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,
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 buying a trusty
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
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.
I’d had an interesting two and a half weeks. I’d hitchhiked all the way from France to eastern Turkey, stopping off at places of interest en route to Iran, which was now only one or two day’s hitching to the east. I’d met some wonderful people in the process and had traveled through France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
I now stuck out my thumb for an approaching truck. It stopped, but in hindsight I wish it hadn’t. Writing this now, months later, still sends a shiver up my spine.
I jumped in and was happy to take the weight off my feet and dump my horrible backpack. I said “Malatya,” to the driver who responded with an “Ooh” as if to say, “That’s a big journey!”
He was a Saddam Hussein look-alike, although he was in better shape than the original and had a bushier trademark ’stache.
I asked Saddam on numerous occasions to make sure we were definitely going to Malatya. Although he spoke no English, Saddam established a sort of standing joke to my question and would shake his head and say, “Istanbul.” When I gave him a concerned look, he’d laugh and say, “Malatya, Malatya.” It wasn’t a rib tickler by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he grasped where I wanted to go.
On our way through dramatic mountain gorges and fields of tobacco plantations, we pulled over next to some children who were selling apples opposite their families’ nomadic tents. They were young guys of about twelve or thirteen, and they filled up a carrier bag full of green apples for Saddam, which they weighed on a small scale. Saddam smiled at them and reached inside the truck, where he produced a handheld scale of his own. He weighed the bag, indicated it was lighter than they claimed, and demanded more apples for his money. The kids knew they’d been rumbled but took it with a smile and even handed me a free apple for the road. Things got weird not long after this.
We traveled along a dusty section of road and onto the highway heading directly to Malatya, which was by now due east. We’d been traveling for a few minutes, when Saddam veered abruptly off the highway and onto a gravelly track heading north toward what looked like a deserted industrial site. I protested immediately and pointed in the direction of Malatya whilst saying the city’s name forcefully several times. Saddam put his foot down on the accelerator and tried his previous joke of “Istanbul, Istanbul!” It hadn’t been funny before, and it certainly wasn’t
