Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn

and listed categories like speed of service, quality of food, freshness of food, etc., alongside the ratings “good,” “okay,” and “bad,” to circle where appropriate. I didn’t pay too much attention to it and circled where I saw fit, but made sure to give the staff full marks. They took it away but returned a minute later looking most unhappy. The source of their contention was I’d only given the food an “okay.”

“Why you not say food was good?” one asked.

They obviously took their customer questionnaires very seriously in Iran. I tried to explain that it was a nice enough cheeseburger as cheeseburgers go, but at the end of the day, it was, after all, just a cheeseburger, not fillet mignon served with a drizzle of truffle juice and half a bottle of the finest Chateau Latour ’82. They weren’t having any of this crap, and asked if I’d like to change my mind. I said I would and circled the good option instead. Everybody left happy.

I started to head back to my hotel but popped into a drugstore on the way to buy some toothpaste. For some reason, the man working behind the counter couldn’t work out my mime for toothpaste and offered me cough lozenges instead. A young guy in the shop who spoke okay English helped out. He ordered on my behalf and before I could stop him had handed over the money for the toothpaste as well. He introduced himself as Pedram.

We got talking outside, where his cheerful plump friend, Behzad, was waiting. They were both students from Tehran and were just down in Hamadan for a couple of days visiting friends. Not five minutes into our conversation and Pedram invited me to join them for chay in a nearby park. A few minutes later, we were squashed into the back of a nice modern car and speeding along with two of his other friends. The park was perched on a hill and had a great panoramic view of the city and all its sparkling lights below. Up here was an expensive-looking tearoom with several raised carpeted platforms outside.

We all had tea on one of the platforms and over our second cup, I was discreetly invited to join the lads back at their place for a drink of the alcoholic variety. This was an opportunity I couldn’t resist but first, apparently, we needed mixers. Pedram and I were assigned this task and dropped the lads off at their apartment, which they’d rented for the weekend before heading out.

In the car, Pedram explained that he had to pick up a girl friend of his from the bus station and give her a lift to her aunt’s place. As we drove, and chatted away, I was struck by how Western Pedram seemed when compared to other Iranians I’d met thus far. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why but I got the distinct impression that he and his friends all came from well-off families.

I was left in the car while Pedram met his friend, who was a large but attractive girl of about twenty. After we dropped her off, Pedram told me that she had invited me to her sister’s party when I came to Tehran. I was hugely excited at the prospect of going to an illegal gathering of drunken students, which I was sure few tourists would get to experience. Pedram said I could crash at their apartment tonight if I wanted, so we made a brief stop at my crummy hotel, where I grabbed my stuff, paid up, and got my passport back. Back at the apartment, the guys were all sitting around in shorts playing cards for money. The game was brought to a swift conclusion when Pedram and I turned up and they brought out what looked like an eight-pack of beer. On closer inspection, I discovered they were actually cans of whisky. I’d never seen whisky in cans before and asked the guys if this was normal. They’d never heard of whisky in bottles before.

We started the night off with a shot mixed with just a suggestion of cola. It was bloody strong and I knew I’d end up loaded before the night was out. A copied DVD was selected from a wallet full of illegal discs and slipped into the player. We all reclined on big cushions with another shot of whisky as the film began. It was Basic Instinct with the delectable Sharon Stone. We watched about fifteen minutes and just before the money shot, the DVD started to malfunction. A cry of horror went up from all around but it was no good, and despite Pedram’s best efforts to right the problem, we had to admit defeat and were forced to abandon the film.

It has to be said, I was quite looking forward to the novel prospect of watching Sharon uncross her legs in Iran. I needn’t have worried though, as this was fully compensated for by the next DVD selected by the lads, which contained acts that the lovely Miss Stone would be far too prudish to attempt on screen and which would have been of borderline legality in certain states of the U.S. until recently, let alone the Islamic Republic of Iran. I wondered what horrendous penalties there were if you were caught in possession of or watching such material whilst consuming vast quantities of hard liquor. I thought back to the television documentary I’d seen on human rights abuses in Iran, which had shown a man having his eye cut out for looking at “something immoral,” and wondered if this Persian porn would count in that department. I knocked back a few more shots and no longer cared. It was a late night and by the time I passed out, I’d consumed a hell of a lot of booze.

I awoke feeling awful with a splitting headache and a desire to curl up into a ball and quietly die. It didn’t look like I was the only one. I had planned to visit the Jewish shrine this morning before catching the bus to Tehran but that plan went out the window now. All I wanted to do was nothing. I had to make a move though, and decided to push through it and get to the bus terminal. Pedram, who looked in a worse condition than me, offered to give me a lift there. Pedram’s fat friend, Behzad, who looked surprisingly sprightly considering how much he’d drunk, said he’d tag along as well. As Behzad got dressed one of the guys, whose name I was in no state to remember or jot down, grabbed the poor guy’s flabby breasts and said jokingly to me, “He is breast boy, no?” Even breast boy laughed at this one.

At the terminal, Pedram whisked me past all the sales guys shouting out their destinations to a bus company called Seir-o Safar. Pedram said it was the only bus company worth traveling with in Iran. He tried to pay for my ticket, but I put my foot down and handed over the money. What he did next was a great help. He phoned one of his friends in Tehran and arranged for him to meet me at the bus station when I arrived and to take me to a hotel. In a city of a staggering 15 million people this would be immensely useful. Pedram was going back to Tehran tomorrow along with Behzad, so he gave me his number and insisted I call him and stay at his parents’ place when he got back. Things were going amazingly well.

The first thing you notice about Tehran as you approach it is the smog. It’s situated in a natural valley surrounded by mountains, which lets the pollution build up and leaves the air a horrible brown hue. As we drove through the endless streets, I realized what luck it was to have a local waiting to help me at the bus station. It was one hell of a big sprawling city, and it would have been a nightmare to try to cope with it after a heavy night on the booze. A hangover is not a state most people are in when they first arrive in Tehran.

I got off the bus, collected my bags and within a minute was approached by two sharply dressed young guys in shades. One asked, “Jamie?” We shook hands and I was led toward their car, which like Pedram’s was a modern European one. Neither spoke much English, so I just followed their lead. We drove through the most insane traffic and nearly crashed several times. The smooth two communicated that we were going to grab some food, and as I was hungry, this was just what I wanted to hear.

Along the highway, we passed two roadside murals in ornate frames depicting the infamous Abu Ghraib torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces. One was the well-known picture of the Iraqi with a leash around his neck, the other of the hooded man with the wires coming out of his fingers. The images contained some Persian text, which I subsequently discovered read something along the lines of, “Yesterday you were torturing Palestine; today you are torturing Iraq.”

We stopped for lunch at a fast food restaurant called Apache, where my hosts ordered a mountain of burgers and fries along with some obligatory soft drinks. Despite my protests, and believe me I tried, the guys categorically insisted on paying, and I was literally physically forced to put my wallet back into my pocket. Over our food I got out my guidebook for them, and pointed to the hotels it recommended. They were adamant that these weren’t up to much and wanted to take me elsewhere. As far as I was concerned, they were the bosses, as I had no idea where I was, and in a city this big it would have been a real mission to sort things out for myself.

Seated nearby were two young women sporting what looked like fresh Band-Aids across their noses. After a bit of miming to the guys, I managed to ascertain that these were nose job bandages, and that it was quite common. I later learnt that, amazingly, more plastic surgery is carried out in Tehran than in Los Angeles.

After feasting like kings, we got on the road again. We drove around and around for over an hour, passing a cinema showing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, but for some reason we stopped at no hotels. It seemed the guys were no longer quite as confident about where to take me. They explained in their limited English that they were now taking me to a library instead.

“What the hell is going on?” I thought. I didn’t want to sit down with a Harlequin novel—I wanted to get some accommodation sorted.

We turned up at a library nestled in a little park in the north of the city. Here the guys made hotel inquiries