IRAN ~ Opposite of Everything Expected (Aug 6 2012)

Phenomenal welcome.  Tragedy of Iran-Iraq War.  
New perspectives on anti-Americanism.  
Conversations with liberal mullahs.  Ramadan.

Seven insights from Iran: From the moment of boarding the Trans-Asia Express train (Ankara, Turkey to Tehran, Iran) to my last lingering days, for three weeks my eyes were as wide as a child’s.  Seven things made it an exceptional experience:

•  our phenomenal welcome by Iranian people;
•   the beginning ride in a train filled with dissidents; 
•   the curiosity and cultural respect of my fellow American travelers; 
•  a new experience viewing anti-Americanism;
•  a glimpse of the tragedy of the Iran-Iraq War; 
•   insights in mosques and in conversations with thoughtful mullahs;
•  and finally, getting to experience Ramadan in two countries.

"Gentleness” is the one word I wouldn’t have expected to summarize my impressions of Iran.  The friendliness and welcoming hospitality of 100% of people we met, from turbaned mullahs in the mosques and complete strangers on the street, was almost embarrassing, considering the hostility and vitriol of the current international media toward Iran.

Were the Iranian people unaware that a large number of people were advocating bombing them into the Stone Age?  Did their newspapers not report the increased heat of Iran-bashing? How could we meet 200 people without a single one asking, “What on earth is the US trying to accomplish with a 30-year sanction on our country?  How do you justify the current US policy toward Iran?”

 Photo from the window of the Trans-Asia Express train

Complete strangers, finding we were five Americans wandering their country, burst into smiles.  “Khosh Amadid!” (Welcome!)  Iran and America, friends.”  We felt like movie stars.  It is true that western tourists were few, and that we didn’t meet one single other American in Iran, but when one father, learning we were Americans, went back and then brought his small son to our group and said, “Son, I want you to meet an American,” we comprehended that 30 years of Iran-US isolation had marked an entire generation.  (An expert reminded me that Iranians are not naïve; they are extraordinarily polite and always sensitive to what the listener wants to hear.)

University women in Shiraz with Charlotte & me at ends. Photo: Will Helvestine

High school boys at mausoleum of 13th century poet Sa'adi could recite his poetry.

Madeline, in blue, jokes with schoolboys, all of whom were recent refugees from Iraq, Syria, & Afghanistan.  Photo:  Will Helvestine

Trans-Asia Express, filled with asylum seekers:  You’ve heard of the Orient Express.  Well, the romance and distance of it still exists with the Trans-Asia Express – three full days of train travel from Ankara (in middle Turkey) to Tehran (in northern Iran): two to cross Turkey and one to get to Iran’s capital city of 8.5 million.  The train windows had Turkey’s flag emblem etched onto them, so many of our photos across Turkey, trying to photograph the cliffs and immense desert, have this “watermark.”  At an eastern Turkish station Kayseri, the nearly-empty train was boarded by about 100 laughing people, who turned out to be Iranians of the Baha’i faith – a religion under acute persecution by the Iranian government.  Kayseri has a United Nations Human Rights office, where Baha’i Iranians can apply for asylum to another country.  While waiting, they are somewhat free to go back and forth to Iran, so this inexpensive train ride is a connector between oppression and hope.

So that was the first unexpected thing - entering Iran with a train full of people forced to be dissidents.  Baha’i youth, for example are not allowed to enter Iran’s universities, and adults  have severely limited employment opportunities.  Sprinkled among the Baha’i travelers were a few Europeans (including a man in his 80’s preparing to bike solo across Iran), and a group of Iranian filmmakers, designers, and long-haired travelers enroute back from Georgia.  The dining car was the social space, and with enough boredom, passengers eventually met over beers or raki (in Turkey) or cups of sugary tea (once we crossed into Iran).  Criticism of the current government of Iran was freely expressed, though speakers often looked over their shoulders first, because they didn’t know which train employees might report to security officers.

Hauled off the train for questioning at the border:  At the Iranian border near Tabriz, the train stopped for a good hour.  In our four-person couchette, I was wakened from a deep sleep by the porter (we’d been up half the night, crossing vast Lake Van by ferry, train cars and passengers alike, then changing to a more austere Iranian train.  All women, including me, had quickly donned head scarves and long dresses to enter Iran).  The porter took the passports from me and fellow-traveler Bill, and, gesturing at the two Dutch passengers sharing our couchette, said unsympathetically in English, “Say goodbye to your friends.”

Shah Cheragh Mosque in Yazd at night

So on that early summer morning, we were de-boarded and marched the full length of the train into a nondescript station, to meet a border security officer for questioning.  Neither of us felt too worried, but as we stood outside the office, we could hear and see heated words exchanged between our inquisitor-to-be and Samira, the film maker.  Later she told us he was asking, “Why are you traveling with a man to whom you are not married?  What did you do in Georgia?  Why are you wearing those strange clothes?” (She had on colorful pants from India) 

As much as I’m known to have a smart alek mouth in these situations, I did not think it the greatest response when the security official finally turned to Bill and I, looked at our passports and said “So you are from America?” to which Bill quipped “Guilty!”  “I just wanted to see if he had a sense of humor,” he defended himself to me later.

I didn’t get a chance to say anything, smart – alek or otherwise, because as in all other situations in Iran, questions about me were always directed to the nearest male. 

In the end, the bureaucrat seemed a friendly-enough chap, just taking the chance to practice his English.

Still, after hearing Samira’s ordeal, we did truly comprehend that the train had “ears” and understood we had now arrived in Iran, with its official representative government that operates side-by-side with a religiously-dominated shadow government, each with its own policies, officials, and security.

Shahzadeh Garden near Kerman

Five plucky Americans & Glenn

The other Americans on the tour – an unusual bunch:  What kind of Americans, in this day and age, would choose a tour to Iran?  If I’d thought about it, I might have guessed a well-educated, well-traveled, curious bunch of iconoclasts – and that we were.  Fellow-train traveler Bill was a Unitarian and Peace Corps Volunteer from 1968 Kenya; carpet-collector Craig’s frequent flyer miles for corporate work had taken him around the world a couple times over, including a lengthy romance with his Mongolian desert guide that would in itself make a book.  Bill and I had both recently lost a brother, so we were touched daily by the laughter and genuine camaraderie of California brother-sister pair Will and Charlotte, both in their 20’s, already well travelled and politically insightful.  The only non-American was computer specialist Glenn, born in Burma, who in his early 20’s had taken a United Nations Volunteer job and from it sought asylum in an Australian Embassy in Papua New Guinea.  I.e., not just any 6 tourists!

We also lucked out on a fabulous guide, wiry Ariya, in his 50’s, who loved Iran’s ancient history and especially his home town of Shiraz with a passion, and who was able to connect and explain Iran’s 10,000 years of ancient castles, mosques, holy shrines, fortresses, gardens, abandoned desert towns, tombs, and madrassahs (religios schools).

A nation of veiled women - It took me 3 days before I could stop taking photos of women in scarves.  I’ve studied women’s fashions in all six of these Muslim countries where I’ve traveled, but this was the first one where 100% of the women were fully covered – I was not to show my shoulders or arms, ankles, toes, or back or front of my neck.  Charlotte and I found it challenging the first several days, then she seemed to get the hang of it and I found ways to cheat (I was a tourist and temperatures were in the 90’s)  – a slit in my skirt here, a shorter neck scarf there.  There were virtually no women in the Saudi Wahid fashion, with face fully covered, and when we did see a couple, we figured they were probably tourists too.

Women in scarves cluster at bazaar spice stall in Shiraz

Woman sewing gold embroidery tablecloth in Shiraz has typical head covering

Charlotte clowns in front of shop selling scarves for women, one to hide your hair and one to cover your head.  
Photo: Will Helvestine 

80% of the women:  A friend told me that 80% of women would throw off their veils if they could.  We also heard that that 80% of the people did not support the government and that 80% of the population supported the Green Party (defeated in 2008, with opposition leaders still languishing in jails).  People seemed especially in disagreement toward the aggressive anti-US, anti-Israeli rhetoric their President seems compelled to incite when he goes abroad.  Whenever a statistic was cited, it seemed to be 80%.  Maybe that’s why we were so well received – Iranians distinguished between a “government” and its people, so perhaps they assumed 80% of Americans disagreed with American foreign policy regarding Iran.  (We did not want to tell them 80% of Americans cannot even  locate Iran on a world map.)

When I went to the Khomeini International Airport in Tehran on my last day and boarded a plane to Turkey, all women wore scarves.  On the plane and in the customs line at the Turkish arrival gate, however, there was only ONE SINGLE WOMAN out of hundreds who retained her scarf.  Mine was stuffed in my handbag and I guess 100 other women’s (99%) were too!

Ancient deserts, modern cities:  Most of our tour was in the south of Iran:  beautiful Shiraz and Esfahan, Kerman, historic Persepolis, the desert city of Yazd, and the conservatively religious city of Qom.  The towns were centers of hundreds of years of Silk Road trade, and had been ravaged by such notables as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane or various Shahs and Sultans.  I loved clambering around ruins of the old citadel near Rayan, and a Zoroastrian desert town (Aşrabod) blown almost into dust, but inhabited as recently as 10 years ago by Zoroastrians.  The mud brick walls reminded me of Southwest USA adobe huts.  The desert winds sang their own symphonies and I yearned to return again to hike Iran’s canyons and mountains and sleep beneath the stars.

The veiled woman amidst the mosque columns in Shiraz is actually me.

Ancient shahs were buried in vast tombs in isolated desert mountains.

Iran’s cities were modern and bustling.  Tehran’s traffic was a terror.  Bill, sitting beside me during our first days in Tehran, kept gasping aloud to the driver, “Oh, my God!  Look out!  Near miss!” while  I simply assumed my well-practiced passenger survival posture, closed my eyes and breathed slowly.

 Until 60 years ago, Zoroastrians buried their dead openly, atop Towers of Silence.

Even in the modern cities, there were still streets with covered bazaars and open vegetable markets.  Along with the calls to prayer, these will surely be what I’ll miss most about Central Asian countries.  Vendors beckon you to buy tomatoes, fish, fresh cherries.  Jeans sellers beg, “Just look, lady.  No buy.”  And children sit on steps, selling packs of tissue.  There were not many beggars.  (I wondered why I had seen almost no beggars in Turkmenistan.  Maybe there they were rounded up, like the drug addicts, and thrown into jails.)

Iranians were picnickers.  When the evening sun began to set and the desert winds ceased to blow, whole families would come out to a park or grassy castle courtyard, bringing blankets and pots of savory smelling spinach and eggplant casseroles.

Anti-American demonstration:  Two of our group, Will and Craig, chanced upon an anti-American demonstration when a mosque let out for Friday prayers.  Apparently neighboring villagers had been bused in for the demonstration, but when Craig asked them what they were demonstrating about, they had little idea.  They raised their fists and shouted in Farsi, “Down with the USA!” but their shouts were mild and without rancor, and their attitude toward Will and Craig was typically friendly and curious.  The coordinator of the march explained to Will later that US President Obama had had a telephone conversation with the Dahli Lama and agreed to murder Muslims in Burma.  “Huh?” Will and Craig asked.  As we had an actual Burmese-Australian traveling in our tour, we pursued this topic on the Internet but it took some days before it some coverage in the international press.  Keeping the USA as a "whipping boy" and linking it to anti-Muslim sentiment around the world seemed one interpretation of the demonstration.  

Incorporating the Muslims leaving the mosque swelled the demonstration to 1,000, as anyone leaving had to follow the path of the demonstration to get out of the square.  The demonstration dispersed quickly and got bare mention on the night’s television news, though coverage since then reveals the seriousness of the attacks against Muslims in Myanmar.

Iranians love poetry.  In contrast, crowds thronged voluntarily to the tombs of 12^th century poets Hafez and his teacher Khajoo, to reverently touch and sit beside their gravestones, or picnic on the grounds.  High school boys, when asked by our guide, could recite stanzas of ancient poetry.  I tried to imagine American school boys having a great time at the grave of Walt Whitman and reciting his poetry, but the image refused to come.

Music:  Because our guide Ariya liked Iranian classical music, our mini-bus was filled for hours at a time with the music of Ali Sharjinian, beloved by Iranian people, currently living in the Los Angeles area (with a “nudge” by the current government to leave Iran).  So many Iranians live in Los Angeles it’s apparently nicknamed “Tehrangelos”. 

We pose, thumbs up, beneath a Down with USA poster,
objecting to Muslim deaths in Myanmar.

Anti-American demonstration in Shiraz focused on deaths of Muslims in Mynmar

Anti-US stamps printed in 1980's following US downing of commercial Iranian air liner.  No longer in print, we found them in an antique store.

Iran-Iraq War:  Over 8 years in the 1980’s, Iranians and Iraqi’s managed to kill 500,000 each of one another’s young men, after Iraq made a land grab for Iranian oil fields along their common border. The US supported Iraq.  Today all Iranian towns honor their “martyr”s with bill boards, cemeteries, annual remembrances, and museums.  We spent a sad and reflective hour in one in Kerman, called the Museum of the Holy Defense.    With oil paintings

letters from the front, poison gas canisters thrown by Iraqis, documents demonstrating US and multi-country support of Iraq, and touching and horrific photos, it brought the war vividly to life.  Iranians had few nice words for Iraqis, despite the large number of their Shi’a Muslim brethren there, and said how glad they were to see Saddam Hussein put down. I shuddered to hear these things, thinking how easily Iran could find itself in the same predicament.

Disappointing natural areas:  A country the size of all the US western states combined, Iran has amazing natural diversity.  Besides the vast, mountain deserts of the south, there are, in the humid north near the Caspian sea, verdant mountains, hiking trails, wetlands and the world’s largest lagoon, old villages clinging in the mist to the sides of mountains, amazing dams, some still under construction..  All in all though, national parks were under-funded, under-staffed, and under-developed.  I appreciated the USA’s great system of county, state, and national parks, the effort we’ve made to keep natural areas and roadside areas clean and our progress in getting Americans to re-cycle trash. 

Highlights – mosques and mullahs:   My best experience was entering the Shah Cheragh Mosque in Shiraz, answering the evening call to prayer.  Charlotte and I went to the women’s entrance, throwing a cotton chador over our heads and shoulders, then joined the crowds of people in an immense courtyard.  Our guide said there might be a few extremists in the crowd, so we’d better call ourselves “Canadians” if anyone asked.  But no one seemed to notice American “heathens” in their midst.  Charlotte and I wandered through the women’s prayer rooms, where women were not just praying on prayer rugs, but also chatting with one another, reading the Koran in pairs, or just sitting at peace.  In the court yard, small children ran about with ice cream cones or balloons.  Men and women sat on different parts of red carpets spread out atop the marble floors, chatting and watching the play of lights in the fountains.  It was one of the most peaceful experiences I’ve ever had in a large crowd -- anything from the austere images I’ve seen of what happens inside mosques.

A black-turbaned mullah at the Khan Madrassah was willing to pose with our guys
but not Charlotte and I.

A mullah who is also a university professor talked with us for an hour in Qom

Less formal than mosques, women & men (in separate rooms) rest, chat, pray, talk on cell phones, even nap awhile.

We had experiences in other cities, including Qom (an Iranian called it a “mullah factory”, given its conservatism and large number of seminaries) of meeting and talking with mullahs, most of them open, candid, liberal, curious, and welcoming.

Ramadan:  End to three months of travel

We experienced the first week of Ramazan in Iran, then I saw it closer during my last week in Turkey.  I am not sure how many people actually do multiple days of fasting:  more in Iran (40%?), fewer in Istanbul (20%?)  During the day there is a subdued feeling.  Many shops and most restaurants are closed or close early;  people who are not fasting try to respect those who are by not drinking or eating in public.  One sees many men napping in the shade of parks.  As tourists in Iran, we ate breakfast and lunch in our hotel, out of sight of passers-by.  But once the sun went down, the energy level escalated dramatically.  Long lines appeared at the haira shops, a green vegetarian soup used to break the fast, and restaurants were re-opened till well past midnight, offering elaborate, multi-course If tar Ramadan specials.

Back in Istanbul, over 2,000 Ramadan If tar picnickers gathered nightly in front of the Blue Mosque.  A couple other tourists and I grabbed a bag of potato chips, juice, and bananas at a mini-market and went to join the crowd.  But there was nowhere to sit. As far as the eye could see, blankets were spread and families were laughing and feasting in the soft light of the mosque, the fountains casting their mist.  “Can we sit here?”  I pantomimed to a family who seemed to have one of their blankets unoccupied.”  “Yes!  Yes!” they beckoned. Soon the women, all in scarves for this Ramadan occasion, were passing us grapes and watermelon and plates piled with chicken kebabs and ghormeh sabzi spinach stew.  After about 10 minutes, we were taking photos of one another, as if we were long lost cousins, and the women all kissed us on both cheeks, in parting.  For 2,000 Americans to have a good time, you have to build a multi-million dollar stadium.  Turks and Iranians just need a blanket and a watermelon.

 “Every woman says she will lose weight by fasting,” a friend laughed, “but everyone gains weight during Ramadan.” 

Ramadan evening in Istanbul, breaking the day’s fast with 2,000 families, Hagia Sophia in background.  This was my last evening of three eye-opening months of travel in the Muslim world.

The problems with this kind of travel:  I am filled with images of beautiful, gentle, historic Iran – whose people distance themselves from their government, and yet are careful not to criticize too openly.  Just as I felt about Iraq before we started the (illegal and unnecessary) war there, I feel Iranians are the best people to solve their own political problems.  Against these lovely and poignant new images of Iran, I now have to struggle with the wild and vicious rhetoric and “facts” that paint it as another place – a country to be mistrusted, feared, and hated.

One of the problems with expanding one’s horizons is trying to figure out what to do with the resulting contradictions, hypocrisies, and lies one hears, and the need to speak out and take action, as a global citizen and world traveler.  I will add Iran to my list (along with valiant, impoverished Lesotho in Africa and Central Asia’s emerging “stans”) of places to care deeply about and try to get others to see with more humanity and interest.  

Sent as Public Letter 11 in August 2012 to family and friends.