Revolutionary Ride

by Lois Pryce

  The pump attendant stared at me myopically behind his glasses, and abandoned the truck to come to my side. He stood too close and grabbed at the map on my handlebars, speaking fast and erratically in Persian. I didn’t need to understand what he was saying to know that my instinct was right. There was something very wrong here and where I would normally take the opportunity of a fuel stop to get off the bike and stretch out my limbs, I was overcome with a powerful sense that I should remain sitting on the bike. Pointing at the tank, I requested Benzin but the truck driver was calling him back to finish filling up his tank, so I stayed sitting there, uneasy, waiting. Every bone in my body told me to leave, but I desperately needed the petrol. I considered my options and concluded that I had to take the risk and fill up. Another petrol station could be a hundred miles away. As I waited I was aware of being hyper-alert, like an animal under threat, but I couldn’t quite identify the source of my unease; the guy seemed a bit unhinged but he was obviously capable of doing his job and that was all I needed. Twenty litres of petrol and I would be getting the hell out of here.

  The trucker, all filled up, drove away down the dirt track. I watched him disappear in a dust cloud and felt a creeping fear. It was now just me and the pump attendant in the middle of this desert. I heard his strange shouts first and turned. He was coming at me, eyes wild, yelling. In what I hoped was a calm but authoritative manner I said, ‘Benzin,’ pointing at the tank again. But he ignored my command and I was suddenly knocked off balance as he threw himself on to me, screaming words I didn’t understand. The force of his attack caused me and the bike to almost fall but I just managed to stick out my right leg and stay upright. Trying to remain vertical while fighting him off, I shoved him as hard as I could, succeeding in pushing him away for a brief moment. Stable again, I yelled ‘Benzin!’ in between a volley of English swear-words. It was as if he was deaf to my instructions. Still ignoring me, he lunged at me again, his full body weight on mine, almost succeeding in toppling me over this time. Again, I just managed to stay on the bike and again shouted, ‘Benzin! Benzin!’ But it was time to give up on that plan. There was no way he was going to stand there and patiently fill my tank, not now. His face was in mine, screaming and spitting, his arms pinned on my bike and his torso shoved up against mine, writhing. I pushed at him harder, yelling in his face, ‘Get the fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!’ but it was no use. He was solid, heavy and stronger than me. We grappled for a moment, but it was almost impossible to push him away with the sideways force of his weight against me while trying to keep the bike upright.

  There was only one thing for it. I jumped upwards, on to the footpegs, surprising him, and in that moment, balancing on the right peg, I high-kicked my left leg with all the force I could muster, into his stomach. He staggered back, winded and roaring, but in the moment it took him to recover I had hit the start button and was ripping it up across the forecourt, out on to the waste ground and back on the highway, engine screaming, back wheel skidding in the gravel, kicking up a cloud of dust. I had never been more grateful to whoever invented the starter motor. That little button had saved my life.

  Out on the highway I could barely think straight. I looked down. My legs were visibly shaking, trembling in that jelly-like way that comes only from true shock. Both furious and distressed, I had no choice but to keep going, but I needed fuel, and badly. That had been the first petrol station I had seen all day. What was the chance of finding another one now? And it was getting dark. The thought of running out of petrol here, at night, in this godforsaken desert, was the worst situation imaginable in my current state. Now, with the light fading, everything seemed sinister, every passing car, every shape, every shadow. As I pondered the miserable possibilities, my bike spluttered and choked with the familiar warning sound that told me to switch over to my reserve tank. I had a couple of litres left at best.

  As one is inclined to do after an alarming incident, I replayed the scene in my head, again and again. What troubled me most was that I couldn’t make any sense of what had happened. A plain old robbery, a stick-up for some dollars, I could understand; hand over the cash and off you go. Likewise, a straightforward sleazy grope and an opportunistic lunge would have been unpleasant but it wouldn’t have been quite as disturbing. That kind of thing is par for the course unfortunately, and most women will have fended off such attempts by the time they reach my age, at home or away. But there was something different about what had occurred in the petrol station. It had felt sexually motivated but there was something else too, something disconcerting; the crazed ranting, the deranged eyes, the refusal to even attempt a greeting or acknowledge my initial request for fuel. I wondered if he was on something. Alone, pumping gas in the desert all day, drugs would keep you occupied. At first glance he had appeared unremarkable. He was young, reasonably well turned out and, if anything, a bit chubby and nerdy looking – not the kind of person I’d imagined as a threat. I wondered if his anger was ideologically motivated. Maybe he was a hardline Islamist, but it seemed unlikely, although, again, I was basing this assumption largely on his appearance. My only whiff of that kind of hostility had been limited to a few disapproving scowls from robed mullahs as they passed me in the street. This kid in the petrol station had looked like every other guy his age, and they didn’t tend to take such a stance. On the contrary, they tended to be friendly and welcoming.

  I thought about the last few weeks and calmed myself by recounting all my positive experiences with Iranian males; even in my state of distress, I was rational enough to know that this could have happened anywhere in the world. On the whole I had been treated with great courtesy by the men here, of every age and status, from truckers and shopkeepers to students and high-flying businessmen. But I had to admit that the business of male–female relations in Iran was still something I had not quite unpicked, and it remained a constant source of confusion to me.

  Because unmarried men and women are forbidden by law from mixing together, schools are segregated, and women are banned from activities as innocent as riding a bicycle or attending a male sports game, an unnatural air of exoticism and mystery surrounds matters relating to sex. Many of the Iranian women I had spoken to about this believed that it contributed to the common harassment they experienced in public, compounding the underlying sense that women were somehow apart, another species. Several women, when telling me tales of being hassled in the street or on public transport, had assured me that as a westerner I was actually less likely to be harassed openly, and it was true that I had not experienced much in the way of outright pestering or catcalling.

  But for Iranian women, discrimination goes way beyond the odd lewd suggestion shouted from a building site or a grope on the Metro – it is embedded in the fabric of society and written into the law of the land. Only recently, a conservative newspaper associated with the office of the Supreme Leader had questioned the wisdom of sending an Iranian delegation to take part in a UN summit on women’s rights, stating that gender equality was ‘not acceptable to the Islamic Republic’. But what was curious from my outsider viewpoint was that these laws of the land – controls on women’s hair, dress, behaviour, social life and even the need for the approval of a father or husband when applying for a passport – seemed to have little impact on the private, professional and even public lives of Iranian women. I remembered Shirin, who I had met in the Hotel Alborz. ‘Difficult times make you stronger,’ she had said. It was true. The women I had met over the last few weeks, of all ages and social classes, were bold, fun-loving, vocal, educated, opinionated, and did not in any way behave like an oppressed group. This was especially true of the urban, liberal classes and the younger generation, who socialised in mixed groups and viewed the battle for women’s rights as a crucial element of their anti-regime stance. Although my travels by their very nature meant that I was less likely to find myself mingling with conservative hardliners, when I had come into contact with older, religious or more traditional women, they did not exude opp
ression either. Women in Iran certainly had plenty to complain about but they did not behave like victims. I could only put this phenomenon down to what I saw as the great Iranian spirit, the embedded sense of self that ran through the core of the nation, and that refused to be crushed.

  But despite the outward appearance of Iranian women being strident and confident, I was still aware of a pervading, institutionalised sense of their second-class status, which filtered down from the men at the top and the religious establishment. What made this more insidious is that it was frequently dressed up as chivalry. In Tehran I had ridden one of the public buses where women are sealed off at the back in their own section. It was for their safety, I was told by a man, they needed to be protected. ‘From what?’ I asked. ‘From bad men,’ he explained. He was speaking as a good man who would step up to defend a woman. The sentiment was well meaning, but this gallant chauvinism disturbed me. The Iranian women I had encountered seemed perfectly capable of looking after themselves. It seemed the whole nation was in the grip of some entrenched Freudian Madonna–whore complex and, most tellingly of all, nobody ever suggested that it was the men’s behaviour that needed changing, rather than the women’s.

  As I continued along the darkening highway, eyes darting left and right for somewhere or somebody selling petrol, I remembered something a female Iranian friend in London had said to me before I left. ‘People will be very friendly, but be wary of the older guys. They are not always so pleased to see you, they are from another time.’ Omid had made a similar comment when some grizzled old men in south Tehran had shouted lascivious comments at us in the street. ‘This country will be better when all those old guys have died off,’ he had muttered. I realised that part of the shock of what had just occurred in the petrol station was that it had involved a young man, a person who normally would be welcoming, open and respectful.

  As I watched the dwindling sun, I could not ignore the ever-increasing digits ticking by on my odometer. There was nothing else for it but to pull in at one of the sketchy roadside mechanic shacks and hustle for some petrol. I sat on the bike, still nervy and shaky, while two silent, suspicious-eyed guys sloshed the contents of a jerry can into my tank in exchange for a fistful of rials that I didn’t even bother counting. As I rode off to find somewhere to stay for the night, I accepted I would never know the motivation behind the young petrol station attendant’s attack. My guess was some combination of drugs, mental instability and a generous helping of testosterone, a miserable cocktail to be found the world over. I was just thankful I had got away safely, and for that I gave my ever-reliable bike a grateful pat; it gave me autonomy, speed and a sense of empowerment that no other form of transport could provide.

  14

  Hotel Nish-Nush

  DUE TO MY fragile state, I elected to spend the following day in hiding in a hotel. The outside world held little appeal, and I knew there was no value in forcing myself to keep pushing on. The desire to hit the road would return soon enough and a day in bed watching cable television seemed like the most appealing option right now. A channel beamed in illegally from Dubai provided me with me an Arabic-dubbed Downton Abbey followed by a gruesome X-Factor-style show, infuriatingly titled, Arabs Got Talent. I whiled away a few hours composing a complaining letter to the production company regarding apostrophe crimes.

  When the excitement got too much I strayed down to the lobby to chat with the receptionist, Nahid, the daughter of the ageing hotel owner. She was a sympathetic woman in her forties who, like many Iranians, worked two jobs, her other being in a hair salon. Over the obligatory glass of tea she asked me about my journey and after talking to her for a while, I told her about the incident of the night before, intrigued as to what she would make of it. She was commiserative but not particularly surprised.

  ‘Ah, this is the shishe,’ she said with a knowing nod, but I did not recognise the word.

  ‘Shishe, in English it means “glass”. It is what you call crystal meth, yes? It is a big problem in all of Iran but here, very much. The road you travel on yesterday, there are many places where they make it. Because it is desert, very empty. No police.’

  I didn’t realise I had been in Iranian Breaking Bad territory, but now it all made sense. The skinny, rough-looking guys with their wary eyes, the deranged behaviour of a young guy, bored out of his skull in a remote desert petrol station. I thought about the shacks I had seen off in the distance; the vast open spaces made a perfect environment for meth labs. My creeping sense of unease and the atmosphere of lawlessness that I had dismissed as the product of an overly dramatic imagination had been spot on after all.

  ‘I am very sorry for this to happen to you in our country,’ Nahid said, taking my hand and looking genuinely chagrined.

  Like all the Iranians I had met, she shouldered the responsibility of my experience. I assured her that all was fine, and that meth-head pump attendants aside, I had fallen in love with her country. She looked relieved but still worried.

  ‘Please be careful, it is not safe for a woman to be alone somewhere like this. I would not go in my car for benzin to this place alone. Only with my father or my brother.’

  I sighed, wondering if those chivalrous chauvinists had a point after all.

  ‘There are many bad people,’ she continued, ‘because of the drugs. It is a very big problem.’

  I asked her advice about reporting the attack and she said she would speak to her father about it, as he knew the local policeman personally. I suggested I could save him the trouble and report it directly to the police station myself, but she shook her head.

  ‘He is an old friend of my father,’ she said. ‘He will know what to do. It is best if he asks.’

  It was a relief to rest my body and mind for a while, to not have to think or do anything. The hotel was located in a small, unremarkable town with no attractions that tempted me outside to explore, and for this I was oddly grateful. I had a sensation of being over-stimulated; every one of my senses had been on high alert for weeks; every night my nerves tingled and my mind raced. This urge to hide away for a while was an almost primal need for shelter; I recognised it from my previous motorcycle journeys and I knew it was a temporary craving, it was simply a response to always moving on and being outdoors day in, day out, weathering the elements and a continually changing environment, forever in the company of strangers, assessing and constantly making decisions, every minute of every day.

  There was no chance of being pestered here. I was the only guest at the hotel, and it didn’t look as though they were expecting any more. It was clean but musty, as if the rooms had been closed up for a long time, and I wondered how many visitors came through these parts, and who they were. I couldn’t imagine anyone stopping here for business, and certainly not for pleasure. I was used to people being surprised when I showed up out of the blue, but Nahid had given the appearance of coming out of retirement when I walked in, literally dusting off ledgers and scrabbling around for a pen.

  When I asked her that evening about dinner arrangements she made no hesitation in inviting me to eat with her and her family in their house that backed on to the hotel. It made more sense than opening up the hotel kitchen to cook for one guest, she explained. One of the many crumbling brick cubes that serve as basic homes in Iran’s boondocks, the house was connected to the hotel by a narrow, rubble-strewn alley strung with sketchy-looking electrical cables. Although the house was as weary as the hotel, inside it was spacious, clean and tidy, if lacking in homely comforts. The walls were bare and on the floor of the living room the seating area comprised the standard arrangement of a few cushions around a worn-out rug. In the corner was a low single bed where Nahid’s father, a balding, wizened little man with smiling eyes, reclined, his manner resigned but peaceful, as though he hadn’t moved from this position in years. Nahid’s older brother, a gaunt, rake-thin man in his fifties, sat by their father, the two of them speaking quietly together while Nahid prepared dinner.

  I joined he
r in the kitchen and she explained that her father was unwell.

  ‘He has pains in his body,’ she said. ‘My brother helps but he has problems too.’

  I nodded sympathetically. She was keeping it all together without complaint, running the home and the business, working two jobs, cooking and cleaning.

  ‘My brother, he is a good man, very kind, but he has treatment for heroin addiction for many years.’

  That explained his ravaged appearance. I asked her if this was a common problem and she nodded, and then proceeded to list a catalogue of assistance that he received courtesy of the state. She told how he was supported by a local treatment centre where he was given methadone, and there were also needle exchange programmes, support groups and help for addicts in prison.

  ‘This has saved his life,’ she said simply.

  She didn’t seem embarrassed or ashamed by her brother’s situation and spoke about it more as an illness, taking a resigned but practical view, as one would with a relative suffering a long-term chronic ailment. In a society with such strict social codes and morality-based laws, these policies seemed at odds with everything else I had seen and heard from the Iranian government. Once again, I found myself confounded by the apparent contradictions all around me.

  Neither Nahid’s father or brother spoke English, but after eating they attempted to engage me in conversation. It seemed to be some kind of invitation. They were motioning some kind of activity and laughing. Nahid laughed too, translating: ‘They are saying, do you want some nish-nush?’ Her brother added something, prompting more laughter.

  ‘Special Iranian tradition!’ she translated. She leaned towards me to explain: ‘Nish-nush is opium. My father, he smokes it, for his back, for the pain.’

  The brother was busying himself preparing a brazier, a large round metal dish of charcoal that he placed next to the bed so it was within reach of his supine father. It took a little while for the coals to heat up, but once they had become red hot he picked one up with a pair of tongs and held it over the end of an ornately carved, foot-long pipe. At the end of the pipe was what appeared to be a small clay bowl, but when he showed it to me I saw it was more like a bulb with a small hole in it. Over this hole he pressed the opium – a small, sticky brown lump that looked as innocent as chocolate. As he held the charcoal over the opium, he blew hard, causing the coal to glow red hot and in turn, the opium to bubble and crackle. A sickly sweet smell filled the room. He took a long inhale of the pipe and leaned back against the wall. Next he passed it to his father, who remained lying on the bed, taking his time, blowing and sucking in silence. Nahid, it seemed, did not partake in this Iranian tradition, so next, it came round to me.