This morning in the cafeteria, the young busboy smiles at me again, this time like we are friends who have an established relationship even though we have never met. I put my hand of his shoulder briefly as I leave and he clearly likes it.
I have a series of chores to do this morning, and things to see before I go, this being my last day in town before I move onto Zahedan. I visit a travel agency to ask about fares to Zahedan. I am able to get a bus tomorrow but I would have to wait until Tuesday to get a flight so that is out of the question. The bus trip, for 1200 km, costs only 7000 rials.
The official exchange rate in the national bank is 65 rials per American dollar. Other banks exchange 200 rials per dollar, but on the street I am able to exchange a dollar for 1300 rials on the black market. It feels unsafe to make an illegal exchange but Roger helped me pull off such an exchange on the Khaju Bridge yesterday. Visitors are required to show a receipt that they have purchased 2000 rials at the official bank rate (about US$30) when they leave the country. Coen exchanged that much for me in Tehran when I was sick and I have the receipt, but the cash itself was stolen with the rest of the contents of my money belt five days ago. At 1300 rials to the dollar, my bus ticket to Zahedan costs just a bit more than $5, but at the official rate that would have been $108, which is about $25 more than what I have left.
With my ticket for ticket in hand for 7:30 am tomorrow, I walk to the Nagsh-e Johan Square and to the covered Grand Bazaar that fronts onto the north end of the square.
The bazaar is immense, and not that different from the one in Istanbul, so I don’t go deeply into it. I am only here to buy a new money belt, although I don’t have much to put into it.
I ride my bike up the cycling path along on the median on Charbagh Avenue to its end, and then another three kilometres to visit the Menar Jonban, the mosque of the shaking minarets, as it is often referred to. My time is limited so I cannot spend long here. It is not as large or architecturally interesting as the big mosques on Nagsh-e Johan Square and it costs 1000 rials to visit, more than I want to waste at this time. I ask a Swiss couple as they are leaving if it was worth the visit. They say it’s ‘nice’, unenthusiastically. The minarets are 10 metre high add-ons that sway in an earthquake. The Swiss say a staff member climbs into one minaret every half-hour and gets it swaying to cause the other to sway. They say you can feel the vibration throughout the church, but that the church itself is actually a mausoleum and not too interesting.
Ahmed’s parents have a home about a kilometre away so I walk with him. They greet me in the foyer of their home where I remove my shoes. I make the embarrassing gaffe of offering my handshake to both of them instead of just his father. His mother looks at my hand in a way that says ‘I see it but cannot touch it’ without saying anything. I mumble an apology but they brush it off without another thought.
They invite me into their living room and offer a snack of fruit and pistachio nuts as we talk. Both his parents have been to the US and speak fluent English. They are respectful of their customs and mine. I am the ignorant one here, only knowing a handful of words in Farsi. They ask me what the differences are between Canadians and Americans and how I like Iran. I like both his parents and they seem to like me, though Iranians are as rich in formal graces as they are in oil. I would probably never know it if they detested me.
The only shocked and disapproving reaction they have is when Ahmed, in his proud enthusiasm for his home town, boasts that eight of the twenty-four Iraqi fighter jets that defected to Iran three years ago, at the end of the Iraq-Iran War, are being hidden in Zahedan. “Ahmed! That is NOT something you should tell a foreigner! Do you want to have us throw in jail?”. “I will never mention a word, I promise,” I say humbly, and that seems to reassure them.
Our visit lasts an hour. I bid farewell to Ahmed and promise to write to him from India. I have been faithful to all my promises to write, unlike most of my friends. I ride down to the river and back to the tea room on the Khaju Bridge – this place has become my preferred hangout in the city, much like Mann-o-Meter was my favourite place in Berlin. I don’t think I ever consciously made that choice but I just keep coming back to here.
Roger is here again, this time by himself, and he’s still on top of the world. Last night, when he ran back to the tea house to reclaim his forgotten movie camera, he found the doors locked. He fretted about it all night and scarcely slept. When the tea house finally opened, he learned that they had found and protected his movie camera. It was in perfect condition. He has wisely left it in his hotel room tonight, I catch myself thinking. Then I remember all that was stolen from my hotel room and I bite my tongue.
Roger came here to make a movie about Iran. He doesn’t have a script in mind or even what he wants in the content, but he is taking clips of Iranian life, customs, architecture and people and he hopes the story will speak to him through the experiences he has. He says most people have prejudiced points of view about places they have never visited. When he visited here the first time a year ago, he was shocked at how different it was to what he had believed before, so he felt it would be best not to have a script. He plans to stay here two months if he can keep renewing his visitor visa that long.
He highly recommends that I visit Mashhad, a city in the north-east corner of the country near the point where Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan meet, and Shiraz to the south of here, but I am afraid Zahedan will be the last Iranian city I will see. From there, it’s a day’s ride to Pakistan. A week from now Vincent, Coen and I will be there.
We decide to go for a dinner out together, at a cheap, local eatery that serves the Iranian national dish, the chelo kabab. It is to Iranians what the hamburger is to Americans or maple syrup is to Canadians, Roger teaches me. The chelo kebab is a plate of unseasoned, boiled white rice topped with an unseasoned skewer of broiled lamb. Some of the higher end places will even add a dollop of butter to the top of the rice. Roger says a glorious crescent of fine cuisine runs half way around the world from France, Italy, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey all the way to the Indian sub-continent, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Japan, but it strangely seems to hop right over Iran.
I would not be a good judge of Iranian food, since I haven’t tried it. This is my first solid meal since I arrived in the country. To help the chelo kebab go down, I have a soothing bowl of plain yogurt (Gawd’s food), and for dessert, Iranians have a special ice cream treat. Their ice cream contains flakes of frozen clotted cream and is delicately flavoured with saffron and rose water. It is sandwiched between two thin, crispy wafers that appear to be a cross between a Belgian waffle and a ping pong paddle. It is to die for, especially when you haven’t had solid food for almost a week.
Roger and I part ways on the bridge with an awkward, homophobic hug and a handshake, which comes strangely after the hug instead of before it. I push my bike back to my hotel, savouring the evening slowly and trying not to exert myself too much. My stomach gurgles horribly my digestive enzymes have a fight-to-the-death feeding frenzy over the meal I have just eaten.
The hotel is dead quiet when I come in. I pass the busboy coming down the stairs, I presume on his way out. We smile at each other openly and glance back a couple times after we pass to catch each other smiling back. My room smells musty as I open the door. I leave it open a couple centimetres and open my window a crack to let a breeze pass through. I lie on my back on the bed and massage my digestive nerve runs down my abdomen from my navel to settle my bowels, a trick I learned eight years ago when I was getting holistic treatments for digestive problems.
I lie there for several minutes, massaging gently, until I realize that someone is watching me through the crack in the door. It is the busboy, who has returned to seek me out. I guess, with my half my hands dipping below the belt, he thinks I am massaging something else. He is certainly massaging his ‘something else’, I see. In a few heartbeats my own cock is stretching to have a look. I open my pants to show it to him and he is spellbound.
After a couple more minutes, I stand up, my cock still erect, and slowly move over to the door. At first he backs away, but I beckon to him and gesture for him to hold it. It takes a few coaxes, but he finally grips it, softly at first and then firmly, stroking it softly like a magical and sacred object. He pulls his hand away, plays a bit with my precum on his fingertips, and then, without warning, disappears around the corner in a bathroom.
I wait a couple minutes for him to return before I walk over to see if he is still in the bathroom. The shower is running and the door is locked. I peek through the keyhole and see him showering without a curtain and pounding his meat feverishly. He either hears me touch the handle or sees a change in the light coming through the keyhole, because he leaves the shower to cover the keyhole with a cloth. I guess he’s not an much of an exhibitionist as I am. I return to my room and close the door. At least my digestion is feeling better.
PHOTO 1: artisan making a patterned tablecloth in the market
PHOTO 2: bike path on Charbagh Ave
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