggars, water peddlers, tea sellers and cow-hide textured kebab were thrown at our faces. And before I forget (how could I?) one ultimate disaster of an excuse for a toilet.
This was looking to be one tough ride...
Somewhere along page 225 on my book on Tudor history and a cup of tea strong enough to stand a spoon, I heard a commotion. He would turned out to be our first proper Iranian friend that we made along the way and he was heading back home after ten months studying in Ankara (and avoiding his military service). The fact that he was also bringing alone a just shy of three months old Rottweiler puppy didn't go past unnoticed. Between helping to feed and water him (the puppy, silly) and getting to know Ashkan, the hours melted fast and we were soon yelled out to load our bags into the departing bus.
That was precisely when I chose the moment to cash in on my status as a foreigner and made some real noise.
The six-foot tall burly bully refused Ashkan's and hubby's effort to coax him into allowing the puppy (locked up safely inside a carrier) into the bus. His solution? Stuffed that poor thing into the tight bag compartment (do not think RV-sized trailers, this was a shrimp of a bus that was running on the dying ends of its diesel engine) with absolutely no ventilation and guaranteed heating from the engine's roaring belly.
Of course I couldn't sit through the journey betraying what I fought most passionately for. So I threw up my best act of protestation. Hand gestures, tacitly pronounced lines, English mixed with a dash of Turkish, head shakes and frantic points towards the puppy and slicing my throat. The panel convened and decided to accord this year's best foreign language NGO act's Oscar to yours truly. So puppy and all three of us happily trotted up the bus and off we went without any further delay.
The former plan was to stay a night in the border town. After much excitement, we went with Ashkan's prompt and thought to heck with proper decorum and rowdy up our crossing towards Iran. We were attired well, energy level was still high. So why for the love of my dirty Kathmandu trekkers not?
Compared with many other land crossings we did in Central Asia, this was relatively civil. Even the pup went through with all the glory and indulgent fame. Two Iranian border guards met us with caterpillar bushy-worthy, strong eyebrows that kissed in the middle that would had commanded a salutation from passing marches. Not a word of English and not a word of Farsi met. Ashkan and the pup looked on. A bit of decorum was probably required now and we handed over our passports, explaining with as much words and gestures (thankfully none taken wrongly) that we checked with the Iranian Embassies both in Malaysia and in Trabzon, that we were allowed visa upon entry.
The moment our status was declared, we were ushered into the "tourist office", namely a little room with two friendly, smiling men introducing themselves as older cousin and younger cousin in relation. We introduced ourselves as husband and wife. They couldn't stop expressing how happy they were in receiving us into their country. We could have done better, maybe, brushing up our phrase book beforehand. I cautiously observed that they both had a 330ml in each hand, Ishtar, the local non-alcoholic beer.
After all, we had entered Iran just at the moment the evening prayers were called. Sun-downer, no doubt.
We breezed past luggage check and came swarming into a crowd of border families waiting for their loved ones. Younger women dashed around in their fashionable trench coats and exotic ways of scarf adornment. The older ones had on another layer of the black chador. Both genders were mixing quite freely and the sky has darkened to light up the many streets and glittering towns afar with the full moon bestowing a welcome that couldn't had been better if I had choreographed it myself.
One of the ladies grabbed my hand and enquired if I was Korean (as I would be continuously mistaken for). Her respond to my explaining about my origins was a hearty "I loooorrrrve Koreans!!!". Hmm, charming. I supposed there was a huge direction in the Korean FDI and drama series infiltration judging by the incessant rows of shops selling the Samsung LCDs. The four of us now jumped onto a tin-can of a bus to make our way down to the main square where a pick-up would get us into Tabriz that night itself.
In a nutshell, due to various UN / International sanctions, no credit facility (well, at least the legitimate way) was available everywhere in Iran. Short of begging or sustaining on bread alone, we took to the alternative of changing all of our Turkish Lira into the local currency. A team of men (you know the ones, with that "look" and the mini calculator) swarmed around us and the haggling of rates began in a riot that would shame the floors of Wall Street. With a mini torch light suspended from my mouth, I was holding wads of Iranian Lira and doing this funny half fourth finger cross with my mini one to clip some pre-calculated Turkish Lira and counting some more of those mattresses of Iranian Lira while hubby poked at the calculator and was planted with more wads of big currency.
note: elsewhere in Iran, it's next to grinding salt from your teeth (and that could actually be more successful!) to exchange anything other than British Pounds and US Dollars - so this was of some urgency and utmost importance!
The hot musky air made it looked like a scene of some local gangsters conducting their moonlight exchange. This rocked!
Business done, we jumped into an old honey-bee yellow Peugeot and began our rally race for the next 300km on winding roads that I must said, were well laid and lit. The full moon emanated a seductive glow into the spreading fields and mountainous brackets that would be accompanying us throughout the drive as small villages punctuated a few pauses with their subdued movements from the odd kid heading home from his prayers in the tiny mosque.
By the time we were unceremoniously again (patterns were forming throughout the journey) dumped outside of a row of shops with 20 minutes to go to midnight, two figures precariously tiptoed up the stairs littered by the resident cat of its caramel logs of discharge (urgh!) to check-in into a room that I highly suspected was a former room for a make-shift hospital. Our beds had musty wheels with one sink that looked suspiciously akin to a former career of washing off a guy's (usually the guy in the white robe) hands after the messy lobotomy. Tired from a full day's travel, we crashed unabashedly, unconscious to the uproar down the streets around us. There will be a next morning to handle everything else.
Tabriz was an entirely modern city with a labyrinth of bazaar lanes (reputed to be the largest one in the country), intermixing with rows of shops filled with the glorious juices and bakeries that we would in no time, come to love. Most of the double-storey buildings bore the remnants of a well-dressed past in a time when it was not unfamiliar to hear the clinking of the Shah's champagne glass. Yet today, its people breezed through the streets with a kind of oddity that separated them from you - perhaps it's a buffer of safety that they could observe an alien intrusion from the protection of the laws laid down by the State.
Iran was a complete spectrum opposite of Turkey. Here, secularism was still slowly fighting a slow climb on the ladder of recognition. Religious dictatorship still expended its grip on everyone and in a sad way, beyond the colourful and helpful, warm lovely facade of the Iranian people that we had met in the last couple of days, there laid an undercurrent of sadness which was hard to describe.
In my humble opinion, I felt, including the women and children (minus the one exception at the border) people were not too used to open expression with someone that was different to them. Amongst themselves, you witnessed perhaps some of the brashest, most energising display of intercourse yet this exchange became very orchestrated, frigid to an extent, when it passed the colours of their safety cocoon. I tried to exchange communication respectfully with the women, but it was far and few in return. It was a given that I simply ignored the men.
Although I had been to many foreign places where I was oggled at most of the time, being in Iran had a slight touch of anxiety to it. Not only people stared, some stole a glance, many smiled, more so didn't return my smiles. Hubby didn't have so much issues with the usual hoard of questions from passer-bys. Most people are generally helpful yet I felt at times, invisible and helpless - something I'm not used to. Perhaps in some places, it IS a man's world after all. However the most uncomfortable form of interaction I had, besides the odd man trying to brush past me in a dubious manner (this with my hubby walking beside or behind me!) was the one fact that the moral police was everywhere in the town.
I was not sure if this would change as we moved ahead to the Southern part to Shiraz tomorrow. But at the moment, this was a real eye-opener to have to witness army-attired men discussing between themselves yet unabashedly pointing towards you in an indication that they were deciding whether the form of your loose, baggy long sleeved shirt had met the "required" length in covering beyond your hips. Notwithstanding it was also very difficult to learn how to balance a headscarf that kept slipping down while focusing on the task at hand - capturing the sights and people around me without offending any local culture.
It was hard. No, it was very, very hard actually.
I missed the freedom that I had experienced despite the much written bad press regarding the more "hard-core conservatives" Southeast of Turkey. I had been treated with more acceptance and grace by both men and women. Perhaps it was still early days and I certainly hope that this was none other than a fault of my own human frailty.
Yet being early days, they were by far, the most in summoning all the virtue that I possessed in practising my patience with the alienation around me. How could something that began so well in the border submerged so quickly into an unfathomable depth?
The only way to find the light was to continue the journey. Here's me signing off, still with hope and putting a foot forward.
