Stephen Orth - Couchsurfing in Iran - Revealing a Hidden World

AT THE BANKI have to collect a number tag and wait for an LED light display to show my number. I give the clerk the note with the handwritten account number, give him thirty thousand toman, and then he passes me the receipt. On the way back I go to the photo store. The examples hanging on the wall, portraits of people resting their chins on the clenched fist of their left hand, leave no doubt about the photographer’s specialty. They all look a little like mediocre crooners. Luckily, I’m allowed to keep my arms down. I return to the visa building with my photos and receipt, hand in my camera and cell phone and then the necessary papers and my passport. “Come back at twelve,” says the official. It’s only just ten.

“Come back at two,” she says at twelve. “My boss is at a meeting, and he needs to sign the document.” This means more time to find out that I’m a journalist by a simple process of googling. The guidebook says that the visa offices sometimes use Google. As a distraction, I wander through the bazaar. Describing a Middle Eastern bazaar in every detail is like carrying cumin to Kerman—there are an incredible number of stores, goods, aromas, and sellers. And in this case a charming teahouse based on the old Hamam teahouses. The smell of hookah smoke, a fountain, ornate columns, and a man playing a santur, a kind of hammered Persian dulcimer. As I enter, he glances at me and begins to play a melody from The Godfather —I assume because it has a European feel to it and not because he is implying that there is something criminal about me.

Shortly before two: a renewed trip to the visa offices, hand in cell phone and camera, get my brass token, all routine now. After a few minutes “Mr. Estefan” is announced, and I get back my passport, with a new stamp: The visa is extended up to 17.5.2014. I’m as happy as if I’d just won a four-week dream vacation, which in some way is true. But of course you wouldn’t know it—exuberance and dancing about would be considered improper in the Management of Foreigners Affairs Office.

From: Iran

Iammina,frendmobina.came hear in Herat. Emamstreet

From: Laila Hamburg

Hey honey, my flight lands at 21:00 in Yazd. See you tomorrow night!

I spend the afternoon on a tour of the small town of Mahan, rightly famous for a Sufi dervish named Shah Nimatullah Wali and wrongly for the Bagh-e Shahzadeh Gardens. Iranians are always turned on by the color green, which is why the garden compound, with a couple cherry trees, wilting flowers, and a mud-colored cascade, is such a popular attraction. Actually, the only spectacular thing about it is its location at the foot of some mountains. The cab driver bringing me back to Kerman has far more character, with his white mustache, suit, and hat. He drives his ancient Paykan and feeds me sweet, gooey clumps of halvah while the sun sinks behind the mountain peaks to the west. Of course, he cheats me at the end of the ride, but the price is worth it just for the souvenir photo.

THE BUS ONLYneeded a spritely 5.5 hours for the 250 miles to Yazd. On arrival I book a double room at the Orient Hotel and buy a plastic rose with I love you on its plastic leaves at a souvenir store. The streets of the desert city are alive with a hectic hustle-bustle of activity. Fruit stalls, fast-food joints, carpet dealers. Two groups of European tourists, one Italian and one Swiss, pass by, an unusual sight after weeks with the locals. They seem very foreign and a bit ungainly, especially the women. You can see from a distance that they haven’t really become accustomed to their Islamic garments.

To: Laila Hamburg

Hey baby, tell the cabdriver to take you to the Orient Hotel, next to masjed-e jameh. See you soon!:*

The room isn’t exactly a honeymoon suite—separate beds, bare interior, and a mosque picture on the wall. The only cause for slightly romantic thoughts is the fact that the washroom door cannot be closed and sometimes opens on a whim. To compensate for this, the inner courtyard is amazing: a burbling fountain, caravanserai-like arcades, and an undisturbed view of the star-studded heavens.

I got to know Laila, who is half Iranian, more than a year ago in Hamburg through couchsurfing. I was looking for couchsurfers from my city who had some connection to Iran so that I could learn more about the country. In her profile she described herself as “spontaneous and dreamy,” and as someone who couldn’t live without music. We met a few times and discovered that she was coincidentally going to be in Iran at the same time as me. During a boozy evening in February we decided to spend a week traveling together. And to get married. Well, not exactly. The arrangement that she captured with a pen on a coaster was for a ten-day fake marriage and purely for a number of practical reasons: tourists to Iran can only book a double room in a hotel as husband and wife; it would save a lot of explanations in conversations with the locals; and last but not least, because it would save Laila from a host of unwelcome advances. She had already traveled to Iran a couple times and knew the feeling of being fair game when making excursions without an escort. An amusing side effect of our “engagement” is that since then we have called each other “honey” and “sweetie,” and we make a genuine effort to cultivate quirks that you can only find with real couples.

Instead of arriving by cab, she comes in a private car. A fellow passenger on the flight offered to give her a lift to the hotel. “Leave you alone for a few days and look what happens,” I say as we shake hands in front of the hotel. I ask, despite her new acquaintance, whether she still is prepared to marry me. “Yes, why not,” is her answer. Then it’s enough of the formal nonsense: “Great to see you!” And we hug each other, in the middle of the street, in the middle of Iran; at this moment, we couldn’t care less.

Laila is twenty-nine, wearing a red scarf over a loose-fitting pink garment, and she works as a graphic designer. Her father comes from Tehran, and her mother is German. She has spent her whole life in Hamburg but speaks a little Persian.

We carry her luggage to the room. If she is pleased about the plastic rose, she doesn’t show it, promptly dumping the present unceremoniously in the trash can. We then go for a walk through a labyrinth of sand-colored alleyways while we exchange travel adventures. I tell of fishing on Kish, dominatrices, and smuggler buses, and she of her overprotective family in Tehran and strenuous hosts. “In Chalus, in north Iran, there was one host who took me on a tour in the mountains. He desperately wanted me to take off my veil. Well, okay— no problem. He took some photos. When the path became tricky he took my hand. But when he wanted to kiss me, things began to get really unpleasant. Not that I was frightened of him—he was totally insecure, and I think that he simply wanted to touch a woman once in his life.”

Behind a half-open wooden door some steps lead up to a flat roof with a cupola. A few Iranians are already there: two young men and two young women, smoking slim cigarettes and holding hands. Not wanting to disturb them, we sit on the other side of the igloo-sized cupola.

There are moments during traveling when the allure of wanderlust wanes but waits for you, suddenly popping up exactly where you are. Where future and past no longer matter, and you believe that your path, up to this point, has been a circuitous and zigzagging journey to reach this particular place, and all that follows is nothing more than a lengthy departure. When you already suffer from yearning while still there.