by Jamie Maslin
I got down to the bus station but had no idea which bus to take, so asked a young guy by pointing to the Persian script for the caves in my guidebook. I needn’t have bothered as he spoke good English and informed me that the next minibus to the caves left in forty-five minutes. But, being Iranian, he couldn’t just leave it at that and insisted also on buying me a cool drink at a café nearby. We both had an orange Capri Sun- style drink in a foil carton. Instead of sticking the straw through the tiny, fiddly, purpose-made hole in the top, which from my experience nearly always leaks, my Iranian friend just turned the carton upside down, stabbed the straw through the base, and drank it this way. I did the same and it worked great.
Although it was just a small minibus, I got a great seat all to myself by the rear door where I could stretch out my legs and recline. I felt surprisingly fatigued in the heat, and drifted off not long after we hit the road. I awoke just before the Ali Sadr village. On the outside, the caves looked very commercial with souvenir shops, ticket booths, playgrounds, and a huge hall next to the entrance for the caves, the purpose of which I couldn’t work out. Inside the hall was a huge grumpy-looking Khomeini picture. Despite all of the tourist infrastructure and a warning in my guidebook that the place could be crawling with Iranians and hundreds of screaming school kids, I found it virtually deserted.
I purchased a ticket and walked to the entrance of the cave. The blessed coolness of the air was the first thing that hit me as I walked down a gradual flight of steps into the opening chamber containing a massive underground lake. Here a long jetty-like platform hugged the water’s edge and two paddleboats waited for passengers. This was clearly where the crowds must have queued on busy days but today, mercifully, there was just a single family and me. I couldn’t believe my luck.
We all had to put on lifejackets, which for the family’s little daughter of about four was nearly as big as she was. We got in the boat, which was connected with a rope to a paddleboat operated by a young guy of about fourteen. A guide joined our boat and slowly we moved off. The water was a shimmering green color, and the clearest I’d ever seen in my life. Looking over the boat’s edge, I could see an immensely long way down into the water, which was as deep as forty-five feet. Strangely, nothing lives in the water or in the caves themselves. Even bats don’t inhabit the place, and there is no evidence of human or animal activity in the caves over the centuries.
We slowly drifted past otherworldly rock formations, which our guide described in Farsi only, leaving me to ponder them myself without explanation. I preferred it that way. Hanging down from sections of the cave’s stalactite-covered roof were labels for some of the larger formations, identifying them with appropriate titles such as “Statue of Liberty,” etc. These were accompanied by separate placards containing quotes from the Koran. I was mesmerized as we drifted slowly along.
The lighting was just enough to reveal the cave’s grandeur but not so bright as to illuminate every nook and cranny and take away any of its mystique. We glided gently past many interconnecting chambers, all filled with the same clear water. Some looked like mystical and holy grottos, others like the hidden underground lair for a James Bond criminal’s secret submarine. We drifted along for about thirty minutes, passing only one other boat going the opposite way, before arriving at another little jetty where a walkway led into the center of the caves. Here we disembarked. I let the family go first, not out of good manners but to give them a few minutes head start so I could walk around in complete silence.
It was simply wonderful and I felt a reverence for the place. That is until I got to a little café playing music. I quickly skipped past this and came face-to-face with the most awe-inspiring chamber. It was 131 feet high and had a jagged boulder protruding from its roof. Strewn all around were the remains of many other boulders from partial collapses over the millennia. I stood in this cathedral-like inner chamber and truly felt as if I were in the center of the earth.
The trip back was just as good and as I climbed out of the swaying boat, I felt completely energized. I emerged, blinking, into the sunlight and baking heat with a big smile on my face. Here the family from the boat asked if they could take their photo with me, and after posing for a total of three shots, I headed toward one of the cafés.
It had the usual collection of water pipes for smoking tobacco, and carpeted platforms on which to recline. Three men sat here whiling away the afternoon in apparent bliss. I ordered a tea and got chatting to one of them who spoke English. He asked whether I liked the caves. “According to the government, they are officially the most beautiful nature in all the world,” he told me. And I guess if the Iranian government officially says so then it must be true. When it was time to pay for my drink, I wasn’t allowed, despite trying the usual three refusals.
I caught the minibus back to Hamadan and arrived just after the sun had disappeared. As I walked through the town in search of some food and an Internet café, the evocative sound of the calling to prayers emanated across the city from the mosques’ speakers. The Internet café was overflowing with people, half of whom stood around sipping away at tea whilst giving advice on what to write to those at the keyboard. Interestingly, Iran has the fourth-largest blogging community in the world, which may very well account for the painfully slow speed of the Net in some places. This was the case here, where it took me the best part of half an hour to send two very short messages.
Not far down from the Internet café, situated along the thriving high street, was a Western-style fast food restaurant. It wasn’t traditional local cuisine, but I didn’t care as I really fancied a change from all the kebabs and rice.
I decided on a cheeseburger and fries.
Whilst ordering my food, I got talking to the cashier and asked him if I needed a calling card to make a call from a public phone booth to a cell phone. I wanted to get in touch with Leyla before I headed to Tehran tomorrow. The guy working the register went and got a girl in the restaurant to translate for him. She explained that the restaurant staff were happy for me to use their phone, if this was okay with me of course. This was more than okay.
I got through to Leyla, who was delighted to hear from me but had not yet heard from Ricardo as I’d hoped. She said to call her again when I got to Tehran and she’d come pick me up from my hotel in the evening.
The English-speaking girl joined me at my table while I ate. She came bearing gifts—a huge ice cream sundae complete with two crispy wafers, Jell-O, and sprinkles. I dropped a wobbly bit of ice cream clad Jell-O on my pants. The girl was a pretty twenty-year-old student from Tehran, although I didn’t make a note of her name. Without my asking, she wrote down her e-mail address for me, seconds before her mother joined us at the table. The girl gestured to the piece of paper with her e-mail and said, “Secret, cannot tell.” Mommy was a crone-like wretch with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, who eyed me and my table manners suspiciously.
Her mother spoke only a word or two of English, which was just as well, as her daughter asked my opinion on Khomeini, and I suspected for some reason that her mother was an admirer of his. The girl gestured to a framed portrait of the man in question on the restaurant’s wall, which like every other shop in Iran has to have one. I had yet to meet a person who actually liked Khomeini, but on a hunch I asked her first what her mother thought of him. She translated the question to her old lady, who, as I suspected, expressed her admiration by putting a hand on her heart and bowing slightly toward the picture.
I told the girl that I wasn’t a big fan of Khomeini, but for her sake, in front of her mother I would pretend that I was. I put my hand on my heart and bowed in a similar fashion at the picture. My reasoning must have got lost in translation as the girl seemed surprised and said quietly, “No, he is not good man!”
Interestingly, in none of the pictures you see of Khomeini is he ever smiling. His PR man didn’t do a very good job; in all his photos he wasn’t just a little on the grumpy side but downright angry. The girl’s mother wa
s the first, and in fact the only person, I met in Iran who openly expressed a liking for Khomeini. But if the information in my guidebook was correct then there were a substantial number of Iranians who not only liked the bloke but looked upon him as something of a saint. Since I encountered the opposite of this, I did wonder how accurate and up-to-date the book was in this regard. That said, Khomeini was definitely popular at the time of his funeral in 1989, which drew a phenomenal 10 million mourners. Not a bad turnout by anyone’s standards.
The Khomeini-loving woman and her daughter left the burger bar a minute after my fake picture-bowing, but then the girl returned briefly on her own. She looked back to see if her mother was watching then held out her hand illicitly for me to shake. We shook hands, she smiled, and then left for good.
Before I left, two staff members came over and gave me a customer questionnaire. It was partially in English and listed categories like speed of service, quality of food, freshness of food, etc., alongside the ratings “good,” “okay,” and “bad,” to circle where appropriate. I didn’t pay too much attention to it and circled where I saw fit, but made sure to give the staff full marks. They took it away but returned a minute later looking most unhappy. The source of their contention was I’d only given the food an “okay.”
“Why you not say food was good?” one asked.
They obviously took their customer questionnaires very seriously in Iran. I tried to explain that it was a nice enough cheeseburger as cheeseburgers go, but at the end of the day, it was, after all, just a cheeseburger, not fillet mignon served with a drizzle of truffle juice and half a bottle of the finest Chateau Latour ’82. They weren’t having any of this crap, and asked if I’d like to change my mind. I said I would and circled the good option instead. Everybody left happy.
I started to head back to my hotel but popped into a drugstore on the way to buy some toothpaste. For some reason, the man working behind the counter couldn’t work out my mime for toothpaste and offered me cough lozenges instead. A young guy in the shop who spoke okay English helped out. He ordered on my behalf and before I could stop him had handed over the money for the toothpaste as well. He introduced himself as Pedram.
We got talking outside, where his cheerful plump friend, Behzad, was waiting. They were both students from Tehran and were just down in Hamadan for a couple of days visiting friends. Not five minutes into our conversation and Pedram invited me to join them for chay in a nearby park. A few minutes later, we were squashed into the back of a nice modern car and speeding along with two of his other friends. The park was perched on a hill and had a great panoramic view of the city and all its sparkling lights below. Up here was an expensive-looking tearoom with several raised carpeted platforms outside.
We all had tea on one of the platforms and over our second cup, I was discreetly invited to join the lads back at their place for a drink of the alcoholic variety. This was an opportunity I couldn’t resist but first, apparently, we needed mixers. Pedram and I were assigned this task and dropped the lads off at their apartment, which they’d rented for the weekend before heading out.
In the car, Pedram explained that he had to pick up a girl friend of his from the bus station and give her a lift to her aunt’s place. As we drove, and chatted away, I was struck by how Western Pedram seemed when compared to other Iranians I’d met thus far. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why but I got the distinct impression that he and his friends all came from well-off families.
I was left in the car while Pedram met his friend, who was a large but attractive girl of about twenty. After we dropped her off, Pedram told me that she had invited me to her sister’s party when I came to Tehran. I was hugely excited at the prospect of going to an illegal gathering of drunken students, which I was sure few tourists would get to experience. Pedram said I could crash at their apartment tonight if I wanted, so we made a brief stop at my crummy hotel, where I grabbed my stuff, paid up, and got my passport back. Back at the apartment, the guys were all sitting around in shorts playing cards for money. The game was brought to a swift conclusion when Pedram and I turned up and they brought out what looked like an eight-pack of beer. On closer inspection, I discovered they were actually cans of whisky. I’d never seen whisky in cans before and asked the guys if this was normal. They’d never heard of whisky in bottles before.
We started the night off with a shot mixed with just a suggestion of cola. It was bloody strong and I knew I’d end up loaded before the night was out. A copied DVD was selected from a wallet full of illegal discs and slipped into the player. We all reclined on big cushions with another shot of whisky as the film began. It was Basic Instinct with the delectable Sharon Stone. We watched about fifteen minutes and just before the money shot, the DVD started to malfunction. A cry of horror went up from all around but it was no good, and despite Pedram’s best efforts to right the problem, we had to admit defeat and were forced to abandon the film.
It has to be said, I was quite looking forward to the novel prospect of watching Sharon uncross her legs in Iran. I needn’t have worried though, as this was fully compensated for by the next DVD selected by the lads, which contained acts that the lovely Miss Stone would be far too prudish to attempt on screen and which would have been of borderline legality in certain states of the U.S. until recently, let alone the Islamic Republic of Iran. I wondered what horrendous penalties there were if you were caught in possession of or watching such material whilst consuming vast quantities of hard liquor. I thought back to the television documentary I’d seen on human rights abuses in Iran, which had shown a man having his eye cut out for looking at “something immoral,” and wondered if this Persian porn would count in that department. I knocked back a few more shots and no longer cared. It was a late night and by the time I passed out, I’d consumed a hell of a lot of booze.
I awoke feeling awful with a splitting headache and a desire to curl up into a ball and quietly die. It didn’t look like I was the only one. I had planned to visit the Jewish shrine this morning before catching the bus to Tehran but that plan went out the window now. All I wanted to do was nothing. I had to make a move though, and decided to push through it and get to the bus terminal. Pedram, who looked in a worse condition than me, offered to give me a lift there. Pedram’s fat friend, Behzad, who looked surprisingly sprightly considering how much he’d drunk, said he’d tag along as well. As Behzad got dressed one of the guys, whose name I was in no state to remember or jot down, grabbed the poor guy’s flabby breasts and said jokingly to me, “He is breast boy, no?” Even breast boy laughed at this one.
At the terminal, Pedram whisked me past all the sales guys shouting out their destinations to a bus company called Seir-o Safar. Pedram said it was the only bus company worth traveling with in Iran. He tried to pay for my ticket, but I put my foot down and handed over the money. What he did next was a great help. He phoned one of his friends in Tehran and arranged for him to meet me at the bus station when I arrived and to take me to a hotel. In a city of a staggering 15 million people this would be immensely useful. Pedram was going back to Tehran tomorrow along with Behzad, so he gave me his number and insisted I call him and stay at his parents’ place when he got back. Things were going amazingly well.
The first thing you notice about Tehran as you approach it is the smog. It’s situated in a natural valley surrounded by mountains, which lets the pollution build up and leaves the air a horrible brown hue. As we drove through the endless streets, I realized what luck it was to have a local waiting to help me at the bus station. It was one hell of a big sprawling city, and it would have been a nightmare to try to cope with it after a heavy night on the booze. A hangover is not a state most people are in when they first arrive in Tehran.
I got off the bus, collected my bags and within a minute was approached by two sharply dressed young guys in shades. One asked, “Jamie?” We shook hands and I was led toward their car, which like Pedram’s was a modern European one. Neither spoke much English, so I just fol
lowed their lead. We drove through the most insane traffic and nearly crashed several times. The smooth two communicated that we were going to grab some food, and as I was hungry, this was just what I wanted to hear.
Along the highway, we passed two roadside murals in ornate frames depicting the infamous Abu Ghraib torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces. One was the well-known picture of the Iraqi with a leash around his neck, the other of the hooded man with the wires coming out of his fingers. The images contained some Persian text, which I subsequently discovered read something along the lines of, “Yesterday you were torturing Palestine; today you are torturing Iraq.”
We stopped for lunch at a fast food restaurant called Apache, where my hosts ordered a mountain of burgers and fries along with some obligatory soft drinks. Despite my protests, and believe me I tried, the guys categorically insisted on paying, and I was literally physically forced to put my wallet back into my pocket. Over our food I got out my guidebook for them, and pointed to the hotels it recommended. They were adamant that these weren’t up to much and wanted to take me elsewhere. As far as I was concerned, they were the bosses, as I had no idea where I was, and in a city this big it would have been a real mission to sort things out for myself.
Seated nearby were two young women sporting what looked like fresh Band-Aids across their noses. After a bit of miming to the guys, I managed to ascertain that these were nose job bandages, and that it was quite common. I later learnt that, amazingly, more plastic surgery is carried out in Tehran than in Los Angeles.
After feasting like kings, we got on the road again. We drove around and around for over an hour, passing a cinema showing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, but for some reason we stopped at no hotels. It seemed the guys were no longer quite as confident about where to take me. They explained in their limited English that they were now taking me to a library instead.