Anis turns on the TV and selects the German ZDF news program. Jürgen Klopp is talking about the Champions League second leg soccer match, Dortmund against Real Madrid. “Sometimes we watch German TV to learn the language,” says Anis. The weather forecast for the coming days is sixty to sixty-eight degrees Farenheit and then an ad for a laxative—very funny, TV channel ZDF.
Plates clatter, people laugh, and I am the only person comatose and most of the time unable to communicate. I feel like one of the sad, lonely, suffering figures in the paintings on the wall, with my head propped up against my hand. On top of everything, on clearing up I stumble over a glass on the floor, breaking it. What a troublesome guest I am. And Anis? As a parting gift she gives me one of her necklaces, with a blossom-shaped bronze ornament and a red wooden bead. “I hope you enjoy your time in Iran,” she says.
THE DESERT
I WAKE UP ON a hard living room carpet, a neon light flickers lazily, my feet almost touching the gas oven on the wall. The room decoration is a battle between black-and-white photos, paintings, and objects that you might find in an anthropological museum. The alarm clock rings at seven, and Hussein makes a tea and hands over his keys.
“Get ready, Nasrin is coming to get you soon,” he says.
Nasrin is a friend of his who, together with her two couchsurfing guests, is planning a trip to the desert. What I planned as a backpacking tour is becoming more and more an all-inclusive trip with pickup service and round-the-clock mentoring.
The doorbell rings, and I go down to a dusty parking bay surrounded by six-story apartment blocks. For the first time I see the dull facades in daylight. Nasrin is a spirited, tall and slightly rotund woman in her mid-thirties, wearing a black chador, white gloves, and blue sneakers.
Two Australians, Richard and Sally, who I figure are around fifty and thirty, respectively, welcome me from the back seat of Nasrin’s Peugeot. They have been traveling around the world for four years, having spent most of the time in Southeast Asia, very frequently couchsurfing. Nasrin’s seven-year-old daughter, Kiana, is huddled between them. Nasrin teaches computer courses at the university and also works as an English teacher but has called in sick today so that she can show her guests the famous Dasht-e Loot desert. Such are the priorities of Iranians, the world champions of hospitality.
She speeds down the freeway between snow-capped mountains, with Michael Jackson and Beyoncé blaring from the radio. A driver, who hasn’t realized that there is another highway ninety feet to our left for drivers going in his direction, speeds toward us. Nasrin gives a short lecture on men behind steering wheels. “They all think that they’re the best drivers in the world. And when they see any female drivers they tailgate just to show them who’s the boss.”
On entering a tunnel, Nasrin tells us of a custom typical of the country: “In Iran we scream in tunnels.” She starts shrieking, and three foreigners and a small girl join in. In a contest for the loudest scream, little Kiana is way ahead, so far ahead that I’m relieved not to be sitting next to her.
We leave the main road and meander through the mountainous landscape, passing through a couple of small villages. Soon the road straightens, and the route takes us through the increasingly barren steppes, which only seem a bit friendlier through the presence of isolated palm trees. We see dunes that are stabilized by highly resilient tamarisk plants, which can find enough nutrition in the sand to survive.
Nasrin knows the area like the back of her hand; she worked for a long time as a tourist guide, until her license was revoked because she was hosting couchsurfers. “It’s illegal because the government is scared that we are hosting spies,” she explains. Two years ago she took exactly the same route with guests from China, France, and Poland. After stopping at a salt river the car refused to start, and it was getting dark. “So I called the police, who said they couldn’t send anybody. A couple truck drivers stopped every now and then, but nobody could help us.” So she called the police again. “I started yelling at them: ‘If I had said that there were a couple of young people drinking alcohol and dancing about you would have been here in minutes! But you won’t lift a finger for a breakdown!’ Then at least they gave me the number of a breakdown service, who eventually got us going.”
Ultimately, however, the police were interested in what Nasrin was doing with the tourists. When it emerged that they were her guests, they withdrew her license as a tourist guide. “A friend of mine had it worse. He was a soldier and took guests to his military camp. He was caught and had to spend two months in prison.”
Just after these remarks, Nasrin has to stop at a police station in Shahdad. “We have to register here,” she says. “In case they ask who you are and how you know each other: you met, by chance, in Bam, and I’m your tourist guide,” she directs.
The police, however, are less inquisitive than feared. As Nasrin shows them our passports, five heavily armed men in camouflage uniforms joke about what such an old man is doing traveling with such a young woman, that he is just trying to recapture his youth. Richard doesn’t have a hair on his head, and you can certainly see that he has a twenty-year start on Sally. With all the excitement and banter about poor old Richard’s adventure, they fail to notice that Nasrin’s guide license hasn’t been valid for two years. They ask her how much she is charging us but don’t really believe her answer—nothing at all. However, they allow us to continue.
Adventurous Area appears on a traffic sign, and as if to underline this, shortly afterward another sign stating: Nehbandan 170 miles, the next town. “Actually, it’s just three houses and a gas station,” says Nasrin.
If you drive there, the only signs of civilization on the way will be the straight road, where you can see the oncoming traffic several minutes before crossing, and a power supply line. The tarmac shimmers in the heat, the ground appears to be covered by water, but on approach it just turns out to be a mirage. The perfectly straight desert road is like a metaphor for travel—when you reach a certain point that had seemed so alluring, then the next tempting stretch opens up just in front of you.
The sand formations all around become more and more bizarre—mountains towering ever higher at the roadside, the sand castles and rounded cupolas of the Dash-e Lut desert. “Reminds me a bit of the Outback,” Richard remarks.
Another traffic sign announces: Welcome to Gandom Beryan, the hottest area of the world. The words hottest area and world have been erased, so presumably there is somewhere else that is even hotter.
“Over 158 degrees Fahrenheit has been measured here. We say that you can fry an egg on the ground,” says Nasrin.
We soon reach the Shur salt river, the site of the bad memories of the breakdown two years ago. It is some fifteen feet wide and at no point deeper than a few inches. Salt forms in clumps, looking like slushy snow on the banks. A little farther away, in the sand crusty white plates have formed, and tourists have left footprints or messages in Persian, and a truck driver has left a huge tire. The thermometer in the car registers nearly 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Luckily, it’s windy today.