“To bozorgi.” I didn’t know what he meant until he used his hands to gesture: you’re big. His friends burst out laughing. I grinned.
From the position of the rising sun I realized that the truck was going northwest. We left the madness of the city behind and soon found ourselves moving along a busy highway. About an hour’s drive out of Tehran, we started to gain steadily in elevation into the mountains. I put my head on a blanket, covered myself with another torn blanket, and thought of my children. It was times like this that I missed them the most. They were used to months going by without word, but still I wondered if they worried.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next time I looked outside I saw nothing but vast, empty land. What always struck me in countries like Iran was how drastically the line between city and country was drawn. One moment you could be risking your life in mad city traffic and the next be in calm country surroundings with no lights, no pollution, but a timeless scenery all around.
Apart from a few stops for fueling, the ride was monotonous and without incident. At about eight p.m. we pulled off to sleep for the night. I couldn’t sleep just yet. I’d had my share during the day, so I decided to take a short walk in the moonlight to ease my tension. The hillsides were dotted with trees, and the hills sloped gently down into canyons. It was breathtaking. After my months of indoor living, I relished the outdoors.
On first light the next morning, we continued. The landscape became higher and wilder, until the boulders grew to the size of mountains. The major roads disappeared and gave way to tracks populated by people who cared only about tomorrow’s meal, and not about terrorism or international politics. From the looks of it, they were living as their ancestors had lived for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.
The scenery appeared to have been molded by endless earthquakes, with enormous boulders and uneven cliffs coming right to the edge of the road. Occasionally we would catch a quick glimpse of a mud-brick village. I saw several waterways carved in the rocks flowing down the slopes to the village for drinking and irrigating.
An hour later, I felt the truck shudder. A car had rear-ended us. I peered over the side of the truck to see if we’d suffered any damage. Nothing serious. The men near me called to our driver, evidently telling him there was no need to stop. He continued driving, ignoring the impact and leaving the colliding car behind us.
Our next stop was Maku, an Azeri town along the road close to the Turkish border. It didn’t appear to consist of much. The landscape, though, was amazing. Volcanic cliffs rose around the town, giving it an aura of mystery. The small mud shacks ascending the cliff looked fascinating. Our driver had stopped for food. Since the truck couldn’t be locked and all of our meager belongings were in the truck bed, someone had to stay behind when the others took off. It was clear I was to be the one, lest I attract attention.
I lay back on the truck bed, letting my eyes range over the signs. sina bairamzadeh internet cafe. Internet! I was considering running over and sending a message, but I changed my mind when I saw a police squad car parked right across the street. I hadn’t come this close to the border to be apprehended. Disappointed, I sat on the dingy blankets until our driver returned with a big plate of pilaf rice with lamb chops and warm naan, the local pita bread.
“Maem nunaem,” I said. Thank you.
“Khahesh mikonaem.” You’re welcome.
We headed out of town and kept on until after dark before camping for the night in an off-road valley. My mind was still on that faraway Internet cafe. What news was waiting for me in my e-mail account?
The new day began with a bright blue sky. Powerful winds made billowy clouds fly around the surrounding peaks and slide down the mountainsides. As we were still heading northwest towards Turkey, the mountain range that we were crossing seemed to be a slender backbone rising from the flat terrain; its peaks were still covered with snow. I couldn’t tell if we were a few hours or a few days away, and my efforts to communicate with our driver beyond basic greetings were to no avail.
The villages in this region made more use of lumber in their buildings, and the terraced villages were abundantly green, making good use of the snowmelt I saw streaming down from the mountains into rivers and streams. I’m always a little disoriented for a short period in a foreign country with a different climate and people.
Toward noon, the air became warmer once again, although the elevation was high. On the left, I saw a tartan green stretch of rice paddies, in terraces up toward the rugged slope of the mountains.
We stopped, and everyone on the truck headed to the nearby stream for the first bath in days. It was bracingly cold, but we were all grateful to wash off the dust and filth of the road. I wondered how I looked to the world. It had been days since I’d seen a mirror. Was the grime helping me blend in?
Three men on horses approached us. I stiffened, sensing trouble. Instinctively I looked for my gun, but it was buried in the pile of clothes I’d left on the water’s edge just a few feet away. But our driver spoke with them in a friendly enough manner, and pointed at me. He signaled me to come closer. I put my clothes on and walked shivering from the cold toward them. Our driver waved his hand toward me and then signaled at the horse riders. “Turkey, Turkey,” he said nodding his head, signaling me to join them. I retrieved my daypack and shrugged it on. I heard car engine noises. Two military Jeeps were approaching us, signaling with their lights to stay put. I didn’t have to look twice to realize that this time it was real trouble, and that I was their target. How had they found me here? I needed to move quickly.
One of the horse men slipped his foot briefly out of one stirrup so I could use it, gave me his hand, and pulled me up to sit on the blanket behind him. My companions during the past three days waved at me.
“Ba aman-I-Khuda” -May God protect you-they said with their hands over their hearts. “Baerat doa mikonaem” -I’ll pray for you-said the eldest man.
I was so tense that I forgot the farewell words I’d toiled so hard to remember. I was too busy thinking how long it’d take before the Jeeps would catch up with us. My guide was cool and undeterred. He quickly steered his horse toward the dense woods up the hill on a narrow pathway. The Jeeps stopped, but not before we heard shots and angry yelling in Farsi.
We galloped away through the woods, the thicket scratching my face and arms. I held the rider tightly. An eternity later, just when I thought that every muscle in my body, even ones I didn’t know existed, would never loosen again, we arrived at a simple mud-brick hut. We got off the horses and entered the hut. I felt I was dragging myself along every step. It was clean, with no running water or electricity. There were no beds in the hut, just old blankets on the floor. My hosts gave me pita bread with goat yogurt. No words were spoken, but warm hospitality was abundant.
In the early morning, I shuddered awake, cognizant of light streaming into the hut. There was a smell of burning wood.
One of the men was making coffee on a small fire in the middle of the room. He offered me a small, ornamented, bronze-colored cup with thick, bittersweet coffee. It was no time to be picky. I held the cup in my hands to warm them up and emptied it in one gulp. Slowly, tentatively, I walked outside. Two of the men followed me and when they saw me looking around, they pointed at the huge mountain range ahead of us and said, “Ararat!”
We were in a landscape of jagged stone high up above the timberline. Outside our hut I saw about a hundred tribesmen camping on the grounds.
“Turkey,” said my host, pointing toward the ground. “Turkey.” That explained why he didn’t seem to be worried that the Iranian military Jeeps would continue their man-hunt. Although there’d been no checkpoint and no change in the terrain for the past few days, we were in a different country.
I’m out of Iran! I’m in Turkey! I wanted to yell. Thank god. A pickup truck came through a dirt road to the hut, and my hosts signaled me to enter the truck’s cabin. I waved good-bye to them. We had barely exchanged a word, and I had no idea who they were. But they had saved my life, part of a team of anonymous lifesavers.
The truck was driven by a small-framed, chain-smoking man in his late fifties. After a six-hour drive off-road we finally hit a paved road. The first sights that struck me with the reality of having finally left Iran were signs on a roadside gas station and restaurant in the Latin alphabet: kredi, with the capital I dotted. In his quest to modernize Turkey, Kemal Ataturk had made all Turks convert from the ornate Arabic script to the far more efficient Latin in six intense months in the 1920s.
An hour later, the truck stopped in the center of a small town. There was a figure in the distance, with uniformed men on either side of him. I rubbed my eyes. Could it be? At last, a familiar face. Casey Bauer. I heaved a sigh of relief.
The truck came to a stop. “Khuda hafez.” Good-bye. I used my Farsi cautiously. I gave the driver my gun. I
