Stephen Orth - Couchsurfing in Iran - Revealing a Hidden World

Farshad sighs audibly and seems moved, although he must have heard the tale many times. “There are many love stories in literature, but that is the only one that is about pure, unconditional love,” he says. Only then do I realize the similarity in names.

As a slave he deems it difficult to find a partner in Iran. In a country where women, from a legal point of view, are second-class citizens, dominatrices are apparently particularly sought after.

“There are far too few of us. I get so many requests on the Internet that I could have twenty slaves all at once,” says Yasmin. However, she has no need of them because she has been in a steady relationship for nine months. She regularly posts on Facebook sites that are only accessible to members, photos of bondage games in the jungle or sessions in her torture chamber, in a house in northern Iran. In the scene, she has quite a reputation.

“Shall we go inside?” she suggests. “It’s getting cold.”

“Doesn’t bother me; I’m a masochist,” jokes Babak.

Nevertheless, we move indoors to the lower level restaurant, where you sit without shoes upon raised platforms and paintings of bazaars hang on the walls. Master Kaveh, nicknamed “Rough,” places a cushion behind me and makes room so that I’m comfortable. Over Istak malt beer and kofta meatballs we chat about Tehran’s traffic problems, Kafka, and homemade erotic accessories carved from wood.

Politics isn’t discussed—well, only once, briefly: “Up to now they have left our online group in peace. It would be very different if we were a discussion forum critical of the state,” says Farshad. “Unusual sexual practices are bad in Iran, but political activism is ten times worse.”

Finally, we take a little stroll through Goftegoo Park. Shirvin and Amir discuss whips and handcuffs. Farshad tells me about the board game Femdomopoly—femdom for female domination, where the throw of dice decides the type of pain or humiliation the player has to withstand. Yasmin and the writer Shahin separate from the group, chatting and walking hand in hand in the park. Only when I look very carefully do I notice that while doing this, she is digging her very sharp fingernails into the palm of his hand. Both walk past the artificial lake in which a few goldfish swim; here the goldfish are free. And at the park entrance you see the police and their machine guns and army tent, as if there were a border crossing here that needed surveillance, instead of a very ordinary park, where people gather to chat, somewhere in Tehran.

• Wait at the roadside until the nearside lane is free.

• Notice in astonishment that suddenly important moments in your life are flashing through your mind.

• Beginners: seek out a group of locals and follow their movements in their slipstream.

• Proceed swiftly but without haste; keep you head at a ninety-degree angle to the direction you’re headed.

• Avoid abrupt movements.

• When calculating speed and trajectory never expect braking maneuvers.

• Especially not at pedestrian crossings. Pedestrian crossings are traps!

• Drivers are quite prepared to swerve to left or right when there is little traffic. It is considered less of an effort to turn the steering wheel slightly than to move your foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal.

• Evaluate feedback: If you are hooted at two or three times, everything’s okay. Four or more times means there’s room for improvement in tempo and/or body language. If you don’t hear any hooting for thirty seconds, you’re dead.

THE FLIGHT FORthe vacation island of Kish takes off from Mehrabad International Airport. A modern terminal with sparkling clean halls, neon lights, and billboards advertising luxury apartments. On small tables there are chargers for all types of cell phones. I have never heard of most of the airlines: Mahan Air, Caspian Airlines, Iran Aseman Airlines. Kish Airlines is on my ticket, filled out by hand by the assistant at the travel agency. On the wall there is a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini, with a particularly sinister look and the inscription Have a Nice Trip next to his head. When the ayatollah landed at just this airport thirty-five years ago on an Air France flight, millions of Iranians cheered his return from exile. They had succeeded in booting the hated shah off his Peacock Throne. But many of the revolutionaries became bitterly disappointed in the ensuing years, as the ayatollah proved to be an uncompromising despot who may well have ruled his Islamic Republic without the pomp and excess of his predecessor but with the same brutality.

I wander through the halls and try to wait for the right moment to take an unobserved snapshot of the poster. It is forbidden to take photos at airports, stations, or any government buildings.

A passenger with a chador and neatly plucked eyebrows interprets my movements differently. “Are you lost? Do you need help?” she asks.

“No thanks. I’m just looking around,” I reply.

“Welcome to Iran,” she continues and introduces herself as Solmaz, thirty-five; she has a master’s degree in philosophy and dreams of writing her thesis in Sweden. She is now flying to Mashhad to pray at the shrine to Imam Reza.

“Are you traveling alone? Aren’t you a bit lonely?” she asks.

“Not at all. You never feel alone here as tourist.”

Fear of the lack of human contact in Iran is like a round-the-world yachtsman being worried about getting a suntan.

“Yes, we’re good to foreigners,” she says pensively.

“Are you coming back to Tehran?”

“Yes, in six or seven weeks.”

“I can show you the city, inshallah .”

She compliments me for choosing to visit Kish and recommends a trip in a glass-bottom boat. And the water park. And the dolphinarium. “They have dolphins there that can clean their teeth.” We swap phone numbers and then my flight is called.

From the plane window Iran’s number one vacation destination looks like a ten-mile-wide ellipse made of white sand and flat as a beach towel. But what the island lacks in natural elevation it makes up for with a whole host of domino-like skyscrapers in the northeast. Kish needs these hotel complexes to cater to the 1.5 million tourists who visit the island annually. What the Dominican Republic is for Americans, Kish is for Persians. They love the island and return here for their vacations time and again. The guidebook states: “There are not many reasons to come here for non-Iranians.” So, the perfect place to begin my transformation to an Iranian. My plane lands on the heat-shimmering asphalt of the desert island’s airport.

While Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport epitomizes modern Iran, the airport at Kish is more like a teeny disco between two car rental booths. To the droning sounds of techno music, two B-boys, completely coated in silver paint, go through their pirouette routines considerably more supplely than the summer jobbers in SpongeBob and pink elephant costumes a few feet away, clowning about with kids. They must be sweating terribly in their woolen slippers. To remind the new arrivals that they are in Iran and not in Disneyland, a huge map of the surrounding waters is painted on the wall flanked by grim portraits of ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. Below the map, the slogan Persian Gulf Forever is a special message to visitors from Arabian countries. The name, which has existed for centuries, is disputed, and the southerly neighbors want to rename it the Arabian Gulf. Those who say, “What’s the problem? It’s just a name” don’t know the national pride of the Iranians. For them it would be a slap in the face if they were to lose their only sea. The Caspian Sea in the north doesn’t count, as it’s actually a lake. My host, Masoud, wrote in his text message that he would try to accommodate me, and I should contact him on landing. So, I call his number. A friendly, deep telephone voice says, “What’s up, bro?” in flawless American slang and goes on to say that he will call me back in a few minutes with instructions about where to go.