It is unlikely that Tehran will ever be added to Milan, Paris, London, and New York as a fashion capital of the world.
I got my first encounter with Iranian party wear when getting ready to go to tonight’s illegal “knees up.” I had been planning to go in fairly casual clothing, until, that is, Pedram, who was wearing a full suit with frilly shirt and tie, saw my outfit. He looked at me as if I was in dire need of a fashion transplant and politely suggested that I borrow some of his clothing. This proved impossible since he was shorter than me, so he quickly called Ali, who was suitably proportioned, and arranged for him to have an outfit waiting for me at his house.
On arrival there, I was presented with skintight black trousers that flared at the ankles, a frilly patterned blue shirt, and worst of all, a pair of very cheesy leather shoes with big long pointed ends. Not just slightly pointed, I stress, but reaching out past the functional part of the shoe by at least a third of the total length. Anywhere else in the world I’d look like a complete knob, but for Iran I was styling it!
I was all excited and slightly nervous at the thought of going to an illegal party that could get busted, and I wondered what the hell it was going to be like. We parked and rang the bell. The door was opened by the first hijab-free girl I had seen in Iran—this was promising. What I saw next wasn’t what I expected, and by the look on Pedram’s face, it wasn’t what he expected either.
Sitting on chairs placed neatly against the walls of the apartment were similarly dressed, subdued-looking guests delicately selecting and eating pieces of fruit from plates on their laps. It was about as wild and exciting as a vicar’s parish tea party for members of the local choral society—and that’s at a push. Pedram and I were handed a plate of fruit, a glass of lemonade, and were shown to our specified seats, which had our names written on them on little labels—rock and roll!
I found it all quite funny, but poor Pedram looked mortified and like me had obviously been expecting something a bit more on the lively side. Even the party girl’s family was here, including, by the looks of it, Gramps. The only hint of illicit behavior was that none of the girls wore their hijabs and a couple of them were dressed rather on the risky side, at least for Iran. Two had low cut tops, and one even sported a tattoo of a tiger on her ample left breast.
Very nice.
The party began proper when a guy with similar pointed shoes to mine put some Iranian pop music on the stereo. Everybody got up in unison and danced to this in the center of the room in the most bizarre manner I’ve ever seen. It looked like the sort of dancing fake Kazakhstani reporter Borat would do, and many of the guests had mustaches that he’d have been proud of as well. When the track was over, everybody sat down and politely applauded. This was repeated several times.
When everybody had indulged in several slices of melon and glasses of lemonade and was feeling really crazy, they all got up and did a joint conga-type dance around the room. This went on for ages, and it’s got to be said, it was bloody boring and the initial novelty and amusement wore off pretty quick. Pedram and I sat these dances out, and just when I was thinking how much I wanted a drink, my prayers were answered and Pedram whispered that one of the guys had some whisky in the kitchen and asked if I’d like some.
Damn right I did.
We both took our leave from the “dance floor” and went into the kitchen. We were joined by the whisky owner, who was more than happy to share his stash. He poured us a couple of stiff shots from a can. It was lucky we got a few drinks down as when we returned to the wild debauchery of the sitting room, Pedram and I were cajoled into getting up and shaking our asses on the dance floor, whilst everybody else watched.
Apart from Pedram, there was only one other person at the “party” who spoke English, but Pedram was determined to get me to speak a bit of Farsi. He persuaded me to go up to the girl with the tattoo and her friend, and say in Farsi, “Shoma khoshgelly ,” which I learnt afterward means, “You are beautiful.”
To tell two strangers at a party back home that they’re beautiful would of course be considered lame to say the least, but here in Iran it was the height of sophistication. They loved it and both insisted on a dance with me—together! And who was I to disappoint such lovely ladies? I was expecting a rather conservative boogie but was pleasantly surprised to find myself sandwiched between them in a delightfully pleasing bump and grind. Everybody else formed a circle around us clapping. It was alas the only highlight in an otherwise very subdued and boring party, which seemed to go on and on forever. The irony is that this inoffensive gathering was still illegal, and on the way back to Pedram’s place, he asked me not to mention it to his parents.
The next day was my last with Pedram and the boys, so it was decided we’d all go outside of the city to Fasham for a barbecue. We all went Dutch and each chipped in for the necessary foods, which included a load of diced chicken, tomatoes, olives, naan bread, colas, and much more. On the way there, both cars drove in a manner I was now getting used to, which was far too fast and bloody dangerous.
On our way there, Pedram told me that slightly farther along the road was a ski resort called Shemshak, where he skied regularly during the winter. Although most people outside of Iran are unaware of it, Iran has twenty ski resorts decked out with modern infrastructure, some of which rival the best the West has to offer, and all of which cost a fraction of the price you’d pay to ski in Europe or the U.S. If you doubt this, then check out the excellent YouTube short film “Skiing in Iran” about an English-speaking Malaysian family who visited the slopes.
It took us maybe an hour of speeding until we got well out of the city and reached a little dirt track next to a dried up stony riverbed. We arrived in the early afternoon, parked up, and got out on foot, carrying all the gear with us. We hiked along the riverbed, which was surrounded by lush green trees and would have been a stunning area except for all the piles of trash. It looked as if the culprits had come out here especially to have a meal in a natural environment but couldn’t be bothered to try to keep it that way afterward.
We found a nice little grassy section on the banks of the river, shaded by several small trees. Here we stopped and rolled out a large carpet to sit on. Being a keen camper and survival enthusiast, I located the perfect place for our cooking fire, which was nearby, and, crucially, on a mound of bare earth. This not only makes it easier to clean up afterward but, more importantly, prevents the fire from spreading or setting the ground alight, which can sometimes flare up weeks later. Everybody rejected my location, and I was encouraged just to sit back, relax, and have a drink, whilst Ali, the firemaster, did the hard work. I thought “what the hell” and let them get on with it.
They selected a place in the riverbed and surrounded it with river rocks to place the skewers on top of and cook the meat. I tried explaining that they didn’t want to use river rocks, as they can explode when heated because of the moisture in them, but my warning fell on deaf ears. They laid out the fire in the most haphazard way imaginable and failed repeatedly to get it going, even with loads of paper and cigarette lighters. I decided not to get involved, but this was easier said than done, as on a couple of occasions I’ve taught classes on survival skills, which have included how to light a fire by friction and, believe it or not, how to get a fire going from a can of Coke and a bar of chocolate.
“Say what?” I hear you cry from your comfy armchair. For those of you now scratching your head, I’ll elaborate. You take a cold can of Coke and carefully pour its contents into a glass containing ice and a thick slice of lemon. Be extra careful not to lose any cola from bubbles fizzing up past the rim of the glass. Now, take a long, well-earned drink. Mmmm. That was refreshing wasn’t it?
Okay now for the fire bit. On the bottom of a Coke can, or indeed the bottom of any drink can, is a small concaved area of exposed aluminum with a slightly rough matte finish. What you need to do is turn this rough area into a polished reflector so as to harness and magnify the sun’s rays onto whatever surface you wish to light (best not to try this on a four-foot-thick log, so I suggest a small highly combustible material like char cloth).
This is where the chocolate comes in. Since it is slightly abrasive, you can use the chocolate as a polish to buff up the rough concaved surface to the point where it has a mirror finish and you can see your face in it, which if you’ve bought this book is no doubt a highly attractive face—and even more so if you recommend it to a friend or give it five stars on Amazon.com. It’s important to note here that you should never eat the chocolate after you’ve used it, for it will contain tiny fragments of aluminum from the can, which can make you very ill.
This polishing will probably take the best part of thirty minutes to complete. All you need now is some sunshine, and you’ll be as happy as a dog with two dicks.
When you can get a fire going this way or from rubbing two sticks together, it makes using a lighter or matches child’s play—not that you’d want to give a child a lighter or matches to play with, but I digress.
After watching the Tehran lads try unsuccessfully to light their fire for the best part of ten minutes, I could stand no more and forcibly took control of the situation. I should have started from scratch and relaid the whole fire, but I didn’t want to get filthy taking off all the charcoal they’d already placed on top. Instead, I stuffed loads of the paper into all the available spaces and built a small teepee of pencil thickness twigs around it. It got going first time.
Everybody congratulated me as if I’d performed some incredible feat, and I was now assigned the task of manning the fire and getting it good and hot. Whilst I took charge of this, Pedram told me he was going off to buy some alcohol nearby. I wondered where on earth he could get it out here in the countryside, as surely it was the sort of thing you needed contacts to acquire. I didn’t ask questions though, and fifteen minutes later, when the barbecue was in full swing, he returned with a couple of bottles of vodka. We all sat around and got stuck into succulent chicken and tomato kebabs served in soft folded naan bread. It was wonderful food, and although I couldn’t communicate much with the guys, it was still great to be sharing their company and this meal together.
When we finished the first round of kebabs, Pedram poured out a round of huge shots of vodka into little plastic cups, which he then mixed with cherry juice. Three of the guys abstained, and after smelling it, I could well understand why. Its aroma was totally overpowering and sent an involuntary shiver up my spine. I wondered what the quality of the stuff was like, but didn’t have long to ponder this, as on the count of three, we knocked it back.
As soon as I swallowed, I was grabbing my throat and gasping for breath. I’d never tasted anything so strong. It was horrendously powerful and as harsh as hell on the gullet. I wasn’t the only one making wincing expressions, and Behzad in particular looked in a bad way. I turned to Pedram and asked in a croaking voice where on earth he’d got the vodka. He answered simply that he had bought it at a shop.
This was weird. I asked how it could possibly be the case, as surely vodka was highly illegal. “No,” he said, and continued, struggling a bit with the translation, “you can buy for medical purpose to put on… how you say, cuts.”
Fuck me! I was drinking a first aid kit! My eyes nearly popped out when I now looked at the bottle for the first time and saw that it was not vodka, but said on the label in big capital letters ETHANOL. It was a staggering 96 percent alcohol. I was speechless and couldn’t believe I’d just drunk surgical spirit. I explained to Pedram that only an alcoholic living on the street would consider drinking such stuff back home. He thought this was very funny, as did the other guys whom he translated for, and explained that it was a normal beverage in Tehran.
I was roped into having a further three shots, and by the time I’d finished these, I was feeling suitably drunk. After loads more food to soak the booze up, Ali and I staggered back to his nearby car for a much-needed lie down. The rest of the lads remained behind crashing out on the carpet. They all returned just as it was getting dark, carrying the carpet, the mats, the skewers, and a few other bits and pieces but none of the plastic bottles, plastic trays, cups, or anything else disposable we’d used.
I might have been drunk, but the day I leave a load of trash knowingly out in nature is the day I die. I’m of the opinion that you should not only leave an area as you find it but try to leave it better, so this went completely against my principles. I asked Pedram where all the trash was and he said not to worry as they’d left it in “the place where you leave rubbish.”
“Like hell you have,” I thought, and told them I’d go and fetch it. They all tried to persuade me not to bother. I was determined to get it, but also wanted them to help me out, after all it was all our stuff so we should all go and get it. I tried to explain this but I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I decided to try a different approach and lied by saying, “It is a sin for a Christian to leave trash. It is a very bad sin for me to do this.” Surprisingly, or perhaps not, they all respected this and agreed to help me out now. We went back to the “place where you leave rubbish,” which turned out to be in the middle of the dried up riverbed. Interestingly all of the rubbish was bagged up, so they’d gone to the effort of doing this, but for some reason hadn’t brought it back to the car.
Not only did we clear our stuff up, but Ali even picked up a couple of bottles from nearby that weren’t ours. We dumped it all in the trunk of the car, and I felt much better. Before we left, it was decided there was time to finish off the ethanol with a further two rounds, this time served with lemonade. From now on, things all got a bit hazy, and I have no idea how Pedram or Ali managed to drive after so much raw booze. But drive they did, or at least they sped and raced each other like a couple of maniacs with a death wish. They zigzagged in and out of traffic on the darkened motorway and seemed to get more and more fired up as the music pumped away at a deafening volume. This time it was dance music, including t.A.T.u.’s “All the Things She Said” in Russian—class!
In my intoxicated state, I simply didn’t care about the driving and was singing away in the back to the music like a total idiot. Things got really crazy when at high speed both cars pulled up alongside each other on the crowded highway so we could all give high fives to the other car’s occupants. It was total madness, and had I been sober it would have been a completely different story but after several surgical spirit spritzers, I was loving it.
When we sped past an army barracks, everyone, including myself, yelled drunken abuse at it out of the window. And the lads had good reason to do so as they’d all soon become much better acquainted with the army when they finished their studies and started compulsory military service. The irony is that if Iran is ever invaded then Pedram, Ali, Behzad, and my other friends will all be called up to defend their country, and if they die they’ll be written off in the West as expendable “legitimate military targets,” not civilian deaths. With the way Iran is constantly demonized in the media, I fear this may become the case. For just like the American and British lies over Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, much the same is now happening to Iran over its alleged “nuclear ambitions,” despite the fact that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have found zero evidence that Iran is trying to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has every right to enrich uranium for peaceful civilian purposes, and according to the IAEA, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has ever deviated from this. The organization’s head, Dr. ElBaradei, has reiterated this fact repeatedly and stated that his inspectors have for the most part been allowed to “go anywhere and see anything.” Pakistan, India, and Israel all developed their nuclear arsenals clandestinely and refuse to sign the NPT, but since their governments are buddies with the U.S. and Britain, no one makes much of a fuss. Such double standards are not lost on the Iranian people.
What the U.S. and Israel craftily demand of Iran is to somehow prove it is not in any way violating nuclear agreements, which is of course impossible. And since you can’t prove a negative, the IAEA inspectors are obviously incapable of giving a 100 percent assurance that somehow, somewhere in Iran there isn’t the faintest possibility that a nuclear weapons program exists. But this is no more evidence for one existing than to say that because I can’t categorically prove Bertrand Russell’s famous ironic suggestion that there is a celestial teapot orbiting the earth to be false, then, in fact, there must be one up there doing just that.
Even the CIA itself has admitted that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, by noting that Iran is ten years away from developing nuclear weapons. The importance of this timeframe cannot be overstated, for it means Iran has no such program whatsoever, or, as former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter put it in a recent speech, “Ten years, ladies and gentleman, in this modern day and age, means Iran is not doing anything! Any nation in the world today is ten years away from developing nuclear weapons!” In 2007, much the same was concluded when America’s collective intelligence agencies produced an authoritative National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the current state of Iran’s “nuclear intentions and capabilities.” This report rubbished claims that Iran is trying to obtain a nuclear weapon and concluded with “high confidence” that as of 2003 Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program and had not restarted it.
Another oft repeated distortion used to demonize Iran is that the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has stated that he wants to “wipe Israel off the map.” My personal opinion of President Ahmadinejad is that he’s an odious little twat, but when translated correctly, his alleged remark, which took place during a controversial speech in 2005, actually says something very different. According to American professor of modern Middle Eastern history, Juan Cole, as well as other Farsi language analysts, the correct literal translation of the remark is, “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time.” No reference to “Israel” or to a “map.” And a regime is very different to the landmass of a country and its people.
In Farsi, the remark is “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shaved,” which I put here not for the benefit of those who can understand it, but due to the significance of the fourth word in, “rezhim-e.” This is the “regime” bit, which is pretty much pronounced the same way as the English version but with a bit of a throaty “eh” at its end. Ahmadinejad had actually been quoting from a speech given by the late Ayatollah Khomeini back in the early 1980s, so the words attributed to him are not even his original prose. Khomeini’s earlier remarks had expressed a hope that one day the Israeli regime mistreating the Palestinians would be replaced with a fairer, more equitable one.
Also generally unknown is that Ahmadinejad compared the downfall of the regime occupying Jerusalem to the demise of the Shah in Iran. Jonathon Steele makes the following observation in an article for one of Britain’s leading newspapers, the Guardian:
The fact that he compared his desired option—the elimination of “the regime occupying Jerusalem”—with the fall of the Shah’s regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970s, he surely did not favour Iran’s removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out.
When Pedram, the lads, and I arrived back in Tehran there was a street carnival of some sort kicking off in the north of the city. After weaving our way through the hectic traffic and animated revelers, we headed over to Pedram’s place. This would be the last time I’d get to see them, because I was leaving for Esfahan first thing in the morning. We all embraced and shook hands vigorously as we wished each other well. I was gonna miss these crazy bastards.
Once inside, Pedram and I had the unfortunate prospect of trying to act completely sober in front of his parents and not just in passing, but over a meal that they had prepared for me. The fact that Iranians eat their evening meals very late was our saving grace, as we managed to get a full two hours sleep before dinnertime. The snooze did the trick, and we both managed to hold it together, although it wasn’t easy.
At the meal were both his parents, his sister, and his brother-in-law, who had come over especially to eat with me. His mother put on a wonderful spread, which was a mixture of traditional Iranian foods, like kebabs and crispy rice cake fritters, along with more Western culinary delights, like fried chicken. After being asked what I thought of Bush and Blair, I asked my hosts the same question, to which Pedram’s brother-in-law came up with a novel reason, and possibly the only reason, to like the prime minister. “I like Mr. Tony Blair,” he said. “He wear nice suits.” When I asked them what they thought of their government, they were restrained and seemed reluctant to answer.
After dinner, Pedram presented me with an English translation of the poems of Hafez. “In Iran, there is a saying that every house should have two books, first the Koran and second Hafez.” And from my experience, I might add a third—an English-to-Persian translation of the lyrics of German rock gods, Modern Talking.
Since I would be visiting Shiraz soon, which is home to Hafez’s tomb, Pedram asked me to visit it and read some of the book there. I thanked him for the gift and his parents for the meal and their hospitality. Before going to bed, Pedram and I sat up with his father and drank several cups of sweet tea together as a sort of goodbye gesture. As a result, I awoke in the middle of the night in dire need of the bathroom.
Before getting out of bed, I recalled something Ricardo had told me about the reaction of a middle-aged Iranian man to his Turkish travel book. The man had casually thumbed through its pages until he came across a picture of a man in swim trunks on the beach. On seeing this, he looked embarrassed and gave the book back in a hasty way, as if handling illicit contraband. With this in mind, I considered putting my pants on in case I bumped into Pedram’s parents in the hallway and they were similarly appalled by my unshapely hairy legs and knobbly knees. But as it was about three in the morning, I just couldn’t be bothered; surely they were both tucked up in bed and away with the fairies.
I quietly got up and started the long dark walk to the bathroom, wearing nothing but my “smalls.” I stalked across the creaking floorboards as if on some covert Special Forces op, trying to detect the slightest sound or stirring coming from Pedram’s parents’ room. All was clear on the western front. I reached the toilet door with a sigh of relief, and slowly began to open it whilst continuing my reconnaissance behind me, looking back in the direction of their room. I got the fright of my life when I now turned around and looked into the bathroom itself, where to my horror was Pedram’s father, not a foot away, with his pants around his ankles taking a dump on the squat toilet. I quickly slammed the door with an, “Oh my goodness, I’m awfully sorry!” and made a tactical retreat back to Pedram’s room.
Thank God it hadn’t been his mother was all I could think. I lay in the darkness straining to hear his father return to his room. I heard him leave the bathroom and breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived; just to make matters even more embarrassing, he came into Pedram’s room and started to apologize repeatedly for not locking the door. I didn’t want to have a drawn-out discussion on this one, so apologized back in the hope he’d leave it at that and we could just forget all about it. It took a while, but eventually, after several more cringeworthy apologies, he left. I waited for a tense ten minutes or more before I tried to go back to the bathroom again.
I was far more agitated this time, and on reaching the toilet door, I cupped my ear against it to check it was vacant. After a fraught moment, I made the decision it was clear and quickly slipped inside. After taking a leak, I got myself ready for the journey back again but as I opened the door to leave, I had the fright of my life as there in the hallway in a tablecloth-like veil was Pedram’s mother. I quickly shut the door again, my veins now awash with adrenaline.
I prayed fervently that this conservative Muslim woman hadn’t seen me in my underwear. This was total madness, and I couldn’t get my head around what the hell they were both doing up wandering around the house at this hour. I didn’t dare exit for another fifteen minutes. In the end, I took a deep breath, turned off the bathroom light, then quickly opened the door and sprinted for Pedram’s room. Next time, I decided I’d sure as hell be wearing my pants, a shirt, and if need be a tie as well.