This comes to you via a top secret source (code name: my brother). The Iranian authorities had clearly got wind of the dangerous nature of my prose and blocked this website before our arrival.
Leaving Turkey by minibus, we were dropped at a dusty road, Iranian flags fluttered on the hill before us. Traversing trucks and oversized hessian packages, we arrived at a desk serviced by a stern moustache. Attached to this moustache was an even sterner looking man who began thumbing through our passports in painfully slow motion. I was beginning to think about a different route to China when, STAMP! We were waved through to come face to face with the glowering twin portraits of Khomenai and Khamenai and the grinning faces of black-marketeers. We were in Iran.
Hiring a taxi to the nearest town, we sped between craggy brown mountains and the sun-bleached posters of Iran-Iraq war martyrs. The first women we saw were swathed in black chadors (the black sheet that only shows the face) but soon we were seeing girls with Bollywood make-up, skinny jeans and headscarves clinging precariously to absurdly bouffaned hair. The men, an extremely gentle lot, responded to such a show with faded denim and gallons of hair gel.
Arriving in Tabriz, we stood on a street corner dazed and culture-shocked as neon buzzed to life in every shop window and traffic honked and screeched around us. The comforting Roman script used in Turkey had dissolved into disorientating Arabic squiggles. Before long, the map we had been examining had been whisked away by helpful hands and a gaggle of men swept from the pavement and a nearby electrical shop to spirit us to our hotel. You are never lost for long in this country.
'Hey Mister! Where you from?'
'Engilistan'
'Engilistan? Very good country! You are welcome in Iran!'
This is the conversation we have ten, twenty times a day, once accompanied by a kiss to my head (an old man who sold, and perhaps was, nuts), twice accompanied by offers to dinner and, more often than not, followed by long conversations as we stroll the bazaars or amongst the shadows of heavenly buildings.
The heart of Tabriz was its bazaar, a 7km square labyrinth of vaulted brick that was begun a thousand years ago. We tumbled through its ornate arches to occasionally find ourselves in cathedral-like halls where beams of dusty light shone on piles of gaudy fabric, or caravanserais awash with Adidas shoes. Though ancient, the building still lives. With a shout of 'Yalla! Yalla!' cart-pushers shove their wares through forests of chadors past spices, cow's feet, and 'Louis Vuitton' bedspreads. Faithful spill from hidden mosques into the snow-flecked city.
Then to glorious Esfahan where we saw some of the most magnificent buildings we will ever see, architecture that brings a lump to the throat. Watching the sun set over the blue domes and palaces of Naqsh-e Jehan Square was special (even when distracted by a hundred shaking hands and offers of tea). Esfahan even had that rarest of things, other travellers! We hadn't seen any in weeks.
We're now in the poetic if disappointingly unwiney city of Shiraz. At the tomb of Hafez, a saint-like hero of Persian poetry, people gather to pay their respects, recite poetry and lay red rises on the marble. Nic, clearly feeling the mystic vibe, started reciting a poem that began 'Pick-a-nose Pick, picked his nose and made him sick'. Really, I do try to culture the dear girl.
Tomorrow we're off to the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis! That's about the most exciting sentence I'll ever write.
Note: In a previous post, I mentioned a lake of 'scared carp', this was supposed to read 'sacred carp'. I neither take part in nor condone the frightening of fish (or any other aquatic creature) and apologise for any confusion this may have caused.
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