Better Irani Days

As expected I have had to eat my words about Iran, but only some of them. The fact that I predicted this occurence certainly sweetens the bitter taste that such an act usually enduces. the reason for this snack is mainly due to the above pictured family who offered their home to me in Esfahan for three days and treated and served me with the same supplication that Xerxes II must of recieved a couple of millenium ago. It is said round these parts that a guest has the face of Allah and one must treat a guest as such, and so they did, fruits, biscuits, meal upon meal and as much shishah as my lungs could take all washed down by countless cups of sweet black tea. The guiltiness and awkwardness about being served so grossly by the women of the famiy soon wore off and was replaced by a lust for an Iranian wife and a loathing for the sexual equality menace which has terrorized our society since the days of the suffragettes and for which I for one am willing to make a stand against.

I am of course joking so you can stop typing the hate mail and erasing me form your contacts. but the womens life in Iran is not as sheltered as maybe common perception has it believed. In comparrison to Pakistan where I did not speak to one woman, women in Iran are approachable and seem to hold nearly as many jobs as men. On a bus trip to Bandar abbas two beautiful young Iranian women started a conversation with me and proceeded to invite me to their house which I having become an Islamic prude in the past weeks was shocked by. Due to other priorities I had to decline but it made me realise the stigmas I had attached to women in Islamic countries and how wrong I was. The education of women in extremely high and despite the strict dress laws they live a relatively liberal life.

There are of course certain dos and donts, the daughter of the family I stayed with, recently married, showed me around the sights of Esfahan, the husband, a surly, mulleted, thick moustached, ex iranian boxer was none to happy about this and from what i gathered from the frantic farsee being shouted from family to mullet man, I was quite close to getting an iranian knuckle sandwich, and believe you me it would of been a rather one sided affair.

This husband seemed to sum up the majority of Iranians I met, ignorant pricks if you excuse the French. Think back to the most authoritarian, condescending police officer you have ever had the misfortune to cross paths with and that is the average 20-45 year old Iranian male (anyone who falls out of this category is without fail lovely). Like with the policeman they know that they have the upper hand, me not speaking farsee and a stranger to the country, so the only acceptable action is complete submission, any other act will end in repramands usually financial. Not being one to bite my tongue and cower like a dog travel in Iran was at the most part infuriating and costly.

Maybe because of the high expectations I held, the brilliance of Pakistan and my state of mind I am not a fair judge of this country but it is the one place I have visited that I would not hurry to go back to. And just to note all my original complaints still stand true. Though I will not go in to it again, the treatment of gusts in Islamic countries puts us christians to shame as we both share the same rules in both religions but we have seemed to ignore. I shudder to think of their reaction when they recieve the treatment I have seen other tourists recieve in this country.