Stephan Orth - Couchsurfing in Iran - Revealing a Hidden World

“WE HAVE TOgo. The others are waiting,” says Azim suddenly. He has invited a couple relatives for the evening. The rush, however, doesn’t hinder him from serving a round of tea from a thermos at the car. There is an Iranian saying that indicates their understanding of punctuality: if you drown, it doesn’t matter if it is in one hand’s span of water or a hundred hand spans. So if you are late, being a little later isn’t going to make much difference. Still, Azim manages to make up a few minutes by consistently speeding, as far as that is possible with an ancient Paykan. Paykan means “lightning,” and it is roughly the same as naming a tricycle a “Porsche.” The charmingly angular cars are for Iran what the Trabi was for East Germany or the Ambassador for India. Twenty years ago you hardly saw any other makes, but nowadays they are becoming rarer.

At home various uncles and cousins are sitting in the living room and tuning traditional string instruments: tar, setar, and tanbur. A bottle of Teacher’s Highland Cream Blended Scotch Whisky is on the table. It doesn’t hold the original contents but homemade raisin schnapps, instead. Burns like fire, but the quality is good. We down it in one gulp from tea glasses, and as if to apologize to the throat and the tongue, we rinse it down with a spoonful of yogurt.

“I will now sing a song for a friend who was killed in the war,” says Azim. His cousin, Saeed, a professor of calligraphy with an impressive black mustache, accompanies him on a setar, a three-stringed plucking instrument with a body the size and shape of half a coconut and a long neck. What follows is more of a dialogue than interplay. The passionate smoky voice and the delicate instrument alternate absorbing the themes of the other and varying them. For European ears it is unusual music, as it consists not only of whole note steps and semitones but also quarter tones.

“It’s a forbidden song,” says Yasmin. “Because it’s about the importance of freedom.” Azim doesn’t hit every tone perfectly, but he dives so deeply into the dream he is singing about that everyone is spellbound. Azim bows to the applause, placing his right hand on his heart. A few minutes later a text comes from the neighbors; they had never realized that he was such a good singer.

“Right, now it’s your turn,” he says to me. Saeed plays a short melody on the setar and then hands me the instrument. “Slant your right hand and then strum just using your index finger.” I fail miserably. He shows me again how to do it, and this time at least it sounds similar. “Affarin !” says Saeed. “Great! You’ve got a good ear! A couple months of master classes, and you’ll be a pro.”

Iranians love exaggeration. Iranians are wonderful, as are their schnapps and songs of freedom and their secret violations of the law.

The morning after, Azim has a headache and talks of dying. He squats on the floor near the window with one leg at an angle. The curtain is open for the first time. He stares out at the gloomy spring sky and smokes one cigarette after the other, daylight falling on his suffering face. He says a sentence without turning his head, and Yasmin noticeably delays translating it for me. Then she whispers, as if she can’t say it loud: “He said: I’m looking forward to joining my martyred friends soon.”

She again explains that the nerve gas is to blame for everything, and that he drinks excessively every day. He turns his head to a picture on the wall. It shows an avenue of trees in fall; the path between them is full of leaves, and there is a bright light at the end of the avenue. His eyes return to the window and seem to be fixed on a point in the distance. “They all died for nothing,” he says.

THE CAB DRIVERtaking us to Paveh looks like Mick Jagger at thirty, and the MP3 player is blaring Modern Talking. Compared to last night’s music, this is how a screaming hangover feels compared to enjoying an eighteen-year-old single malt.

“Did you know that Modern Talking come from Germany?”

“Really? I learned English from their lyrics,” answers Yasmin.

“Then your English is surprisingly good.”

“Don’t you like Modern Talking?”

“I can think of two hundred German export products that I’m more proud of.”

“They’re famous in Iran.”

The Mick Jagger behind the wheel, who is actually named Farsad, joins in: “We have to listen to singing mullahs every day. Compared to them, Modern Talking sounds good.” An interesting point.

Despite this, he shuffles to another singer, Hayedeh, a Persian cross between Maria Callas and Adele. “If you’re looking for me, I’ll be in the bar, and drinking and talking to God,” she sings. The lyrics remind me of Hafiz, who also managed to connect the pleasures of alcohol and divine experience. But even without such provocative words Hayedeh would be banned in Iran—women are not allowed to sing alone because the rulers fear it might give men stupid ideas. Shortly before the revolution in 1979 she emigrated to Los Angeles, where she was able to write her songs and record her albums without fear of censorship. “After a concert in January 1990 she had a heart attack and died at age forty-seven,” says Yasmin. “The funeral was followed by millions on TV, and all Iranian businesses were closed for the day.”

I am relieved to see that Yasmin prefers this music to German pop of the 1980s, and she passionately sings along (of course that is also forbidden, and it seems to irritate our driver somewhat).

If you want to recreate the beauty of a cab ride through wild Kurdistan you should type “Hayedeh Zendegi” into YouTube, shut your eyes, and imagine an adventurous, winding road over a pass between snowcapped mountains and gas trucks and kebab stands on the roadside, with shepherds in baggy pants and stone walls with paintings of patrol cars and scenic views of the Iranian plateau and villages that seem to have been slapped onto the steep mountainside. Houses are built like steps, so that the flat roof of one acts as part of the foundations of the neighbor above.

Border trade must be immensely important for the settlements in the Paveh region; otherwise, no one would come up with the idea of building villages on such steep slopes. We see many military outposts painted in camouflage colors with No Photo signs hanging on the walls. With their rounded towers they remind me of desert forts from the Middle Ages. They are not only important to the government because of the proximity of the border, but Tehran also feels uneasy about the Kurds, as many of them dream of independence. The skies are gray, and it is drizzling a bit.

“I love rain,” says Yasmin. She jiggles her shoulders in time with the music and clicks her fingers.

“When you move to Germany you will think differently,” I say.

“Definitely not. It’s so refreshing. Azim’s neighbor named his daughter Baran, which means ‘rain.’”

“Poor girl.”

“I don’t understand you. There’s plenty of sun, and you just sweat the whole time.”

“The Germans are so crazy about the sun that they produce happiness hormones at the smell of suntan lotion.”

“You’re weird. Try wearing a veil the whole day in the heat here.”

“Which sky color is more beautiful: blue or gray?”

“Definitely gray.”

“You’re weird, too.”

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