Stephen Orth - Couchsurfing in Iran - Revealing a Hidden World

Within a second I can think of three hundred reasons for which I would rather be liked. But the Aryan topic is a big thing in Iran, and even the country’s name is derived from Aryan. Here the word isn’t associated with racist ideologies and the Holocaust but used as naturally as if you were calling a Chinese person an Asian, or a Croat a Slav. Thousands of years before dubious European scientists thought up attributes like blond, blue-eyed, and Nordic type, the Iranians were already known as Aryans. To this day they are convinced that they share a heritage with Germanic and Indian peoples, which is why they are the only country in the world where Germans are still respected as Aryans.

After a ten-minute break the motor indignantly splutters to life, and the decrepit Pelican renews efforts to reach the gray cliffs of the mainland. My neighbor introduces himself as Nader. He comes from Kerman. His two friends with almost identical T-shirts bearing a huge Abercrombie & Fitch print, one in gray and the other in white, are Moshtaba from Bandar Abbas and Ismail from Isfahan. All three are wearing very new sport shoes and have very new cell phones in their hands. None of them speaks English well, which is why I use the best small-talk-despite-language-barrier trick in the world and change the subject from ethnology to soccer. A verbatim transcript could never do justice to the emotional intensity of the conversation. It goes something like this:

“Mehdi Mahdavikia!”

“Ooh, good!”

“Ali Daei!”

“Ali Daei! Bayern Munich good! Schwains-Tiger! Ballack! Lahm!”

“Yes, very good players!”

“World Cup! Brazil!”

“Iran against Argentina, ooh!”

“Messi! Ooooh no!”

After this exchange we are best friends. The three guys ask whether I need a lift to Bandar Abbas. The ship docks at Charak, and soon we are sitting in Ismail’s age-worn white Peugeot. We crunch away at nuts, listen to the Gypsy Kings and hurtle eastward. Foam dice swing back and forth beneath the rearview mirror.

There is a strong resemblance between traveling and a game of dice. Had I caught an earlier ship, or sat somewhere else once on board, I wouldn’t be sitting in this car. In Tehran, if I hadn’t contacted Yasmin but one of the thousand other potential hosts, I wouldn’t soon be visiting the battlefields on the Iraqi border.

From the window a shimmering desert landscape flashes by, with wind-formed sand dunes and signposts warning of camels. Conical cisterns look like the tips of buried stone rockets. Having done soccer players, other sports stars become our next topic. “Ismail Schumacher,” says Nader, grinning and pointing at his friend behind the wheel, who drives as if Mika Häkkinen and Damon Hill are in hot pursuit.

The racer poses would be perfect, were he not a chainsmoker and therefore only has one hand permanently on the steering wheel. At two of the speed bumps our car almost takes off, with the consequence that at the next bump our driver is more cautious, braking directly beforehand and causing our suspension to screech. I know no other country with so many speed bumps. Iran is speed-bump country, and I’m sure that’s a metaphor for something.

Recently, a statistic was published claiming that 25,000 had died in the previous year in traffic accidents; that is 68 a day. The government now aims to reduce the number to 20,000.

At any rate, gas prices don’t deter people from speeding. We fill up for 140 rial per gallon, which is all of twenty cents. At the halfway mark we stop at a beach to drink tea with hot water from a thermos. I drink it without sugar, which earns me three puzzled looks.

Nader looks miserably at his tea bag. The tag reads Ahmad Tea London . “English bad!” he says, crossing both index fingers. “English against Iran.” The British had made a killing with Iranian gas and oil in the first half of the twentieth century by duping the shah into exploitative contracts. I feel Nader’s hand on my shoulder. “Hitler good. Hitler help Iran.” Hitler never wanted oil from Persia in the Second World War because they were allies. This is turning into quite a challenging conversation, given our language barrier.

I babble in broken English: “Hitler not good!”

He asks: “Merkel good?”

I deliberate briefly before saying: “Hitler bad, Merkel good,” which admittedly is a gross simplification but, in this comparison, not wrong. The rest of the journey we don’t speak much, but I wish that I could say more in Persian than fish and sun.

In the port city of Bandar Abbas we say our goodbyes, and I catch a boat that is twice as big and three times as modern as the Pelican to the island of Qeshm. I had hoped to have a host there, but Kian had texted me to say that unfortunately his apartment belongs to his company, and they don’t allow visitors.

To: Kian Qeshm

Hey Kian, no problem, would be great to meet! Can you recommend a hotel to stay?

From: Kian Qeshm

Ask the taxi driver for Hafez guesthouse, its not expensive but I m not sure if it’s clean

From an open deck I view the huge oil and gas tankers of the Persian Gulf. Many are old and barely seaworthy. It’s difficult to see whether they are moving without looking for the anchor line in the water. The whims of traveler’s dice have placed a family behind me with a daughter who I guess to be about twenty and two sons, maybe six and eight. The younger son is staring at me with huge dark brown eyes. I leaf through my Persian phrasebook and read the sentence “ Esme tan tschi ast ?”—What’s your name? The parents are named Reza and Ehsan, the girl, Mobina, and the family comes from a place near Yazd. The rest of the conversation consists of “Welcome to Iran” and “Do you like Iran?” And, above all, plenty of friendly and curious looks. Mobina asks for my cell phone number. We wish each other a good time on the island, she takes a picture of me, and we go our separate ways.

A cab driver, in a prehistoric Toyota Corolla, drives through featureless streets with endless rows of stores to the Hafez Guesthouse. On telling him about my home country he stretches out his right hand and screams, “Heil Hitler!” and laughs amicably. Somehow today’s jinxed.

AT THE ENTRANCEto the Hafez Guesthouse a few teenagers are hanging out. As I enter they seem amused that at last something is happening there. Using sign language, I communicate to a young man behind the counter in a Barcelona soccer shirt that I’m looking for a room. He looks at me somewhat quizzically.

“Double room forty thousand, no single room,” says a man without a single hair on his head but an abundant growth on his chest that couldn’t be missed, as he is only wearing scruffy track pants and sandals. He, too, is only a guest, which doesn’t deter him from going through the check-in formalities.

“Don’t eat here; the food’s no good,” he adds. But the rooms are safe. Mine is exactly as wide as two beds, and I don’t need a tape measure to establish this, as there are two beds placed next to each other, on top of which are two stained bed covers with Cinderella motifs. A tube, looking as if it were made shortly after the Industrial Revolution, runs from the air conditioner through the middle of a frosted glass pane to the outside. Someone seems to have used a hammer to make the necessary hole for the tube, and at one point the gap is so big that it allows a single shaft of sunlight to enter the room. The metal double doors to the hall also have a window, which has been covered by a poster advertising Deluxe Diamond T-shirts. There is precious little else deluxe here. The furnishings consist of a tiny CRT TV (broken), a Super General fridge (loud), and a blotchy carpet.