Different worlds

TEHRAN

...against all the prejudices surrounding this country, it's with great joy that I can finally write about the "dangerous" IRAN!...and I'll start by saying that there's absolutely nothing dangerous here. Far more dangerous is the media propaganda to which we are subjected in the West, and we, accustomed to judging from the height of our cultural pedestal, guided by gurus named Bush or Sarkozy and in the name of a better and more evolved race, hold back at the mere possibility of looking at and judging reality with our own eyes...

I arrive in Tehran in the dead of night... the queue for passport control is nerve-racking and takes up more than an hour of my precious Iranian time. Currency exchange isn't any better, and with my pockets full of the usual banknotes that are worth nothing (and yes, because thanks to the embargo that has weighed on this country for 10 years from our American friends, credit cards are unusable...) I plunge into the lively Middle Eastern life, baptised by the first haggling over the taxi fare: during the ride, which lasts more than an hour, the taxi driver gets lost, fills up with petrol, stops on the road to make a phone call, and offers me about fifty cigarettes... but in the end I arrive at my destination. The Firouzeh Hotel is reasonably priced, clean, and well run by Mr. Mousawi, a true pearl of the city, with his advice, always ready to help and open to conversation...

I'll later discover, however, that I'm staying in a hotel located in one of the worst areas of the city... but oh well, never mind... I move around for three days in the extremely polluted Tehran which, from a tourist point of view, has very little to offer (a gigantic bazaar, a couple of palaces, and the shrine of Imam Khomeini accompanied by the cemetery of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war...) but it lifts the spirit from a human point of view... I am continually invaded by hordes of curious and kind Iranians (especially young people...), who under the sincere pretext of wanting to help me find my way around the immense city... take the opportunity and always ask you what we think of them and what idea the West is forming about their country, a point that worries them frighteningly... what's more, the social situation, especially with regard to women, is changing enormously.

Without defending the indefensible, it must nevertheless be said that women are very respected: they have carriages for themselves on the metro and seats reserved everywhere, and if they then want otherwise, they are completely free to mix in every way with men: it's the man who has restrictions!...and also the fact that, albeit still with the hijab, they are nowadays heavily made up, in jeans, and much more emancipated says a great deal about how things are changing here too....

ESFAHAN

The description of "pearl of the Islamic world" for the city of Esfahan couldn't have been more apt! It's so sad to see this wonderful place practically deserted. Foreign visitors are almost non-existent: I talk to loads of locals and they all tell me that shops are closing now, hotels are always empty (mine included...) and the economic situation is almost unsustainable. The publicity Iran has abroad is also reducing the last hope they have of making a bit of money and relating with the outside world... anyway... Esfahan: a wonderful and immense bazaar (empty though...), mosques straight out of a thousand and one nights, Imam Square that leaves you breathless. It's the second largest square in the world, second only to Tiananmen in Beijing, the difference is that Imam Sq.

is steeped in that wonderful Arab architecture that leaves you speechless and where for just 80 cents you can visit what is rightly considered the most beautiful mosque in the world: the Imam Mosque. I then visit without stopping everything I see. While I'm in the Armenian (Christian... long live tolerance...) quarter, I sip a coffee and start talking to a guy my age and after half an hour and a bit of riding around on a motorbike, here I am at his house with his fiancée, brothers, and father! They stuff me with home-made food (delicious!), fruit and then take me around to see the city with its bridges at night!... it feels like being in a fairy tale!... what a city!... and what wonderful people... and the much-famed Iranian hospitality couldn't have turned out to be more real!

YADZ

I leave Esfahan with the idea that without me this wonderful city will have the lowest number of tourists ever recorded: none. Besides having struck me for its people and artistic wonders, the total absence of foreigners also cannot fail to surprise......and the fact that I'm one of the very few visiting Iran at the moment is also confirmed by the fact that on no bus or train will I ever meet other tourists... or at least "not Iranians"... I arrive in Yazd where I stay in a beautiful hotel converted from an old aristocratic house in Arab style and where I meet, or rather see, some backpackers... the food is good and the atmosphere is very pleasant. The city is more than a thousand years old and the historic center is entirely built with sun-dried mud bricks, which gives the small town, empty and silent like all of Iran, a fairy-tale atmosphere...

everything there is to see is in a fairly limited area and the main tourist attractions can be appreciated by wandering around without a precise plan... I will certainly remember Yazd as the most characteristic and fascinating of my Iranian destinations...

SHIRAZ

Another 6/7 hours of bus leave me dazed, and having to wander around at 9 in the evening looking for a hotel is certainly not fun, but since I've saved loads of money according to my plans, I treat myself to the luxury of a room for a good 15 euros where, after almost 10 days, I find again the magic box that emits images and voices, BBC included... I see everything and more: here in Shiraz too I get lost in the beautiful bazaar, I see mosques, castles, and then I simply walk without a destination (and without stopping!) getting lost a dozen times in alleys and little streets... I try to eat a kind of pizza that mostly tastes like... nothing! Well, Shiraz isn't a marvel, but I was obliged to pass through here to be able to visit one of my childhood dreams: Persepolis!

PERSEPOLIS

You CANNOT close better THAN with the visit to one of those cities of the ancient world whose beauty and historical importance has no equal: Persepolis. A city that today can be compared to the seat of the UN. A center where the different kingdoms of the era, under the careful rule of the Achaemenids and their immortal kings (Cyrus the Great, Darius, Xerxes...), had a representative or ambassador. Lost in the nothingness of the arid lands of ancient Persia, near present-day Shiraz, little can be written to try to turn sensations and emotions into concrete words. Persepolis, even today, where it's possible to see no more than 5% of what it once was, leaves you breathless: the grandeur, the architectural and artistic perfection with thousands of years of our world's history as a backdrop is simply wonderful.

For me it's the realization of a dream, it's like seeing photos and words read and re-read over the years in dozens of different books materialize. The Gate of All Nations, the Palace of a Hundred Columns or that of Darius, accompanied by famous bas-reliefs, leave room only for admiration and imagination... The negative note, once again, is the absolute lack of tourists. Selfishly it's a pleasure to be able to wander among these stones centuries old without the usual hordes of Japanese or groups of any other nationality with their little hats all the same color, but I realize that for the already knee-buckled economy of this country, with ordinary people as always paying the consequences, a greater influx of tourists would only do good around here...

I leave Persepolis with a tear, but with the awareness of having had the luck to be able to visit one of those places that, unbeknownst to many, have been the fulcrum of part of what the world is today. And the courage to visit it, setting aside all the stupid prejudices that exist about this country......but now it's time to return, 13 hours by bus to reach Tehran, closing my backpack for the umpteenth time and setting off on the road again...

DIFFERENT WORLDS...

Iran is undoubtedly an unexpectedly fascinating country. More than two thousand years of history, art, and culture are enclosed in an unpredictable geographical setting, and where today's social and political situation fascinates and generates anger, but makes you spend at least a bit of time trying to understand its mechanisms......but once again it's the people of this country who give me the chance to receive as a gift visions and attitudes totally foreign to my way of understanding human relationships. A human experience that will mark the soul of anyone who has the courage to set aside the many prejudices surrounding Iran. Something unforgettable. The opportunity to compare two totally different worlds. Ours, which we know so well, and theirs, which we should make an effort to know better.