"Grand Accident"
Midnight on the pier jutting into the Caspian Sea, H2 and his college friends haven't seen each other in a couple years, but it could have been yesterday. We teach each other dirty words in our native languages. His friends talk about engineering and starting up a business. Some naughty boys put a firecracker into a charity box and run away.
*
"Slovak investors urged to invest in rubber tree plantantions in Ethiopia."
*
The elderly chaikuneh owner in Qazvin seems tired, but no worse for wear.
"I hope America can be Iran's friend in the future," he says to me. "We are all God's creation."
*
Someone asks if its true that no Jews died in the September 11 attacks.
"Jews died", I reply. "Puerto Ricans died, Jamaicans died, Moslems, Jews, Christians, secular humanists died. Everyone died on September 11."
*
"Iranians hate bin Laden", H2 tells me over a course of dizi. "They blame him for turning the world against Moslems. And he's Saudi. I don't even think he's really Moslem. All politicians are the same."
And, of course, bin Laden is wealthy. If he really wanted to do something for 'his people', well, he could have done something for his people.
*
We set out for our last great trekking adventure together. We negotiate a ridiculously low price with the driver, but he has to stop and ask directions from other cabbies. They inform him he should be getting much more. We decide to find another car. Just as well - considering the trip we're about to take - the driver's jacket says, in English, "Grand Accident".
Our destination is less than 100 km from Qazvin, but it takes over two hours since, once reaching the mountains, its a long series of hairpin turns over one mountain range above the treeline, then descending into a valley before ascending another mountain range. One false move - no guardrails - and we'd plummet thousands of feet. The other driver certainly would have gotten us killed. Our new driver grew up in the village where we're headed. Its called Alamut, also known as Gazor Khan, also known as Dezha-ye Hashish-iyun, also known as the Castles of the Assassins.
I'll turn on the comments for this blog when I get back and maybe my brother Scott can provide some more details, but about 1000 years ago Hasan-e Sabbah lured young men into his remote mountain fortress where he would ply them with hashish (hence "hashish-iyun"), show them beautiful gardens with lovely maidens convincing them they were in paradise, and then send them back down the mountain to assissinate political and religious leaders. Its an arduous trip to the top of the stronghold, but the vistas are breathtaking. I don't see any hashish or maidens.
On the way back to Qazvin, our driver Ali - a man in his late 40s - asks if I have any Persian girlfriends.
>"Nope."
"I'll set you up with my mother!"
>"I don't want to upset your father."
"Its okay, I'll get him a new girlfriend, too."
>"Maybe if your mother looks like Jessica Simpson."
"She looks like Jimmy Carter!"
*
Ali keeps a picture of his young daughter taped to the inside of the driver's side door next to a memorial picture of his brother.
We stop at a village restaurant that doesn't have menus. Doesn't really matter since 95% of Iranian restaurants have 95% of the same menus. More kebabs. H2 and I have taken chicken out of our diets quite a while ago. The radio reports that bird flu has been found in the lagoon of Anzali, the same lagoon my hotel balcony overlooked the night before.
I've taken some pictures of Ali and he asks me to e-mail them to him at my earliest convenience. He puts his pinky fingers together and says "doost".
Along the way we pick up a woman with a flower embroidered into her scarf. The men continue to talk, she speaks nary a word.
*
Akbar takes us in his cab from our hotel to the bus depot in Qazvin. A man of deep serenity confident in the role God plays in his life, he shows us the scars he incurred during the Iran-Iraq war - his knee, his forehead, all over his body. He suffers from blood poisoning during a chemical bombing. He offers to put me up for the night if I decide to stay over again in Qazvin.
"Iranians love Americans like brothers", he says. "Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Armenians, Russians - Only God."
We arrive at the depot, but rather than getting tickets we arrange for a car to take us to Tehran. Akbar comes over to us: "I've provided the police with this car's number so that you will have complete immunity on your journey."
*
Bruno Kirby's Persian Doppleganger will take us, along with another couple, the short distance from Qazvin to Tehran (at about 140 kph). He looks like the last man you'd think of when it comes to electronic dance music, appearing to be in his late 40s or 50s, but like virtually every driver we've had, regardless of age, Persian techno, trance and breakbeats boom from his stereo.
Arriving in Tehran Bruno Kirby's Persian Doppleganger informs us that he hasn't slept in two days. Everyone pays and immediately gets out of the car.
*
"Doost" means "friend".
*
"Slovak investors urged to invest in rubber tree plantantions in Ethiopia."
*
The elderly chaikuneh owner in Qazvin seems tired, but no worse for wear.
"I hope America can be Iran's friend in the future," he says to me. "We are all God's creation."
*
Someone asks if its true that no Jews died in the September 11 attacks.
"Jews died", I reply. "Puerto Ricans died, Jamaicans died, Moslems, Jews, Christians, secular humanists died. Everyone died on September 11."
*
"Iranians hate bin Laden", H2 tells me over a course of dizi. "They blame him for turning the world against Moslems. And he's Saudi. I don't even think he's really Moslem. All politicians are the same."
And, of course, bin Laden is wealthy. If he really wanted to do something for 'his people', well, he could have done something for his people.
*
We set out for our last great trekking adventure together. We negotiate a ridiculously low price with the driver, but he has to stop and ask directions from other cabbies. They inform him he should be getting much more. We decide to find another car. Just as well - considering the trip we're about to take - the driver's jacket says, in English, "Grand Accident".
Our destination is less than 100 km from Qazvin, but it takes over two hours since, once reaching the mountains, its a long series of hairpin turns over one mountain range above the treeline, then descending into a valley before ascending another mountain range. One false move - no guardrails - and we'd plummet thousands of feet. The other driver certainly would have gotten us killed. Our new driver grew up in the village where we're headed. Its called Alamut, also known as Gazor Khan, also known as Dezha-ye Hashish-iyun, also known as the Castles of the Assassins.
I'll turn on the comments for this blog when I get back and maybe my brother Scott can provide some more details, but about 1000 years ago Hasan-e Sabbah lured young men into his remote mountain fortress where he would ply them with hashish (hence "hashish-iyun"), show them beautiful gardens with lovely maidens convincing them they were in paradise, and then send them back down the mountain to assissinate political and religious leaders. Its an arduous trip to the top of the stronghold, but the vistas are breathtaking. I don't see any hashish or maidens.
On the way back to Qazvin, our driver Ali - a man in his late 40s - asks if I have any Persian girlfriends.
>"Nope."
"I'll set you up with my mother!"
>"I don't want to upset your father."
"Its okay, I'll get him a new girlfriend, too."
>"Maybe if your mother looks like Jessica Simpson."
"She looks like Jimmy Carter!"
*
Ali keeps a picture of his young daughter taped to the inside of the driver's side door next to a memorial picture of his brother.
We stop at a village restaurant that doesn't have menus. Doesn't really matter since 95% of Iranian restaurants have 95% of the same menus. More kebabs. H2 and I have taken chicken out of our diets quite a while ago. The radio reports that bird flu has been found in the lagoon of Anzali, the same lagoon my hotel balcony overlooked the night before.
I've taken some pictures of Ali and he asks me to e-mail them to him at my earliest convenience. He puts his pinky fingers together and says "doost".
Along the way we pick up a woman with a flower embroidered into her scarf. The men continue to talk, she speaks nary a word.
*
Akbar takes us in his cab from our hotel to the bus depot in Qazvin. A man of deep serenity confident in the role God plays in his life, he shows us the scars he incurred during the Iran-Iraq war - his knee, his forehead, all over his body. He suffers from blood poisoning during a chemical bombing. He offers to put me up for the night if I decide to stay over again in Qazvin.
"Iranians love Americans like brothers", he says. "Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Armenians, Russians - Only God."
We arrive at the depot, but rather than getting tickets we arrange for a car to take us to Tehran. Akbar comes over to us: "I've provided the police with this car's number so that you will have complete immunity on your journey."
*
Bruno Kirby's Persian Doppleganger will take us, along with another couple, the short distance from Qazvin to Tehran (at about 140 kph). He looks like the last man you'd think of when it comes to electronic dance music, appearing to be in his late 40s or 50s, but like virtually every driver we've had, regardless of age, Persian techno, trance and breakbeats boom from his stereo.
Arriving in Tehran Bruno Kirby's Persian Doppleganger informs us that he hasn't slept in two days. Everyone pays and immediately gets out of the car.
*
"Doost" means "friend".
posted by s. at 12:05 AM
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