Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn

She looked at me confused. “But an orange is better.”

“Ah, yes, well, er, to you an orange is better, but to many the apple is the superior fruit.”

All the class, including the teacher, looked confused at this. “No, but orange is better!” she repeated again.

My analogy wasn’t working, so I quit discussing fruit salad and said, “Iran and England are as good as each other.”

“But which is better?” asked another one of the girls.

Good God, it was like being back with Hattie trying to find out if I wanted to marry Susan.

“Iran has better weather,” I said, “but England has better, er… soccer.” This they all agreed on, and for the next few minutes, I was asked if I knew David Beckham and the like. The questions got easier after this, and I decided from now on to answer them in as straightforward a manner as possible. They included, amongst many others, “What Iranian food have you tried?” “Did you have culture shock when you come to Iran?” “What do people think of Iran in England?” and “What do you think of the hijab?”

The last two were interesting and I answered honestly, saying that a lot of people in Britain thought Iran was dangerous. I told them that I had even been warned not to go to Iran because I might get shot. The class roared with laughter as if this was the most absurd thing they’d ever heard. After order was reestablished, the teacher confirmed for the class that this was in fact the case and that many people in America and Britain thought Iranians were all terrorists. They seemed genuinely upset at this.

The hijab question was revealing when instead of answering what I thought of it, I asked them what they thought of it. One girl pointed to a small television camera up in the corner of the room and said, “It is not safe.” And it wasn’t; big brother was watching.

The teacher answered for them, saying, “For girls it is better to wear hijab, I think more safe for them.”

We ended on a much lighter note, with me talking about my experiences in the country and the places I’d visited outside of Iran. One of the girls asked jokingly, “Are you Marco Polo?” Everybody laughed at this. There was a knock on the door and the same staff member who’d brought me into the class now came to take me on to another one. The class all protested and asked if I could stay. My ego swelled. They were overruled and I was taken next door, this time to a class of slightly older girls. They all stood for me again and once more I was introduced as, “Mr. Maslin, English Expert from England.”

It was the same routine as before, and I was asked to introduce myself but by now I was really getting the hang of this teaching lark and said confidently, although a little tongue in cheek, “Please be seated class. My name is Mr. Maslin, I’m from England and will be answering your questions for the next fifteen minutes, so please fire ahead. Who’s first?”

They reeled off pretty much the same queries as before, which I answered as best I could. I was in the zone now and managed to get the class laughing on a number of occasions. It was great fun, and I felt like I was a comedian on stage. There was another knock on the door and in came Mr. Nasser Khan. All the class, including me, stood up. Nasser took a seat nearby and listened to the rest of the questions, one of which was, “Have you learnt any Farsi?” After going through “hello,” “goodbye,” etc., Nasser leant over and whispered, “Tell her she is beautiful,” so I did.

“Shoma khoshgelly,” I said, mustering up a look of sincerity. Everybody was in fits of laughter and began applauding. I was encouraged to do it several more times, which I did and received the same response. I was really getting into the swing of it all when there was another knock on the door. It was the same staff member who now wanted to take me away again. This wasn’t popular, and there was a near-rebellion in the class with all of them begging to let Mr. Maslin stay.

When it was all over, I was taken downstairs to meet the school’s head honcho who shot from the hip with his first question. “Which teacher was the best, and which teacher was the worst?”

I loved the irony, as teachers from my old school would be mortified at the thought of Jamie Maslin, of all people, being asked to critique their profession. Although the thought of playing school inspector for them would have greatly appealed, this was Iran, where classes were filmed—probably to keep an eye on the teachers as much as the pupils—so I didn’t want to put anyone in it, and answered that both were exceptional teachers with very good English. The principal seemed satisfied.

Mr. Khan, the Poles, and I caught a cab back to the center of town, where we wished each other well and parted company. Minutes later, I was in my hotel. I requested a morning call for 5 AM and went to bed. I got bugger all sleep though, as for some reason, just like in Maku, I was paranoid that the call wouldn’t come. When the phone finally rang, right at 5 AM, I was exhausted.

Fifteen minutes later, I was in a cab with Ian on the way to the bus station. We arrived there around five thirty, but for some reason the early bus was cancelled and we had to wait until 7:10 AM. It had been one big waste of a lie-in.

The scenery on the way there was awesome, with dramatic hills in layers of rusty red and murky cream, made all the more beautiful by the pink tinge of the early morning sun. I was pleased now that we’d traveled later; if we’d traveled in the dark, we’d have missed much of this wonderful landscape.

Ian and I chatted away on the journey there like old buddies and told each other about our trips and experiences in Iran. Ian worked for an airline and thus got cheap flights, so he had done a lot of traveling, and although Canadian, had been educated for a time in England. He was only in Iran for two more days and, if I remember correctly, had spent about a week here visiting the north of the country. On the way to our destination, the town of Kaleybar, we passed through a town where every vehicle, without exception, was an old style Land Rover. There were rows upon rows of the things all over the place. I’d never seen so many in all my life. We started counting them but gave up when we got into the hundreds.

Kaleybar was a sleepy little isolated town in the heart of Iran’s rugged Azerbaijan region. It was surrounded by steep green mountains, the peaks of which remained unseen, shrouded in a slowly drifting alpine mist. It was a great location and once again so very different from most people’s perception of Iran—not dry and parched like its central deserts, but as lush and green as merry old Mother England.

Ian and I were both hungry, and since we had many hours of hiking ahead of us, we went to a cafe to fill up on carbs. After our breakfast, we went looking for a taxi. On the way, we were invited into a complete stranger’s house but as we were already well behind schedule, we reluctantly had to decline. We caught a cab up to the start of the trail.

The trek started along a twisting forest trail past a number of abandoned campsites, which, sadly, were strewn with trash. It was a real shame as it was a stunning piece of scenery, which clearly the people who’d camped out here had come especially to see, but for whatever reason had seemed determined not to leave that way. Past the campsites, the trail meandered uphill through the trees and along a boulder-riddled riverbed, toward the looming cloud-capped mountains in the distance.

All was going well on the hike until we arrived at a waterfall next to a steep craggy rock face, to which the path appeared to lead up. We were both unsure whether this was the correct route, as the rock face was steep and dangerous as hell. Ian didn’t like the look of this one bit or the prospect of climbing it. Since he was built more for chopping trees down and I was built more for climbing them, I volunteered to scramble up the rock face and check it out, whilst Ian backtracked to see if there was another route.

To me, the climb seemed a little hairy, although perfectly doable if taken slowly and carefully. I didn’t find it too hard and got to the top without drama. At the summit, the path skirted around the waterfall and connected to a much more gradual and safer track leading through the forest. As I descended to pass on the good news, the clip attaching my water bottle to my belt gave way, sending the bottle careering toward the ground, bouncing off and smashing into jagged rocks as it went. This did nothing to encourage Ian, who the water bottle just missed, that the climb was a safe one. Surprisingly, the bottle was in one piece.

Ian hadn’t found another track, so the choice seemed simple: either he did the climb or we went back to the start again and located the easier route.

There was no point in him trying something he wasn’t comfortable with, and what’s more, we were in a very isolated location along a deserted mountain path and should something have gone wrong, than it could have gone wrong badly.

We started the depressing walk back, but a minute later, Ian fortuitously spotted another trail going all the way around the rock face and waterfall. We took this and in no time were both looking down on the waterfall. The path then led along another boulder-strewn riverbed toward a rocky peak jutting majestically out of the forest