He used to have a lucrative job selling VPN Internet access for a dollar per month—passwords enabling uncensored use of the Internet: Facebook, CNN, Twitter, the New York Times, YouPorn, everything. He rapidly had a couple hundred customers, but then AT&T, the U.S. Internet service provider, blocked the service to Iran, and Saeed couldn’t continue.
On top of a small outcrop just below the peak, Saeed spreads his arms and leans back against the now-fierce wind. He tips back his head, closes his eyes, and keeps the pose for a good minute. “Nowhere do I feel as free as in nature,” he says.
The ribbons of houses in Shiraz loom beige-colored in the sunlight. “All hail, Shiraz, hail! oh site without peer! May God be the Watchman before thy gate, That the feet of Misfortune enter not here!”[1] hoped Hafiz, who very probably wrote those lines while on a mountain tour.
“I know a German word,” says Saeed suddenly.
“Really? Which one?”
“Spach.”
“Spach? What’s that, then?”
“No idea. Doesn’t it exist?
“No.”
“Oh.”
Sometimes all that is needed is a small trigger for what had been serious conversations to descend into utter silliness. Laila and I spend the next half an hour making nonsense sentences with our new favorite word. The definition remains a mystery.
“I’m feeling a bit spach today.”
“You’re looking spach, darling.”
“Let’s speed up. We have to reach the spach, and it’s pretty late.”
Instead of a cross on the summit, there is a hundred-foot-high tower, with a steel stairway and a dome that looks like a giant white soccer ball. It is the core of a weather station that is still at the construction stage. Saeed, with his cheerful disposition, befriends a goatherd and the security guard who is there to ensure that no one is spying or taking photos. “If I didn’t have to go to lectures tomorrow, I’d spend a couple days up here, riding donkeys and tending the goats,” says Saeed with a glint in his eyes.
“That’d be spach,” I add.
From: Yasmin Tehran
Hello dear, can you be in Ahvaz on Monday? I found a host there for us. See you soon!
“Have you been to Ahvaz?” I ask Saeed on the way back.
“No.”
“It’s not supposed to be too exciting. Ugly, hot, poor air quality.”
“Did you read that in Lonely Planet?”
“Yes, it said, ‘vast, featureless industrial city.’”
“There are no bad places if the reason you are traveling is to meet people,” says Saeed.
• Choose a lively spot.
• Open up your guidebook.
• Look recognizably lost.
• Wait until someone talks to you (usually takes a maximum of sixty seconds).
THE RED PERSIAN CARPET
ON MY TRAVELS I was always asking myself how I could repay the Iranians for all the incredible hospitality. On a purely material level I gave them some marzipan (or for devout Muslims some nonalcoholic shirini from the candy store), invitations to pay at restaurants (which were sometimes so vehemently rejected that I had no chance), or a couple of cab rides. But all of these seem a bit too meager compared to the experiences that the locals shared with me. They sacrificed time and money, and they even risked problems with the authorities to make my stay as pleasant as possible.
The principle of hospitality is as old as humankind, and in most religions it is considered a virtue. In daily life in Western industrial countries, however, it plays an increasingly minor role. Maybe because religion is losing its importance or because people have become cooler in their social interactions, but probably just because there are fewer opportunities. Mary and Joseph just don’t appear at the door asking for a mattress for the night. Also, there is so much infrastructure available for travelers that they no longer need private accommodation.
On the Internet, often criticized as a promoter of social decline, of all places, the ancient idea is celebrating a renaissance. Fourteen million couchsurfers, hundreds of thousands of members of Hospitality Club, BeWelcome, GlobalFreeloaders, and Warm Showers, open their doors to strangers. Some use the portals just as guests, others as hosts. What do the latter get out of it? Often new friendships, exciting stories from travelers, gratitude. But is “What do they get out of it?” even the right question?
In Iran there is another reason for rolling out the red Persian carpet. The people here are hungry for news from other countries, want to know what life is like there. And for some a guest is still an event, a spectacle, because direct contact with people of the same age from Europe, America, or Australia for today’s thirty-year-olds is not something that can be taken for granted. “You all look a little bit like people from Hollywood films,” an Iranian teenager told me.
In many conversations I felt that I inspired people with my experiences from free countries. Some of them felt motivated to fight for a better future, not to be so apathetic or resigned when dealing with things that they disagree with. If you have comparisons, you can develop aspirations. I’m curious about the effect that growing tourism will have on Iran as ever-increasing numbers of people come here and talk of freedom.
I also felt how much good it does to each individual to hear that Iranians are wonderful. Persians are very proud of their country but also know that their country receives bad press throughout the world. Every visitor who shows that he understands the difference between people and governments does something for the self-confidence of a much-reviled population.
This is also the reason that I have an explicit answer to the question of whether you should visit a country where you are at odds with the political leadership. There are no bad places if the reason you are traveling is to meet people.
BUSHEHR
Population: 171,000
Province: Bushehr
NUCLEAR POWER
THE FISHING PORT of Bandar Gaah could be idyllic, a favorite of tourists; it’s all there. Two swimming beaches on the Persian Gulf, a couple hundred gleaming white houses, a horse ranch, an old-fashioned pier with creaky wooden boats.
“Those two are mine,” says Ahmad, pointing to two sixty-five-foot-long dhows with blue cabins and an Iranian flag fluttering in the east wind. A crew of eight to ten, with two skippers. If the weather is good, they will set off tomorrow for a week. “They usually land about four or five tons of fish, even sharks and tunas,” adds the forty-year-old businessman, a muscular guy with a precise part in his hair and a colorful shirt.
Nearby motors rattle. Dark-skinned sailors are redocking two boats. Screws rotate in the water, with black smoke gushing from the funnels. An older man tries to give me a small silver fish that he just caught in the harbor with a nylon line. Reluctantly, he realizes that I really don’t have any use at the moment for the creature thrashing about in its death throes on the asphalt.
Ahmad steers his Peugeot from the pier back to the village. Past the “Ashura Square,” where, during the month of mourning, Muharram, devout Muslims flagellate in public. Past an enclosed playground with brightly colored plastic swings and slides, far and wide not a child in sight. Past some typically Iranian murals on concrete walls of mountains, valleys, and small sailing boats.
1
1.Hafiz.