I never said too much of this for fear of attracting all the wrong attentions but I once travelled to Iran.
Now that Obama is president, it’s time to tell travel stories.
Iran, is a fascinating country.
When I exchanged my US dollars, i got money back in plastic bags, literally. Two plastic bags of indecipherable Iranian currency utensils in exchange for two hundred American dollars.
In customs they held me to inspect a Pink Floyd album for inflammatory expressions (Division Bell, not a very good album, it was deemed not offensive enough to Iranians custom officials).
The first thing I noticed out from the airport was that I couldn’t tell which side they were driving on. The roads were big and plenty wide and the cars were all small and of the same colours and they drove wherever they like. Some drivers appeared to have been engage in a very prolonged private conversation on what would have been the designated fast lane for traffic. These people didn’t know left from right – it’s a common symptom in developing countries – check Hanoi, Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila for examples.
I spent time in Qom – the hotbed of Iranian revolution – the city is a dignified town that have educated the most brilliants of Iranians for hundreds of years. Imagine Cambridge leading the revolution against Tony Blair government. It was delightful. Books and music were cheaper than anywhere else in the world because they were all pirated. The Iranians are lovely people, however, and their own culture thrives with great movies and good artsy vibes. They know how to entertain themselves.
It helps that Iranian girls are some of the most beautiful creatures ever made on planet earth. All girls are drop dead gorgeous – so long as you’re willing to speculate on everything other than the face. Iranian girls spark with beauty and they were just easy to watch. They’re also the smartest people in the world. Two of my smartest professors in the UK in the esteemed profession of computer architecture are Iranians. The Iranians are blessed with the rare mix of good looks and functioning brain.
Proof that pretty girls are smart, too.
I stayed in Qom and decided to study Philosophy for a little while, it happened to be the only class I could enrol since I speak neither Persian nor Arabic. I lived in one of the student housing and spent time with all the other full time students. The Lebanese are also the most beautiful people in the world but they tend to have a nastier brother.
The lessons were intense but they have so much references crammed in their libraries these people reflects an almost biblical ideal of smartness. I learned more of Hegel and Wittgenstein and Karl Marx and Adam Smith in three months of study in Iran compared to my one year in Germany. These people are fiercely smart and they are always the most dangerous of all peoples.
The Iranian arts fascinated me and i couldn’t get enough of it. I spent days and days walking around the art markets, spending ridiculous amount of money on paintings and scraps of prints to take home. I was on the road for a few more months and most of the accumulated junk were left in airports all over the world later.
The Iranians are beautiful people with truly beautiful reflections.
The girls know the words to Bon Jovi, just as likely as they were to quote Rumi and Hafiz in their original lines. They steal my heart when they do that. Courting is always more exciting if you don’t understand the languages.
The Iranians drink tea in very small cups and put the sugar cube in their mouth before each sip. You’re also not to lounge in any tea shops. Two tiny little small cups and you will be asked to leave. You don’t read books in tea shops. Period.
They consume an unhealthy amount of this Coca Cola looking drink. It looks exactly like Coca Cola but didn’t taste like one – tho not too perennially bad. I’m sure a lot of them were diabetics but i am not of the medical profession. Did i say they were very pretty people?
Most Iranians have no idea that the outside world don’t speak Persians – everything on their television is dubbed into Persian (just like the Germans). The taxi drivers chatted during an entire four hours ride in languages i don’t understand. And yes, taxis there have two drivers, one to swap funny in-jokes with. And occasionally, they also take other passengers to further cheer the atmosphere. I guess that makes it more like a bus, but in a taxi shape, very confusing to describe, really, you just gotta go and check it out yourself.
In my spare weekends, I ventured to other places. Isfahan was the city with the tombs of angels and Mashad was a grand palace of charms. Tehran was the capital with too much of it all and smelled of nothing but power. Revolutionary dreams and their grand boulevards. It’s an idea in its expiration date.
There was another guy just as crazy as I was and as we were lost wandering the vineyards in Shiraz, we decided to see how things were on the other side.
We got on to a bus to Iraq two weeks later.
