Nesfe Jahan, pt 75

Lake Ochrid, FYROM

Nesfe Jahan, pt 74

2 am on some expressway in Tehran. The streets are deserted, even though it’s the first evening of the weekend. Nothing new though. The social gathering happens, as unusual for a small percentage of the people behind a closed door. But not for me. Tonight, I’m leaving Tehran, Iran, and probably the life I’ve been living the last months. I said my goodbyes to the handful of people here that have become very close to me. No drama, no surprises. Perfunctory. The minute we met, we knew it was coming, and there’s always that vague promises that I will be back. It’s so big that it can only be unreal.

I’m flying today. My mind is on autopilot. I claim the right to be, because I paid for the privilege. I coast through Iranian customs, wake up a couple of thousand kilometres later in Rome. I meet a dear friend of mine, but I’m completely incapable to communicate any profound thoughts due to lack of sleep and context. We bum around for the afternoon. It’s kind of a culture shock for me. Everywhere there are historical places, I probably see more from my airport transfer than I’ve seen in the past six weeks. Nice shops. Really nice shops, expensive ones. Foreigners, from everywhere. Nice places to eat. Nice cars. Indifferent people.  It takes some getting used to. Not that I take that time, I just hang around and head back to the airfield, stuffed with the good stuff. I doze in the two hour queue for check in. And then I have my wake up call.

“I’m sorry sir, but your flight status is set to suspended. Please proceed to the ticketing counter”.  My mental machinery wakes up from standby during the ten second walk. Apparently, there is a problem with using someone else’s credit-card to pay for the flight. They need a fax, and there’s no budging. So I call my dear mother, who is luckily in the right place in the right time. But of course it’s not that easy. Their is broken, or they don’t know the actual number, but it just doesn’t matter. I’m calm, speak clearly and to the point, and I’m adamant. Whatever happens, I’m going to continue to get on this flight until it kills me. The woman at the counter is professional, but not unhelpful. The plane is already late one hour, and both her and me know that without that, it would already be too late. She gets nervous, she’s shaking her shoulders while she searches for alternatives. She walks swiftly between the fax and her terminal. Everything is devoid of emotion, until she looks at me, and tells me she’s going to arrange it. And to please not tell anyone, as it’s not really according to procedure, and not really beneficial to job security.

Faced with a bleary eyed dirtball in trying to get home for Christmas from Iran, people probably fall in two categories. The ones that don’t care, and would leave me stranded. And the others. I’m very lucky to be in front of the second group. I think the rest is cultural, if she was born in Iran she would have probably just bought a new ticket out of her own pocket. There are nice people everywhere, even in Italy, even working for airlines.

Security confiscates fifteen year old garlic. The plane is two hours late to depart. It’s half an hour late to arrive, it keeps circling around the airport. When we touch down, I know why. The whole airport is a snowy wasteland. Most signalisation is buried under half a meter of snow. It takes another half an hour for our plane to drive half a kilometre to the terminal. It takes another half an hour to find some stairs to takes us down. It takes half a second for me to realize it’s damn fucking cold when I get out of the plane. I hang around the baggage claim for a couple of minutes. Enough to see the crowds of previous flight looking miserable, sleeping. It’s a lost cause for mine anyway, considering how difficult it was to get the human luggage off, so I just split. No trains, no buses. But no way I’m going to sleep in an airport tonight. I call around, make sure I have some addresses to go to. I put on the raincoat I was lucky enough to pack in my hand luggage, expecting rain a couple of hours ago. I head to the road. The same on I’ve been on, even though I haven’t been expecting it here. Hitchhiking now is a bit weird. The idealist would expect everyone to stop in a situation like this, but hey, welcome back to Europe. The only ride I find is going to a place where I don’t know anyone, mainly because I hate the place. Yeah, Antwerp. I catch a cab, and it costs me about as much as a week travelling in Iran. But I don’t care. My whole brain is focused on one single thing. It’s going to end as soon as possible.

The taxi ride proves tricky too. I manage to steer the conversation to the weather for ten minutes. But fatigue, and rusty French make it turn into politics ten minutes into it. Which I wanted to avoid. I can barely muster the energy to hum approvingly, my attention to absorbed by the sight of the deserted highway. I ask to get dropped off at the edge of the city, as it’s probably faster to walk. And I get my reward for the day. The whole city is covered and empty, apart from a handful of pedestrians. Situations are what they are, everyone greets each other with the familiarity of shared experience. It’s all a little surreal, but I enjoy it to the fullest. It’s peanuts after two Berlin winters. I arrive home to my father, and it’s over.

I’m home now. My plans extend no further than the next bathroom break. Everything is too easy. Fast, uncensored internet.  Alcohol that’s not procured from the trunk of a car. Good food, and knowing I don’t have to leave within a couple of days.  Neither looking back nor forwards. If you’re anywhere within a hundred kilometres, give me a call. Time of arrival in Berlin is tentative.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 73

100 kilometers south of Shiraz, 25 degrees.

Me and my friend A travel to the nomads who ferry between Esfehan in here. There is no question about them hosting us for the night, and giving us food. Fresh from the goat’s teat. When I ask one man if he has some cigarettes, since mine are done, he disappears for an hour. When he’s back, he wordlessly hands me an expensive pack, still unopened. I realize he drove his motorcycle all the way to town, and that there is no way I can manage to make him accept money for this. I tell him he’s too nice. He looks me straight in the eye. “I would die for you”. And he ain’t kidding.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 72

Why I’m only paying what we agreed on? Well, first of all, you had to come from out of Shiraz, so it doesn’t matter where you picked me up from. Likewise, I know the place you’re going to drop me off is just as far as the bus station, and I’m sure you can find a fare here, as it’s the tourist center. I don’t agree with you that you had to wait a long time, I know you go to Persepolis all the time with tourists, and most of them stay longer than I did. And the worst part is, that you let your three year old son stand on the passenger seat in front, despite my repeated instructions to make him sit down and wear a seatbelt. That’s completely irresponsible and stupid shit, way beyond even Iranian standards. So that’s why I’m not giving you more money.

Contrary to common belief, taxi drivers are not human beings. They’re a special form of shark,s carefully evolved to look just like us. If you look closely, you will see that they lack any form of humanity.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 71

Esfehan, again. Not me, the story. I’m in Shiraz tomorrow.

A scramble to get to another mosque before sunset turns into another anthropology field day. The poor side of town. Busy, dusty streets. Five people to the motorcycle. Long shadows hiding the border between woman and road. The loud cackle of the live poultry market. Five tiny shops form the mirror district. I’m so out of place here, people finally start to harrass and make fun of me again. Even the woman are so surprised they talk to me in the street.

I arrive to the mosque. It’s only a kodak moment. And only that because of lucky timing. I rush it though, eager to get on this street again.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 70

If you’re wondering why there aren’t any pictures of Tehran, let me satisfy your curiosity.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 69

One more experience to add to the pile. I got sick here right after eating the infamous fesenjoon. With the hilarious consequence of having walnut pieces stuck in my orifices, and the less funny consequence of being stuck here for another couple of days. Nothing serious though. A lot of time spend looking at a pile of memories. Wondering what to do with enough pictures to wallpaper a decent size apartment. Enough words to make Joyce look up. It’s depressing, really. Maybe my brain is simply protesting, it prefers to be lean and mean. But there’s no stopping it. A bar playing blues, with a silver haired sexagenarian greeting every young female customer to a free introduction to intellectualism. It’s a famous place, by virtue of it being the only one. Fifty meters further, the twirling of batons by forgetful men. They left their uniform at home. The unintended comedy of google translated poetry. Somewhere down the line, baladam. Amo alon na.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 68

Late afternoon on a residential street in Eastern Tehran. A man tidies up the uncovered hair of his young daughter. A twinkling reflection on a motorcycle windshield, a businessman with a suitcase hitching a ride on back. An intense and confused look from inside a chador. The smell of roasted beet from a cart. Random conversations on the subway, every single time.

Autumn in Tehran. The gleaming rooftops at sundown. Sometimes, it lift you up when you are down. It turns the slums into mayfairs. You don’t need a castle in space.

A combination of sand and random punishment made my mp3 player function again. Mostly, Billie Holiday is piped into my consciousness. I’m slightly melancholic these weeks, something to due with a date to go home. 23d of December by the way. So much left to do. Courtesy visit to Kurdestan. The lure of Lurestan. A score of friends to say goodbye to, I have more here than in all the other places I traveled through. It makes me glad, just to be sad, thinking of Iran.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 67

“So, what do you think of Iran?”

I think it’s West of Afghanistan and East of Turkey.

Nesfe Jahan, pt 66

Tehran, still. I’m starting to love my hate for this place. My excuse this time is a duo of bike bums, friends of friends when I figured out they were close, but now friends. Crazy enough to bike Chalus-Tehran.

At a certain point, some weeks ago, I figured things were stable. That I’ve had all the types of experiences I could have had. Comfortable with road trips, new cities, inter-cultural communication and collisions. The fear of dying when crossing the road. But that was premature. Things continue to change, sometimes unrelentingly.

In Esfehan, I visited Lotfollah mosque six times. A beautiful structure, probably the most beautiful man-made things since I set out. I get waved in after the first time, no need for a ticket. The seventh time, it changed again, but that’s a story for another day.

PS I post little, but I write a lot. When I want to post things I wrote before, they seem irrelevant, out of the current perspective. So I prefer not to post those, as it would give a false idea about how things are nice. The gist of it, is that I’ve made more friends here in Tehran than the entire trip before that, and now I’m mostly spending time with them. But I will go on one more trip before I go back home, probably to the East, Kurdestan and Lorestan. I take a flight home the 23d.  I could go 250 euros cheaper by spending 5 days on a train, but being here longer is worth the money.