Saturday, October 2, 2010

Blog 3 - Tabriz, Zanjan, Tehran and Esfahan (Iran)

Blog 3 –Tabriz, Zanjan, Tehran, Esfahan (Iran)

Greetings to you all! Despite my excuses that there would be no internet access whilst in Iran and I would therefore be unable to blog, I was wrong. Although there has been no mobile phone coverage of any description, we’ve been fortunate to have a WiFi connection in most hotels which has been an unexpected luxury. It is interesting however that all of the social networking internet sites are banned such as Facebook and Twitter (not that I ever Twit or Twat or Tweet).

Lots of the group have struggled since we entered Iran several days ago. In fact, I feel that the majority of the group has struggled in various ways which is quite disappointing considering Iran was to be the highlight of the trip for many of those Oz Bus travellers. Crossing over the border from Turkey into Iran was both intimidating and nerve-wracking. Now it didn’t help that all the females of the group were trussed up like turkeys in 35 degree weather - wearing constrictive headscarves which had to hide all signs of us having hair, a forehead or ears as well as wearing baggy clothing that had to conceal all evidence of bodily contours.

As I suspected, the short sleeves on my tunic DID cause a problem and on the morning of our ‘crossing over the border’, I was taken aside by the group leader Lana. I heard my name being called out and I walked over to her in my best ‘baboon walk’ with arms almost trailing off the ground to try to make the sleeves longer but my secret had been discovered …. and the game was up. Within minutes of the observation / discussion, a long sleeved dark grey t-shirt was produced out of Isabelle’s rucksack and I was told that I should wear it inside my tunic to hide my long-armed disability and more specifically, my forearms (as opposed to my four arms which I may as well have had such was the panic it had caused). So for seven days in 37 degree heat, I wore the long sleeved t-shirt inside my tunic and it almost had to be cut off my back on the day we flew to India.

We all had to wear the headscarves for the whole duration but there’s no doubt that I struggled with it more than others. In fact, one of the girls told me that it was like as if ‘my body had resisted and rejected the scarf’ right from the start. I swear to God that I’d have a beautifully wrapped head leaving the room in the morning and walk downstairs to breakfast. By the time I’d enter the dining room, I’d be walking into pillars and posts and walking INTO or OVER the buffet table. My beautiful lime green scarf would have fallen down over my eyes, nose and mouth and my tresses would be flowing in the wind behind me. I’d have to hurriedly and apologetically ‘fix myself’ without the luxury of a mirror and very often I’d find myself eating my breakfast as well as eating a good proportion of my scarf. Sometimes I’d be fortunate enough to find a ‘slit’ in the material around the mouth area and spoon my cornflakes in through that but most times I wasn’t so lucky and as the week progressed, with every meal that I’d consume, the scarf was accumulating more and more varieties of greens and gravies.

I swear to you that over the full week, I tried every concoction of a knot known to man but it invariably ended up like a Bedouin scarf, draped completely over my face. In fact, eventually the penny dropped and I finally realized the reason why I was the group eejit for the whole week. My fellow passengers were simply able to wear their scarves with poise and elegance because THEY WERE WEARING PROPER SCARVES. I discovered that what I was wearing was a FECKIN’ SARI which should have been around my waist and not my head. That’s what I get for not reading the small print when one receives a gift on the eve of departure to foreign lands. Sure when I inspected its fine silky material closely, it was glaringly obvious that no knot in the world could make it defy gravity and stay upright on a person’s head. It also hadn’t dawned on me that it was three metres long and three metres wide and that the average head did not require such a multitude of material. No wonder I almost smothered to death in Iran, I was a walking time bomb.
But the only upside of it all is that when we landed in Amritsar in India, there was great joy in ridding ourselves of the tunics and headscarves …….. but my scarf/sari was safely packed away for our four days in Koh Samui in November. Meanwhile, the tunic with the cut-off sleeves got pride of place in the ‘Fairy’ position and was gladly horsed onto the top of the bonfire.

I’ll divulge to you now that it wasn’t just the clothes that caused me problems. Prior to leaving Turkey, the group leader Lana, had gone through the drill with us several times stressing how busy it was going to be at the Turkish / Iranian border and the importance of the group sticking together and not allowing ourselves to be separated. She told us that after our several hours waiting to be processed, when the man who has all our passports says ‘Follow Me’, we’re to drop everything and RUN after him as he is our only chance of getting our passports stamped and getting into Iran. A life in the 50 metre buffer zone between Turkey and Iran just didn’t seem too attractive a proposition! Anyway, tensions were genuinely running high in the queuing area and we discovered very quickly that the Iranians are not backward in coming forward i.e. they’ve obviously never read the small print in ‘how queues work’.

There were 28 pale and frightened Oz Bussers standing in a long line of what must have been about one hundred and fifty loud and unruly Iranian nationals all going through the border security. We discovered that we had to press ourselves up against the person in front of us as the Iranians were trying to muscle into the queue and avoid going back to the end. After about thirty minutes, I was still holding my own, in 25th position, my nose jammed against the back of Vicki’s neck, when all of a sudden, this Iranian woman came at me from my blind side (which in truth could have been from any side as my headscarf was more effective than any horse blinker used in the Aintree Grand National). Anyway, having shouldered me across and over the crash barrier, she side-stepped in where my two feet should be …. and she was in! The group was separated and it had happened on my watch. Twenty four pairs of eyes glared back at me in disgust and three pairs of eyes bore into the back of my head. I held my breath and prayed that I wouldn’t hear the words ‘Follow Me’ being roared by the passport man with his megaphone. I tried to calm myself down by saying ‘its okay, it’s only one person between me and the rest of the group, what harm is that?’. Little did I realize that Fatemeh had other ideas and was planning her strategy with military-like precision! Either that or she must be the most polite and well-mannered woman ever born in Iran (well apart from almost dislocating my shoulder) for Fatemah absolutely INSISTED on allowing every brother, sister, mother, father, granny and granddad join the queue in front of her. She was smiling and grinning like an influential Cheshire cat as she beckoned long lost relations to make their way up and to maneuver themselves in front of her. Meanwhile my blood pressure was rising with every headscarf that came between me and my Oz Bus group that just couldn’t be separated. Eventually Vicki and the rest of the group were just a distance fleck in the horizon and there was such a gap between us that the remaining four members of the Oz Bus 20 group almost became Oz Bus 21. Since then I’ve not been allowed to stand in any position of authority and I’m chaperoned in case the Iranians boss me around. I’ve been told that my problem is that ‘I smile too much at them’ and I’m seen as the easy pushover. The only thing about that is I genuinely can’t imagine that any of them have seen my smile because I for one haven’t seen any of my own scarf-clad teeth in over a week. Unless of course my sari is see-through …..hmmm, I might have to re-consider its resurrection in Koh Samui!

Since we left Istanbul, there has been a considerable decrease in the standard of hygiene as well as in the standard of food available. Although aware that this was an inevitable occurrence, when confronted with it, it is still difficult to become accustomed to it.
A few days ago we traveled 450kms from Tehran to Esfahan and I fell asleep on the bus at some stage of the afternoon. I was awakened to the sound of the tour guide announcing that they were stopping for a quick toilet break. I opened one eye and observed a WC sign on a dilapidated-looking concrete shed located at the side of the motorway and decided that although I had four litres of water and two cans of fake Cola Lite inside of me, I could wait. Five minutes later, the females climbed back onto the bus, squealing and gagging and proclaiming that ‘it was the worst ever’ and that ‘there had to be something dead in there’. They had also observed a basket of money and an empty chair at the entrance to the toilets and concluded that the woman ‘manning’ the toilets had probably died in one of the cubicles. In fact she had probably died last April and such was the smell, had still not been discovered. Was I glad that I had stayed where I was? You bet!

But you know, in saying that, when I think back to the first time we stopped at a service station that didn’t have ‘proper’ toilets, I remember standing outside in the queue and listening to the piercing squeals of horror and disgust from seventeen women. Since then, we’ve become masters of the squat toilets now but god knows, it has taken a lot of failed attempts to perfect the art. I’ve discovered that prior to entering every flooded cubicle, you have to roll up your trouser legs (whilst not exposing too much of ones ankles), and then you have to do the sailors knot on your scarf in case any part of it trails down and lands into the Black Hole of Calcutta. Even if this means that you have to tie it so tight that your eyes bulge and you’re on the verge of unconsciousness, it has to be done as one has to leave the cubicle with that scarf on your head, even if there’s bits hanging off it. You then have to do a series of preliminary yoga moves and stretches so that when you eventually get yourself into squatting position, you yourself don’t fall into the Black Hole of Calcutta …. and that you’re able to make your way back up into an upright position. Then, you inhale deeply and as you make your descent, you ensure your mouth is firmly closed so that you don’t ingest the swarms of flies. Once in the required position, you must perform whilst balancing your toilet paper between your teeth and simultaneously holding the swinging door shut with a your index finger and you must pray to Allah that you’re not hit with a bout of stage fright. I’ve discovered that seventeen civilized and cultured women become seventeen braying donkeys when standing at a cubicle door of someone who has exceeded their two and a half minute time allocation. When you eventually emerge from the cubicle, in your 90% asphyxiated state, you have to break the 100 metre record to make it to the doorway for fresh air whilst simultaneously rolling down your trouser legs and covering those nasty and offensive ankles.

I know from reading this blog you have learnt SO MUCH about Iran – the customs, the culture, the religions, the Persian society etc. I bet you also never thought that a blog could contain so much information on ones toilet habits? For what it’s worth, nor did I – it’s amazing what happens when the keyboard takes on a life of its own.

To conclude on my Iranian experience, I found it to be quite an unusual place but culturally it was absolutely amazing. It's a country that I would definitely return to and if anything, it has heightened my interest in returning to the Middle East and seeing more of the countries in that region. The scenery, the customs, the culture and the wonderful people will always provide me great memories. Although so many Iranian people we met were friendly and interested in us, a couple of the group also experienced Iranians who politely (or not so politely) suggested to them that British and American troops shouldn’t have entered Iraq. Whenever anyone asked me where I was from, I made sure that I emphasized the IRE in Ireland ….and in case there was any misunderstanding, sang them a verse of ‘The Fields of Athenry’, played them a tune on my Harp, pulled out a pint of Guinness from under my scarf / sari, knit them a bawneen sweater on the spot and gave them a bunch of shamrocks wrapped up in a ‘Céad Míle Fáilte’ sticky label. It seemed to work …. War, what War???

Anyway, we have just made our way to India via airplane from Tehran so that‘s going to be our next installment (you’re in this to-gether with me, I’m not taking all the blame). Please keep in touch – it’s lovely to log on after a long day on the bus and see emails from you all (well, I’d imagine it is!). That’s a little dig …… a definite case of the pen being mightier than the sword!
Love to you all and chat soon. Debbie x

4 comments:

  1. fantastic blogging, Debbie. Had me in stitches. I remember those squatting days..the smell and the flies..oh the memories.

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  2. BTW, Lilly's scarf is definitely a sarong for the beach on Koh Samui!

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  3. Hi Debbie from all of us in Cloughjordan. When you said where you were going, I meant to text back and find out if you'd be blogging, but I forgot. So I was just chancing my arm when I googled you this morning. And there you and your blog were, on the first page of results! It sounds like you're having a really interesting time, if occasionally uncomfortable... I look forward to hearing how you get on.
    Annemarie

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