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I called an Iranian friend who I knew from a social network site to ask her for
information about Tabriz. Farah did not know much about Tabriz either as it was
located far at the tip of northern Iran. After half an hour later, she called back
and said a few friends of hers would pick me up to show me around Tabriz. Her
friends, two beautiful girls called Mona and Laden, came to my hotel in a
Peugeot 307 car. Both of them were artists and Mona was also able to speak
a moderate level of English. They introduced me to all the interesting places in
Tabriz and after lunch, Laden promised to introduce more friends of theirs to me.
Later in the evening I met them all at the hotel. Ali and Yahaya were both
studying management. Seema, Mariyum and Sogan were students at Tabriz
University. Sogan was teaching English in Tehran and planned to do her PhD in
the US. Seema was learning French and hoped to migrate to Canada. All had
great dreams but each of them felt that they were stuck in Iran because of
their government's ineptitude and mismanagement. In Iran, 70% of the young
people are alcoholic drinkers. You can see Levi's jeans and Adidas T-shirts
behind the burqas that young women wore. Ali and Yahaya showed me the
Khomeini's house; it is a public toilet. Ali is looking like an Italian and has dreams
of living there.
Eventually, the time to say sayonara was upon us. Ali and Yahaya hugged me
and hoped to see me again. I took a taxi and travelled to meet Farah, forty
kilometers outside of Tehran. She speaks good English and works as a teacher
in a government school. She watches a lot of Indian films which are dubbed in
Persian and receives western channels via satellite. It is banned in Iran but as
Farah said to me, “Everyone is using a satellite dish.” She took me to the local
mosque which had recently closed because not enough people were
showing up for prayers. We talked a lot about the culture and the politics of
Iran.
According to the BBC and CNN, Iran and Iranians are the most dangerous
things in the world but I never found anything like that during the time that I
spent in Iran. Iranians are very much moderate and humble. Most of the
people are Shia Muslims and they believe that Muhammad al-Mahdi, the 12 th
Imam, will return as a messiah with Isa (Jesus Christ) to bring peace to the world
and establish Islam as the ruling faith across the globe.
Before I left, Farah's family invited me to dinner with fish and rice prepared
Iranian style. She then arranged a taxi to Tehran for my departure. The light
music of Shahyar Ghanbari was flowing from the stereo:
Blue of the sea is forbidden
The desire to see, is forbidden
The love between two fish is forbidden
Alone and together is forbidden
To write about you, is forbidden
Even to complain is forbidden
You are forbidden, I am forbidden!
OCTOB E R 2014
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