We spend the morning on the trail of Pakistani visas. We try to phone the embassy from a hotel next door to the Khasah Sea but cannot get through. The friendly hotel owner writes in Persian the directions on how to get to the embassy. We catch a taxi from Maidan-i-Imam Khomeini and it takes us for 2000 riyals up to the Maidan-i-Doctor Fatemi. From there we ask successive directions until we find the embassy.
For visas, we need two photographs and a fucking letter from the New Zealand embassy. We take a taxi there and it is shut. Walking down the Ulāi-u-Asr, we are sent from branch to branch of Bank Milli Iran in a vain attempt to cash a traveller’s check. A bus ride later and we are finally successful at the Central Branch. It still takes a lot of patience, however.
We repair to our room at the hotel for a few hours to rest and escape the heat of the day. At 5 pm we venture out again and walk down to the bazaar. The afternoon is scorching and a hot wind sweeps down from the street and swirls around the stultifying year.
The bazaar is closing. Its main streets carry a flood of people leaving to return to their homes and most of the shops are shuttered and locked. We’re looking for a shop that sells shalwar kameez, the cool Pakistani dress, for me to wear, but it was obvious that there is no point looking today as the bizarre is rapidly emptying of people and the only activity is the barrowmen dragging huge loads on their small carts.
The empty streets take on a new character without their customary crowds, silent and gloomy, save for the occasional openings into quiet leafy courtyards around mosques or private quarters. Outside the bazaar, we walk over to the park where we sit next to the rows of fountains whose action causes a small localised flow of cool air to circulate. An Iraqi with one blue and one brown eye comes and asks if we would like an ice cream. We reply yes and he brings them, asking for our address and return. I write James Wheeler, 37 Kings Road London W4 on his piece of paper and he goes away happy.
Soon two other men approach. They introduce themselves and tell us that they are filmmakers. They speak good English and we talk for a few minutes then they go on their way. They return sometime later and invite us to a recital of music and poetry at a nearby venue where a conference on some form of theatre is being held. There are speakers, they say, but between each one, there are short performances. It sounds okay so we go along.
We all wait in the lobby of the theatre talking about various things until a performance starts. It is finished by the time where we are seated. And we have to sit through several dreary and incomprehensible speeches before another play starts. Our two friends translate as best they can. The story seems to revolve around the efforts of a farmer to cure his retarded son with some sort of magic from a local doctor. It is obviously a very corny piece of theatre and our hosts apologise profusely for the state of it. But it is nevertheless quite an interesting experience for us, despite not being able to understand much.
After lemonade and biscuits in the foyer, we walk with our new friends back to the hotel. The 30-minute walk gives us time to talk. Both of them obviously hate the Islamic regime that runs Iran and talk at length about the freedom that Iranians don’t have. Amir jokes that every Iranian has a Mullah in his pocket — ie on the face of the money — an ironic reference to the fact that they must be careful and what they say in public.
At the hotel, we arranged to go to their house for an evening meal tomorrow. We go out for a meal of chelo kebabbi then retire to our hot little chamber of a room.
CurseOfTheTraveller 