Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn

Another interesting place I tried was one of the many milkshake shops. As well as the more traditional flavors, this place also did a fresh carrot milkshake. I tried one of these bright orange shakes, which was surprisingly good, as well as a fresh banana shake with big chunky grains of sugar in it.

Having lost myself for a good part of the day doing more wandering, tasting, and exploring, it came as something of a shock when I realized how late it was. Back at the hotel, I gave Shahram a call. He apologized that due to unforeseen circumstances at work, he’d now be about an hour late and would come and get me as soon as he could. This was fine by me, as it gave me a chance to recline on my bed and read up on Tabriz and Iran in general.

Two things in particular caught my attention on the same page of my guidebook. The first was under the heading “Marriage, although not until death do us part” and described a bizarre Iranian practice, unique to Shiite Islam, called sigheh or “temporary marriage.” Sigheh allows horny singles to indulge in a bit of legal “slap and tickle” with full religious blessing, for anything from a few hours to a few months. Amazingly, sigheh is officially sanctioned in Iran, even though unmarried couples who simply date or hold hands can be arrested, fined, or in some cases flogged. Supporters of sigheh often defend the practice as a way for the widows of the Iran-Iraq War to still get a bit of action, although apparently many Iranians see it simply as legalized and sanctioned prostitution. I told myself that if the opportunity arose, I’d happily say “I do.”

The second thing to catch my attention was a passage on Iranian social etiquette that mentioned a confusing practice known as ta’arof. This is where you might be offered something purely out of politeness, but it is not meant as a genuine offer to be taken literally and accepted. To tell if the offer is legit, what you must do is refuse three times, and if the offer is not then retracted, it can be assumed genuine and you can accept. I thought back to when Shahram had given me his watch, but that definitely hadn’t been ta’arof, as I’d refused more than three times—in fact, it was probably closer to ten.

Shahram turned up and apologized repeatedly for being late. I tried to hand his watch back at once, but Shahram wouldn’t hear of it and insisted I wore it “until we have seen a few places.” The first stop on Shahram’s guided tour was a place called Arg-e Tabriz or “the Ark.”

This was a huge brick citadel built in the fourteenth century on the site of a massive mosque that had collapsed some five hundred years ago. There was construction work going on nearby on a mosque the size of a department store, which we needed to venture through in order to access the Ark. We asked the builders’ permission before entering the site; they clearly had no concern for “health and safety,” and waved us through without a second thought. We only had access to the rear of the Ark, which looked from here rather like an old, disused power station, but Shahram livened it up by recalling an interesting story from its past.

Its roof, he explained, had once been used to throw criminals to their nasty and rather squishy death in the ditch below. And, if legend was to be believed, one lucky woman cheated death through the parachute-like effect of her traditional chador. Whether they tossed her off a second time to finish the job he didn’t know. Given the height of the thing, this ancient BASE jumper certainly wouldn’t have been in a good state if she had survived, assuming the story was true. But there would, of course, have been a beckoning career as a disabled break-dancer ahead of her.

We left the Ark and walked on to the bazaar—a place I was looking forward to seeing. The bazaar in Tabriz is massive, totaling 2.1 miles in length and containing 7,350 shops and twenty-four separate caravanserais where the itinerant traders set up shop. It dates back a thousand years, although most of the buildings currently there are from the fifteenth century.

The inside of the bazaar made the streets outside seem empty and quiet. There were people everywhere trying to strike a deal, browsing, feeling the quality of goods, eating, drinking, smelling foods, working, chatting, and generally shopping until they dropped in this atmospheric labyrinth.

The bazaar was separated into five main areas specializing in gold, footwear, spices, general household items, and carpets. As well as these main sections, there was, to the north and across the Quri River, a section specializing in copperware and foods like honey, dates, cheese, and halvah. I couldn’t help but walk around goggle- eyed. There were huge blocks of sugar being broken into more manageable pieces, mounds of brightly colored spices and dried foodstuffs, carpets being made and mended, bread being cooked, and many, many other intriguing sights and smells. But most impressive of all was the size of the place—it just went on and on forever.

Just when my brain was bursting with stimuli, Shahram led me to a little haven of tranquility in the form of a teahouse. Here, seeking respite from the frantic activity outside, were men smoking huge qalyans, or water pipes, and sipping little glasses of black chay at small wooden tables. I was given a complimentary glass with several sugar cubes but no spoon. Shahram demonstrated for me the Iranian method of drinking tea. Grasping the especially hard sugar cube between your front teeth, you then suck the tea through it. A little sugar then disintegrates into your mouth with each sip and thus sweetens the tea. It seemed a lot of effort but I gave it a go. It was far from easy, as the whole cube kept falling apart in my mouth so I had to keep getting new cubes. Where I might have had one lump, I now ended up having seven or eight. Shahram was a master of this technique, though, and made it seem effortless. He was also a master of the pipe and got stuck into this whilst blowing out huge clouds of smoke like a dragon. I gave it a go but was far from impressive.

Even to a Brit, Iran is a nation of obsessive tea drinkers, and a whole set of social etiquette has developed around how you place your cup and saucer. If you place your cup upside down, you insult the person nearest to you. If you turn it on its side, you declare you’re gay. And put the saucer over the cup, and you might as well yell out, “I’ll take you all on!” as it’s a slur to the whole teahouse. And watch how you smoke the pipe as well. One big faux pas is to ignite a cigarette on the pipe’s embers, which can also lead to a spot of fisticuffs.

Shahram explained that he liked teahouses very much but tried not to go to them too often because he tried to stay in shape for his hobby, karate. By way of coincidence, there was a seventies martial arts flick playing on a small crackling television in the corner. It was dubbed abysmally in Farsi and featured a big, fat, bearded white guy taking on a group of lean, hard-ass-looking, and nimble Chinese. It wasn’t the slightest bit convincing, as the bearded one was appallingly slow and moved about like the big fat white guy that he was. Seeing my interest in the movie, Shahram offered to take me to his karate class tomorrow. This was something I had to see, and the thought of getting involved in a punch-up, Iranian style, greatly appealed.

Three cups of tea and what seemed like a hundred sugar cubes later, we hit the street. Once outside, we were approached by a European-looking guy, the first I’d seen in Iran, apart from the one in my hotel mirror, who pointed at my guidebook and said, “I am tourist guide on page 205 of that book.”

And indeed he was. His name was Nasser Khan and he ran the local governmental tourist board office directly above where we stood. He gave me his card and offered me a “Nescafe” in his office whenever I had some free time. Interestingly, in Iran, instant Nescafe is rated above ground coffee, as if the absolute pinnacle of coffee excellence. If you’re offered Nescafe as opposed to just a coffee, then it’s to stress the fact that it’s not the cheap stuff. My dear mother, God bless her, would get on great with this social one-upmanship; whenever my folks have guests over for dinner, she slips in a discreet, “It’s from Sainsbury’s ‘Taste the Difference’ range,” in an attempt to elicit an impressed and approving, “Oh, Mary.”

Oh, Mother.

Finally, we arrived at a watch shop where Shahram bought a battery for a silver pocket watch. With all the excitement of the bazaar, I’d completely forgotten I was still wearing his wristwatch. I asked if I could now return it to him, and to my delight he said yes. I handed it over with great relief, but on doing so was immediately presented with another one—this time the silver pocket watch. Once again, my refusal was not allowed, despite my attempting it on more than three occasions.

It had a beautiful flowery pattern on one side, and on the other was the inscription, “World’s Best Dad.” He obviously couldn’t read English as well as he spoke it, and said proudly, “English words.” I was touched.

Poetry is big in Iran. Iranians take their poets very seriously, and poetry is without doubt the most important form of literature there. This is because poets often promoted Islam and the Persian language during periods of occupation. Not only do they have mausoleums named after them, but streets and squares as well—although probably not as many as Khomeini does.

Our next stop was to visit one such place called the Poet’s Mausoleum, situated to the west of the bazaar in a quaint little park, which had been built after the death of a very popular local poet, Shahriah. The mausoleum was an odd-shaped monument consisting of several large hollow arched sections, which in totality formed a towering