Whisky Good!

Our time in Iran is nearly up. The last week was spent in Tehran where a line of white mountains give false hope to the concrete-dwellers down below. Tehran is a vast grid of flyovers, cables and propagandist murals. The former US Embassy is rather tastefully daubed with images of a sick and dying West, the British Embassy still stands silent. These symbols do not however reflect the opinions of the people we have met.

We were walking through Tehran with Freddy, an Iranian friend of ours when he spotted the police up ahead. Freddy, unlike most Iranians, sported sideburns, long hair and  a rock T-shirt. As we approached the police he quickly and subtly removed his earring.  I asked if they would they take the earring if they saw it, 'No' he said 'they'd take me.' He wasn't joking, friends of his had been arrested for less. One friend, a black-clad drummer with a mane of curly hair, had been arrested for little more than being with his girlfriend and for being a 'satanist' i.e. having long hair. He faced a 6 month jail sentence but was lucky enough to have an uncle in the police. It is these small things rather than grand ideals such as democracy that often get people most riled. Before democracy, before freedom of speech, people want personal freedom, alcohol and sex (or at least the right to hold hands with their girlfriend).

Amongst the hundreds of people we have met in Iran only two have had good words to say about the government, one was in his early teens, the other a touch unhinged. The rest have attacked the regime with unchecked vitriol and not just the regime, but Islam itself. Of course most of the people that speak to us do not represent all of Iran, they are the educated, the open-minded, but there are many such people. A majority say they to want to leave Iran, ask us how they can get to England. 

Plenty of things happen behind closed doors though. Freddy (he has rejected his Islamic name) and friends meet in a smoky cafe in Tehran, images of revolution and rock musicians on the wall. Here men and women with tattoos, piercings and dangerous thoughts smoke and talk. I was surprised then, to hear that they were playing inoffensive soundtrack music and soft jazz, 'We can't play vocal music' they explained 'they [the authorities] think it's satanist'. Elsewhere, one middle-aged man excitedly invited us to his hotel room where he proudly got out a bottle of homemade vodka and huge bag of weed. 'Whisky, good!' is a common refrain. Another man told me about his underground club who meet once a week to discuss Pink Floyd lyrics.  It is unbelievable that such a thing has to be underground and perhaps equally unbelievable that anyone can make sense of Pink Floyd lyrics.

Every time someone starts government-bashing (and this is very often) I ask what can be done, how it will change, but the answers are always pessimistic. There is no hope, they say, we just want to leave. Some blame the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some blame the coming of the Arabs, the coming of Islam. It  is so very sad. I have never known a country with so little hope, a country with such a broken heart.
The people here have been so unbelievably kind and hospitable I can't even begin to describe it, but being in Iran has been a sobering experience, a saddening experience. Perhaps what has made it so difficult is the fact that it is so easy to relate to the Iranians we've met because, like many of us, they are educated, worldly, modern people but they are trapped in a medieval prison. I don't want to put any of you off visiting, it is a wonderful place for a holiday and a place where hospitality and generosity take on new meanings. In the last few days we were given chocolates and a miraculously fast visa extension by an army colonel, given a free meal in a restaurant because we were 'guests' and a free lift to our homestay by a helpful passer-by. Miraculous acts of kindness by strangers have become the norm for us.

We've now nearly untangled the bureaucratic nightmare that is Central Asian visas (the Uzbek Embassy didn't even stock application forms) and will soon leave for the liberal paradise of Turkmenistan (well at least it's one place ahead of North Korea in the free media league).

We're now in the holy city of Mashhad, a kind of bottleneck for overland travellers to Central Asia. We stay in a sort of a home stay with a ragtag bunch that includes Dutch and Spanish cyclists and a French couple who drove here in a 2CV. We've all had enough of being stopped, greeted and questioned by well meaning but incessant passers-by twenty times a day. The finest variation on the 'where are you from?' question we've heard was the quite wonderful 'Made in?'

To Turkmenistan!