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  Iranian Rappers And Persian Porn

  A Hitchhikers Adventures in the New Iran

  Jamie Maslin

  Copyright © 2009 by Jamie Maslin

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles.

  All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Maslin, Jamie.

  Iranian rappers and Persian porn : a hitchhiker’s adventures in the new Iran / Jamie Maslin. p. cm.

  9781602397910

  1. Iran—Description and travel. 2. Iran—Social life and customs—21st century.

  3. Maslin, Jamie—Travel—Iran. I. Title.

  DS259.2.M38 2009

  955.06’1092—dc22

  2009023710

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE - Close Encounters of the Mustachioed Kind

  CHAPTER TWO - Hitchhiking to the Axis of Evil

  CHAPTER THREE - Tourist at the Border

  CHAPTER FOUR - Disco Lake with Ferris Wheels

  CHAPTER FIVE - German Pop Songs and Chains of Misery

  CHAPTER SIX - Rules of the Road

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Mosquito Mayhem

  CHAPTER EIGHT - The Assassins and the Smoking Car

  CHAPTER NINE - Underworld Paradise

  CHAPTER TEN - All the Gear but No Idea

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - Mullah Madness

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Milan, Paris, London, Tehran: Party Time!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Traveling in Style with the Single-Handed Man

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - The Jewel of Esfahan

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Mr. Private Jet’s Gate of All Nations

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - “Super Film” with Celine Dion and Eminem

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Who’s A-knocking on That Door?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Den of Espionage

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - English Expert

  CHAPTER TWENTY - Strange Encounter

  Introduction

  From Iran’s scorching deserts to its lush forested mountains, from sprawling chaotic cities to ancient historical sites, I witnessed a subtle yet perceptible breeze of discontent stirring through the country, a breeze that foretold an approaching storm.

  That storm erupted for the world to see in 2009 when thousands of predominantly young Iranians took to the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, Esfahan, and elsewhere, to protest the reelection of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, amid allegations of vote fraud from rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

  Despite the Western press giving the impression that the election was unquestionably rigged and that Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his supporters were robbed of victory by Ahmadinejad, the evidence available thus far does not back this up. The only reliable independent polls conducted before the vote by a Western polling organization—carried out by the nonprofit Center for Public Opinion and the New America Foundation whose work with ABC News and the BBC earned them an Emmy Award—predicted a substantial victory of two to one for Ahmadinejad. During his first election in 2005, Ahmadinejad received just over 60 percent of the vote, and the above polling organizations predicted roughly the same figure in the 2009 elections, which appears to be what he received.

  Indications of vote tampering exist, but it seems their scale would have been insufficient to swing the final outcome. Ahmadinejad would have won regardless, and by a substantial degree—perhaps not surprising given that he is a sitting president perceived by many Iranians as someone standing up to the country’s archenemy, the United States, whose armed forces sandwich Iran between Iraq in the west and Afghanistan in the east.

  The irony of such slanted media coverage is that it has portrayed the defeated Mir-Hossein Mousavi as something of an American hero. He is anything but, for when serving as Iran’s prime minister in the eighties, he is believed to have been responsible for orchestrating the attacks on the U.S. embassy and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. These attacks killed 241 U.S. personnel.

  Whether or not vote fraud occurred, and whether or not Mousavi is the great upholder of freedom and democracy that much of the Western media portray him to be, what I came to witness in Iran was a generation longing for greater freedoms. Not just freedom to say what they choose and to write what they wish, but in more elementary ways too—to socialize at parties, to openly have a boyfriend or girlfriend, to hold hands.

  Two thirds of Iran’s 71 million people are below the age of thirty, and half are younger than twenty-five. In the country’s metropolitan areas in particular, there is a huge willingness to break the county’s Islamic laws, often at great personal risk, in order to have a more interesting and exciting life. Alcohol, pornography, illegal books, and forbidden music abound.

  The longing for greater freedom is not the sole preserve of Iran’s youth, but is clear to see in older generations too. I witnessed cab drivers purposefully wind their car windows down in order to yell expletive-peppered abuse at passing mullahs; shopkeepers draw their finger symbolically across their throat whilst gesturing toward obligatory pictures of the country’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini; and others who simply expressed a discontent toward the government.

  But just as I witnessed an appetite for domestic change, so too did I see a deep distrust of the American and British brand of freedom, and outright cynicism, often amongst those most vocal in demanding greater freedoms within Iran, regarding our platitudes on “democracy” and “liberation.” There will scarcely be an Iranian on either side of the recent election protests—and there were huge numbers out in support of Ahmadinejad too—not well aware of the U.S. and Britain’s role in destroying secular Iranian democracy in 1953, something which Iranians are taught from a young age, and in which U.S. president Barack Obama recently acknowledged American involvement.

  It was then that the CIA launched its first ever coup, overthrowing the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh, and installing a brutal dictator, the Shah, in his place, whose secret police, the SAVAK, tortured citizens in the most horrendous ways imaginable. The CIA’s methods included a campaign of shootings and bombings that were blamed on Mossadegh in order to stir up protests and opposition against him.

  With such a past, the irony of the United States decrying the electoral process in Iran, but remaining mute regarding ally nations such as Saudi Arabia that have no elections whatsoever, will not be lost on many within the country.

  The Iranians I met wanted change, but on their terms, not the West’s. For this, there is appetite aplenty in the new Iran.

  Prologue

  Iran? Are you insane?” I’d received similar melodramatic responses from other friends, one of whom said he didn’t want to switch on his television set and see me paraded around in an orange jumpsuit as the latest al Qaeda hostage about to receive “the chop.” He wasn’t talking about a vasectomy.

  Hardly anyone I talked to had any notion that Iran was anything other than an Axis of Evil terror
ist hotbed. In fact, no one seemed to have any idea what the place was like at all. “They’re all desert nomads, right?” asked a colleague of mine. Hardly. But I confess that I was almost as ignorant when I first applied for my Iranian visa, and as a result intended to spend as little time as possible in the country.

  My plan was to travel overland all the way from England to China, following, as best I could, the famed “Silk Route” of renowned thirteenth-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo. To do this, I would have to venture through the Islamic Republic of Iran. Initially assuming it to be far too dangerous for a Westerner to dawdle through, I planned to skip quickly across the top of the country en route to its northeastern border, where I would then travel at a more leisurely pace through such mysterious lands as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and finally China itself.

  I chose China as my destination because my brother had lived in Shanghai for the last five years but I had yet to make the trip out there to visit. For transport, I had made up my mind to hitchhike. I’d done plenty of hitching before, most notably from Normandy, France, to the tiny British colony of Gibraltar. I’d also hitched all the way across Australia, but this trip would far exceed that in length.

  A myriad of reasons motivated me to make this trip; not least was the fact that to my mind it was an epic journey, and up until that point my journeys had been far from epic, and I had yet to travel anywhere truly exotic, different, or challenging. I had spent a good few years backpacking abroad, but on the whole I had only really visited English-speaking former British colonies where the only discernible differences from my native Britain were the warmer weather and the colder beer. It had been great fun and a worthy experience, but hardly a different and fascinating new world. I hoped this trip would redress the balance.

  The travels of my former girlfriend, Ashley, were the antithesis of mine. She had spent eight years as a humanitarian aid worker for Doctors Without Borders, during which time she visited some of the most war-torn countries on the planet. This included two years in Sierra Leone, two in Lebanon, and two in southern Sudan. I had immense respect for her work and had always loved to hear of her many adventures. Some of her tales were exciting, some poignant and moving, others downright funny—all were an inspiration and made me want to visit a more enigmatic part of the world.

  All I needed to see my plan come to fruition was enough money to fund it—quickly, so I didn’t have to travel through Central Asia in the depths of winter. Winters in that part of the world could be brutal, and, since my accommodation would predominately be my flimsy little tent, it made travel at that time of year unappealing if not unfeasible.

  For the last few months, I had been religiously saving every penny earned from my boring and underpaid temporary office job, but this was only a secondary source of funding. The main slice of traveling cash would come from something I’d done on three previous occasions when in dire need of money—taking part in medical research in a voluntary clinical trial.

  For clinical or medical trials, healthy people volunteer to take an experimental medicine that is in the final stages of development with a pharmaceutical company, such as a new headache pill or asthma inhaler. They’re then monitored on a hospital ward for a designated period of time before receiving a handsome, tax-free check for their troubles, normally in the order of one or two thousand British pounds for just a couple weeks of their time. Two grand (roughly four thousand U.S. dollars) was just what I needed to add to the eight hundred pounds I’d saved. That would enable me to stick around in China for a while, and, more importantly, get me back again.

  Clinical trials aren’t such a bad way of spending a week or two. You get free food and accommodation, a common room with satellite TV, free Internet access, loads of DVDs, game consoles, books, board games, and best of all there are lots of pretty nurses to chat to—when they’re not siphoning your blood or demanding a periodic urine sample, that is.

  The downside to the trials is that the medicines, thus far, have been untested on humans. I’d felt no side effects during the three previous trials I’d taken part in, but whether I’d been lucky and got one of the placebos, which make up 25 percent of the doses given, I don’t know.

  I phoned the hospital and secured my place on a trial for a new flu drug. The pretrial screening seemed but a formality, since I had passed all the previous screenings and was of average height, average weight, and a nonsmoker. After several tests, however, the doctor gave me the bad news that I had been rejected from the study because my heartbeat was twobeats-a-minute too fast for this particular trial. I was gutted. The next available trial, if I passed the screening, was months away, meaning I’d have to travel in the depths of winter. My failing the trial had put an end to my epic overland journey to China before it had even begun.

  So what was I to do? I had about fourteen hundred dollars to my name and two brand-new, unused visas in my passport, one for Uzbekistan, the other for the Islamic Republic of Iran. The first had been a piece of cake to acquire but the second had been very difficult. It had taken over two months to secure, despite the fact that I’d used a Tehran-based visa agency which had promised speedy service and liaised on my behalf with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It had been so difficult to come by that it now seemed a terrible waste not to use it, especially as I had read that if I didn’t use it, it would effectively guarantee the embassy’s turning down any subsequent applications.

  With this in mind I decided, somewhat apprehensively, to hitchhike to Tehran instead of Shanghai, and to travel the country from north to south and east to west. It was apparently dirt cheap, so I figured my funds would just about stretch this far. Plus, it was over halfway to China—over three thousand miles away—a more than respectable hitchhiking destination, although perhaps not quite the monumental overland marathon I’d hoped for with China.

  My only concern was Iran’s ominous reputation as an “Axis of Evil” breeding ground for angry Islamic fundamentalists. And since two of its bordering neighbors, Iraq and Afghanistan, were in total chaos, I wondered if Iran might not be the smartest of holiday destinations. Most of my friends thought likewise and encouraged me to go elsewhere for my vacation—somewhere “safer.”

  I could well understand their concerns, for I had similar fears myself, most of which had been formed after watching a TV documentary showing graphic footage of human rights abuses in Iran. It had made a powerful and lasting impression on me. In the program, a man was shown having his hand cut off, another was shown screaming in utter agony as his eyeball was sliced out with a scalpel—punishment for looking at something immoral—and worst of all was footage of women being stoned to death. The women were wrapped up like mummies in thick white sheeting and buried in the ground up to their chests to prevent any movement as the blows rained in. Gradually, the sheets turned from white to red. It was horrific and scared the hell out of me.

  But any fear of hitching to and traveling around the Islamic Republic was superseded by my fear of staying in England in a dead-end job I hated. I thus made up my mind to hitchhike to Iran come-what-may.

  The more I thought about it, the more I became curious as to whether the country’s ominous reputation was well-founded, or if much of it was just media propaganda. I couldn’t remember having ever seen a positive or heartwarming news story from Iran, and it seemed to me that whenever it featured on the nightly news, either crazed, head-banging mobs or grim, blackcloaked women were shown. Even the famous Iranian embassy siege in London seemed to indicate a country that was trouble. Did normal people live there at all, I wondered? Whatever the truth, I wanted to see and experience the real Iran for myself and to spend as much time as I could with the people of the country whilst immersing myself in their culture.

  My planning, or lack of planning, for this new adventure of mine consisted simply of photocopying the relevant pages from both a European and Turkish road atlas, on which I plotted my intended hitchhiking route with a thick red marker, then bu
ying a trusty Lonely Planet Iran, and getting myself packed.

  I was desperate to get moving.

  Arriving at the train station, I headed toward the seaside town of Dover, where I would catch the ferry to France and begin my long hard hitch to the Middle East.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Close Encounters of the Mustachioed Kind

  To hitchhike is to experience the very best and worst of humanity. Often when hitching, I’ve been lucky enough to meet people who have shown to me a kindness and generosity so great as to be humbling—a kindness which, had our situations been reversed, I fear I would not have shown to them.

  Unfortunately though, whilst hitching you also get to encounter your fair share of moronic idiots, who, upon seeing you standing by the side of the road with a thumb held optimistically in the air, flick you, by way of response, a middle finger. Or even, as I experienced once in Australia, throw a bag of half-eaten McDonald’s at you. From my experience though, the good normally far outweighs the bad, and to travel this way generally leaves me with a greater faith in humanity.