Hal-e shoma chetor ast? Who bead? Who bam. Kheili mamnunam. Khasteh Nabshi. It takes all those words, like a fine Persian poem, to say hello in Farsi. I guess I should know as my good friend Karman (a Tehrani – not to be confused with a Yazdi by any measure) seared those words into my brain and after 21 days they finally stuck! Of course, when I try to impress anyone with my Farsi today, everyone always asks me if I was married to an Iranian otherwise how could I know how to say hello in Farsi so well? Moreover, most Iranians become suspicious when they hear that I went there initially all on my own as a solo traveler covering over 8,000km in a car with Karman as my guide and driver to scout out the location before I brought my group of intrepid travelers for a further 34-days! Of course, during my visits, unless I was inside my hotel room, I had to dress in the Islamic tradition which meant I had to wear a black mid-calf manteau and scarf at all times. Funny enough after wearing this get-up for awhile, I became accustom to it. So much so that when I went to visit a US friend’s sister living in Tehran, when she told me I could take off all my outerwear while in the confines inside her home – I took off my scarf but declined to discard the manteau. The weather had been warm and I did not happen to have a heap of designer clothes underneath like a lot of the locals do. Suffice it to say, you can stash a lot underneath that disguise. When I met the woman in the photo above at the Caspian Sea seaside resort of Bandar-e Anzali (our jumping off point to the village of Masule), it was fascinating to watch her pull out a book and all sorts of other items that were stashed away underneath her shroud. Too bad she did not pull out a small tin of that infamous tasty black Caspian Sea caviar! Honestly, there is nothing more amusing than a little cultural exchange…but all kidding aside, as a tourist it is easy for me to make light of the day-to day aspects of the mandatory restrictive clothing for the women there. The truth is that in places like Ahvaz you could actually die of a heat stroke because of it.
