Iranian Rappers And Persian Porn (13 page)

I was so surprised and asked, “Really?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Look at the mosques on Fridays; they are nearly all empty.” Since Friday is the holy day for Muslims, this was in stark contrast to how we had perceived Iranians before our visit. Ricardo and I found this fascinating.

When it was time to pay, Ricardo and I tried to pick up the tab but were scolded like little schoolboys by Leyla’s mother who said forcefully, “Sit down. I am older than you! You are our guests.”

We did as we were told.

Before we parted company, Leyla gave us her cell number and told us to call her just as soon as we got to Tehran. We thanked them for the meal and for such a fascinating and enjoyable night and headed back to our room very satisfied.

“That was just brilliant, Jamie! Just brilliant!”

I agreed with Ricardo.

We were back at the room by ten and, after washing some clothes in the sink, were nearly ready for bed. At around ten thirty, just as I was yawning my way into bed, there was a knock on our front door. I went to open it, and standing there was a man carrying a cake. He apologized in broken English for disturbing us and explained that he’d heard there was an Englishman from London in the village, and so just had to come and see me. He asked if I was returning to London tomorrow. On hearing that I wasn’t, he sighed with disappointment. “It is a shame,” he said. “I have a friend in London and I would like you to take this cake to him.”

Doing favors for strangers was clearly a way of life in Iran. Here was a man I’d only just met who wanted me to take a big, icing-topped, cream-filled cake, as hand luggage, to London, then travel across the vast city to deliver it, in person, to a guy I’d never met before. He apologized for the inconvenience, and I apologized that I couldn’t help him. When I closed the door, I realized I’d been talking to him wearing just my boxers, which in Iran was hardly the done thing.

T
he small antiquated television in the corner of the room displayed rather a strange spectacle. Here were loads of Iranians walking up a hill, and that, believe it or not, was the be all and end all of the program. This seemingly innocuous event got top billing and was jazzed up with funky music and dramatic zooming in and out with the camera. It went on for a good fifteen minutes, and for all I know much longer, as we had to leave before it finished.

On our way to pay the owner of our accommodation, we saw Leyla and her mother again, who were staying in another home stay a few doors down. We decided to have breakfast together at a café nearby. Over boiled eggs and bread served with real honeycomb and thick cream, I showed them the funny posters I’d bought in Tabriz, which, due to my not being able to find a post office, I was still carrying around. They thought they were hilarious, especially the ones of the wrestler, whom they now told me about.

His name was Gholamreza Takhti, and he was an extremely popular national hero who’d had a rags-to-riches life. He was raised in abject poverty but had succeeded in becoming the first Iranian wrestler to win a medal at an international tournament. He went on to become an Olympic champion, and began to attain a legendary status. He was seen by many Iranians as a sort of larger-than-life champion of good, a person Persians refer to affectionately as a
pahlavan
. Although there is no direct English equivalent, a
pahlavan
can roughly be described as an ethical, chivalrous, and heroic warrior fighting for good. Many Persian folklore stories tell of legendary
pahlavans
who stood up to unfair rulers to defend righteousness despite the dangers to themselves. And this is what Takhti did.

He was a staunch supporter of the popular democratic Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who was ousted by a CIA and MI6 sponsored coup in 1953, which led to the Shah’s twenty-six years of despotic reign. Because of this support for the former Prime Minister and Takhti’s huge popularity, the Shah’s secret police sought to diminish his status and began to watch his every move. Although he was well past his prime, the secret police purportedly arranged for him to compete in the 1964 Olympics and the 1966 World Championships in the hope that if he lost, the Iranian people’s affection for him would wane. He was unsuccessful in these competitions, but the secret police’s plan failed, and his popularity remained as high as ever. He died mysteriously a couple of years later, and although the official cause of death was recorded as suicide, the generally held opinion was that the secret police had assassinated him.

I felt a bit guilty at having found a poster of such a national hero so funny, but they agreed it was a naff picture and laughed at it also. Leyla’s mother warned me that I might have trouble sending the Khomeini poster through the mail, as it might be deemed disrespectful, and so to be careful doing this. When it was time to get the bill, Ricardo and I asked Leyla’s mother politely if we could pay and said it would make us very happy. She agreed.

We were all heading back to Rasht today, so Leyla and her mother asked if we’d like to share a private taxi with them. We parted company when Leyla and her mother got out at the main bus station to catch a coach back to Tehran. Leyla’s mother kindly insisted on paying, not only for the fare from Masuleh but for the taxi to take Ricardo and me on to the local minibus station so we could catch a bus to our next stop, the coastal town of Ramsar.

On the way there, the driver put some thumping Western dance music on, and when he saw that Ricardo and I both approved he cranked it up and beat his fist enthusiastically into the air. We both laughed and then joined him as if at some crazy rave party. It was great fun.

We caught a minibus down the coast to Ramsar, which had been described in our identical guidebooks as one of Iran’s most attractive seaside resorts with some of the best scenery anywhere along the Caspian coast.

It certainly didn’t look it from the place the minibus dropped us, which was a crowded intersection called Imam Khomeini Square, on a busy street called Imam Khomeini Boulevard.

By way of a caveat, our
Lonely Planet
s added,

The thought of women in Iran wearing bikinis was something I found very hard to picture.

Our first priority was finding a place to stay where we could dump our backpacks, and pretty soon a local approached us with an offer of a home stay. Apparently, he had a place a few minutes away and offered to take one of us on the back of his little motorbike to check it out. Ricardo wasn’t too keen on this, so it was decided I’d jump on, while Ricardo remained with the backpacks.

I clung on for dear life as we sped along, swerving in and out of cars to get there. It was in a nicer part of town near a big hotel, which apparently used to be Ramsar’s main casino in the days before the revolution.

The apartment was a nice enough place, but he wanted far too much for it at IR300,000, about thirty bucks. I tried to negotiate but he could smell those tourist dollars and was reluctant to drop the price. We’d traveled a good couple of miles on his bike to get here, and as I didn’t want to forfeit my ride back, I said I’d have to discuss it with Ricardo. The return journey was terrible, and I swear we nearly got hit twice. I got off the bike on shaky legs and gave Ricardo the news. We both agreed to look elsewhere. On seeing the deal slipping away from him, the owner miraculously dropped his price to IR70,000. Not only that, but he said he’d throw in a taxi ride, which he’d pay for, so both of us could get there. This was more like it, so we agreed and shook on the deal.

He hailed a taxi for us, which followed closely behind his bike. This time he led us along a different route and we turned onto a dead-end street in a different, shadier part of town. I turned to Ricardo and told him we weren’t going the right way. He looked at me concerned and said, “This isn’t good!” And it wasn’t. We followed along behind the guy’s bike twisting this way and that until we arrived at a dilapidated, half-built house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It looked very ghetto.

He tried to make out like it was all an honest mistake, but his English was too good for that excuse. I wasn’t happy at getting scammed—and after looking at the interior of the place was even less so. It was filthy, even for someone used to sleeping on the side of the road, and contained just one horribly stained double bed. As much as I liked Ricardo, I wasn’t snuggling up in the same bed with him. I let the guy on the bike know I was pissed off and told him that he’d wasted his time and ours, and that we weren’t interested.

The taxi driver now demanded an extortionate payment, but the guy on the bike refused to pay anything despite his promise to the contrary. A bit of a stand off ensued. It would have been one thing if the taxi driver was just asking us for a normal fare, but it was clearly bumped up several hundred percent since we were foreigners. And what’s more, biker boy had given us his word that he’d be paying for the taxi anyway, so we were being ripped off on both fronts.

Ricardo played the part of Switzerland and remained neutral. It all got a bit on the heated side, but I wasn’t particularly bothered and was willing to stand my ground. Ricardo didn’t share my enthusiasm for this approach and was clearly uncomfortable.

“Let’s just tell them both to get lost and walk out of here,” I said to Ricardo. He didn’t like this option.

“Let’s just pay them, Jamie,” he said more intelligently. “Look at the area; it’s not good.” After a moment’s further reflection, I conceded. It wasn’t worth getting into any trouble over, which was of course the last thing we wanted in Iran. I thrust a note into the driver’s hand and we started walking. Halfway back to the main road, the guy on the bike sped past and deliberately swerved toward us, scowling.

“What a prick,” I thought.

So much for the guidebook’s assertion that people in Ramsar are very friendly and like to see foreigners. Like to fleece foreigners more like it.

We walked to a hotel along the main road and got a wonderful, spotlessly clean and reasonably priced modern room with two single beds, a fridge, TV, and two chairs still covered in their factory plastic wrappings—something surprisingly common in Iran. The bathroom was a proper “wet room” with a high-powered shower and that rare luxury in this part of the world, a sit down toilet. We were both delighted. We threw our packs on the floor and flicked on the TV for the hell of it. On screen were more clips from the Iran-Iraq War just in case anybody was trying to forget about it.

We turned it off and went out. The beach and the Caspian Sea were calling our names, so we headed in their general direction. What we thought would be a quick five-minute stroll turned out to be a walk of a couple of miles and not a very scenic one at that. As we finally got closer to the Caspian, we passed row upon row of huge, opulent-looking houses, their gardens completely overgrown, and their outside walls made of nasty cement block. There was just no synergy to these homes; they looked expensive but at the same time cheap and unattractive.

When we got to the water, it was late afternoon. Although technically a lake, the Caspian looked for all the world like a sea, with fishermen lined along the front and boats going by just off shore. It would have been a nice spot, but it was covered with trash, both on the gravelly shore and in the water. We were both very disappointed. A nice-looking restaurant jutted out into the water like a tiny pier, which we thought a suitable enough place to grab a drink. Both of us ordered
chay
, but I was brought a large iced coffee instead.

We sat on the balcony looking out to sea as trash floated gracefully past. We both wished we hadn’t wasted a whole day in coming here. As we sat chatting, I noticed a guy and a girl in their late teens discreetly stroking each other’s thighs beneath their table. I couldn’t help but look and wondered how difficult it must be to be a young person with such ridiculous restrictions on dating. My mind wandered and I probably stared too long, because the girl saw me looking their way. She stopped stroking her boyfriend’s thigh immediately and looked very uncomfortable.

Ricardo started to read up on the Caspian in his guidebook and gave me the lowdown on the place. Apparently, the Caspian was the biggest lake in the world, covering over 140,000 square miles (larger than Germany) and measuring 752 miles from north to south and between 130 miles and 271 miles from east to west. It was five times larger than the next biggest lake, Lake Superior, and contained 44 percent of all the water in the world’s lakes. Its water was salty, although only about a third as salty as the sea, and it had no outlet into the ocean. Five countries bordered the Caspian: Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

The Caspian was in very poor health ecologically, although we didn’t need to read about that—all we had to do was just look at the crap floating past. It was under threat from shipping, the development of ports, industrial chemical waste, oil and gas exploration, broken oil and gas pipelines, and severe overfishing, particularly of its once huge caviar stocks. And perhaps most interesting of all, the oil and gas in the Caspian Basin is estimated to be worth an incredible 11 to 12 trillion dollars.