drop.
I spent about an hour at the church and would have spent longer but I could tell the taxi driver was itching to get back. Whilst walking back to his car, we went past a rather strange flock of sheep, a number of which had been spray painted in the most incredible colors and patterns. Some were spotted pink and blue, others orange and green and a couple were painted up like the British union flag. I had to get a photo of this and tried to snap one sheep at close range, but every time I got near, it would scurry off. Seeing my frustration, the helpful cabby lunged at said sheep and held it still from behind, long enough for me to get the picture. The sheep’s legs were splayed apart and it looked mighty startled to be held around the hips. But it made for a great photo. Months later when I got the film developed, it looked, for all the world, like the taxi driver was getting down and dirty with a technicolored piece of mutton, and the poor ewe didn’t look in the slightest bit happy about it.
We took a different way back, which I hoped would take us past the taxi drivers who’d had a laugh at my expense and that I could now have one at theirs. There was much more life on this route, and we passed through some incredible rural mud-brick villages. These contained the biggest, most out of proportion haystacks I’ve ever seen. They were huge, oversized things piled up in little square roofless buildings, and extended many times the building’s height into the air. Although I had chartered a private cab, when we passed a couple of guys standing by the side of the road in one of the villages, I gestured to the driver to pick them up. He didn’t have to think twice and pulled over in an instant. We took them to the next village. Although I’d already experienced some wonderful landscapes in Europe and Turkey, I was still bowled over by this drive, with its huge dramatic gorges and twisting mountain roads.
It was with sheer delight that I spotted the junction up ahead where the sarcastic cabbies were waiting. I couldn’t wait to get the last laugh and see their faces drop as we zoomed past and I waved triumphantly at them. I got my three fingers ready to indicate the price and hauled myself partially out of the car’s window. Goodness knows what the driver, who gave me a most concerned and confused look, thought I was doing. As we got closer, I noticed to my utter dismay that most of the cabbies were sitting around in the shade of a tree facing the other way. As we drove past, I waved frantically and shouted at the only one facing me and held up my three fingers at him.
He looked extremely confused. I hoped he’d tell the others about the strange tourist he’d seen waving madly from a taxi cab and that they’d work it out, but I wasn’t optimistic. I laughed at this and then wished I hadn’t; my lips were horrendously cracked from the sun of the last couple of weeks and were excruciatingly painful. Having been on the road for so long, I hadn’t had a chance to get any medication, but now it was getting beyond a joke and they needed sorting out, and soon. If not, I sure as hell wouldn’t be getting any kisses for the foreseeable future— and I couldn’t be having that.
Tomorrow, I would be heading off to the thriving city of Tabriz, so I got myself down to the bus station to book a ticket. This was situated on Maku’s one and only main road, Imam Khomeini Ave. Maku, as I was soon to learn, was far from the only place where something was named in honor of Khomeini.
Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was born in a small central Iranian village called Khomein and later moved to the holy city of Qom to study philosophy, law, and theology, which was the family tradition. He earned Shiite Islam’s highest clerical title of Ayatollah in the 1920s and pretty much kept to himself teaching and writing for the next few decades.
In 1962, he came to prominence by criticizing the country’s American and British installed dictator, the Shah, and his proposals to diminish the clergy’s property holdings and give greater freedoms to women. Two years later, the Shah banished him from the country for attacking a bill he had approved that gave American servicemen based in Iran total immunity from arrest. Khomeini attacked the bill by saying that the Shah had “reduced the Iranian people to a level lower than that of an American dog,” since if a dog was run over in America then the person responsible could be liable to prosecution, whereas if an American now mowed down an Iranian, he could do so without concern of consequence, as he would be untouchable by the court system. Khomeini fled to Turkey and then Iraq, where he stayed until the late seventies.
The so-called oil price revolution of 1974 was the catalyst for the Shah’s eventual downfall. Within the space of a year, the Shah’s oil revenue skyrocketed from $4- to $20 billion, but instead of spending this windfall wisely, he was convinced by American arms dealers to waste much of it on quantities of weaponry, which then stood idle, decaying in the desert. The Shah’s military spending became so rampant that under his rule Iran possessed the fifth largest army on earth. Other fortunes were squandered on worthless schemes, and while corruption made a small minority of Iranians very rich, rising inflation made the majority of them worse off. Recession then hit the world economy, sending oil prices spiraling downward and forcing the Shah to cancel planned social projects and reforms.
Resentment was rife and continued to build as the economy grew worse. In 1978, the Shah imposed martial law, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators on the streets of Tehran, Tabriz, and the holy city of Qom. Whilst this was happening, Khomeini, now located just outside Paris, was plotting the Islamic Revolution with Abol Hasan Bani-Sadr. Increased internal resistance finally led to the Shah fleeing the country in 1979, taking with him some $20 billion of the Iranian people’s money, which he stashed away in American banks. With the Shah gone, Khomeini returned to Iran to a rapturous reception and not long after took full control of the nation, bringing to an end 2,500 years of monarchy. Executions took place en masse after speedy and pointless trials, people went missing, and civil war looked a real possibility. The world’s first Islamic state was set up after a hasty referendum, the results of which allegedly showed 98.2 percent of the country in its favor. Khomeini became Iran’s supreme leader for life and got more than just a few places named after him as a result.
The bus station, or simply “terminal” as the locals called it, was at first a little on the confusing side. Here there were many different bus companies all going to the same places and all after your business. By the looks of the buses outside, it appeared that you could choose the price and quality of your ride accordingly. The buses ranged from sparkling modern “Volvos,” as the locals called the nicer buses, to forty-year-old rust buckets with several cracked windows and worn-out, flat-looking tires. Fancying a bit of luxury, and safety, which I thought well-deserved after my extended hitching, I went into a bus company office that had a picture of a flashy modern “Volvo” in its window. I purchased a ticket for a coach, which left the next day at 6 AM, then headed off in search of food.
My rumbling stomach led me into a little kebab place on the high street, where I ordered a kebab in a crusty white roll and two ice-cold Iranian Zam Zam colas. Whilst waiting in line for my food, I experienced more stunning Iranian hospitality. A man standing with his wife introduced himself in perfect English as Kamran, and told me that he was a local English teacher. He was very friendly and not only insisted on paying for my food, but on hearing I was leaving Maku tomorrow, insisted that when I returned to the town, I should phone him, so he could show me the local sites and put me up. Although only one full day into my Iran trip, I was already witnessing something very different from what I had expected—namely, how hospitable Iranians could be to foreigners. I liked it very much, and after making a note of his details, agreed that if I returned to Maku, I would look him up.
Halfway through my meal, I panicked on seeing fresh blood all over the white roll. “Oh my God, it’s raw!” I thought, convinced I’d soon be suffering from food poisoning.
Upon closer examination, I realized the blood wasn’t coming from the meat. I wiped my hand across my lips and chin and realized the multiple cracks in my lips had all split open and were spilling blood like fresh operation stitches in a hot bath, not only on the bread but all around my mouth and chin. I must have looked a right old state, and I realized why the locals sitting nearby had been looking at me strangely.
I finished up and got straight down to the drug store. In a display of reassuring professionalism, the pharmacist behind the counter took one look at my bloody swollen lips and gave a loud audible “Urrrgh!”
Thanks, mate.
He gave me a big tube of jelly-like ointment for my troubles, the origins of which were unknown to me. Back at my hotel, I smeared on vast amounts of the stuff, which had a cool and pleasant soothing effect—especially when I put it on my lips.
CHAPTER FOUR
