My grand pa was a hitch-hiker

After two wild months in Kosovo, which started with a 3 week long meditation about loneliness and the necessity of positive human interaction but ended up in an artistic and social roller coaster spent watching amazing films, partying until morning, and playing bob marley songs in cementeries, I found myself sitting at my grand father's dining table.

I cannot hide that however hard it was to adapt to my life in Prizren, leaving it behind was even harder. My time there intensified progressively, and culminated with the festival, during which there was more to do, and more interesting people to meet than I could cope with. From midday to midnight, there were film screenings in seven indoor and outdoor cinemas, after which there were concerts and DJ's playing all night long. With the master classes, panels and a little work added to that a few hours were left to sleep each day

After such an experience, going back to 'normality', especially when that means flying back to the Netherlands (a country famous for its exhuberant and spontaneous lifetsyle!), can be a bit of a shock. Well so it was; I was devastated, to leave the place I was finaly starting to feel at home in, and all the people that had become such close friends to me. And after my two year long boycott of planes (the boycott did end for practical reasons, I am back to being an Evil Polluter of the Planet), my body and brain still cannot adjust to the idea that it is possible to travel 1500 km in 2.5 hours, especially when this involves going from mountaineous, warm and wild to flat, cold and tidy.

However sad as that sounds, I cried when I got out of Eindhoven airport. I really try to get myself to like this country, but I can't hide that my soul feels more at ease in other places (I am getting more and more diplomatic each day). Anyhow, this long introduction was meant to lead us to my grand father's dining table. So here I am, in the Hague, tired and litteraly spaced-out, talking to my wonderful grand father. There are a few bright spots in my Dutch life; long conversations with my grandpa and bumping into Gavin the street musician are two of them.

My grandpa spends his days writing books, sitting long hours thinking, and visiting his friends from the Hague's art club. Like many old people, he has got great stories to tell. I know a lot of them, and each time I hear a new one I think 'well, this might be his best story!' but I end up being surprised again. 

to be continuuued: how my grandpa hitchhiked on a donkey ;)

The day people sailed down the river on truck inner tubes

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As someone told me, this picture doesn't symbolise Prizren very well. But the day I took that picture, another flag was the subject of bigger controversies. It was Bunar Fest, a really funny annual Prizreni celebration during which people raft down the city's river on inflated truck inner tubes. There were many people on the streets. No one seemed to know precisely when the race would start, so I just started roaming around the city observing people and hoping to notice by the crowd's motions when something was about to happen. After having fruitlessly followed a several large groups of people thinking that they knew where they were going, I heard noise and saw people rushing in one direction. I thought 'Hey! The boats must be coming!'. But I quickly understood that something else was happening. Groups of political activists had started walking up the river bank, removing every Kosovar flag they found and leaving only the albanian ones. The police rapidely arrived, and I got pretty confused about what their intentions were. One moment, they seemed to be assisting the activists by helping them not to fall as they were reaching to remove the flags. The next moment they harassed protestors. 

I watched the whole scene incredulously, not really used to this kind of events. People who were standing next to me explained that there was nothing exceptional about what was going on, and that these kind of anti-kosovar-flag actions took place regularly. I was surprised that they were against the flag, as I thought that having one's own flag could only be perceived as a great sign of political autonomy. However, the explanation I received made sense. Kosovar albanians feel a strong affinity with the albanian flag, since it represents their cultural and historical heritage. But the republic of Kosovo was founded as a multiethnic state, and the flag had to be ethnically neutral. So there's a blue background and 7 stars each representing one people. Does this sound similar to the European flag? That's what those protestors and many more find disturbing.

 

You can be happy everywhere, but some places make you feel different...

Last month, the pharmacy refused to give me my medicine. They said that I was getting addicted and that I needed to learn to cope without. That medicine was designed to help people like me fight the irresistible urge to compulsively give up everything that's stable and makes sense around them to go somewhere completely different and start all over again. They are still unable to understand the roots of this condition, but they found a molecule that seems to attenuate its negative effects. The only thing is that as everything chemical remedy, it should be consumed with moderation. That's probably why they decided that I had to take a break.

Once the withdrawal symptoms passed, the old restlessness came back. I got bored of seing the same things and going to the same places every day. I had enough of the northern normality and inhibitions. The tasteless food and the inexpressive faces. I know that was exactly what I had come to find when I decided to come back to the Netherlands a few months ago, but too much of one thing makes me want to dive right back into the other edge of the continuum. I feel complete when I am on the move, testing the limits of my confort zones, and constantly facing my ignorance and biases.

I love waking up every day in a place where everything is exotic to me. The taste of my breakfast, the smell inside people's houses and the colours of the birds that come to my window. I miss the times riding bumpy roads, slipping on frozen winter streets, talking with old neighbours about why I am not married yet, buying fresh vegetables on street markets, drinking coffee in the house of someone I just met, and eating pomegranate with salt. Next to this, a new kind of fever got to me; documentary film. In this artistic realm, creativity meet intelectual depth and the fight for social and environmental justice. And being the impersonation of creativity and rationality themselves, I figured that it was just for me.

I had heard about dokufest a few years ago. This international documentary festival takes place in a lovely historical city of Kosovo called Prizren. I had considered attending the fetival one day, then I thought about becoming a volunteer, and I ended up with the honour of being accepted for 1.5 month internship!

My job isn't clear yet. I've watched a lot of great films, and I've written a bit for the website. Plenty of time was left to explore the surrounding,  take some pictures, chill around a coffee and sometimes a raki!

The Mystery of the Marinated Shrimps

There are many mysteries in life. For instance, I cannot fully explain how I ended up, on the evening of December 14th, sitting at the table of one of the finest restaurants in Tirana, eating marinated shrimps in the company of famous albanian singers. This doesn't follow very logically from what Marijana and I were doing two hours before that; when we were standing at the gaz pump in the dark and cold, hungry, and having little hopes of sleeping in Tirana that night. Sometimes things just aren't logical, and events unfold in impredictable ways. So although I cannot figure out the intricacities of the cosmic mechanisms that worked together to create the exact right sequence of events that led to the most unlikely outcome, I remember the smell of shrimps and I know that it really happened.

Marijana had spent a few days in Pristina while I was visiting a friend in Skopje, and we had decided to meet in Prizren in order to continue the journey together and reach France by Christmas, which was getting dangerously close. That Wednesday morning, I was feeling sick, and once I quit wondering ways to teleport myself to Kosovo without using any of my muscles, I started packing with the bit of strength that I could find in myself. Heavy headed, I walked to the bus -yes I take buses in extreme cases like this one, and three hours later I was in Prizren.  In Prizren, Marijana and I found each other without the technology of mobile phones, but thanks to the brightness of her Santa hat sticking out of the crowd. Aslan was there too, puking on in the middle of the agitated workers of the bus station. The brightness of our outfits finally made complete by the purchase of first class Santa costumes in Macedonia, people's smiles and songs, and the excitement of being a tramper once again made me forget about my sickness. It was sunny, and we were ready for another day of adventures.

A nice young man of turkish origins (I am sure there is a secret organisation of turkish male assistants to hitchhiking girls) drove us to the Albanian border. The geopolitical situation makes the crossing of the Kosovo/Albania border one of the easiest I have seen so far after european borders. Instead of scary looking faces, waiting lines, and stamps (and the optional fines and tears...), we got smiles and 'Happy New Year's (Albania is a muslim country). Our passports weren't even checked, what I'd like to believe is the fruit of our amazing Santa charisma, but is apparently a usual thing there.

Once we had passed the border, we only had another 100 km or so to hitchhike until Tirana. All the cars that stopped were going to a city nearby called Kukes, and it was about to get dark so we decided to wait until someone going to Tirana would offer us a ride. After some time waiting we thought that we had found our ride when a young man stopped and told us that he was going to Tirana. But just like everybody else, he was going to Kukes, and once we had been driving around the bouncy streets of this creepy city (sorry, anybody from there?) for a bit too long we understood that our driver just wanted to find a way to have us over for the night. But once more, Santa Woman super powers got us out of there and we were back on the road, in the dark, waiting for our  next ride.

But it was dark, and despite trying out one by one all our magic tricks (i.e. jumping, smiling, waving, lighting a cigarette, standing under the signpost, standing in the light, standing at the gas pump...) we remained shivering and car-less. Now that I have gained all the necessary wisdom from this experience, I would advise anyone facing a similar situation to skip all the jumping and waving and to just go stand by the gas pump. Indeed, as was revealed that night, petrol stations seem to have strong affinities for lost hitchhikers. Whether there is a global gas pump consciousness willing and able to work out the best outcomes for lost hitchhikers will probably remain forever within the real of the unknown, but what I know is that out of nowhere, in this small and empty filling station of Northern Albania, we were picked up by a fancy four wheel drive driven by a handsome famous singer and his millionaire acolyte.

Sinan (we are good friends by now :)) seemed to quickly recover from the shock of seeing a girl dressed as Santa Claus running towards him and saying "problem, no car, Tirana!" (I discovered only later that he lives in Chicago and speaks fluent english). He understood our problem, but was at first reluctant to help us since we had a dog and their car was full of sausage (full in the balkan sense, there were a few pieces of Kosovar sausage in the trunk). I have to say here, however, that I understand anyone's hesitation to spontaneously offer assistance to a group as strange and crazy looking as ours at this time of the day. After a little while, we convinced him.

In the cosy car, we started happily chatting with our saviours of the day, still ignoring what kind of people they were. After a few minutes I asked the driver, 'so what do you do?', and he answered 'I don't really know!', so I innocently said 'Oh, just like my dad, haha!'. But his acolyte didn't wait long to inform us that Sinan was actually one of the most famour Kosovar singers, and he started playing one of his friend's CD's. The other man mentioned that he was a businessman, and we later understood that he wasn't a small player, but the owner of the fanciest hotel in Pristina. So here we were, riding with the Kosovar elite. After some jokes and discussions, they invited us to join them for dinner, which they were to have in the company of their friend Castrieto (or Fidel Castro as he later introduced himself to us), a notorious Albanian tenor. Too curious about what would happen if we accepted their invitation, but also because Marijana and I were starting to feel seriously hungry, I ignored the fatigue and headache and decided to go for it, even if I had to end up sleeping on the dinner table. Oh, and another thing to mention is that under our Santa outfits we were dressed like hippie travellers and even had dirty hair. Whatever, I've never been good with dress codes.

Flore restaurant is one of the nicest fish restaurants in Tirana. The food was great, and to us it seemed like the most incredible meal we ever had after the long, cold and lonely day we had behind us. Shrimps, rare and forbidden but delicious shells, baked fish, italian wine, desert... and another desert... We were even joined by the director of the Albanian footbal federation and his enormous cigar by the end of our meal. The two singers were the most friendly ones though, and they even sang a little after a few glasses of wine.

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Despite the fact that I barely had the strength to lift my fork to my mouth, it was another memorable experience for the Hitchhiking Santa's! 

We are All Cyber Monks

Can you imagine what it felt like to be one of those monks who were copying entire manuscripts by hand? It doesn't seem like the most appealing job, does it?

Well, I discovered today, thanks to another wonderful TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration.html) that we are actually all little cyber monks. Indeed, without even being aware of it, we are all contributing in the digitalisation of millions of books every year. How is that possible?

As you might have noticed, since three or four years ago, CAPTCHA's (the letters you have to type in websites to prove that you are human) evolved, taking on the shape of real words. You can read things like that:

So what happened? Did they just think that we were too stupid to copy meaningless series of words and signs? That's not the reason, but WHAT IS IT !!! Tell me pleaaase !!!

Well, one day some clever people were bothered by the fact that humanity is wasting a considerable amount of precious time each day to type millions of meaningless CAPTCHA's, and that there are millions of books which remain unavailable to the public because computers are unable to digitalise them. That's when their genius operated, and they thought, why not connecting the two, and making millions of internet users contribute to the digitalisation of entire books by just typing the CAPTCHA's they would type anyways? That's when CAPTCHA became ReCAPTCHA...

Now, thanks to a system that I don't understand, while spending a few dozens of seconds each day proving that we are human on websites such as facebook, twitter, or whatever else we are using (because honestly, who uses facebook and twitter! Huh???) we are actually participating in a "massiva scale online collaboration". Together, we are participating in the digitalisation of about 2.5 million books a year.

For the system to work, CAPTCHA's must be composed of two words, which sometimes gives funny combinations. A CAPTCHA on a liberal politician website read 'damn liberal', there was 'bad christians' on the embassy of God website, or still 'stoned founders', 'invisible toaster'...

The next thing? Translating the web while learning languages with duolinguo (http://duolingo.com/). With 1 million users, this website can translate the whole of wikipedia from english to spanish in just 80 hours. Isn't that INCREDIBLE?

Duolinguo

The Time I Could Still Go Out Without Sunglasses and Body Guards

http://webtv.am/haxordasharer/art-modern/hasmik-sevoyan/

Fame is a tough thing. Although I already had a small career behind me with my appearances in the background of the final scene of the French movie Bienvenue Chez les Chti’s, what I encountered in Armenia was a totally new thing to me. There, as the often only Armenian speaking foreigner around, journalists were flying to me like bees rush to a blooming meadow. I've been interviewed at the zoo, on the street after having been thrown into different fountains of the city at the Vardavar celebration, at a wine festival, at a school... And my narcissic side usually took over at this point, accepting the interview with no consideration to my readiness, to my knowledge of the topic, or to my physical state. That's how I ended up declaring proudly and in Armenian to a journalist with a voice that sounded like I had just been smoking 5 packs of cigarettes, that I loved how abstract the paintings were and that, by the way, I was escorted by the police. Self control is a thing I might still have to learn, especially in the face of such major public appearances. But luckily, most of the embarassing scenes were cut off during the editting (not without some pressure from my side).

I wasn't able to track down all the records and I had to try and guess what a person was referring to when she or he (several times it was doctors at the hospital) told me that they'd seen me on TV. However, thinking about how funny my grandkids would find it to see their wrinkly grandma as a young Armenian celebrity, I looked for some of them and got lucky.

Here is the interview I gave at an art exhibition to which I went only because I was spontaneously invited by one of the chiefs of the police (who was my friend since my driver's license adventure) and thought it would be fun to go although I was dead tired (you can hear my voice, I wasn't in top shape at that time...). I remember driving there in the police boss' four wheel drive without seatbelts and after a few shots of cognac. And walking around there feeling like a zombie out of his dark and safe hiding place. They coerced me into saying that I had come there with the police during the interview, but afraid of the consequences that the exposure of this secret relationship would have I had to pressure the journalist to cut out this sensitive information from the film. Fortunately they did, and you can't hear much more, if you understand Armenian, than my comments about the colours and abstraction of these paintings. I had NO CLUE what to say, but the point is that I said something! You can see me on 3:30.

http://webtv.am/haxordasharer/art-modern/hasmik-sevoyan/

 

 

Santa the Dog Smuggler and the Giant X-Ray Machine

 

I ignore how I ended up standing by the side of the road at the outskirts of Istanbul on December 6th with a Santa hat and a red jumper. With my old lady's orange shopping bag, feeling a little bit out of place (lost in my reminiscence of the white snow covers and the warm wood fire of my home in the North Pole); there I was lifting my arm with my thumb up waiting to get a lift. With me, a 1.83m tall Croatian girl and her little black dog named Aslan (it means lion in Turkish, very fitting to her affective and feminine personality :)). 

It all started with a lost towel. Left behind in Adana and desperate to get back to its owner, it sneaked into Marijana's backpack and reached Istanbul on a truck. I was hoping to skip this enormous city, but my towel's suicide threats (she was very attached to me) drove me all the way to Marijana's apartment. There, after having managed to contain my towel's outburst of joy and tears I got introduced to the fuzzy haired girl. It didn't take this travelling maniac a long time to convince me that hitchhiking to Europe dressed as Santa Claus was the best idea one could ever have, and we started planning our departure. It started with a few failures; failure to get the correct stamps on the dog's Turkish passport (which meant that it had no right to exit Turkey), failure to get complete Santa outfits, and failure to buy extra supplies of Pepper Spray. On top of this, Marijana was aware that she had largely overstayed her Turkish visa, and that this meant that she would most likely get a fine when exiting the country, and even probably be banned entry on Turkish soil for up to 5 years. But as real adventurers are not afraid of anything, we left our plans unchanged. The only difference would be that besides being hippy reincarnations of Santa Claus, we would have to be proficient dog smugglers and bet on our hopeless blond acting skills to avoid paying the fine. At 7 am the next day, with our red hats and sparkles in our eyes, we were on our way.

We decided to avoid the main border since we expected the police to be less lenient concerning overstays and clandestine dogs there. Instead, we made our way towards a smaller border. It is when we got stuck on a petrol station, 1 km before the border with no one offering to give us a lift through that we started doubting our genius plan. However, after a while waiting, and having abandoned our hopes to reach our destination in the west of Bulgaria by night, a kind Turkish truck driver offered to drive us to the other side of the border. We were glad to get a ride from a truck, believing that it would be the best place to hide a dog as truck cabins are generally not checked at customs. We were at this point quite confident that we would be able to persuade the border guards to let Marijana out without a fine, but we were nervous that the dog would be discovered. In that case, we would be stuck between two borders, as Marijana wouldn't be allowed to go back to Turkey and we had no intention to leave the dog behind. What they would do with two Santa's and a dog between two countries we didn't really know.

Our hopes to discreetly leave the dog in the cabin during the border crossing to avoid it being discovered were soon disappointed. The truck had to pass into a giant X ray machine (lacking a better name for it), and we had to take the dog out to keep it from being ionized, or whatever giant X-ray machines do to little dogs. As we were walking around with Aslan, a police officer asked if it had a passport, checked it and didn't notice the missing stamp. But while the dog was allowed to exit Turkey, it wasn't as easy for Marijana as the police soon realised that she had overstayed her visa by one and a half month. In the police station, despite crying, acting completely desperate and explaining that it really wasn't her fault, she had no choice but to pay about 600 Turkish Liras (about 240 Euros). That's all she had on her account plus a little help from our truck driver.

2 hours later, we finally made it back to the truck. It was dark, Marijana was totally broke, we were all hungry (the dog included) and worn out. But it wasn't over for us, as the most difficult thing would be to pass the Bulgarian border without Aslan being discovered. Our fantastic driver was by then our accomplice; he had understood that we weren't sure about the validity of the dog's documents and preferred to hide him from the Bulgarian authorities. At the passport control point, he started bribing the police with olives, cigarettes and cookies (apparently a normal thing to do at Bulgarian borders for Turkish truck drivers... it makes crossing faster). The woman inside the cabin looked at our faces carefully, and then a man with a yellow jacket walked around the truck. My heart was beating fast, and I could smell Marijana's fear (literally...). Then what we dreaded occurred, the man opened the truck's door on Marijana's side, the side where Aslan was lying on the floor. There was no way that he wouldn't see the dog, she was going to move, or bark and we would have to cry and beg them to let her pass.

But none of this happened, it was dark and Aslan didn't move. She stayed there, quietly sleeping at Marijana's feet while the man looked around the cabin, shuffled things around to check if there was anything under the bed, and even looked right were she was. He just didn't notice her, her black body in a dark background had made her invisible! Dog power! Satisfied, he walked down and shut the door behind him. It is hard to describe the feeling of relief and excitement that got into the little truck cabin at that moment. Marijana and I looked at each other's eyes, I said 'is it over?' and she answered 'wait a couple kilometres and I'll be able to breath!’ There were a few more bribes, but no more cabin checks. We felt safe, and exhilarated by the thought that we had made it, we had reached the other side of the border with the dog! Exhausted, we fell asleep until we reached our final destination for the day. Our driver had driven us to a truck station were we could wait until the next day. We thanked him with all of our heart and wished to meet him again someday. Without him, we wouldn't have made it, and he was one of the kindest persons I had ever met.

In the truck station we had to face the harsh reality that not everybody is as kind as Turkish truck drivers. The only answers we got when kindly asking whether there was any indoors place we could put our sleeping bags on the floor were, 'no, you can sleep on the parking'. It was dark, and no one was going to help us. We sat in the restaurant for hours, laughing in a tired after-shock high. Finally, at 3am, when we were getting ready to sleep on the parking, a kind young Turkish driver (who else!?) offered us his warm truck cabin :)

This movie was made in the truck station's restaurant, broke, tired, but still smiling!

 

A good start for the Santa hitchhikers... Soon more on how we met two of the all times greatest Albanian singers!

 

Back to modernity: My dad's dustbin is alive!

My dad’s dustbin is alive! From a distance it looks like a typical well mannered kitchen dustbin; 60 litres, silver colour with a lid.  The unusual thickness of its lid, and the absence of a pedal should have made me suspicious, but my naivity kept me from seeing the obvious. She took me by surprise. First there was a sound, a soft groaning which I heard briefly as I was leaving the kitchen. And then I saw it happening with my own eyes. As I approached my hand it started moving alone! This dustbin's behaviour is nothing like what is usually observed amongst individuals of the garbage family. It has somehow developped the capacity to sense the approach of trash, to which it reacts by opening wide it's garbage mouth and closing it once trash has been deposited in it's stomach. At times it closes while my hand is still inside of it, probably trying to add some human flesh into it’s dustbin diet.

Be careful, this is not a unique case; I heard that there are many more specimens of this strange species. I had to tame it slowly. I first spent a few long minutes staring at it incredulously as it opened and closed everytime I approached my hand. The tough part was cooking. It opened up everytime I walked next to it and I had troubles concentrating on my soup. Despite my attempts to move calmly and keep my distances I couldn't control its behaviour. So I did what I had to do... I turned it off. But don't worry, I turned it on again later and I don't think that it suffered any long term effects, except maybe a good lesson.

Honestly, I am amazed at the progress in the field of automatic dustbin making. When I left France, the most advanced type of dustbin that I knew of was the one that you had to press with one finger to cause it to open up -my mum still owns one of those, she has always been a little old fashioned.

Really, what else could we have dreamed of than self aware automated dustbins?

Since I came back from my long journey into countries without blenders and automatic carwash, I keep being amazed at technology and all the great things that it has produced or improved during my absence. I got my first email writing, translator, mapping, keyboard, chat, Facebook phone and although I have no way to use it as there is still no sim card in it, I am amazed at how modern I have become myself. I am now typing this message on an iPad, enjoying the tapping sound of my fingers on the screen and feeling sorry for those still using laptops.

I would have never thought that throwing trash could be that exciting. I'll just have to make sure I keep throwing trash, only trash.

A month in Iran

On October 10th, with a hardly won visa sticked on my passport, I reached the Armenia-Iran border on an old Kamaz tanker. I had waited for a long time to go to Iran, and I had imagined and heard a lot of things about what what it was like, but I was eager to see it with my own eyes. In the last armenian building, I made the necessary clothing adjustments, worrying about not being dressed properly and about how I would get a ride to Tabriz. Fortunately, I met four friendly men there and was offered a ride. I walked through the border with a mixture of intimidation and excitement, feeling as if I was walking behind the curtain of a famous play.

I still haven't written much about the month I spent in Iran. The main reason is that the internet there is very slow (one of the many strategies to cut people from the rest of the world), discouraging the most motivated traveller to post blog updates. But an even bigger issue is the censorship, and as a foreigner lacking awareness of what should and should not be said, the fear of getting into trouble for sharing the wrong information is another obstacle. Back in the 'free' world, it is finaly time for me to write something about this time.

'Why did you come to Iran?' is a question that came up many times. It seemed strange to people that while they were dreaming of going out of Iran, I was happy to have managed to get into Iran. I explained that I loved the iranian people, culture and language and that I was interested in seeing something different. That's what I seek when travelling, something that I have never seen before and that will challenge the way I see the world and teach me to perceive things under a new light. And that's just what happened, Iran shook my world.

The experience I had was against all my expectations. I didn't see the things I was expecting to see, and I experienced a lot of things which I had not imagined before. I expected something else on the architecture and landscape side, which is probably due to my wild imagination and how I always imagine unknown places as something out of a fantastic movie. I have only been to the North West and Center of Iran, which could be split into desert -not only the idillic sand dunes desert but mostly vast dry areas with bushes and no trees, and forest near the Caspian Sea. Iranians call the Caspian Sea lush region 'jungle', but what I saw didn't look too much like the jungle I imagined -again, wild imagination with monkeys running up and down the trees. As for the architecture, there are plenty of wonderful old monuments and mosks, but they are scattered in a background of low and ugly buildings.

Nevetheless, Imam Square in Esfahan is splendid, and made up for the dry river (due to a dam, which has since last month been opened to let the water return! Yey!). Kashan's historical houses are an amazing display of wealth and fine architecture. Tehran's old government buildings and libraries are beautiful, as are the impressive modern buildings of the North Tehranis in Valenjak.

 

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But going to Iran in these strange and difficult times has a much deeper meaning than just watching landscapes and architecture. So, the small desilusion of the little tourist in me was more than compensated by the rich experience that I gained by getting a glimpse of the iranian life from the inside. Behind the islamic veil, and far beyond the image that western media presents, Iran is a country of refined culture and wonderful people. As extremes go together, oppression and the resulting pain and fear of the people are paired with extravagant generosity, great minds and unique creativity.

Iran without the iranians would be like a book without words. There are the religious ones who pray 5 times a day and sit around drinking tea with their large families in furniture-less living rooms, the rich ones in the Tehrani suburb Valenjak with remade noses and too much make up, the revolutionaries, the women in chador and the young girls pushing their scarves back when the police is not watching... I met every kind of people, in taxis, buses, in the park or at dinner parties, and all of them were full of kindness and generosity, always doing their best to show me hospitality in any way they could. I was offered genuine friendship, meals, and often even to stay in people's homes. Once a girl in a city bus took me by the hand and walked with me under te rain for almost an hour in order to get me a bus ticket for the next city, and she insisted on paying for it. The only problem with being the 'sacred guest' is to start taking it for granted, and the chance of getting bored and feeling useless while everybody is doing things for you. So I learned to fight with housewives over doing the dishes and to run to the waiter in order to pay before anybody else.

In Iran women must wear headscarves and loose fitting coats, they cannot smoke nor sing, drinking is strictly forbidden, men and women are not allowed to hang out unless they are related or married, dancing is forbidden, and so is owning a dog, hosting foreigners, being gay, changing religion, and oposing the regime in any way. The penalties are high, going from fines to imprisonement, lashing and death.

On the positive side, I was amazed at how forbidding some things could make doing those things much more enjoyable and exciting. I had learned this beforehand when an iranian girl in Armenia told me that she rarely drank alcohol in Armenia since it was so easy to get that there was nothing exciting about consuming it. This must be human nature, the fact we need to be deprived of something to understand what that thing is worth. This realisation captivated me and puzzled me quite a bit, and I still wonder about the relationship between freedom and happiness. Hidden from the sight of the police, boys and girls meet, there are music bands, concerts and parties (the only one of which I experienced was a bus party in the desert!)... Everything that one can do that is considered 'fun' in other places is thrilling in Iran, for the simple fact that it is forbidden. In order to avoid getting into trouble I learned to spot green police cars from a distance and walk away from police control points in busy street corners.

After some time though, I started to understand how it is not all just fun, and how heavy this situation is for the people who face it every day. Forbidding something does make that thing more enjoyable as long as the penalties that are risked are not too high and systematic. I spoke to a young lady in the bus once who is a lawyer. I asked her what kinds of cases she mostly dealt with and she told me that it was relationship issues between young men and women, and that the penalties included most of the time lashing. I spoke to countless young people, who are hopeless about changing their situation and dream to leave Iran. And it is the young women who seem to suffer the most, those who want to study and be successful, or just to be able to walk on the street dressed as they want.

When I passed the border with Turkey and could finaly take off my headscarf, I felt strange and it took me a few more days to get used to the fact that it was ok to go on the street like that, and that I was not an outlaw when having coffee with a man who is not my husband.

Iran definitely left a strong impression in my mind, and I my interest grew even deeper once I left the country and looked back at what I had seen and lived there. If you want a nice introduction to independent iranian cinema and the underground music movement I advise you to watch 'No one knows about persian cats' by Bahman Ghobadi :)