Book "Unforgettable Iran". Chapter 1. Hiking from Azerbaijan to Iran (Astara checkpoint)
Astara crush.
The road from Baku to the border with Iran took about four hours. On the way you will pass the city of Lankaran. This is a very interesting city in terms of agriculture - oranges, tangerines, kiwi, feijoa are grown there, so if you arrive at the end of October, you will be able to see how these fruits grow. In Lankaran there is also a monument to tea, a huge samovar - in this region, high-quality tea is grown under the brand name "A zer Chai", awarded many gold medals at international exhibitions.
The last two hundred kilometers I flew with an Azerbaijani Schumacher, who even fit into turns at a speed of one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. Somewhere on the road he stopped to buy a watermelon, he did not have enough money and I donated two manats. Then we drove even faster, our last settlement was some village, from where I got to Astara already by minibus.
Passengers asked me where I was going. I proudly replied that I wanted to be in Tehran in the evening.
- In the evening you will not be in Tehran, only if in the morning, and then, it depends on the customs, - some man corrected me, he was traveling with his wife to Iranian Astara to visit relatives. This city is divided into two parts: one half is in Azerbaijan, the other is in Iran.
The clock showed one in the afternoon, and I thought that I could easily get to Tehran. We got off the minibus and walked through the city to the customs. As far as I understand, there is a crossing for cars, regular buses also go there. But since I was without a car, they brought me to the pedestrian checkpoint.
The transition looked like this: long rows of gratings that divided people into long lines, on top of a canopy of unknown origin.
Despite the fact that the checkpoint should open in the morning and work until the evening, today it was open for half an hour at ten in the morning, and has since been closed, so queues of several hundred people stretched from the doors, who sat, lay, slept, ate, littered in these passages from the bars. Each passage ended with a small metal door. Some desperate people tried to pry our door open with crowbars. When they failed, they would nervously pound their instruments on the door and curse in Azeri.
In the meantime, more and more people were approaching the crossing, and soon a crowd formed behind me, the end of which was not visible. Nobody was missed. Four hours passed (! ), now we had to wait in a dense crush among people, and going to the toilet or going to buy water was out of the question.
At five o'clock in the evening, the bolt of one of the doors creaked, the door opened, and an Azerbaijani border guard who looked out of it said in Russian: "The passage is open for ten minutes. "
People rushed to the door like crazy, a woman screamed in the passage, in screams I heard a child cry, an uncontrollable crowd rushed to the door. Of the three doors, only one was open, and only for ten minutes. Women with huge shopping bags screamed like crazy. As the locals explained to me, these women cross the border several times a day to buy cheap food in Iran and sell it at a higher price in Azerbaijan. Since with their crossings they create a lot of work for the border guards, the latter do not even interfere and encourage if such a woman is crushed or completely strangled in the crowd.
Here's my turn.
An ordinary door, five people are trying to squeeze through at the same time, I clung to a man who, having pushed aside the weaker ones, was rushing forward. Behind me, I heard how the border guards began to close the door, forcibly pushing out those who did not have time to get through, and a minute later the door slammed shut.
This was the end of our suffering. But it turned out there were two more doors waiting for us. Now we were waiting in a stuffy corridor, the border guard took some of the passports and went to issue them. By law, they are required to let in first of all citizens of other countries, so I showed him my passport, he thought and loudly shouted to the crowd: “Belarusian, let him through the door. ” But, of course, no one listened to him. Then the border guard himself approached me, as I remember the officer, already a gray-haired and respectable uncle, swearing and squeezing through the crowd, sweating and breathing heavily from such physical exertion, led me by the hand through the door. So I passed the second level.
The last door was glass, there were no more than a hundred people left, but we were told that only the first twenty people would pass. Therefore, the competition was high. I, like other men, were simply pressed into the corner by young ladies with shopping bags, because they had to go through in order to buy goods for themselves at all costs. They did not care about the rest, and the rest had mutual feelings for them. The border guard was counting people, while in front of him ten people with screams and groans squeezed through one, this time, a narrow glass door. “Twenty, close! the assistant called to him. The woman with the shopping bag, the twenty-first, yelled loudly, grabbed the door frame with her hands and began to pull herself up on her hands to squeeze through the door. The border guards began to vigorously grab her by the fingers and push her away. The young lady turned out to be smarter, at the last moment she managed to slip her foot into the passage. Now the door wouldn't close.
The border guards did not expect such a trick and began to kick her protruding part of the body with the heels of their shoes. The woman screamed even louder, but did not remove her leg. The efforts of the third customs officer did not help either, who ran to the rescue and also diligently connected his heels to work. After a few minutes, they decided to let the lady through as a big exception. I watched this attraction from the side, I felt sorry for these unfortunate people, and, of course, I no longer had any desire to squeeze in twenty-second.
“Why are they creating such a crush, ” I asked a local Azerbaijani, “they could still open all three doors there, they would say that they would accept everyone who they have time today. Why were they closed all day today and opened only for ten minutes, why do they do it so that people crush each other.
- It has always been like this here, this is the worst crossing in Azerbaijan.
They are not people, but animals, look at them, they deliberately make a stampede, so that later they can trick someone for a bribe. You saw how they took away some passports and let them pass, and then they will pay for this service.
“The crossing is closed, we are not accepting anyone else today! "- the border guard said loudly. The people sighed, and after standing for a while, began to dutifully disperse, there were about twenty people left. I went to the border guard and showed my passport.
- Why didn't you pass, we told you to pass first? ! - he said.
I replied that I couldn't get in because they wouldn't let me in.
- Then come tomorrow morning, today the crossing is closed.
It was six in the evening, on the Iranian side the crossing was closed half an hour later. I think that the Azerbaijani customs officers had no right to close so early, so I and a few people continued to wait.
From time to time, people in uniform came up to us and told us to leave, because the boss with the necessary seals left, and they still wouldn’t let us through. I was told to wait as I am from Belarus. For all the time I had a strange feeling, the border guards treated me very kindly, sometimes very helpful. The crush, in fact, artificially created by themselves, they did not seem to notice. How it was part of their daily work, a simple routine, completely independent of them.
When there were six of us left, the most persistent and hardy, they let us through. The chief did not go anywhere, and the seals were put up pretty quickly. Crossing the bridge, I saw Iranian flags and breathed a sigh of relief.
Author: Kozlovsky Alexander.
Book: "Unforgettable Iran". 159 days hitchhiking.
Source: http://sanyok-belarus. people. en/
