The small antiquated television in the corner of the room displayed rather a strange spectacle. Here were loads of Iranians walking up a hill, and that, believe it or not, was the be all and end all of the program. This seemingly innocuous event got top billing and was jazzed up with funky music and dramatic zooming in and out with the camera. It went on for a good fifteen minutes, and for all I know much longer, as we had to leave before it finished.
On our way to pay the owner of our accommodation, we saw Leyla and her mother again, who were staying in another home stay a few doors down. We decided to have breakfast together at a café nearby. Over boiled eggs and bread served with real honeycomb and thick cream, I showed them the funny posters I’d bought in Tabriz, which, due to my not being able to find a post office, I was still carrying around. They thought they were hilarious, especially the ones of the wrestler, whom they now told me about.
His name was Gholamreza Takhti, and he was an extremely popular national hero who’d had a rags-to-riches life. He was raised in abject poverty but had succeeded in becoming the first Iranian wrestler to win a medal at an international tournament. He went on to become an Olympic champion, and began to attain a legendary status. He was seen by many Iranians as a sort of larger-than-life champion of good, a person Persians refer to affectionately as a pahlavan. Although there is no direct English equivalent, a pahlavan can roughly be described as an ethical, chivalrous, and heroic warrior fighting for good. Many Persian folklore stories tell of legendary pahlavans who stood up to unfair rulers to defend righteousness despite the dangers to themselves. And this is what Takhti did.
He was a staunch supporter of the popular democratic Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who was ousted by a CIA and MI6 sponsored coup in 1953, which led to the Shah’s twenty-six years of despotic reign. Because of this support for the former Prime Minister and Takhti’s huge popularity, the Shah’s secret police sought to diminish his status and began to watch his every move. Although he was well past his prime, the secret police purportedly arranged for him to compete in the 1964 Olympics and the 1966 World Championships in the hope that if he lost, the Iranian people’s affection for him would wane. He was unsuccessful in these competitions, but the secret police’s plan failed, and his popularity remained as high as ever. He died mysteriously a couple of years later, and although the official cause of death was recorded as suicide, the generally held opinion was that the secret police had assassinated him.
I felt a bit guilty at having found a poster of such a national hero so funny, but they agreed it was a naff picture and laughed at it also. Leyla’s mother warned me that I might have trouble sending the Khomeini poster through the mail, as it might be deemed disrespectful, and so to be careful doing this. When it was time to get the bill, Ricardo and I asked Leyla’s mother politely if we could pay and said it would make us very happy. She agreed.
We were all heading back to Rasht today, so Leyla and her mother asked if we’d like to share a private taxi with them. We parted company when Leyla and her mother got out at the main bus station to catch a coach back to Tehran. Leyla’s mother kindly insisted on paying, not only for the fare from Masuleh but for the taxi to take Ricardo and me on to the local minibus station so we could catch a bus to our next stop, the coastal town of Ramsar.
On the way there, the driver put some thumping Western dance music on, and when he saw that Ricardo and I both approved he cranked it up and beat his fist enthusiastically into the air. We both laughed and then joined him as if at some crazy rave party. It was great fun.
We caught a minibus down the coast to Ramsar, which had been described in our identical guidebooks as one of Iran’s most attractive seaside resorts with some of the best scenery anywhere along the Caspian coast.
It certainly didn’t look it from the place the minibus dropped us, which was a crowded intersection called Imam Khomeini Square, on a busy street called Imam Khomeini Boulevard.
By way of a caveat, our Lonely Planets added,
It has to be said, though, that unrestrained development has started to spoil some of the erstwhile wonderful views. People here are very friendly and like to see foreigners, perhaps because they bring back memories of the boom years before the Islamic Revolution when women strolled around town in bikinis and blackjack was the game of choice in the casinos.
The thought of women in Iran wearing bikinis was something I found very hard to picture.
Our first priority was finding a place to stay where we could dump our backpacks, and pretty soon a local approached us with an offer of a home stay. Apparently, he had a place a few minutes away and offered to take one of us on the back of his little motorbike to check it out. Ricardo wasn’t too keen on this, so it was decided I’d jump on, while Ricardo remained with the backpacks.
I clung on for dear life as we sped along, swerving in and out of cars to get there. It was in a nicer part of town near a big hotel, which apparently used to be Ramsar’s main casino in the days before the revolution.
The apartment was a nice enough place, but he wanted far too much for it at IR300,000, about thirty bucks. I tried to negotiate but he could smell those tourist dollars and was reluctant to drop the price. We’d traveled a good couple of miles on his bike to get here, and as I didn’t want to forfeit my ride back, I said I’d have to discuss it with Ricardo. The return journey was terrible, and I swear we nearly got hit twice. I got off the bike on shaky legs and gave Ricardo the news. We both agreed to look elsewhere. On seeing the deal slipping away from him, the owner miraculously dropped his price to IR70,000. Not only that, but he said he’d throw in a taxi ride, which he’d pay for, so both of us could get there. This was more like it, so we agreed and shook on the deal.
He hailed a taxi for us, which followed closely behind his bike. This time he led us along a different route and we turned onto a dead-end street in a different, shadier part of town. I turned to Ricardo and told him we weren’t going the right way. He looked at me concerned and said, “This isn’t good!” And it wasn’t. We followed along behind the guy’s bike twisting this way and that until we arrived at a dilapidated, half-built house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It looked very ghetto.
He tried to make out like it was all an honest mistake, but his English was too good for that excuse. I wasn’t happy at getting scammed—and after looking at the interior of the place was even less so. It was filthy, even for someone used to sleeping on the side of the road, and contained just one horribly stained double bed. As much as I liked Ricardo, I wasn’t snuggling up in the same bed with him. I let the guy on the bike know I was pissed off and told him that he’d wasted his time and ours, and that we weren’t interested.
The taxi driver now demanded an extortionate payment, but the guy on the bike refused to pay anything despite his promise to the contrary. A bit of a stand off ensued. It would have been one thing if the taxi driver was just asking us for a normal fare, but it was clearly bumped up several hundred percent since we were foreigners. And what’s more, biker boy had given us his word that he’d be paying for the taxi anyway, so we were being ripped off on both fronts.
Ricardo played the part of Switzerland and remained neutral. It all got a bit on the heated side, but I wasn’t particularly bothered and was willing to stand my ground. Ricardo didn’t share my enthusiasm for this approach and was clearly uncomfortable.
“Let’s just tell them both to get lost and walk out of here,” I said to Ricardo. He didn’t like this option.
“Let’s just pay them, Jamie,” he said more intelligently. “Look at the area; it’s not good.” After a moment’s further reflection, I conceded. It wasn’t worth getting into any trouble over, which was of course the last thing we wanted in Iran. I thrust a note into the driver’s hand and we started walking. Halfway back to the main road, the guy on the bike sped past and deliberately swerved toward us, scowling.
“What a prick,” I thought.
So much for the guidebook’s assertion that people in Ramsar are very friendly and like to see foreigners. Like to fleece foreigners more like it.
We walked to a hotel along the main road and got a wonderful, spotlessly clean and reasonably priced modern room with two single beds, a fridge, TV, and two chairs still covered in their factory plastic wrappings—something surprisingly common in Iran. The bathroom was a proper “wet room” with a high-powered shower and that rare luxury in this part of the world, a sit down toilet. We were both delighted. We threw our packs on the floor and flicked on the TV for the hell of it. On screen were more clips from the Iran-Iraq War just in case anybody was trying to forget about it.
We turned it off and went out. The beach and the Caspian Sea were calling our names, so we headed in their general direction. What we thought would be a quick five-minute stroll turned out to be a walk of a couple of miles and not a very scenic one at that. As we finally got closer to the Caspian, we passed row upon row of huge, opulent-looking houses, their gardens completely overgrown, and their outside walls made of nasty cement block. There was just no synergy to these homes; they looked expensive but at the same time cheap and unattractive.
When we got to the water, it was late afternoon. Although technically a lake, the Caspian looked for all the world like a sea, with fishermen lined along the front and boats going by just off shore. It would have been a nice spot, but it was covered with trash, both on the gravelly shore and in the water. We were both very disappointed. A nice-looking restaurant jutted out into the water like a tiny pier, which we thought a suitable enough place to grab a drink. Both of us ordered chay, but I was brought a large iced coffee instead.
We sat on the balcony looking out to sea as trash floated gracefully past. We both wished we hadn’t wasted a whole day in coming here. As we sat chatting, I noticed a guy and a girl in their late teens discreetly stroking each other’s thighs beneath their table. I couldn’t help but look and wondered how difficult it must be to be a young person with such ridiculous restrictions on dating. My mind wandered and I probably stared too long, because the girl saw me looking their way. She stopped stroking her boyfriend’s thigh immediately and looked very uncomfortable.
Ricardo started to read up on the Caspian in his guidebook and gave me the lowdown on the place. Apparently, the Caspian was the biggest lake in the world, covering over 140,000 square miles (larger than Germany) and measuring 752 miles from north to south and between 130 miles and 271 miles from east to west. It was five times larger than the next biggest lake, Lake Superior, and contained 44 percent of all the water in the world’s lakes. Its water was salty, although only about a third as salty as the sea, and it had no outlet into the ocean. Five countries bordered the Caspian: Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
The Caspian was in very poor health ecologically, although we didn’t need to read about that—all we had to do was just look at the crap floating past. It was under threat from shipping, the development of ports, industrial chemical waste, oil and gas exploration, broken oil and gas pipelines, and severe overfishing, particularly of its once huge caviar stocks. And perhaps most interesting of all, the oil and gas in the Caspian Basin is estimated to be worth an incredible 11 to 12 trillion dollars.
Cruising past us now was a fair-sized yacht whose occupants gave us a friendly wave. We returned the gesture and in doing so I remembered, and recalled for Ricardo, a time back in London when I’d been the one waving from a yacht but in a slightly different manner.
My brother Matt and I, along with my friend Mark and his friend Gary, had been sharing a well-earned post-work drink in a pub on London’s River Thames, overlooking the permanently moored Second World War battleship HMS Belfast. Unusually, moored next to this was the biggest, most opulent yacht I’ve ever seen in my life. On the rear of this floating billionaire’s palace was a small private party going on where glamorous-looking individuals sipped champagne whilst looking at the views of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, and occasionally across toward us plebeians, enviously drinking our pints at the pub opposite.
After several bladders full of liquid courage, I suggested that we try to crash the party. Mark was up for the challenge. We were still wearing suits from work, so looked relatively smart despite being only nineteen and twenty at the time.
Leading to the yacht was a long gangplank where several of the boat’s impeccably dressed staff were standing to meet and greet guests. “Let’s just walk up and straight past them as if we own the thing,” I said to Mark. He agreed.
We decided to button up our suit jackets as if this somehow made us look smarter and more successful, then strode confidently up the gangplank. Mark gave a little approving nod of the head to the guy who looked in charge, as if to say, “Well done, my man. Keep up the good work.”
I was sure we were about to get rumbled, but the staff member gave a gracious nod in response. Before we knew it, we were on the yacht proper. We couldn’t believe it, and by the looks on the faces of Matt and Gary, who were staring openmouthed from the pub, neither could they.
We headed to the party. Once we were mingling with the great and the good, it was easy to gain further access to the yacht’s interior. Inside was the height of opulence with ridiculously thick carpets, lavish furnishings, and private bars in all the rooms. On one floor, there was even a framed photo of the Queen with, presumably, the owner of the yacht. It was unlike any official photo I’d ever seen of the Queen, in that she wasn’t just smiling but laughing like you would in a shot of you and your mates at the pub. She obviously knew the boat’s owner pretty well.
After having a damn good mosey around the place, and considering raiding a few bottles of vintage brandy from the rooms, we headed up to the top floor to beckon Matt and Gary to join us. Within minutes, they’d likewise strolled past the staff and were standing with us on the deserted top deck.
As we stood facing the river, we spotted a red London Sightseeing boat packed with tourists approaching, and we quickly developed a plan. I undid my suit jacket, which I held casually over my shoulder whilst Matt and Gary did theirs up, hands clasped in front of them in typical bodyguard fashion. As the sightseeing boat approached, I gave the royal wave as if to my humble subjects below, whilst Matt and Mark scanned around with a hand to one ear as if maintaining radio contact with unseen operatives elsewhere on the yacht.
The boat erupted in excitement, as if someone on board had shouted, “Hey, isn’t that Prince William?” with tourists pointing and shouting hysterically my way whilst firing off their cameras.
In a moment of genius, Matt now gestured first to the tourists and then my way before giving a little round of applause as if encouraging them to do likewise and pay homage to their sovereign. Mark and Gary did the same and amazingly all the tourists followed suit, clapping away enthusiastically. I continued the royal wave at my applauding subjects until they drifted by, at which point we all burst into fits of laughter.
Ricardo and I left the restaurant after dark and walked back to our hotel, hoping for better things tomorrow when we would be heading to the city of Qazvin, which we hoped to use as a base for a trip to a mountainous fort called the Castle of Assassins.
We had hoped to check out a local museum before getting on the road, but after oversleeping we were running late and decided to skip it. It was a shame as the museum sounded quite nice and had formerly been the summer palace for Reza Shah, the father of Iran’s last Shah and the man who in 1934 officially changed the country’s name from Persia to Iran. The palace was apparently very opulent and had been left exactly as it was back in his day. Interestingly, the bedroom was said to contain no bed as Reza Shah liked to sleep on the floor, a habit he apparently acquired from being a soldier. In the hallway was purportedly a copy of the edict issued by Khomeini in 1979 that authorized the confiscation of all of the last Shah’s possessions, which included his father’s Ramsar palace.
Before checking out of the hotel, I went to the main post office and bought four large envelopes that I brought back to our room. I put the relevant posters in these and sealed them here as opposed to doing it at the post office where everyone would be able to see me irreverently folding up Khomeini and sending him second class to England. I dropped them off and paid the relevant international rates, and as far as I know they didn’t get opened, as they all arrived a month or so later to much amusement.
We caught a cramped and crowded little minibus back to Rasht and due to the lack of seats, Ricardo and I had to sit apart. Whereas Ricardo got a seat next to an interesting English speaker, I got one next to a stinky weirdo who just stared at me the whole journey like I was an exhibit in a freak show. It was swelteringly hot inside, and although there were plenty of little windows that could have been opened for fresh air, for some reason nobody sitting next to them did so. I was pleased when it all came to an end, and so was Ricardo, as the chap he’d sat next to insisted on paying for him—and for me as well.
At the bus station we were incredibly lucky and found a guy hollering out the destination “Tehran.” Ricardo asked, “Qazvin?” which was on the way to Tehran.
“Yes, yes,” the bus driver told us.
It was a modern air-conditioned vehicle with comfy seats, dark curtains, and a television. It sped off nearly as soon as we were on board and a few minutes later we were approached by the ticket guy who insisted that as the bus’s final destination was Tehran, we should therefore pay for a seat all the way there. Ricardo and I weren’t happy about this, but we were by now well outside the town, and the ticket guy said if we didn’t like it then he’d drop us here. Needless to say, we paid up.
A rather interesting film started up on the television, which was turned up to maximum volume for all the bus to hear just in case someone wanted to sleep. It was a violent seventies Indian “revenge” film dubbed into Farsi whose basic premise, as far as I could tell, was that everyone on screen was going to die and in a rather nasty way because they bloody well deserved it. The special effects seemed to consist solely of a big bottle of ketchup spread liberally amongst the actors, but Ricardo and I were on our own being amused; the rest of the coach was riveted. For the grand finale, the bad guy (they all seemed bad) was thrown off a cliff. The genius was that they chucked off a shop front mannequin dressed up like the baddie instead. It fell all the way down in the same body position, and, I swear this is true, its wig came off in midair!
Ricardo and I laughed so much that it hurt. The rest of the coach burst into applause at this dramatic ending, while a few old women wiped tears of emotional exhaustion from their eyes.
The landscape we drove through looked far more “Iranian” than yesterday’s had: dry, dusty, hot mountainous desert. After a few hours of driving, the bus abruptly stopped by the side of the freeway and the ticket guy came over and told Ricardo and me that we had to get off. We were incredulous as this sure as hell wasn’t Qazvin but was instead a freeway exit for the city.
We had no option but to get out, as despite our strenuous protests, the driver was adamant he was going around and not through the city. We grabbed our bags and stood speechless on the side of the freeway as the bus took off. Before we had time to get really annoyed, a taxi approached and we both started waving frantically at it. Over he pulled and in we jumped.
The city was a welcome sight when we arrived. We drove along Imam Khomeini Street (just for a change) past the bazaar and onto Ayatollah Boulevard, which was heaving with people and vehicles. The main street was cheerfully decorated with colored lights lining the street and full-size illuminated plastic palm trees. I was familiar with these as they were identical to some that had been erected illegally outside a historic building converted into a Chinese restaurant near my parent’s house. These were then torn down by the local council after numerous complaints, many of which came from my father. Great work, old man.
We asked the taxi driver to take us to the Hotel Iran but instead got dropped at the much more expensive and fully booked Hotel Alborz.
We consulted the guidebook map and started the walk back to the Hotel Iran, dodging through the crowds and taking in the sights as we went. Several people said “hello” or “bonjour” to us with a welcoming smile. On the way, we popped into a shop with the obligatory picture of Khomeini on the wall, accompanied this time by another bearded chap I didn’t recognize. I pointed to it and tried to ask the shopkeeper what the bearded guy’s name was. It got lost in translation and the shopkeeper pointed to Khomeini, cursed something-or-other in Farsi, and drew his finger across his neck at the picture in defiance. The meaning was clear. Ricardo and I did the same at the Khomeini picture, which the shopkeeper loved. He shook our hands warmly before we left.
The Hotel Iran was hidden away just off the main street and although it was recommended by the guidebook, we didn’t think much of it. Not only that, it was full. The guidebook mentioned only one other place in our price range, the Khaksar Hotel. Whilst consulting our map, we got talking to a petite French girl in her twenties staying at the Hotel Iran. Her name was Sabine and she was traveling by herself. We were both impressed and asked if she had found it difficult to do so being a woman. She said that so far she hadn’t had any trouble and that she had met many wonderful people. After a brief chat, we all agreed that as soon as Ricardo and I had booked into a hotel we would go to a restaurant called the Restoran-e Eqbali, which according to Sabine’s guidebook, was considered one of Iran’s finest restaurants. I wouldn’t have gone that far.
We booked into the Khaksar Hotel without event and headed to the restaurant. I had some yogurt and cucumber then devoured some beef khoresht—a type of stew served with loads of rice. Over the meal, Sabine told us that she also wanted to visit the Castle of Assassins tomorrow and we all agreed to go together.
For one of Iran’s finest eating establishments, the Restoran-e Eqbali was sorely lacking in the dessert department; all it had on offer was melon. We passed on dessert and whilst out strolling in the park got talking to a load of young Iranian guys hanging out together. They were exceptionally friendly, and wanted to talk to us about anything Western. First it was soccer, leading to a long discussion on the likes of David Beckham and Michael Owen before it moved onto music. A heated debate amongst the red-blooded lads of the group now erupted as to whether Jennifer Lopez or Christina Aguilera was the more delectable. Ricardo and I, although not Sabine, were asked for our input on this one, as if our opinion would conclusively settle the dispute. We both firmly joined the Aguilera camp.
One of the guys then asked if Sabine was my wife, and on hearing that she wasn’t said, “She has very beautiful eyes.” It was interesting that the guys all seemed too shy, or perhaps just mindful of Iranian social protocol, to address her directly. The same guy said, “I like her. Please tell her.”
I did, even though Sabine had heard for herself, to which Sabine replied jokingly that she was probably old enough to be his mother. He then asked me to ask Sabine if she had a sister.
After the reaction to Khomeini from the shopkeeper, I was curious to ask them what they thought of their government and of the late Ayatollah. There was no dispute like the JLo and Christina debate; they all unanimously stated their hatred. Sabine seemed surprised at this and asked if their parents had similar views. They nodded and one guy said, “My father fucking hates him!” Without further prompting he then said, “I like Mr. George Bush very much.” When we offered contrary opinions he replied, “Yes, George Bush is a bad man, but he is not as bad as Khomeini.” We laughed.
When we bade them good night, they all wanted to shake hands although they wouldn’t shake Sabine’s. We walked Sabine back to her hotel and arranged for her to call on us tomorrow morning, where we would then charter a car or get a minibus to the castle. On our way back, Ricardo and I stopped off at a milkshake shop where I had the best “milk banana” I’ve ever tasted. I finished the first and it was so good I had another. I don’t know what the guy put in it, but it might have been crack it was so addictive. As soon as we got back to the hotel, we hit the sack.
Getting any sleep was another matter, though, as it was swelteringly hot and our room was full of mosquitoes. There was no screen on the window, but it was so hot we had little choice but to leave it wide open. The little bastards feasted on us for hours before it became too much, and at two in the morning, Ricardo turned to me and asked, “Jamie, are you awake?”
I was, and he didn’t need to tell me what he was thinking. We jumped out of bed, turned on the light, shut the window, and set about a rampage of killing that made the Indian ketchup flick seem tame. One by one, we asserted our revenge. Halfway through the cull, I glanced across at Ricardo standing like me in nothing but his underpants, with a look of sheer intensity on his face. He looked as if on a life or death military operation. We both started to laugh. By the time we’d finished, there were probably some fifty bloody splat marks on the walls. The last few were the hardest to get, but when finally over, it was a tremendous relief and sleep was not far off.