Foreigners! Picture!
For maybe the 10th time that day, we lined up for a selfie with some passers-by.
It seemed that as soon as the Nowruz holiday started, all the 80 million Iranians jumped into their cars and came to Shiraz. The whole city was packed like one huge Tehran subway.
It also seemed that besides visiting the Eram garden, the holy shrine and the hipster café in an old water tank, taking a selfie with foreigners was another thing on a must-do list. In any western country, we would probably just ignore people shouting at us because we would think it just is catcall or they want money. In Iran, though, we knew that they were curious and really just wanted that selfie.
Sometimes, we noticed a group of people whispering next to us. Then a person, usually a young girl, would approach us and very politely ask in English if she could talk to us. We would agree, she would start asking us questions and then her whole extended family, sometimes up to 15 persons, would surround us and make her interpret their questions too.
How to crash a traditional wedding
It was our second day in Shiraz and I felt like a tired soccer player or a pop star.
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| Hipster café in Shiraz |
We had been invited at home by the people who had given us a ride to Shiraz. We had seen most of the famous places where we had to pay 10 times more than Iranians because being a khareji actually is a bit of a double-edged sword. We had camped in a park and found a bag with money and phones, and had been hunting for an English-speaking Iranian to help us track the owner.
We had also visited the holy shrine and I had experienced what was it like to wear a chador. (If it weren't rude, I would say it sucks. I could focus on the shrine just a little because most of my mental capacity had been consumed by trying not to stumble over the chador and not to let it fall down along with my hijab. Eventually, I had tied the two corners of the chador together in a huge knot. It definitely was very un-islamic but I at least I finally had my hands free.)
We were going to see the last famous place, a castle. Then we wanted to hitchhike on, to Persepolis.
We saw some luxury rooms, took some selfies with tourists and then we sat in the garden to eat our snack.
"Hi, can I ask you where you are from?" I heard as soon as we finished the lunch.
Oh, another selfie, I thought.
"Hi. From Czechia. It's in Europe."
"I know where that is," a very young guy standing in front of us smiled. Then he shook hands with both of us. "Are you traveling around the world?"
I realized he probably knew more than three sentences in English. Maybe we even could have a real conversation...
"No, just Asia... Did you come here for Nowruz?"
"Yes. I'm actually hitchhiking to the Persian Gulf with my friends."
"I see... eh - WHAAAT??"
That's how we met our future fellow traveller. I will need to speak more about him here, so I will call him Atesh (it means fire).
He was our first Iranian hitchhiker (out of a dozen others we met later), so we couldn't let him go easily without asking him loads of questions. He was on his first hitchhiking trip with his brother and another friend. His brother was just making money for traveling by selling jewels made by their friend's sister. They too had the khareji power, probably because of their backpacks and of his brother's European face. People also wanted to take selfies with them, and once they had made a person think they were from Italy. We also learned Atesh knew several Czech novelists and historical figures.
As for hitchhiking, it is no longer true that it's not known in Iran. Now, there is something like a boom of hitchhiking. There are young people who are into traveling, who like the US novels about Beatniks from the 50s and who hitchhike in the very same way we do.
Then he invited us to a wedding of his friend's friend.
In Europe, you usually need to be invited by the newlyweds months in advance. Here it took one phone call three hours before the event.
So we ended up in a house full of nicely dressed people and six Polish physicians Atesh had also found on the street somewhere. (They were planning to go by bus to the Persian Gulf.)
It was decided that guys would stay whereas girls - that meant two Poles called Gosia and I - would go with the family to see the wedding ceremony. We squeezed in a car with Atesh's friend (we will need him further in this story so let his name be Azad - it means "freedom" and I like this name for him) and his sisters. There were seven of us in the car but nobody minded. We found ourselves in a house with more people in even nicer clothes. Then the bride and the groom arrived. We were allowed to look as they were signing their documents. Soon the ceremony was over and we returned to the first house.
And then the party started. It was the craziest party without alcohol and without guys I had ever experienced. All guys were celebrating upstairs and all girls downstairs. They came with perfect make-ups and high-heeled shoes. As soon as the door closed, they got rid of their hijabs, stockings and long-sleeved coats. Underneath, they had dresses I would be too shy to wear in Europe. For several hours, they were dancing to the loudest disco music I had heard since my high school. The Polish girls and I looked like visitors from a different galaxy (the Polish girls, though, at least had clean clothes with no holes). But everything was pardoned since we were khareji. Even here people wanted to take selfies with us and they were asking what we were. And the bride asked me to dance with her.
Our friend from Morocco
It was decided. Persepolis will wait. Let's join the Iranian guys for the Persian Gulf.
In the rainy morning after the party, we squeezed to a taxi with Atesh, his brother, Azad, the taxi driver and five backpacks in order to get to the hitchhiking spot.
We bought some cans and bread. Atesh's brother - let his name be Samir - wrote two nice hitchhiking signs saying "Bandar Abbas" for us. Thus we got our first Iranian hitchhiking sign. And we learned that the Iranian guys didn't mind using the thumb sign for hitchhiking.
We divided into two groups - Azad and Samir would be in one group, and the rest of us would go together. (We were 3 but we counted on the khareji power.)
"You go hitchhiking and I will wait with the backpacks," Atesh said, smiling. "People in here are nicer to foreigners than to other Iranians. I bet we will be faster like this."
It was the most comfortable hitchhiking ever because Atesh took care of all the taxis.
He was thinking on. "Maybe I should also speak English and tell I'm a foreigner..."
"Try it. I bet you won't pass for a Czech," I laughed. "You look totally Iranian."
A car stopped. This time it wasn't a taxi and it was going our way. Our friends were still waiting - Atesh had been right.
"I hope the driver won't be too good at English," Atesh grinned when we were putting our backpacks into the trunk.
He was wrong - the driver was very good at English. He asked us several questions about the trip and about us.
Atesh solved his problem by falling asleep immediately.
At noon, our driver invited us for a fried fish. This time, he was also asking Atesh questions - but our friend was playing his part well and was way less nervous than me.
In the car, we were then talking about where to extend our visa. The driver knew how to do it and even gave us a number of a person who could tell us all the requirements.
We got off in a city half way to Bandar Abbas. Atesh's cover remained uncompromised. I felt bad for having fooled a person who had helped us, though.
"But it was fun!" Atesh grinned again. "And it had done him no harm."
He was actually right.
"But we need a nationality for you. What about France?"
"Morocco is better! And I tell I have lived in the UK since childhood, and that's why I only know bonjour in French."
The next driver didn't speak English, so Atesh passed for a foreigner quite easily. He was a miraculous foreigner, though, who would always somehow understand what the driver was trying to tell us - and he would then answer him in English. (Telling isolated words in Farsi with bad accent was my and Vojta's job.) When we stopped near Bandar Abbas and the driver left the car, Atesh called his brother to agree where to meet. Suddenly the driver opened the door again. I was trying to warn Atesh, but there was no need. He fluently switched to English on the phone. He was playing his part with ease.
In Bandar Abbas, it was really hot. It was also raining heavily, which was rather unusual for this part of Iran. (Atesh was afraid that we would freeze and die, and I was happy that it was making the heat a bit more bearable.)
After a bit of theatre in which Atesh was making the driver talk with his brother on the phone, pretending Samir was his Iranian friend, we landed in the middle of Bandar Abbas. We got reunited with the other guys, went to the harbor and found out that boats to the islands had already left.
Here we realized a big advantage of traveling with Iranians - they had friends everywhere. So by some magic, Azad pulled out of his pocket some relatives living in Bandar Abbas, and they agreed to host all of us.
The Hobbit, cave trolls and Islamic rules
We were then walking several kilometers to the relatives' house in rain because we had got lost, and the guys were making fun of Samir. They were calling him Karl because he looked like a European, and he was worried whether it was a male name. We called him Marushka instead and he ended up being my Czech brother. After that, the guys started singing a song from the Hobbit movie and I joined them, and then we were calling Vojta a cave troll and making nerdy jokes about Tolkien's novels because we all actually were his fans. Then we were making fun of Azad's communist-style hat and were calling him a dictator.
I had never imagined before that I would joke with Iranians about the same nerdy things in the same way as with people I know at home. I felt like at an ordinary camping trip with my Czech friends and it suddenly seemed weird I was wearing a hijab. Sometimes I was forgetting I was in a country where I was supposed not to hang out with guys, do high fives with them and sing the Hobbit songs with them, and that I might even get my new friends into troubles by my mere presence if Vojta weren't there too. (Our friends seemed totally undisturbed by the fact that I happened to have the wrong gender, though.)
In the morning, we bought some supplies. (The guys told me to buy bread since at the bakery, there were separate lines for men and women, and the women's line was always shorter. Like that I discovered the second - and so far the last - advantage of being a woman in Iran.) Then we took a boat to the Qeshm island to reunite with the Polish doctors.
The air felt like in an oven and I rolled my sleeves up even though it was unislamic, and I was frying anyway. The Iranian guys still had two shirts. Atesh eventually agreed that it was a little bit warm and took off one of the two pairs of jeans he had been wearing at once.
The Polish friends invited us to a house they had rented. The weather was a bit too hot even for them, so most of the afternoon, we were sitting in the yard over non-alcoholic beers and chatting (the Iranians wouldn't mind alcoholic beer either but they didn't know where to buy it). The Polish girls weren't wearing their hijabs and the Iranians seemed totally undisturbed by that again, so I took mine off too. In the evening we went to the beach, we were baking potatoes in fire, smoking water pipe, making fun of Azad's hat again and I felt I was among good friends.
Unexpected lack of culture clashes
We spent a day with our new international group, and we made a trip back to the mainland to extend our visa. (The cops in the visa office were very much willing to give us the extension even though it was very clear we weren't staying in any hotels as we were supposed to. The only cop who spoke English mainly spoke about soccer with us. There were also many Afghan people waiting with us, and the cops weren't that much nice to them, though. So I realized that being a khareji in Iran was maybe only cool if one happened to be a khareji from the west.)
We also moved to a small, mostly uninhabited island nearby and camped on the beach, watched sharks from the cliff and walked 10 km in a horrible heat back to the harbour and were smoking water pipe again. (When we were camping, I noticed that our Iranian friends were not only NOT throwing garbage to the nature, but also collected some of the litter that had been there before.) Then the Polish people had to get ready for flying back home, and we were one last time camping with the Iranians. When we were walking through the city, people were asking us in English where we were from (Atesh sometimes answered them also in English that he was from Iran) and they wanted to take selfies with us.
When we had started hitchhiking with Atesh and his friends from Shiraz, I was curious about the cultural differences we would certainly come across.
Except that I realized I had failed to find any.
We didn't share only movies and songs to joke about, but it was also very easy to talk about art, religion, approaches to life, social traditions etc. I realized that we even shared most of our values (at least with Atesh whose English made it possible to talk about this kind of stuff).
We were also talking about freedom and cultural taboos. When Mirek, one of our Polish friends, asked Atesh whether he was not afraid to talk openly, he just shrugged his shoulders: "What can happen to me? They can't do anything worse than to kill me."
When I heard this young, smart, helpful person saying this, I suddenly felt as if I had a stone in my stomach. This was the second time in a couple of weeks already I almost had tears in my eyes.
The only cultural differences I eventually found were our notion of hot or cold weather, openness to strangers and the fact that straight Iranian guys usually hug each other way more than straight guys in Europe.
That was pretty much it.
Also the thing that I happened to be a girl made no difference at all. The guys weren't ignoring me and weren't too rude or too nice to me. They were just normal. (I had expected many things about Iran, but I was actually surprised to find guys behaving just normal in there.)
The next morning, we took a taxi to the harbor (which meant that all of us climbed into one car and made a huge heap of people and backpacks on the back seat again), and took a boat to get back to Bandar Abbas.
On the mainland, we said goodbye to each other and I realized I would miss these people horribly. We had known each other for a week and I felt as if we were leaving old friends.
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