LOST IN TRANSPORTATION III
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN YAZD and Shiraz we decide to hitchhike for a couple hundred miles. A spectacular failure. Not because no one wants to give us a lift. The first car that we wave down stops (we waved because the usual raised thumb ritual is considered an offensive gesture, at least by the older generations, so the chances of a lift are low).
The driver introduces himself as Gorlam and indicates that we should hop in. “I live just around the corner. Would you like some tea?” he asks. After half a mile he stops in front of a whitewashed house with a flat roof.
In the living room Gorlam’s four-year-old son, Iman, is doing a couple circuits on his kiddie bike. The wall is decorated with sayings from the Quran and photos of well-dressed sons with well-dressed wives. To one side of the room there is a kind of bathtub full of potted plants. When Iman pauses from his circuits he proves to be incredibly talkative but unfortunately fails to understand that I haven’t got a clue what he’s saying. Fatimeh, his mother, brings a plate of huge slices of melon. Gorlam says that he has to go quickly to his office; he works for the highways department. We talk to Fatimeh, or rather Laila does, and I just sit around. People who can only say car, fish, and elephant farts in Persian automatically become outsiders and observers in such situations.
Laila explains where we come from, how beautiful it was in Yazd, and that we are now heading for Shiraz. “We’ve known each other for two years and have been married one year,” she fibs.
It is more difficult to explain what hitchhiking is all about, although we had looked up the word ootostop beforehand. The concept doesn’t seem to be known here. Fatimeh, anyway, doesn’t react to it. “You have to take a cab to Safa Shahr and then take a bus to Shiraz,” she explains. “You can spend the night here and then take the bus tomorrow morning. It’s not so tiring.”
It is only just 1 PM, and we would really like to be on the move. Staggering hospitality is not compatible with the wish of traveling more than half a mile today. But Fatimeh remains indefatigable. She offers to call her sister, who works in a hotel in Shiraz and can organize accommodation for us. Laila says that we already have a room. If we had begun to explain our idea of sleeping at the homes of locals we only met on the Internet, our benefactor would have thought us completely mad.
Fatimeh serves up tea and goodies, and she asks whether we would change our minds and stay for something to eat. We politely decline but decide to wait for Gorlam’s return before traveling on.
All in all we spend 2.5 hours with the nice family. At the end we film a video message with a cell phone and are asked a further six times to share a meal with them. As we turn them down for the sixth time, Fatimeh and Gorlam are visibly disappointed. They ask again if we are really sure we can manage without a hotel in Shiraz and whether it might not be better to stay overnight with them.
Back on the road it doesn’t take a minute before the next lift is offered. This time the car turns out to be a cab, but there is already one passenger, and we can travel the three or four miles to the next village for nothing. Our fellow passenger, Mohsen, a math teacher, gets out of the cab with us. He also wants to go a short way toward Shiraz and suggests that we share a taxi, as there is no other possibility of making headway. He also reacts with a puzzled shaking of the head to the term ootostop. We agree to share, and so after 2.5 miles in three hours, our Iranian hitchhiking adventure draws to a close. It would have been quicker to walk.
SHIRAZ
Population: 1.5 million
Province: Fars
HIDE-AND-SEEK
“BE QUIET AND don’t speak English on the street; otherwise, the neighbors will hear you,” says Saeed. “It’s forbidden to take in foreigners.” He jumps out of the car, looking left and right like a burglar, and unlocks the steel door to his apartment in southwest Shiraz. Then he waves to us to quickly come in. We snatch our backpacks and scurry to the entrance. Saeed’s friend, who picked us up in the city center in his car, says goodbye and disappears into the night.
Saeed is twenty, a graphic design student, and “pretty hot,” as Laila put it on seeing his profile photo—black wispy hair, bushy eyebrows, knockout smile. After reading one of my posts in a couchsurfing forum, he contacted me to ask me whether I wanted to stay with him during my trip to Shiraz.
According to what I read of his profile, Saeed likes kick-boxing, BMX bikes, and juggling, and apart from that he is an absolute couchsurfing junkie. In the last three months he has had forty-five guests, has organized meetings, and is always traveling around his country with a tent and a backpack.
Saeed has another guest. Christian, lounging on the carpet, is in his mid-twenties. He has a designer beard, is from Colombia, and manages to simultaneously look incredibly tired and incredibly happy. Travel drunk and high from the road. He quit his job as a business consultant four months ago and now jets around the world. Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Egypt, Turkey. Iran was the only country on his route that his mother told him to contact her every two days to say that he was still alive.
“There is a paralleclass="underline" Colombia also has a bad reputation, and everyone immediately thinks of cocaine, drug barons, and criminals. But the country has so much to offer. High mountains, dream beaches, fantastic nature, and lively cities. But a lot of people are scared to go there,” says Christian.
“I’ve had some guests here who have kept their destination secret from their parents,” says Saeed. “People think there’s a terrorist hiding in every corner, and that our favorite leisure activity is burning American and Israeli flags. It’s nonsense.” He makes some black tea in his samovar. A narrow kitchenette separates the two rooms of the tubular apartment. On the shelf there are mussel shells from the Persian Gulf, a Rubik’s Cube, juggling balls, and a considerable collection of foreign coins: cents, lira, rupees, pesos. The front door has been screened with aluminum foil, the apartment has one window to the back that has been masked by cardboard, and a door to the inner courtyard is hidden behind a dark red drape.
“The police here are pretty unpleasant, though” says Christian. “I was sitting on a bench with an Iranian friend in Tehran when two officials came up to us and took some photos. They didn’t say a word; they probably just wanted to intimidate us.”
“Every day I expect to find the police at my door because of all my guests,” says Saeed. “I’m prepared for it. But until then I will have as many guests as I want—five to ten a month.”
He is not afraid when traveling inside Iran, even in the danger zones in the borderlands to Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Actually, I would like to be kidnapped; it would certainly be interesting,” he says.
“I wouldn’t agree with that about Colombia,” Christian maintains.
“I suppose that in Iran even the kidnappers are pretty tolerable hosts,” I suggest.
“You would probably have better chances than me to find that out,” adds Saeed. Do I sense a bit of envy in his voice? “Iranians are not so interesting. These criminals know that our government won’t cough up. Europeans are much more lucrative.”
Shiraz is one of the few cities in the world that you can recognize blindfolded because it smells of oranges. Not only in the gardens and parks, but even on roads with heavy traffic; it seems as if someone has tried to neutralize the exhaust fumes with a citrus spray. Even Iran’s national poet, Hafiz, found the place pleasant to the nose: