Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Three

November 2, 2009 at 10:40 pm · Filed under Iran, Travel, Trip Reports

Continued from Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Two

Day 4: Kashan – Esfahan

On the bus ride from Esfahan to Kashan, I made a point of not taking any pictures. The road passes close to Natanz, which is where Iran’s uranium enrichment plant is. I heard stories of a couple of French travelers that had their cameras confiscated for taking pictures in the area, so I didn’t want to take that risk.

After checking into one of Esfahan’s more popular backpacker hostels, I deposited my passport and most of my money in the hostel safe. Because of the large number of visitors, Esfahan has a large number (for Iran) of pickpockets, so I decided to play it safe. Then I set off for Atashkadeh. Atashkadeh is a small hill outside Esfahan, on which there are the ruins of an ancient Zoroastrian fire temple. I caught a local bus, and had to get used to the peculiar way in which bus services run in Esfahan. Every bus stop has a little hut with an old man sitting in it, who will sell you tickets and give you change. You wait for your bus, get on, and when you get off, you put the ticket in a rusty old can, next to the gear levers, in the front of the bus. The buses were segregated though. There were two doors, one in the front and one in the middle. Women use the middle door, and sit in the back half of the bus. There are bars on the inside of the bus, physically separating the two sections. When women get off the bus, they have to walk to the front door and put their tickets into the can.

I asked the bus driver to tell me when the stop for Atashkadeh was. About twenty minutes later he pulled over on the side of the highway, between stops, point up at the mountain looming over us, and say “Atashkadeh”. That was good of him, it saved me a fifteen minute walk. I scrambled up the side of the mountain, and looked around the ruins. The ruins themselves were nothing special, the view however was great. There’s something special about the sky in Iran. I don’t know what it is… it’s as if a child painted it with water colours. Looks great.

When I go hiking or climbing, when I get to the summit or the point in the hike where I sit and look at the view, I usually reward myself with some chocolate. To this end, I had a bar of very familiar looking Irani chocolate. It was pretty good.

On the bus ride back, I had an interesting conversation with one of the local Esfahanis. I blogged about that in my post titled “A Pilgrimage to Iraq”.

I was kind of hungry when I got back, and I found a place selling… samosas! These were especially welcome. Not because I particularly wanted indian food, but because after nearly four days of Irani food, I needed something spicy. Irani food, while good, can be a little… bland. My experience with Irani food is that it’s generally either on the bland side, or sweet. Iranis consume sweet stuff like nobody’s business. Iran is a nation of diabetics waiting to happen. If someone were to set up insulin production facilities and other necessities for diabetics in Iran, they’d make a lot of money. Iranis consume ridiculous amounts of sugar, candies, pastries, even bread, all with excess sugar, all in large quantities. The worst offender is tea. More on that later.

There’s a popular half-rhyme from the 16th century that goes “Esfahan nesf-e jahan” or “Esfahan is half the world”. As I made my way to Naqsh-e Jahan Square I could see why people would be writing poetry praising this city. Officially known as Imam Square, it contains what are probably the most amazing, awesome and majestic set of buildings in the islamic world. Naqsh-e Jahan means “Pattern of the world”, and is ringed with some fine mosques and a marketplace. More details about the Square to follow in Part Four of this trip report.

When I got to the Square it was evening, the lights were on and it looked spectacular. I can’t think of enough words to describe the magnificence and scale of the area. It is the second largest square in the world, second only to Tiananmen. Though for sheer attractiveness, it beats the more severe Tiananmen hands down.

One of the better known secrets of Esfahan is the tea shop on the bazaar roof, at one end of the Square. It’s a great place to sit, drink tea, smoke qalyun (hookah) and watch the square.

A brief digression on tea: I grew up hating tea. I used to have a pathological loathing for it, tea was my kryptonite. Drinking it made me throw up, and just the prospect of it being served to me gave me cold shivers. I decided to get over it. In Iran, I drank it almost every day, and while I didn’t really enjoy it, I managed to endure it, and get over some of the issues I had with it.

Iranis have a unique method of drinking tea. The tea is usually served in a pot, without milk. A bowl of lumps of rock sugar or sugar cubes accompanies it. You hold a lump of sugar between your front teeth and filter the tea through it as you drink it, and the sugar dissolves away with the tea. It’s common to use five or six lumps of sugar per cup of tea.

There are many interesting stories about why Iranis drink tea the way they do. Most of them sound like complete fabrications, but like most tall tales, they’re entertaining, with perhaps a grain of truth. My favorite one is the one of the British Merchants and the Imams. It goes like this: Back in the 1800s, most of Persia’s sugar was supplied by British Merchants, under charter from the Shah. Persia’s imams felt they weren’t getting their due from the sugar trade. Their requests to the British were rejected. So, they issued a fatwa against using sugar in tea. Mixing sugar with tea was now haram. Overnight, the demand for sugar dropped to nothing. The British merchants capitulated and came to some kind of arrangement with the imams. However, the imams couldn’t just rescind their original fatwa, it would look like they were being opportunistic. If sugar was haram yesterday, how come it is halal now? So, they issued a new fatwa that said it’s still not alright to mix sugar with tea. However, if you put the sugar in your mouth and drink the tea through it, it is completely acceptable. Sugar sales went back up, the imams made out like bandits, and the Iranis got screwed over by their clergy, yet again. A precursor of things to come perhaps? It’s a funny story.

To be continued…

Also in this series:
Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part One
Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Two

Comments (1)

Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Two

September 5, 2009 at 3:20 am · Filed under Iran, Travel, Trip Reports

Continued from Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part One

Day 3: Tehran to Kashan

After breakfasting at the hostel (more carrot jam!) on what can only be described as a deep fried egg and nun bread, I walked around for a while and changed money before taking the metro to the bus depot.

On my way to the bus depot, I saw several women on the metro with plasters on their noses. Iran is the nose job capital of the world. The cheapest nose jobs run for about US$1000, and the best surgeons cost about US$4000. Despite the average annual wage being far less than that, Tehran alone has about 3000 plastic surgeons. About 90,000 noses are redone in Iran every year. And if you get tired of your redone nose, it’s not uncommon to get multiple nose jobs. And it’s not just women. Men do it too. Unlike the west, where people who get plastic surgery often lie about it, or get it done while on holiday, Iranis are proud of their nose jobs. It’s a status symbol. Enough so that many people have taken to wearing the plaster on their noses, just so they can look like they’ve had a nose job.

I got to the massive Tehran bus terminal, from where I took a bus to Kashan. Language is an issue in Iran. Nowhere more so than at the bus depot. There are several private bus companies, each with their own ticket counter. I went to a random one and bought a ticket to Kashan, for a bus leaving in five minutes. I got lucky. If I had gone to another counter and they had a bus leaving in three hours, I would’ve bought it and waited. Comparison shopping is hard to do when you don’t speak the language. So, I had my ticket, but had no idea which bus to take. I wandered around for a few minutes, trying buses at random. “Kashan?” “Kashan?” “Kashan?”. After I found my bus I got on, and we were off. The ride to Kashan wasn’t very long, about three hours. On the way we stopped in Qom for a few minutes and I got off and took a quick look around. Qom is one of the holiest cities in Shiite islam, and is home to most of the hard-line clerics that run the country. It is very conservative. Not much to see here.

After making it to Kashan, I walked the few kilometers from the bus depot to the town center. The first order of business was to find a place to stay. I ended up splurging on the Khan-e-Ehsan. My travel budget is about US$30 per day, and in Iran I typically spent US$10 per day or less on a room or a bed. The Khan is a fairly new place; its dorms weren’t ready yet. It cost me $40 to stay here, and was worth every penny. When I say new place, I mean that the Khan-e-Ehsan is an amazingly well restored two hundred year old house that recently opened as a hotel. It’s built around a large courtyard, has several well appointed rooms, and a small stage upon which there are weekly performances by local artists. The owner ploughs the profits from running the place into his NGO, which supports the arts, especially among Irani girls and women. The night I stayed there a group of school girls came in for music lessons. The day I was leaving there was going to be a poetry recital. Iran isn’t the most woman friendly place, I’m glad to support women’s rights and women’s organizations in Iran in any way I can, and staying in the Khan-e-Ehsan when in Kashan is a good way of going exactly that. It’s also supposed to be a great place to meet young educated Iranis in Kashan. After leaving my stuff in my room, washing my clothes and leaving them to dry, I went for a walk.

Kashan is a fairly small town. Its’ claim to fame is that it is the place from which the christian bible’s three wise men set out to pay their respects to the newborn christ. If those events actually happened, this does fit in with the place, given that the three wise men were magi (Zoroastrian priests). The people in the area were mostly Zoroastrian at the time.

It was afternoon, and getting kind of hot, but it wasn’t too bad. I walked to the old city walls, and then checked out a couple of traditional houses. Kashan has several traditional houses built in the 19th century, which have undergone restoration over the past few years. I spent some time at the Khan-e-Ameriha, one of the more impressive houses. It has seven courtyards, and is spread over 9000 square meters. It was really impressive, and in its prime, probably housed hundreds of people, once you include servants.

I saw many traditional doors while wandering around as well. These typically have two knockers, one round and fat, the other long and thin. One is for women and one for men. They give off different sounds so that the inhabitants of the house know whether a man or woman is at the door, and can decide who should answer the door. This was important in a society with purdah.

After the houses, I made my way to Kashan’s Bazaar. This place was huge; however, all the shops were closed for the afternoon siesta. Nobody was around. I took advantage of the solitude to climb onto the roof of the bazaar, and walk around. The roof is paved with mud, you can actually look into the shops through the ventilation holes. The mud keeps the entire structure cool.

Kashan is really laid back compared to Tehran. I just sort of walked around and soaked it in, checked email at a nearby cafe. The shops began to open, so I had some unidentified black juice from a blender at a small grocery shop. It was really bitter, but good. I bought one of the locally bottled colas to try out as well. Because of the sanctions, Iran doesn’t have Coke or Pepsi, or anything made by them. They have some very good local soft drinks though. I think Zam-Zam is my new favorite cola. More on that when I talk about Esfahan. Some of you may be familiar with the name of this cola:

I ended up sitting in the courtyard that evening, watching the stars come out, reading my book of Rumi’s poetryand drinking pineapple flavoured non-alcoholic beer. The non-alcoholic beers in Iran are actually pretty good. They’ve given up any pretense of making it taste like beer, you just have to think of it as a refreshing soft drink. It was a really peaceful evening. After dinner with a fellow traveler, went off to bed. It was really cold that night, I needed extra blankets, and turned the heat up all the way.

The next morning after breakfast, went to the Fin Garden with a fellow traveler. Came back to the hotel, checked out, went to the bus station and caught a bus to Esfahan.

Continued in Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Three

Also in this series:
Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part One
Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part Three

Comments (5)

Iran 2009 Trip Report - Part One

August 28, 2009 at 5:44 pm · Filed under Iran, Travel, Trip Reports

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.” “Liberators you say? Welcomed with flowers? Dancing in the streets? Interesting….”

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

Comments (9)

A Pilgrimage to Iraq

August 8, 2009 at 7:14 am · Filed under Interesting People I've Met, Travel, Trip Reports

In March 2009, I was on a local bus in Esfahan, Iran, when I started talking to a random guy sitting next to me. I will not publish his name here. Turns out he was an engineer, working on Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicle program at a nearby aerospace firm. He seemed like a smart guy, he spoke English reasonably well and his knowledge of world affairs was pretty good. One of the things we talked about was Islam. Turns out he was a devout Shiite. It always surprises me when I meet religious scientists. It also surprised me that he was willing to admit what he worked on to me.

He told me about a recent pilgrimage he made, to Najaf and Karbala, in Iraq. Iranis weren’t allowed to make pilgrimages to Iraq for almost a generation, first because of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and then because Saddam Hussein sealed the Iran border post-war. The Iraq - American war in 1991 and the post-war sanctions were also a factor. The border opened up only after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The land border is now open, and apparently buses full of pilgrims make the journey, in stifling heat. My bus-mate flew to Baghdad, on a chartered flight full of pilgrims. He mentioned the corkscrew landing they had to make at Baghdad to avoid potential grenade and missile attacks, it scared him. Once they landed, he noticed security everywhere. Except they weren’t American. And they weren’t Iraqi. They were dressed in military fatigues. He believes they were Ugandan army or mercenaries. The word on the street is that the United States is paying the Ugandans to handle security at Baghdad airport. The Iraqis can’t be trusted and American lives are too valuable. So Ugandan mercenaries handle it.

Wikipedia says: “Currently Sabre International Security provides the ground and aviation security at the BIAP. The personnel consists of ex-pat nationals in key and supervisor roles and local nationals and a mixed Gurkha and Ugandan guard force.” (BIAP = Baghdad International Airport)

The immigration counters are all staffed by Thais. The Iraqis can’t be trusted to handle their own immigration processes. Most of the manual labour at the airport was being done by Filipinos. In fact, the only Iraqis he saw working at the airport were the people cleaning the toilets.

From Baghdad airport, his group of pilgrims took chartered buses, part of their package, to their pilgrimage sites, to the south. On the way, they had to pull over a couple of times to let convoys of oil tanker trucks pass. The convoys were protected by US forces. At least one US military vehicle every few trucks. There were about 80 trucks to each convoy. He counted. I wonder where the oil was going. My guess is probably to Kuwait, for export through its ports. I hope Iraq is being paid adequately for the oil being removed from it.

I have to wonder: If the Americans can’t trust the Iraqis to handle their own airport security, how much power are they really giving them? There have been many recent reports of the Iraqi army taking over security for large parts of Iraq. However, I believe theres more to it than that, this man’s story doesn’t necessarily support some of the good news out of Iraq. I guess time will tell. I hope the Iraqis don’t get screwed over any more than they already have. They’ve suffered a lot, the loss of life has been of almost genocidal proportions.

_______________________
Note that this story is based on one man’s retelling of his visit to Iraq. I don’t know if he had an agenda of his own. He didn’t seem to. He might have embellished the story. I don’t think its a complete fabrication. I would take the whole thing with a pinch of salt. My goal here is to reproduce the story as faithfully as I could, and provide my readers with the same level of information and detail as they would’ve gotten from talking to the man himself. I have done only cursory fact checking.

Comments (3)

My Visit to the Pepsi Bottling Plant, Battambang, Cambodia

May 28, 2009 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Cambodia, Interesting People I've Met, My Favorite Posts, Travel, Trip Reports

I was taking a walk this evening, around Battambang, Cambodia, when I passed a derelict building that looked like a Pepsi bottling plant. The logo gave it away.

Derelict Pepsi bottling plant, Battambang, Cambodia

An old man who was cutting the grass let me in and let me look around.

The plant was almost exactly as it was when it abruptly ceased operations in 1975. There are even bottles on the bottling line.

Empties waiting to be filled.

The caretaker said he was working there since 1959. I googled the Pepsi plant, most sources claim its a 1960s era plant, but either way, he’d been working there a long time. When the Khmer Rouge took over, the plant abruptly ceased operations and the former employees were sent to work in the fields. The caretaker survived the Khmer Rouge years. His family didn’t. After the Khmer Rouge years, he returned to the Pepsi plant, the only place he had to go to, and now lives in the back, where he tends a vegetable patch to feed himself. He takes care of the lawn and trims the hedges, and maintains a semblance of order around the place. I don’t think he gets paid to do so.

When he is gone, this place will be overgrown by trees and plants and crumble away.

Comments (4)