You look like a fundamentalist

In the morning of our second day in Iran, we came across another challenge - to recognize what cars were actually cabs. Most of them are unmarked. There is no such rule as "don't try to hitchhike yellow cars with a big TAXI sign". It is more like "and old grey or white Peugeot or Saipa with just one guy inside is probably a taxi, but maybe not". (And it is further complicated by the fact that most cars in Iran in general are grey or white Peugeots or Saipas).　


If they knew they would kill me

Cars were stopping for us every two minutes - but most of them were cabs. Fortunately for us, the magical sign translated by Elham did the job to identify them. Unfortunately, it always took several minutes of confused stares and a lot of Farsi, and was preventing us from trying to hitch other cars.

Luckily, we rather quickly stopped somebody who was going up to Tabriz.

And he was speaking Farsi. I had already got used to understand every 10th or at least 20th word in Turkish, and not understanding at all was strangely annoying me. Vojta was better prepared. Before the trip, I had told him - as a joke at first - to learn Farsi because he would have to be the one to do the talking here. And he really did start learning. (It had surprised me quite a lot since on the last trip, he had just been nagging he was not talented enough for languages.)

So Vojta sometimes understood (or imagined) what the driver was saying, and answered something. More difficult part was to understand the driver's reply. When Vojta didn't know, I took out a phrasebook, also translated by Elham, and said something like "maezdjomhureeczechhastim" or "mamosaferhastim" and hoped it was what the driver wanted to know.



Mountains on the way to Tabriz

We landed around noon in the middle of Tabriz, still without any Iranian money. Our next big quest was to exchange some and to buy a data SIM card. It was not as easy as it might seem because I was totally illiterate and Vojta couldn't understand signs he managed to read because they were missing vowels. So we decided to just walk along the streets until we would bump into an exchange office.

Before that, we wanted to eat our bread in a park. We didn't have time to unpack food, though, because some workers invited us for tea. One of them spoke Turkish. I suddenly felt like at home again.

Other people kept showing up and saying hi. Eventually an elderly guy addressed us in a good English, shook hands with Vojta and apologized that he couldn't shake hands with me. We started talking about traveling and about Iran and he quite openly told us he was not happy with the current situation. He then offered us to show us around and to find all the things we needed with us.

I don't know what his plans originally had been but he didn't mind changing them for us even though we insisted we could find everything ourselves. And he didn't mind being very open even though he knew us just for half an hour.



First tea in Iran

We were staring at everything we saw since it was so new for us. When we were passing a mosque, Vojta asked if we were allowed to enter mosques in Iran.

"I don't know, I haven't been in a mosque for a long time," our new friend (let's call him Mohsen) answered.
"So you pray somewhere else?" I asked.
"I don't pray. I don't like all this. I'm an atheist."
"I see. Do you have any troubles because of that? I mean with cops and all..."
"They don't know. I just pretend I'm religious. Otherwise they would kill me."

Mohsen then helped us with all the things we needed, gave us some advice about hitchhiking (one of the most interesting things was to avoid old cars and just try hitching the new ones) and wished us good luck. We bought a Farsi-English dictionary (I feel like a Bedřich Hrozný every time I'm trying to read a word with it), 2 kilos of tangerines instead of 2 pieces (having money added another difficulty to our lives since figuring out the currency is an awful maths exercise) and walked out of the city to sleep in a park.


Hijab issues
In the morning, we continued hitchhiking to a city where our acquaintance was waiting for us (let's call him Amir). We were in the middle of the Tabriz bypass and it seemed to be the worst spot in the world. It was not because people would ignore us, though.

Cars kept stopping for us every minute, sometimes two or even more at once. Most of them were cabs or just were going back to Tabriz. It always took us ages to explain we really didn't want a taxi, we didn't want to go to the bus terminal, to the train station nor to a police station (no, really no, thank you very much). Vojta - who had to do most of the talking - began losing his temper. Sometimes neither the magical paper from Elham would help. (It said something like "we do not use buses, taxis or any paid transport" so I felt particularly hopeless when a person would finish reading and would immediately ask us "bus terminal"?) Also totally packed cars or motorbikes would stop to ask how we were, and a very insistent pedestrian was explaining to us for ten minutes that we really needed to go by bus.

When a driver finally agreed to take us out of the city, Vojta looked exhausted. We found out, though, that we had only been waiting for 40 minutes or so. Compared to European waiting times, it still was a paradise.

We quite easily made a distance we would normally dream about in Europe and we reached our friend's city one day earlier than expected. Our last truck driver even called Amir to agree where he should leave us. So we were waiting for Amir and I was pondering whether I could dare shaking hands with him. So far, shaking hands with the other sex had been something like a secret sign for telling apart religious people from the not-so-religious or more rebellious ones.

My thought were interrupted by Amir who jumped out of the car and gave us both a big hug. (So much for my handshaking question.) He drove us home and was making fun of us all the time in his perfect English. When we entered his place, he told me I could take off my scarf. ("We are not that much religious here.")

"Are you sure?" I asked with doubts. I was mentally prepared to wear the thing for the whole month.
"Absolutely. My mom doesn't wear one in here either."
I started unpinning my elaborate hijab made like the ones Turkish people wear.
"Why do you look so serious? You look like a fundamentalist!" Amir commented it.
"Because I have to".
"Oh my God, what's this?" he exclaimed when he noticed my "bone" cap under the scarf.
"I need it because otherwise the scarf would fall."
"So what."
"I would have to pay a fine and all."
"No, you wouldn't. You have it all wrong. I will teach you how to wear it."
He took my scarf, put it on my head without tying it whatsoever, and threw one end over my shoulder.
"That's it."
"What if it falls?"
"You just put it back on."

It seemed that most of my doubts were needless. So far, today's Iran seemed way different from the Iran we knew from novels set in the years just after the revolution.