The next morning we worked out a route to the bus station, which was across the other side of the city. We were going to take a subway (we hadn’t even realised there was a metro system until we saw the signs) to the station, but first had to find a taxi. I was keen to find a female taxi driver, but in a city of God knows how many taxis, only a handful of women were allowed to drive them.
I was quite eager to leave Tehran. My initial impressions of Iran as a whole had been positive, but the closer we got to the capital - the seat of power - the more the reality of the dictatorship began to hit home. There were so many rules, so much you weren’t allowed to do. And while individuals made us feel welcome, I could sense a lot of anger. Many of the locals we spoke to were very angry with Britain and openly sided with the Taliban, and there was a lot of talk about creating a state of war in the Middle East.
Russ went out to pick up a copy of the
Iran Daily
, a newspaper published in English. When I appeared with my suitcase he was sitting on the kerb with his cellphone in his hand. ‘Have a look at the paper,’ he said. ‘There’s quite a lot of mention about Britain. They’re saying that Labour was mauled in the elections and Boris Johnson is now mayor of London . . .’
Meanwhile, Mahmood had managed to locate a female taxi driver. I was really pleased because this would be my first and probably only opportunity to meet an Iranian woman. I wasn’t sure whether she would be talkative, but there’s nothing like driving a big city taxi for seeing life and I didn’t see why Tehran should be any different.
The taxi driver’s name was Fariba. She was dressed all in black, but she was also wearing designer sunglasses and seemed an upbeat, confident woman. Through Mahmood I asked her how many women drivers there were in Tehran. She said that there were only four or five working for a regular agency.
‘There are women driving taxis that are only for women, though,’ she said. ‘Private taxis. But I have been with an agency for two years. Before that I used to be a women’s driving instructor. Actually as far as some of my family is concerned, I am still a trainer. I cannot tell them I drive a taxi because they will not comprehend it.’ She said that she had never experienced any trouble from her male passengers, and that business was very good because many men felt more comfortable if their wives were driven round by another woman.
Fariba, who was in her thirties, told me she wasn’t married because it was hard to find a good man. She was joking: the truth was her father was bankrupt and he was old, her mother cared for her father, and it was down to Fariba to provide for the family.
‘Is it difficult being a woman in Iran?’ I asked her.
She thought for a moment. ‘Women here have the same problems as women everywhere,’ she told me. ‘Mostly the pressure is from the economy.’
We were deep in the heart of the city now, the traffic four lanes wide and inching forward bumper to bumper: it was ten times worse than Baku. People swapped lanes, honked their horns. Mopeds carrying outrageous loads skipped between the cars. Fariba said motorbikes were particularly dangerous, and that riders would barge between the cars and clip them, using their feet to lever off and carry on.
‘Do you mind the customs?’ I knew my questions might be awkward, but this was my only chance to ask. Fariba seemed so modern and open, she was bound to have an opinion, although whether she felt able to express it was another matter. ‘Do you find it difficult having to wear traditional clothes all the time?’
She looked at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Customs are not limitations,’ she explained. ‘They are the customs of society and we live with them. If you drive in India, for instance, the women there wear different clothes. We try to live with it: it’s not difficult.’
Mahmood pointed out a brick building with green doors marking the entrance to the subway. Pulling over we got out and I grabbed my bag.
‘Thank you so much, Fariba,’ I said. ‘You’re an amazing driver and what you’re doing for women is terrific. That’s the safest I’ve felt so far in Iran. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she told me.
We made our way down the escalator. The station was very clean, with cafes and newsstands in the foyer. It reminded me of the metro in Paris.
Mr Bean
was playing on a widescreen TV above the platform, which seemed incongruous, to say the least.
‘I’m a bit tired today,’ Russ admitted as we hung on to the overhead grips. ‘Tehran’s at altitude; four thousand feet. And we’ve done nothing but rush around for days.’
‘We can chill out on the bus,’ I said.‘It’s six hours to Esfahan.’
Rattling into the tunnels, I looked at the other passengers, mostly men, apart from a couple of groups of women. Nobody was saying much to anyone - just like the underground in London or Paris, I thought. I was struck again by how lucky we had been to speak with Fariba. What a fantastic woman - so friendly and spirited, despite all her country’s restrictions.
The bus to Esfahan was the kind you find in any major country; very modern with air-conditioning, TV and reclining seats. I sat back and chilled, letting my mind wander. South of Tehran the landscape changed dramatically. We were in a world of rock and sand: no trees, no bushes, just the odd bit of scrubby sagebrush clutching the side of the road. It was a vast red emptiness, broken only by the occasional village or truck stop.
On the bus we met a girl who had travelled from India to see her father. She told us - in very good English - that she lived with her mother in Mumbai, where she was finishing her education. We would be in Mumbai in about a week, so we bombarded her with questions, eager to know what to expect. Apparently it was about forty degrees there at the moment, and incredibly humid - hard to imagine in the dry heat of Iran.
The six hours passed very pleasantly, and were easily better than any coach travel I’d experienced in Britain. As soon as we sat down, a waiter brought us a drink and a little piece of sponge cake - they brought water whenever we asked for it and there were nuts and snacks to buy. Maybe that’s how we should have stocked the
dolmus
, instead of the Turkish Delight and cologne . . .
Esfahan was spectacular. It is the second largest city in Iran, and yet there didn’t seem to be any high-rise buildings there - it just spread across the desert floor under the slopes of the mountain. Apparently it was established over 1,500 years ago. The wide river flowing through the middle of the city was called the Zayandeh Rood or ‘life-giving river’. It was a city of trees and flower gardens, of bridges - an incredible contrast to the red desert we had just driven through.
We stared in wonder at the Seeyo-Se-Pole, a massive red-brick bridge that spanned the river on two levels. On the second level, people sat watching the boats pass underneath. It was very beautiful, and nothing like Tehran, with its modern industrial blocks and high rises. I loved it.
We stopped for tea at a massive C-shaped plaza. The terraces bordering the plaza were two storeys high, with shops at ground level and a sprawling mosque facing us. The entrance was formed by a pair of intricate portico turrets with slim spires, and the domes of the mosque itself were painted blue.
We wandered the length of a bazaar, open-fronted lock-ups selling clothes and second-hand goods, kettles and gourds, leather plates and Persian rugs. One store had the most enormous twin-headed battle-axe and a shirt of chain-mail. ‘Ewan would love this place,’ I said. ‘He’d buy up everything.’
Strangely enough, seeing the axe made me suddenly homesick - for Annamoe, my dad’s place. A week before we left, we’d taken the kids to see him, and some of the props from
Excalibur
are on his piano, including the golden mask I’d worn as Young Mordred. I’d been about fourteen. Dad put me on a horse and told me to ride through the woods down by Lough Tay where our neighbour Garech Browne lives. ‘Just hold on,’ he said, ‘and gallop. You’ll be OK, the horse won’t run into any trees.’
We grabbed a cup of tea in a narrow cafe with glass tables and carpet-covered benches. A line of interlocking battle-axes hung on the walls and the ceiling was choked with masses of lamps and lanterns. There wasn’t an inch of clear space, the walls covered in tapestries and photos of famous wrestlers. The tables were laid with tobacco bongs, and a few men were gathered around smoking.
The tea was served in a glass with sugar crystals on the side, and a plate of crystallised honey, which we ate like biscuits. I decided to try a hubble-bubble, but just had a couple of tokes - a sheesha pipe full of the stuff is like smoking a whole packet of cigarettes. The tobacco in mine was apple-flavoured.
The people in Esfahan were very friendly: they asked us where we were from and told us how much they loved the English. A country of contradictions, for sure. By the time we left it was dusk and with the city lit up we could see just how flat it was. The place just unravelled under the shadow of the mountain, as if the lights were strung together for decoration.
We spent the night in Shahr-e-Kord, a small town of sandstone buildings in the middle of the desert. The next morning we rose and set off to meet a group of nomads who would be taking us into the desert. The weather was as contradictory as the country: yesterday had been boiling hot but this morning the rain was crashing down and I shivered in my jacket.
Leaving Shahr-e-Kord we headed into the desert. The red rock and sand had been replaced by scrub, quite green in places but rocky with shale slopes and - strange as it may sound in the pouring rain - very dry.
Along the way we picked up our guide, an old man who pointed out the sights as we passed, including a glimpse of sheep being driven along a ridge. He told us the people were Baluch, a generic name for a number of different nomadic tribes who speak a western Iranian dialect called
Baluchi.
We found them camped beyond a shale rise, a handful of tents set up in the shelter of a natural gully. There didn’t seem to be any men around, only women and young children, girls mostly. A donkey was tethered in a pen made from wooden poles and chicken wire; a couple more tied to stakes in the ground.
A woman sat cross-legged on a mat outside her tent wearing a black headscarf and a shawl over her robes. Her two daughters crouched behind her. The tent was large and square with a sloping roof and when we got closer I realised it was made from lots of pieces of cloth all sewn together like a quilt.
It reminded me of Mongolia; the tents, the sheep and goats, little children running around. These people were very poor but the woman had a strong face, she looked proud and was more than happy to talk to me. I asked her about nomadic life and whether it had changed much in recent years.
‘It’s very hard,’ she said. ‘It used to be better, our people were more together. Now the rain is not coming as it should and many leave to go to the city.’
‘Where’s your husband today?’
‘He is working with the sheep - he is looking for water.’ She gestured to a small lean-to kitchen, made from poles and canvas. A large kettle was hanging from a piece of twine, yellow jerricans sitting under a work surface fashioned from a couple of poles. Mahmood told us that for the last two years it hadn’t rained as it should and if it carried on this way the people would have to sell their sheep and move to the city. The woman had eight children (her sons were off working with their father) and all ten of them slept in the one tent.
We were high up here, the mountains orange and pink stone. The whole place looked thirsty. These people had a tough life, but a proud one, and it was a shame to see it being lost to the cities. The kids were great fun, of course: kids are kids no matter what the situation. I messed about with them, getting them to creep up on me and chasing them away like an ogre, the kind of game children play all over the world.
It made me think of my own kids. I really missed them, and with the phones still playing up it was even more difficult. Back in Esfahan, waiting at the station for our next train journey, I managed to get through to them briefly. They all seemed in fine form. I tried to explain to Olly how I felt about Iran - it had been such a weird experience. There are pluses and minuses everywhere you go, of course, but here the differences seemed much more pronounced. The segregation of the women had particularly upset me. I had enjoyed the north more, where the people had seemed more relaxed and the rules and regulations weren’t so clearly in evidence. There was plenty of water, the weather was less oppressive and of course it was further from Tehran.
On the platform, Russ was inspecting the train. ‘This is our fourth train,’ he said. ‘The fifth if you include the one from Liverpool. The
Orient Express
was the best and the Tbilisi-Baku the worst: we’ll have to figure out where we rate this one.’
I studied the military green engine and the pink and blue carriages. The cabins looked pretty small. The train was packed, and the four of us (Mahmood was coming with us) would be sharing one cabin, along with all our gear.
We watched the world go by for a while. It was sandy and flat again, the mountains just hazy shadows in the distance. The cabin was compact, to say the least - Mungo was on the top bunk on one side with Mahmood on the seat below. Russ would be sleeping on the other seat two feet across from Mahmood, and I was on a bunk above Russ. Our gear was strapped on a third bunk above me. But despite being cramped, the train was air-conditioned and the service was fantastic, way better than anything we’d get in Britain. They served dinner on metal plates with real knives and forks: chicken kebab on rice with yoghurt and a lime. The food had been amazing everywhere in Iran - though the meal we had at the transport cafe with Asadollah was probably the best.
In the next carriage along from us, four very attractive sisters were travelling south with one of their young sons. They were in and out of our cabin all the time - we guessed because we were foreign and filming. They were wearing plenty of make-up and only just about wearing their obligatory headscarves. They were full of fun, and one of them just loved the camera. Sitting down next to Mungo, she made sure she was in every shot that Russ was filming. Poor old Mahmood had to keep translating; he talked and talked to the point where his brain was fuddled and he finally said, ‘no more’.