Book "Unforgettable Iran". Chapter 6.1 Isfahan
The cult of the hookah and not only
As soon as I arrived in Isfahan, my friend Bahman immediately organized a tour of the evening city for me. We walked around the New Julfa district and looked at the old Armenian church, and then we went to the best teahouse in the city called “Takht e Soleyman” (Throne of Suleiman, Hakim Nezami St. )
It was a pleasant place in the traditional style, we climbed with our feet on a low table covered with carpets. Behind each such “table” there were several hookahs (ghalun), so that at the same time dozens of people exhaled vapors of white smoke, but the room was not stuffy and it was very easy to breathe. The peculiarity of this institution is that they did not cook food here - you can only order hookah, tea or soda, and besides, women are not allowed here. We drank tea and smoked hookah. Soft, not disturbing the throat mint smoke disposed to a long unhurried conversation.
The guys opposite us were experimenting with hookahs of different heights, adding milk and juice to them, but I liked the simple hookah on the water the most.
Smoking hookah in Iran is a special tradition - it is smoked both during the day and in the evening, before and after work, as well as before going to bed. They will definitely make you a hookah for lunch and dinner, and if you ask, then also for breakfast. The hookah will be soft or very soft, and you may immediately like it. However, it must be remembered that during a session lasting 45 minutes, a smoker consumes more carbon monoxide and nicotine than when smoking a pack of cigarettes. I preferred not to think about it until I began to scratch my throat, as a result of my hookah smoking several times a day for a whole week. I made a firm promise to myself that I would stop smoking hookah more than once every five days, and I stuck to that rule later on.
Reference. In Iran, the hookah is called "ghalun".
The name, obviously, was borrowed from the Arabic "ghla" (boil, seethe).
When we returned home, I prepared a dish of Belarusian cuisine for everyone - draniki (pancakes made from potatoes, eggs and flour). Since they didn’t like draniki with milk and yogurt, they immediately invented the Iranian version - they began to drink sweet soda pancakes, and for taste pour plenty of ketchup and mayonnaise. As a dessert, Bachmann's friends put a liter bottle of Absolut vodka on the table and now walked around it in very joyful anticipation, while the owner of the house himself, with a pleased expression on his face, rolled cigarettes, mixing tobacco with hashish, which, as he himself said, was of very good quality. In fact, it turned out that getting any banned product in Iran is quite easy, the only problem is the price - a bottle of vodka costs $40.
Drinking alcohol in Iran, like using drugs, is a criminal offense (punishment - up to the death penalty). All names in the story are fictitious. The author was an outside observer and did not violate the law.
Dinner in Aseman
I was going to walk around the city center, and in order to find the right bus, I had to ask people at the bus stop.
“Beba khshid, kodu m utubu s be Maidan n e Ema m mi r e” (excuse me, which bus goes to Imam Square), I asked the young guy.
Recognizing me as a foreigner, the Iranian enthusiastically grabbed my hand and led me across the road to another stop, found the one I needed among the many buses and pushed me into the passenger compartment. While I was thinking about where I would arrive, he had already paid for my fare and agreed with the driver to drop me off at the right stop. Waving his hand in farewell, he quickly disappeared into the crowd of people.
A minute later I was already riding the bus and studying the map of Isfahan.
The Iranian sitting next to me immediately spoke to me. His name was Mojtaba, he worked as a waiter in a restaurant at the four-star hotel Aseman (Sky) and invited me to go there to eat. I asked how much the dinner would cost, and he replied that it would cost nothing, as he would be given a big discount as an employee. Then I asked him to give me a discount, and I would pay the bill myself. Mojtaba did not agree, saying that I was a guest, and added that in any case he would be glad to see me.
A few days later, I happened to be in that area and went to a restaurant. Mochtaba immediately recognized me and offered to choose any dish he liked. For $10 you could pay for a buffet, which had almost no meat dishes in its assortment, but abounded in various fruits.
I decided to order from the menu and chose the signature dish - shish kebab with the intriguing name "shish keba b", a bowl of rice with saffron, and a can of Bavaria non-alcoholic beer, which is actually just a sweet malt drink. Such an account should have cost me about $18, with a 30% discount for employees, it turned out to be $12. However, the bill was never brought to me, because Mojtaba insisted that he pay my bill himself. We agreed to meet him after work, but we never succeeded, so from the pages of my book I express my gratitude to him for his hospitality.
That evening I returned home in a very unusual way. Walking around the evening city, I accidentally stopped at the site where the guys were playing baseball. It was very unusual to see a classic American game in Iran. After the match, I approached one of the players, who told me that he studied in the US and now organizes baseball games in Iran.
Packing his equipment onto a motorcycle, the Iranian offered to take me home, which I was very happy about.
bodybuilding champion
I was walking around the main square and taking pictures of the monuments, when suddenly my phone rang. Parents from Belarus called, they celebrated the birthday of a neighbor. It is not surprising that I was immediately asked to bring "cognac or wine" from a distant country. Since Iran has a dry law, this was not possible, and I simply wished health to the birthday man. Someone called me: “Hello, Mister! ". Two guys were sitting nearby on the lawn, having heard an unfamiliar speech, they now really wanted to get to know each other. They were Ahmad and his friend.
Ahmad said that he is a student and professionally involved in sports, this year he won a gold medal in a bodybuilding competition in Isfahan and a bronze medal in Iran.
Although he did not look very muscular, I later verified his words when I saw his cups and medals and went to training with him. He often liked to brag that he had a girlfriend and they had sex. In general, men in Iran are very proud if they are still unmarried, and they have at least once "had". Well, if “it was” with women, I have repeatedly heard that due to their absence, many men in Iran start their sex life with men. So when he was bragging, I used to mimic, “Sex? Shoma? ” (sex, you) - pointing at him and his friend. “Know, know, dustam! (no, this is my friend), - Ahmad denied, while he and his friend began to blush in embarrassment. There was no doubt about their normal orientation, but the way they reacted amused me. A little later, I learned that homosexuality in Iran is punishable by death, and it is better not to joke about this topic.
We went to look at the Imam Mosque.
During prayer, it was closed to visitors and tourists, only believers went there to perform namaz. I had to wait about fifteen minutes. A merchant attached himself to Akhmad, who looked like a European, and began to invite him to see the carpets and buy postcards, but he mistook me for a local resident. We ran away from the importunate merchant to the mosque, but when we returned, he was still waiting for us. Imagine his surprise when Ahmad explained that he was not a tourist and was born in Isfahan. I said goodbye to my new friends and agreed to meet the next day.
After buying Isfahan sweets, I immediately went to look for bushes or a secluded place where I could have a bite to eat. In the month of Ramadan, it is forbidden to drink water and eat on the street during the day, so I had to find a place where no one would see me.
The only problem was that as soon as I noticed some lawn hidden by trees and went there, it turned out that this place had long been occupied by people who dine there.
In the meantime, a strong sandstorm began, and I, hiding from the dust at the entrance to the museum, met the girls who came to Isfahan to visit for the weekend. Even though they hardly spoke English, it was a lot of fun to chat. We wanted to get in a carriage and ride around the main square, but in the end we decided to go to a national restaurant to drink tea and wait out the bad weather. It was interesting to watch how the girls were delighted to have the opportunity to invite me, I thought that they would hardly have gone with me if I were an Iranian man. For my part, I bought ice cream for everyone, and the evening ended with a night photo session at the Thirty-Three Arches Bridge (C-o-Se Paul).
Visiting Ahmad
That day I was going to leave for Shiraz, but the garden with petrified trees and the palace with the mysterious name “Chekhel Sotun” (40 columns), which I did not have time to get into, so intrigued me that I decided to stay.
I spent most of the day with an Iranian whom I met by chance on the street. He helped me learn the words in Farsi and pronounce them correctly, and then we walked around the museums together. In the evening, already tired, I again returned to the Imam Square, which by this time was filled with people much more than during the day. In addition to the busiest trade in the market in the evening, many people came here to have dinner together. Sitting on the grass next to large pots of food, adults waited for the sun to set, while children played near ponds and fountains. After the evening prayer, as if on cue, everyone took out plates and spoons, rattled pots and began to have dinner.
By this time, I had already grown a small mustache and beard, on the one hand, it was good - they took me for a local, but on the other hand, no one paid any attention to me. Since my friend had left the city, there was nowhere to spend the night, all that remained was to go to a cheap hotel. I was advised by Amir Kabir Hostel, where I could spend the night for $15. As soon as I thought about the hotel, the young guys who were having dinner on the lawn called me to their place and offered to have dinner together. After a bite of watermelon and grapes, I received a checkered scarf as a gift, which I was very happy about, but later I had to hide it and not show it to anyone. Saying goodbye, one of them asked: “Kart e postal dari? (you have a postcard). I didn’t understand right away, so he took a phrase book from me and found the translation of this word - “kart e postal” means postcard.
I had a lot of beautiful postcards from Belarus with me, so I gladly signed one of them and presented it.
On the way to the hotel, Ahmad called me and invited me to go to some park on the mountain, and I could spend the night at his house. I was met by car, and I realized that the evening was just beginning. Along the way, we ate Iranian pizza at a cafe - a thick pie stuffed with meat and sausage, heavily seasoned with mayonnaise and ketchup, Italians would cry if they had to call it pizza. Another feature of the Iranian "fast food" was that the food was washed down with soda (nushabe ) like fanta or Coca-Cola, so my friends were even surprised when I asked for a bottle of water (botri eh a b). With a company of six people, we gathered in the park and, having smoked an excellent hookah, began to sing songs.
Iranian guys are very inventive in this regard, it is fun to spend time with them - they dance beautifully, sing in chorus with pleasure and alone, carelessly fool around and joke.
That evening, Ahmad's family billeted me in a room with a huge LCD TV and an XBox. When the language barrier does not allow expressing one's thoughts, high computer technologies come to the rescue.
- Mortal Kombat? Ahmad suggested, pulling a computer game from the shelf.
We played until five in the morning, and in the end, sleep won. When we woke up, it was about eleven o'clock, my father brought us tea and cake and said that dinner was being prepared. We went into the kitchen, Ahmad's mother was cooking chicken, pouring it with saffron tincture. For her interest in cooking, I received from her a gift of saffron and a bunch of strange dried herbs for making khagineh - an omelet with spices and meat.
She no longer participated in our conversation, but only sat on a nearby sofa, she was dressed in a black veil and covered her face with her hand. The only thing I could see were several very massive gold bracelets on each arm.
After a delicious lunch, we began to say goodbye. Father constantly put his hand to his heart and made bows, seeing me off. This gesture, as well as their hospitality, I still remember well. I got up from the table and bowed in the same way. Ahmad was instructed to take me by car to the terminal, and I explained that I needed to leave the city (kha reje sha hr), from where I was going to leave for free in a passing car. My father said that no one would take me for free and that I had to take the bus. I insisted, and in the end he shrugged his shoulders and wished me a safe journey, and then shook my hand for a long time.
Ahmad's brother brought me a medallion with inscriptions from the Koran in Arabic.
At my request to read what was written there, they brought the Koran in Farsi (according to the rules, it is written in red ink) and found a translation. The inscription on the medallion repeated the famous Sura 112: "God is one, God is eternal, He did not give birth and was not born, and there is no one equal to Him. " Ahmad wrapped the medallion with transparent tape, because it cannot be touched with hands, and said: "He will protect you on the way, the most beautiful and important part of the Qur'an is written here. "
- I agree that your religion says about God, - I said, and put on the locket.
By car, Ahmad brought me to the exit from the city and once again asked if I would like to go by bus. However, I refused and went to catch passing cars. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, about 500 km remained to Shiraz.
