tours - iranian style 2

…Continued from before

Today I woke up to three emails from three of my best
friends in the whole wide world.  I am the happiest
person alive right now.  I am extremely lucky to have
the friends that I have.  It doesn’t matter where I go
and what I do, they are always there for me and know
just what to say to me so that I’m cracking up and
smiling all day long.  If you are reading this, I love
you so much! I can’t even express it.  You girls make
my life…

Anyway, one of my best friends is going to Israel
towards the end of my trip so I might be going there
before I go to Amsterdam.  I wonder how many people in
the world have gone to both Israel and Iran.  That
would be the most amazing thing ever.  After meeting
so many Israelis in South America and hearing such
great things about their country, finally getting to
go there and see what they were all talking about the
whole time would be spectacular.  Plus, I’m a big fan
of Israeli men.  I could just use my US passport, as I
came to Iran with my Iranian passport.  I love dual
citizenship.  I don’t even have to pay for a visa to
Turkey because I can just use my Iranian passport!

But back to the story…the resilience of Iranians.
They really do know how to have quite the bash when
not under the watchful eye of their government.  As we
sped down the freeway in a blur of dancing and singing
whilst merrily passing fruits and flat breads from
seat to seat, I marveled at how lively and fun-loving
these people were.  Iranians are most hospitable and
courteous, outdone only by those in South America.
The only reason I feel that I can make this
distinction is because social interaction here is
rather systematic, as opposed to South America where
it is indisputably heartfelt.  Iranians have a sort of
formalized courtesy system which they call Ta’ arof.
It succeeds plain old-fashioned courtesy in the sense
that there are rules regulating it which everyone here
seems to have grown up knowing.  It’s a double edged
sword, in my opinion.  It strips social interaction of
its genuineness which, I think, in turn can breed a
general fakeness towards other facets of life,
especially social ones.  In addition, if you are as
novice to the system as I am, then you might end up
feeling like more of a sore thumb than you would have
already.  Here’s an example: upon being invited to
anyone’s house for any reason, it is tradition that
you bring at least flowers, however cakes are always
better.  That person must then insist that you stay
for tea at the very least, if not invite you to stay
for dinner, given the appropriate time of day.  You
must stay for tea, but refuse the dinner offer the
first two times in the case that the person doesn’t
actually have enough food to feed you.  This allows
them to back out of the invitation without shame or
embarrassment, but if they persist a third time, you
may accept.  You must then have them over for dinner
in return and repeat the process.  Also, every time
you reach a doorway, you have to practically argue
with whoever you are walking with to let them pass
first, and same thing with paying a bill – evidently,
there is no sharing the bill here.  When you are
offering tea or cakes to people in your house, you
always offer it to the eldest first, and then to the
next eldest and so on, no matter where they are
sitting.  The rules are endless, and as I’m utterly
unaware of social niceties as it is, I find the system
to be more of a burden than something I can fully
appreciate.  You don’t know if someone truly wants to
see you, or if they are simply in your home because
it’s polite to visit; and likewise, you never know if
someone really wants you to stay in their home, or if
they are just telling you to because they have to.  

As for the bus ride, however, I was quite thrilled
when the passengers began to unfurl various treats
which they had brought for the trip and pass them
around throughout the mobile party.  Upon arriving at
the hotel, I was elated to find that somehow, I had
been assigned a huge room with three beds all to
myself.  I immediately dropped my bags, quickly
grabbed the ashtray on the table, my book, and my
cigarettes, and proceeded to park my ass on the toilet
with the door wide open smoking, reading, and
listening to my ipod while taking an extremely
satisfying shit.  I’ve discovered that I have quite an
affinity for doing things while I sit on the toilet.
I like to eat, read, smoke, do my makeup, etc.  It
makes me strangely giddy.

After my toilet extravaganza, we explored the area
surrounding Kashan, one place being Abyaneh, the
oldest living village I’ve ever seen.  The streets
were constructed from these small gray stone bricks
which were polished in a way that they were even
slippery to walk on.  On either side of these
sparkling pathways, emerged these tall yet humble red
clay edifices which loomed over you but were
familiarly comforting all the same.  The window work
framing these dated structures was spectacularly and
intricately crafted out of tiny pieces of woodchips,
wedged together by hand to make complex geometrical
shapes through which the sun could filter into and
reflect on the red adobe walls.  The village seemed to
blend into the mountain as if it had risen up from the
sea that way.  And similarly, the people who still
lived in the village seemed timeless, as if they had
been there for the beginning of earth.  Firstly, they
were all old, or their browned and wrinkled faces
belied them.  The men sported ginormous cotton black
trousers, which could appear as a long skirt if they
stood with their legs together; and this was strangely
without exception as they all wore the exact same
pants.  Likewise, the women all donned colorful
flower-printed sheets which they wrapped around their
heads and upper bodies.  To complete the look, they
wore long black cotton skirts to match the trousers of
the men.  It was the cutest.  They, like the rest of
Iran, were not too fond of pictures however, and some
actually yelled at me for trying to photograph a door
which they were sitting near.  I’m at a loss as to
what exactly Islam’s issue with pictures is, but I’ve
seriously got nothing to work with here.  I can barely
go out as it is, and when I do go out, I apparently
can’t even take a picture to remember my experience by
as I sit at home crocheting a doily or something while
I’m barred from the outside world.  Throw me a fucking
bone, dude.

On the trip I met a guy my age from England.  He’s
originally Iranian, but has been in London for the
past ten years and is visiting with his dad for a
month.  We swapped stories and realized that we share
a strong difficulty in adjusting to the way of life
here (though I must say, he has quite the leg up on
me).  I think his exact words were, “the culture just
doesn’t agree with me.”  Well said, old chap!  I
agreed with his notion that Iran is rather backwards
socially and deathly boring for the typical American
or European twenty-four year old, and he almost shat
his pants when I told him how long I was staying.  He,
going crazy with boredom after one week, hadn’t the
faintest how he was going to survive three more.
Interestingly, there were three Pilipino guys on our
tour, as well, who shared our uneasy and boring
perspective of Iran (the rest of the crowd consisted
of entirely Iranians).  As we were chatting and
laughing about how if someone killed me here, the
government would actually calculate the price of five
camels in Iranian currency and have the murderer pay
that amount to my family – five camels for girls, ten
for boys, the tour guide approached our circle and
chastised the boys for fraternizing with me.  We
parted ways dolefully but with better wits about us.
My conversation with my fellow tourists basically
cemented two things for me: a) contrary to the opinion
I had begun to formulate of myself, I am actually not
the totally narrow-minded American snob I may seem to
be, as there are people from other countries who are
equally as over it here as I am, and have been here
for less time than me, and are men; and b) with this
new found return of normalcy to my psyche, I am now
sorely aware of that fact that I must learn Farsi as
quickly as humanly possible and get the fuck out of
here asap before I begin to doubt myself again.

The next day of the tour was spent primarily at this
castle where another tour group was toiling along in
the heat with us.  Suddenly, I spotted one of the guys
from the other tour staring at me.  He looked
strangely familiar.  A gust of fury shot through me
when I came to realize that this shithead was one of
the six predators who had followed me for forty-five
minutes all the way to my door in Tehran the day that
I went to the embassy!  I wished that I could spit
because I would have hawked a lugie the size of a golf
ball at his pathetic staring face right then and
there.  He obviously recognized me as well but didn’t
dare to harass me this time as I was with a tour and
the tour guide would have had his ass.  I eyed him
evilly as he proceeded to part with his group and
follow me through the castle preying on me with his
vulgar stares.  I couldn’t say anything to him because
a) I don’t know how to and b) I would have gotten
yelled at by the tour guide if I tried.  I just had to
sit there and try to ignore him, as difficult as it
was, because wherever I went, he followed me and would
gawk at me uninterruptedly.  He didn’t even pretend to
glance at anything else.  He clearly wanted me to
break down under his gaze.  I wanted to cry with anger
and frustration.

That day, my return to Tehran was met with the news
that starting tomorrow, the government was “really
going to crackdown on everyone” – a.k.a. arrest women
with too tight a jacket or too much of their hair
showing or too much makeup on, etc. because most
schools are ending now and for some reason, they think
that women are going to “act up” or something.  I
could have stabbed myself in the eye after I heard
that.  It enrages me to think that these “crackdowns”
(a product of the government’s paranoia and
schizophrenia) are reserved solely for women when it
is all too clear that the entirety of their efforts
should be directed towards containing or at least
treating the bigoted men here.  Furthermore, they
ought to be easing up on these rules, not cracking
down on them, unless their ultimate goal is to
propagate a country of rabid dogs and moving piles of
laundry to replace men and women.  My blood absolutely
boils whenever I think about it.

To be continued again…