Iran 2017 Part 1 - Arrival

Late last year I ended up in Iran.  

I was working in scooter caffe in Waterloo, serving drinks and cocktails and cakes. One evening a very attractive young lady approached the counter. Somehow conversation blossomed; she had been studying in the Middle East, in Jordan, and I mentioned my own trip, many years before - Syria, Jordan, all that.

Oh how quick we are to boast to beautiful women. 

The impression was formed that I was something of a traveller so naturally she asked where I was going to go next and, having nowhere in mind, I said Iran. 

Then her inevitable boyfriend came along, he said "I hear you're going to Iran" and I could only agree, it seemed that I was going to Iran. 

But all that is so much facetiousness. Nauseous facetiousness. 

Why did I choose Iran? It felt like it could change, it was different, it was unknown to me, travel was currently possible but that could change. It had already been bubbling in a vaguer part of my mind. The pretty girl and her inevitable boyfriend were simply a catalyst. 

Be careful Jerry. 

Now I'm not one to worry. Except always. But generally not about the physical unknown. I will however admit that this time I did; the accrual of everyone's kindly warnings led me to expect danger. That care would be needed. It wasn't, in the end, but for once I allowed myself to think it would be.

And so, as I did before, I will attempt to give an account of the trip, I'm really rubbish at telling stories about this particular trip as I can't seem to define the shape of the thing, and it would be nice to know how to look at it now that it's done. So this is for me. And maybe some of you will like it too. 

Onwards. 

Gatwick 

I had only booked the flights about a month prior. I had not really thought about it much since then. I sat in Gatwick, in the sealed environment of an international November the 1st, and expected something to go wrong. I did not feel like I was going. 

This occasionally happens. Usually airports obliterate the sensation, the sound of mumbling over tannoys, the sight of hassled people in shorts and sandals drives into ones intellect the excitement and the reality of the silliness of travel, but not this time. It was almost like I was looking for an excuse to baulk. 

My agency rang, they had put me forward for some telly. I sat in Costa and in agitation pondered. I will get the audition. I will have to race back from Istanbul. I should be ready to run. After all, had it not happened before? The time I covered the distance between Meteora and the seven dials in 19 hours. Maybe this is the only way I can get tv work, by being in the wrong place at the right time. 

I wouldn't be going to Iran. 

I searched the web and mentally fiddled with contingencies for the inevitable race back to London.

I wouldn't be going to Iran. 

The Istanbul flight was delayed. 2 hours. Most of this time was spent on the plane, the staff gave us complimentary plastic glasses of water to lower our hackles, an English woman behind me complained continuously with a voice that felt like being hit with a shoe. The seats were as hard as permafrost. I planned how I would escape the plane - pull the lever in the emergency escape door, drop down to the wing, roll off, sprint back down the runway. 

I've always fantasised about emergency escape doors. To be the little man in the instructional comic.

I was tense. 

My agent failed to ring. 

I scribbled in my diary "Was I legitimately afraid? What is going on with me then?" 

I had been stopped by a policeman as I was about to board, I was wearing my ridiculous hat. My hat is a tradition, whether I wear it or not on a trip like this is dictated by two things: the last 15 seconds before I leave the house and the last 15 years. 

 "Should I take it? I always take it." My hand hovers about the crown. " Yeah. I'll take it. I couldn't go travelling without it." Moments later, doors from my home, regret sets in as I realise I look stupidly conspicuous. LOOK AT ME! I shout in foreign lands, I'M A TOURIST! When all I want to do Is inconspicuously observe I wear a hat that insures I will BE conspicuously observed. 

So naturally a police man stopped me. 

"Where are you Going?" 
"Iran" 
" What? Why would you go to Iran?"
" Curiosity mainly" 
" Well, that's a new one on me, have you looked up the travel warnings?" 
"Yep, don't go near Afghanistan don't go near Iraq. Try to blend in" 

I quickly removed my hat. 

"Alright, mate, well, I'll be here when you get back, tell me how it went" 
"Alright." 
"Be careful" 

I never saw him again. 

Istanbul was dour. The sweep of corrugated roof hanging over the duty free. The city was too far away to pop into so all I had was McDonald's and Starbucks. Both Turkish. 

In McDonald's the men wore yellow baseball caps and jeans emblazoned with Golden Arches. I had a kofte burger - not as exciting as it sounds. Sat in Starbucks. Watched the airport people wander the airport. In the bar across the way some sort of sport was being broadcast. I stayed clear. 

Eventually it was time to wander to the gate, the corridor gleamed in marble, polished brown gold. Nobody looked Iranian. No head scarfs. No chadors. In my travel weariness I wandered back out to the display board twice to confirm that this was indeed the gate for Tehran. It was . Both times.

A group chatted animatedly in English off to my left. Lanky lads in shiny clothes. Whatever was wrong with me I didn't have the confidence to sidle over and join in. I watched in my stupid hat. Tense in the dark gold brown modernity of it. 

Air hostesses with steely black uniforms, over sized golden buttons. 

I snoozed through the flight and on landing came round to see the females surrounding had magically acquired the head scarfs I had strained to notice in Turkey, little else of note pierced the sleepy marinade as I grumbled from the craft to the terminal by bus through enveloping dark. 

I had read far too many horror stories regarding visas, the worst of which suggested that without one I wouldn't even be allowed onto the plane let alone into Iran. Even so, I had forgone getting a visa. I had cycled down to the Iranian consulate in ochre Kensington and collected a form, but before I could even think of doing the many things it requested of me I found that standing next to me was an Iranian I knew, there to renew her passport; kindly she broached my situation in Farsi to the harried men behind glass. My current plan was recommended to me. To wing it. To turn up in Tehran and hope that an Irish passport would be enough. 

Set into the wall of a wide yellowed corridor were the windows of little offices, at the last a capable looking man paced with alacrity. He exuded care free confidence; he was the sort of man you might find propping up a government from a basement office. Or teaching geography in a cape. He seized on me with his eyes and set me off on a circuit of slick mustachioed men who exist here, in the yellowed hospital gloom, to stamp forms and scrutinise nationalities, I paid the last, a neat fellow at the end, and joined the other tired arrivées in front of the windowed row, anxiously awaiting. 

20 minutes we stood worrying in our sudden camaraderie. Beyond the glass, men with comically large spectacles and slick hair tapped at antiquated computers - boxy and yellow.  I assumed that they were browsing through our digital lives.  Reading this blog.  Watching my showreel. Checking me out on tinder.  They paused occasionally and subjected us to withering judging stares, perfected after many years of tapping away in this yellowed hive.  We Europeans quivered and fretted. Muttering worries in our sudden camaraderie.

But of course, they let me in. 

Outside, I was alone again, the grumbling camaraderie proving reassuringly flash pan. I was beyond the yellowed corridors now and here was all tile and glass and light, a show home airport. I had some time to wait for my pre booked taxi so I bundled over to a black marble currency exchange and changed €200 , this came to 6,906,842 rials. Slightly boggled by the wad of cash I was proffered I set off in search of water, some confusion over which I failed to understand in any way, and, while I wandered away, trying and failing to decipher the receipt, I noticed a pair of shiny black shoes beyond the paper, blocking my way, I looked up, the man from the exchange booth was standing in front of me . His Hands were behind his back. 

This was to be my first experience of the legendary Iranian hospitality. It transpired that I had given him €50 too much, and so he had found me in order to give me back my money. Awkward conversation was struck, it seemed almost flirtatious. He asked if he could give me his email address, and wrote it down on a piece of paper I gave him, along with his name, it was Dariush, as in Darius the Great, as he wrote in the space between us our heads bowed together and I found I was looking down at the backs of his hands. Thick wiry black hair grew along the backs of his fingers right down to his knuckles,  thick and busy, like eyebrows. I was startled by the intimacy of his hairy knuckles. 

He asked if I was travelling alone, spooked, I lied," Friends at a hostel in Tehran - waiting for me", his reply was enigmatic "Friends are good, so is knowledge. I am looking forward to your email" then he turned and walked back to his black marble booth, hands clamped once more, at the small of his back. 

I found a metal chair to wait in, it was studded with holes and built for someone twice my size, I tried to write, but was quickly interrupted. A Taxi driver, 60 ish white hair, strong face - did I need a taxi? No. He shrugged and sat by me in my super sized row.

40 minutes of chat followed easily: Iran, London, archaeology, acting, Ireland, a large cave somewhere to the north that I would seek out, my journal (it was propped open in my lap). I chatted away without the trepidation I had instinctively felt towards hairy knuckled Darius and it passed the time until 6 and my pre booked driver. Goodbye and thanks and carry on.

Outside was a different world to the sharp glass of the airport. The air a cloak, a black sand blasted veil hanging between me and the pre dawn sky. Concrete pylons, streaked with burn arched over as I followed my cabbie, fat and wheezing, outside to his little square of a car. He squeezed in beside me. It stank of dry old insulation and gasoline, the paneling shook as it retched to life. 

The immediate motorway was wide and unmarked. We ambled along it, A billboard, one of many along the unmarked tarmac, caught my eye "6th BRAIN MAPPING CONFERENCE" it read, we suddenly turned, a u turn to double back and pass the airport again as we did my rotund friend turned his large head towards me and declared "MISTAH JER-A-MEE-AH OH CONNAH" each vowel sounded out with a ludicrous smile "yes" I replied "and you?" "Naavid" "David?" "Naavid Assad" "David-Assad?" "No. Naavid" "Naavid" "yes" 

Though this was our sole true conversation occasional announcements followed: an hour later, approaching Tehran: "Mistah" ( ludicrous smile) I looked over, a perfect yellow apple sat in his outstretched hand, tiny, lost in the huge enfolding of it. "apple" he said. I ate it in two bites. It was a good apple. Tangy. Later: "Mistah" smiling. A cigarette. I declined, the situation seemed to demand a cigarette, but no. It was the last offer he made, the last word he spoke. He seemed abashed.

 The airport was further from Tehran then I had realised and it took well over an hour to cross the twilight between. It hurt to look at it. Cold grey sand in the cloak of pre dawn seemed greyer yet in the day. We rattled along wordlessly, windows open, old days inhaled on the brittle wind, a seat in the back, black curtains slapping, the air scouring fresh, all is yellow and warm and red, the light bleeding into itself, searing itself onto me as the sun sets; the smell of the desert, crystal and sweet and stone. The road from palmyra. Gone now. Here, the wind smells of stone and gasoline. Far away and off across the grey so impossibly flat, the day roiled redly into existence, come once again to mount the world. Red orange stained the air swirled it like tear stained ink. The grey, stubborn, remained petulantly grey. 

Solitary billboards passed us by, giant faded photos of the sacred martyrs, passport photos in the desolation. Further along a gold domed mosque lurched up, a little Disneyland under scaffold, every mile or so massive black flags twirled above casting coiling shadows, hung from stupendous flagpoles.

The city approached, the smog grey still holding onto patches of night, the mountains just visible beyond, a crenelated row of nascent teeth away beyond the suburbs which swept in at us now like a flash flood.

Here was Tehran, a confusing mass of concrete and smog. Overpasses overreaching, martyrs gazing down, rows of faded dead men staring into middle distance, countless flags fluttering above their heads, black and red, white and green, parallel rows across the road we passed beneath, a grid furiously flapping against the sky. On every overpass a repeat of the same. Bearded men and a hundred flags. 

Khomeini sightings were common, smiling benignly from the side of a tower block or pointing dynamically in the form of a statue, the landscape was jumbled, the style erratic, everything latched onto everything else. We plunged through the up and down winding random mass of it, a labyrinth of battered dusty roads. Naavid hardly touched the wheel as we jostled among the countless Honda motor bikes, the snug cars and the occasional terrifying spectacle of a bicycle. How long could a person last in the roiling chaos of it? 

After a time the traffic dissipated, we ascended up out of it and at last came to a stop beneath a yellow grey balconied block. Naavid led and I followed as we left his little car and headed down an alley. We stopped at a head high sheet metal gate set into a wall. This was to be my hostel. 

Inside, a small grey courtyard - tree straggling off to one side -ragged plastic tables - hundreds of shoes in piles by a door, their feet lay above, snoozing musty in bunks in balconied towers that seemed to lean out and over me as I gazed up. A wooden hut, like a sentry post or potting shed stood by the tree, a man sat inside, stapling. It was still very early - 8 am. I could not check in til 2. 

More soon.