Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part One
I went to Iran in March 2009. It was nice.
Why go to Iran? Why not go to Iran? I believe it’s available for being gone to at that time of the year? I think I should be able to travel anywhere that will have me. Go because you want to see Iran for yourself. Go because you can.
Iran has a history going back several thousand years, and through historical accidents or conscious efforts, most of their historical monuments and sites have been really well preserved. More than that, it’s a rich culture; one which I felt was worth exploring. There is of course the matter of the country being an international pariah, run by a band of religious zealots, but that wasn’t a good enough reason for me not to go. It’s a very safe country to travel in, despite popular perceptions of it being filled with suicide bombers wielding AK-47s, as they stand on a pile of kidnapped young western women, laughing maniacally through the daggers between their clenched teeth. That’s not Iran. You’re probably thinking of Arabia. Anyway, the misbegotten fears of a few Americans who’ve never even left their country aren’t really enough to dissuade me from the wonders of Persepolis, and the idea of a bunch of Imams passing silly fatwas aren’t enough to keep me away from Esfahan.
I think Iran has been demonized by the media, and by the US government, mostly because they took over the US Embassy in Tehran in the early part of the islamic revolution. I really don’t think the government of Iran is much worse than many other regional governments. It’s hypocritical to think it is, when we continue doing business with serial human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I think the US would have come to terms with Iran’s new regime if it weren’t for the embassy incident. The government is indeed undesirable, but that shouldn’t stop you from going to experience the country for yourself. It’s important to distinguish between the government imposed on the people and the Irani people themselves. It’s an amazing country, an amazing culture and an amazing people. They’ve taken really good care of their heritage (including their pre-islamic heritage) and their historical sites can compete with anything Rome or Greece have to offer. The Persians have a lot to be proud of. So, I tried to leave my pre-conceived notions behind, and go experience what Iran has to offer.
Is it safe? After ‘Why Iran?’ I’ve been asked this most frequently. The answer: Yes.
I flew to Bombay, from where the plan was to get an Irani visa and fly to Shiraz on Air Arabia. I wanted to work my way up north and fly back from Tehran. The Irani consulate in Bombay rejected my visa application though. I’m not sure why. The guy at the window looked at it, went and spoke to someone at the back for a few minutes and came back and said they can’t give me a visa. I’m not sure why. I think they weren’t used to backpackers coming through the consulate in Bombay. I was a single male, traveling alone, last minute. I think they might’ve thought I was a spy. He did tell me that they’d give me a visa if I signed up for an organized tour though. I said no, and left.
I decided to go to Iran anyway. Another source at the consulate in Bombay told me I could get a visa on arrival at Tehran airport, but not in Shiraz. So I decided to reverse my plans. Fly into Tehran, fly out of Shiraz. And instead of spending a month there, spend just fifteen days, because that’s how long a visa on arrival is for. It can be extended, but I didn’t want to deal with that. I bought a ticket on Air Arabia, Bombay to Tehran via Sharjah. Air Arabia is great for getting around the Middle East and central Asia; it’s a low cost carrier along the lines of Air Asia. Though the booming voice on the airplane’s speaker’s shouting “Allah-hu-Akbar” before we took off startled me. Apparently it’s something they do before every flight, to ensure a smooth flight. Reassuring.
Day 1: Tehran
While I was waiting in line at the visa on arrival counter in Tehran, I did a double take when I saw a group of hasidic jews going through immigration. Not something you expect to see in Iran. Turns out jews in Iran have historically faced less persecution than in many other places, such as Europe. The Iranis like to represent themselves as anti-Zionist but not anti-jewish.
I had no trouble getting a visa in Tehran at all. Showed up at the window, paid my fifty euros, waited about ten minutes and had my visa. Iran’s visa policy is that anyone who shows up can get a fifteen day tourist visa, renewable at police stations in most major cities. The fifteen day visa is really a seventeen day visa, because the first and last day don’t count. They have a list of about ten countries whose passport holders aren’t eligible for visas on arrival, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. U.S. Citizens can only visit Iran as part of a tour group. They aren’t allowed to travel independently through Iran.
I shared a taxi to my hostel with Maartin, a Dutch guy I met in the visa line. Maarten loved Iran, he’s a perpertual nomad, who’s been traveling for years now. He spent about three months there last year, and was back for more, so he was really informative.
The newish Imam Khomeini International Airport is about 35 kilometers south of Tehran. On the way into Tehran we passed the Behest-e Zahra. It’s the main cemetery for those who died in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. It looked massive as we drove by it, the scale of death represented is said to be moving. Each grave has a little glass box on stilts above it, from which a photograph of the deceased stares out at you, along with some of their possessions, like a watch or a letter they wrote. It’s more than a bunch of gravestones, it really drives home the fact that under each gravestone is a real person, with a real family and real aspirations…cut short in their prime.
Our taxi driver exchanged pleasantries with us in his limited English, and then began a conversation in Farsi, Maartin translating. “Obama kharaab!” the cab driver shouted. I knew I’d have to leave my pre-conceived notions about Iran behind, and be open to hearing unexpected things and unexpected experiences, and here I was, not even in the country for an hour, already having a big chunk of my beliefs blown apart. Like most other people I know, I opposed the Iraq war, think George W. Bush is the most incompetent US President in memory, and think the election of Obama to the presidency A Rather Good Thing. Maartin translated “He doesn’t like Obama.” Somehow, I got that part. He went on “He likes Bush. He was hoping Bush would come into Iran and get rid of the regime, like they did in Iraq. There is no other way they’ll go.” This was a stunner. There actually were people who wanted a US invasion of their country. This cab driver wanted McCain to win because he hoped he would help them get rid of their regime. I suddenly had a mental image of Cheney interviewing the Iraqi counterpart to this cab driver before the Iraq war. Cheney: “Hmmm.”
The cab driver’s was an opinion I saw repeated to varying degrees of intensity during my stay in Iran. Most people I spoke to want the religious zealots in power replaced with something else. I got the feeling that a small but sizable minority of people, usually those of lower incomes, hold views similar to those of my cab driver. I suppose that’s what happens when you give up hope. I could have told the cab driver about the incompetent handling of the war, the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, the bungled reconstruction, the takeover of large swathes of the country by religious militias, but he’d probably have none of it. When you’ve sunk to that level of despair, any change is good change I suppose. Ah well.
The cab driver turned around and showed me the scar in his hand, and on the side of his head. An Iraqi bullet passed through his hand, and cut a groove on the side of his head, during his time as a soldier during the Iran-Iraq war. A fraction of a centimeter to the right and I’d probably have had a different cab driver, and this guy would be buried in the cemetary we just passed, a photograph of him staring out at visitors from a little glass box.
Maartin and I happened to be staying at the same hostel, it’s popular with backpackers. After checking into our respective rooms, we had a lunch of chicken in pomegranate sauce (fesangunj) , and some yogurt (mast). We went for a quick walk through the bazaar, and then took the metro to Taleqani Square. As we exited the metro, we walked by a large interesting looking wall. This was outer wall to the US Den of Espionage (known as the US Embassy under previous management). Now it’s the headquarters of the Sepah Militia. It does have a museum though, which is only open a couple of weeks of the year, in early February. Its exhibits include some interesting and incriminating documents seized by the students when they took over the Embassy. The graffiti on the outer wall was interesting. It included the well-known mural of the statue of liberty with a skull as the face. Taking pictures of the wall is verboten. If you get caught by a member of the militia, you get taken inside the Den of Espionage, yelled at, and get your camera’s memory card erased. So, I had to be careful when taking pictures of the wall. Had to walk by it a couple times to get a decent shot of the statue of liberty mural. Here is a picture:
They also have these blue boxes all over Iran, on every street. They’re alms boxes, charity is one of the pillars of islam, and this makes it easier to give to (state-approved) charities. Word on the street is that a large chunk of the funds put in these boxes makes its way to Hezbollah.
I walked by the UK Embassy as well. There were barricades up outside it, and a few policemen standing around. Apparently they’ve been permanent fixtures since the protests outside the embassy in January 2009. Someone I was talking to said they watched the protests, they were fairly short. The crowd dispersed as soon as the TV cameras left, and most of them were paid to be there.
Day 2: Tehran
After breakfast, where I first discovered the wonder-spread that is carrot jam (seriously, this stuff is good), I went to the Golestan Palace complex. Built by the Qajar dynasty of Shahs, it’s now a series of six different museums. Each of which you have to buy a separate ticket for. It’s an interesting place, but somewhat dilapidated. The gardens looked like they had potential when properly maintained, though they were dug up at the time of my visit, probably in preparation for the spring planting. The part I enjoyed most was the art museum with portraits of the Shahs, as well as portraits of European royalty and nobility, gifted to the Shahs by their European counterparts.
After the Palace complex, I walked towards the National Jewel Museum, about a forty minute walk away. The jewel museum is open only two hours a day, from two to four in the afternoon, which gave me a couple of hours to kill before opening time. The museum is in the basement of the head branch of Bank Melli, the largest government owned bank in Iran. When I showed up at the side gate to the building, which leads to the basement, there was already a small crowd of about twenty people gathered there. They let us in, and once I deposited my backpack, mobile phone, camera and anything else I might be able to use for the jewel heist of the century at the little security window, I purchased my ticket. After passing through two metal detectors, a wanding and a patdown, I proceeded down the stairs, past the souvenir shop and to the Museum section. The Museum isn’t much more than a very large vault, occupying an area of maybe about two thousand square feet. Outside the vault door was a replica of the Peacock Throne, looted from India’s Mughal Dynasty during the reign of Nader Shah. The original Peacock Throne was hacked up by Nader Shah’s soldiers, who spread the wealth among themselves. When I think ‘throne’, I think of a large ornate chair. The Peacock Throne is not a chair. A better description might be ‘The Peacock platform on which several people could comfortably sleep’. It looked very nice. If I were a foreign ambassador newly arrived in Delhi, I would be suitably impressed if the Emperor were occupying this throne during my audience with him.
The Jewel Museum itself was spectacular. The highlight of my visit to Tehran. While the presentation itself isn’t great, large piles of jewels don’t need a lot of supplementary presentation. There were plenty of crowns, scepters, dishes of jewels, swords and other interesting gemological curiosities. My favorite part of the collection was a large globe of the earth, made entirely out of solid gold, about thirty kilos of it. On the globe, the oceans were made of emeralds, the land was rubies, and Persia was marked out by diamonds. About two kilos of gems were used. I stood there staring at the thing for almost fifteen minutes, and went back for a second look as well.
Once I was done with the Jewel Museum, I took a taxi to North Tehran. Back in the day, south Tehran was Tehran. The shah’s palaces, embassies, museums, government buildings, and anything of any importance was there. Over the last thirty years, the rich began moving north, building new houses and neighbourhoods in what used to be the wilderness. Today, south Tehran is what the Americans would call the wrong side of the tracks. It’s the poorer part of town, with a higher crime rate and inferior public services. You really can tell the difference when you get to North Tehran. I spent some time walking down Gandi Avenue, which is named after the Indian freedom fighter. Ironic, because Gandi Avenue is where the expensive, designer stores that Gandhi would never shop in, are.
I ended up at the Gandi Center, which is a little mall filled with upscale cafes where Tehran’s more affluent kids and college students hang out. At one of these cafes, I met Daniel, a fellow backpacker from the UK, and his friend Mariam, a Tehrani college student (names changed). Daniel was on the last day of his Iran visit, flying out the next day. He’s a construction consultant, his job essentially involves him climbing tall buildings, on the outside. I guess to examine structural supports? It’s a job that grew out of his passion for mountain climbing.
After coffee and cake, we went to a local bookstore, and spent some time browsing through the books on offer. I bought a copy of Rumi’s poems, I’d been wanting to read his work for some time, and there is no better place than his homeland I suppose. After the bookstore, we went to a coffee shop for snacks and Qalyoon (known as hookah or shishah in the rest of the world).
Mariam was telling us about her plans to go to graduate school in Canada. She’s applied to a few Canadian universities, and expects to arrive in Canada this fall. For her, it’s more than just going to school in a foreign country for the experience. It’s an escape from a restrictive regime, under which she’s chafing. She’s not very religious, enjoys the music of Pink Floyd, and would prefer not to wear the hijab, as she’s forced to do by her government.
After seeing Mariam off, Daniel and I went to a slightly upscale Irani restaurant for dinner. I had dizi, which is a poor man’s meal in Iran, but delicious. Dizi is lamb stew, and comes with its own unique set of implements and method of eating. The stew comes in a clay pot with a bit of fat floating at the top. Accessories include a pestle, an empty bowl, and some bread. You spoon the fat into the bowl and grind it with the pestle for a while till sufficiently malleable. Then you pour the liquidy part of the stew into the bowl, tear up some bread and add that to the mix, and enjoy. Once you’re done with that, you pound the meat in the clay bowl with the pestle till it’s almost a pastelike consistency. It was delicious.
We walked back to our hostel, where coincidentally, we were both staying. I couldn’t help but think to myself… damn I’m wandering the streets of *Tehran* in the middle of the night…. it felt surreal.
Continued here: Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Two
Also in this series:
Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Two
Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Three
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by Harris
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