Couchsurfing in Iran Read online

  The next history lesson of the day wouldn’t have happened if I had been traveling alone. I simply would have missed the finer details on the Bagh-e Melli Gate. The magnificent entrance to a former military parade ground was built during the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1922, with huge doors with floral designs made from cast iron. Hand-painted ornate tiles depict idyllic landscapes and deadly weapons. Meadows, forests, lakes, and country houses with red roofs provide the background for depictions of Vickers machine guns between Iranian flags.

  “Do you notice anything?” asks Yasmin.

  “It would look quite nice without the weapons.”

  “I don’t mean that; look at the flags.”

  “The crescent moon in the middle of the white stripe is missing. And there are truncated golden animal legs on the lower red stripe.”

  “Exactly! The lion was painted over—it was the national emblem of Iran during the time of the two Pahlavi shahs.”

  “And there was no money left for red paint, which is why the legs remain?”

  “Probably. Do you see the metal crest above the door?”

  “Looks as if half of it was sawed off.”

  “There was also a lion there, and below it the inscription Long Live the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini had a metal plate superimposed, so that all that remains is Long Live.

  “Is censorship always so easy to spot?”

  “Would that it were. But luckily, not everyone is as blind as you,” she says.

  At the last stop in today’s history triathlon, the Golestan Palace and its parks, the lions have survived. There are so many of them that they would have needed more than just a bit of white paint. Most of the lions seem to be busy pouncing on ibexes or dragons. Such motifs symbolize the victory of Persia against her adversaries and were much loved by the shahs who lived here from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

  Yasmin then tells me of the most foolish shah of all—Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, in the second half of the nineteenth century. He believed, for example, that red was his color, and nobody else was allowed to wear anything red. “On top of that, he was a passionate collector who was always swapping whole Persian cities for works of art.” Fourteen cabinets of finest porcelain from Russia, England, and Germany are displayed in a room of the palace. “Each cabinet was a city,” explains Yasmin. She always has a story on hand that you can’t find in history books. “Once he was so drunk that he even wanted to swap Tehran, until, at the very last moment, one of his advisers pointed out that it was the capital of the country.”

  The interior of the palace is not only proof of his mania for collecting but also of his narcissism, and there are a couple hundred tiles showing the shah hunting. His tombstone, not far away, is an effigy of the shah with a sensational mustache. A protective screen has been placed above it, which is covered with pigeon droppings. Every day pigeons drop their loads on the shah, and the eyes of the effigy follow the flight paths of every plane. There must be better ways to spend eternity.

  The last shah of Persia, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was crowned at Golestan Palace and guided the affairs of state from 1941 until the revolution in 1979. He was more conciliatory toward the Muslim clergy than his father, lifting, for example, the ban on chadors. But his extravagant lifestyle, his controversial politics, and his cozy relationship to the West brought him many enemies. At some stage the situation became untenable, and the people took to the streets, paving the way for the seizure of power by the mullahs. The shah was forced into exile, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile and received a hero’s welcome.

  Those who pause after the sensory overload of halls of mirrors, treasure chambers, and all the accentuation on marble unavoidably come to the conclusion that being a shah couldn’t have been too bad a way to spend your time. I ask Yasmin to rate my chances of this career path. This induces a high-pitched fit of laughter, and then she points to an inner courtyard, where a photographer takes photos in authentic regal regalia. Touristy folklore, but it’s worth the five dollars for two pictures.

  I don a green silk frock coat, a blue cloak with embroidered flowers, a round, flat cap with a feather. An assistant quickly glues on my mustache. Several other visitors stop by and greet me with “Welcome to Iran!” Gradually, more and more onlookers gather to follow my photo session. Should I use the window of opportunity to gain a few potential subjects? I nod gracefully toward them, slowly raising my silk-covered arm in a greeting and smiling with dignity. From the tension of my skin the mustache becomes dislodged and with it every imagined aura of majesty. The onlookers, however, are royally amused. My lesson for today: shahs don’t smile.

  COUCHSURFING FOR BEGINNERS

  THE NEXT DAY I take the number one line north. A well-groomed man in a shirt and suit pants with a hairstyle like American football quarterback Tom Brady sits next to me. First he speaks to me in Persian and then English. He only needs five minutes to tell me what’s wrong with his country.

  I learn that he is fifty, works as an electrician for a company making machines, and earns US$200 a month. “You can’t live on that; it’s just about enough to cover the rent. There’s no chance of getting married, either.” And then he becomes astonishingly open and intimate. “You know, for us sex is a real problem. Those without money can’t marry, and anyhow nothing goes on before marriage. Everything has got much worse since the financial crisis. Hardly anyone can afford to have a couple kids. And at the same time we can’t get our asses into gear. I’m not the exception there. I sit on the couch after work and watch TV because there’s nothing better to do. Iranians are incredibly friendly, but once you become better acquainted with them you will see the darker sides. Envy, for example, when someone else has more. And the lack of a fighting spirit: people try to come to terms with their lot, to make the best of their circumstances, but not to fight for or against something. Have a nice day. Welcome to Iran!”

  I get out at Mofatteh and look for Raam Café at the corner of Mehrdad Street and Aslipur Street. I’m a little bit late, and some twenty young people are sitting in a circle of chairs. The round of introductions has already started.

  “My name is Mehedi. I’m twenty-eight and have been a member for three or four days and work as a tourist guide. I don’t like hotels, as they don’t have anything human about them, anything individual. I like traveling simply, without luggage.”

  “I’m Atafeh, twenty-four years old, and a member for a couple months. I’d like to meet Iranians who can show me their cities. I love surprises.”

  “Neda, twenty-nine. I’ve been registered for four weeks and have used couchsurfing in Germany. You can make many friends by traveling like this.”

  “Stephan from Germany. I’ve been couchsurfing for more than ten years and have had roughly 80 guests and 120 hosts. I can’t imagine traveling without couchsurfing.”

  The café sports designer wooden shelves full of books. A Chinatown movie poster hangs on the wall; Nescafé is served, and so are nonalcoholic mojitos. The atmosphere is of a Bible class. Or a self-help group. Or a sect. Two dozen people between twenty and forty have come to experience how couchsurfing works. Their guru is called Pedram, a charismatic bald guy with a MacBook and an Adidas T-shirt, who drinks water from a bike bottle when there is a lull in conversation, which is seldom. On an almost-daily basis he organizes some meeting or other. Free tours of the city, photography walks, visits to museums. And every fortnight he organizes a meeting for beginners, today for the tenth time.

  “I will talk about the basics, the rules, about surfing and hosting, and about security,” he announces. Pedram doesn’t have to worry about running out of enthusiasts. “A year ago couchsurfing had a few thousand members, and now we have more than 100,000.”

  A red-haired girl, her scarf way above her forehead, asks: “If we visit strangers that we only know from the Internet, how can we trust them?”

  “A very important question. Trust is of utmost importance,” Pedram replies. “One general rule is to go
through the profile very carefully before you arrange to meet. Trust your gut feelings, your instincts—sometimes you will feel that something isn’t quite right. And there are reviews. If you are hosting or surfing, leave a short comment.”

  The red-haired girl asks me about my worst experience. I tell her about a visitor from Frankfurt who wanted to talk the whole night about the intricacies of high-end stereo systems, although I had to get up the next morning at eight and had an important exam at the university, and in addition to that he behaved as if he were in a hotel with twenty-four-hour butler service.

  “That was your worst experience?” she asks incredulously.

  “Yes, and the second worst was the guest who stole my toilet paper.”

  So, all within the bounds of reason.

  From: Masoud Kish

  Hello Stephan, I have the in-laws here, but might kick them out to host you. Just call me when you arrive ok?

  TORTURE

  LUSH GREEN TREETOPS sway in the wind, a fountain softly splutters, traffic whirs from the main road. A young couple, holding hands, stroll along the freshly tarred path. Tehran’s couples hold hands in public in parks when they feel safe from critical eyes. Teenagers, with hoodies and Justin Bieber hairstyles, display their skateboarding skills on the high curbs. They tumble and pick themselves up without seeming to feel pain, all the while listening to music on their headphones—boom boxes are forbidden. Two older men are torturing themselves on open-air exercise equipment made of colorful metal.

  It is a mild spring Sunday in Goftegoo Park, the name meaning something like “chatter,” and that’s just what we are doing. Farshad explains that religious names for children have become less popular in recent years. “People question belief more nowadays; not everyone is called Mohamad or Hussein.” He is pleased with his name, which means “happy.”

  Amir asks me how I’m enjoying Iran. I praise the friendliness of the people and the museums and palaces. Yasmin explains to all how funny I looked in the shah costume. Only Kaveh ambles silently beside us; he speaks little English and is in a bad mood because someone stole his wallet in the subway.

  Five of us saunter to a café in the middle of the park. From the terrace we have a magnificent view of the Elburz mountain range, whose white peaks tower above the sea of houses and the top of the Milad Tower, one of the tallest TV towers in the world. Below the railings there is an artificial lake with concrete banks, where small children check out the fat ducks and make quacking noises. We move three plastic tables, numbered 33, 34, and 35, together, as we are expecting more guests. Then we sit down and order water and tea.

  We made the introductions at the entrance to the park. Now follows the second round: one after the other, Yasmin points to Farshad, Amir, Kaveh, and herself. “Slave, Master, Master, Mistress,” she says. Then, grinning, she points toward me and adds: “Undecided.”

  Yasmin organized the meeting via an Internet forum. If the police realized what we were speaking about, we would be arrested. The plan for the next hour? “We start off with the theory and then test it out on you,” suggests the slave Farshad. “We could strap you to the table and then show you something about Iranian hospitality.” Two Masters and a Mistress buckle with laughter. I join in rather sheepishly.

  I prefer Yasmin’s version of the day’s schedule: “We will discuss our relationships, techniques, and … er… just about everything else,” she says. The group meets every month at a different venue, which Yasmin announces only a few hours beforehand. “Meeting at home wouldn’t be possible with so many people; it would be too conspicuous.”

  Farshad is thirty-two, with neatly combed hair kept in place with hair gel and gentle brown eyes, and is wearing a light blue shirt. “You know, we see allusions everywhere. Look, your water is called oxub. That sounds like a shortened form of ‘submission.’ You could also make a fine strap-on dildo from the bottle, a bit on the large size, but it’d only hurt at the beginning and pretty soon you’d be in a trance.”

  Farshad asks me what I know about BDSM. I say it’s about dominance, role-playing, and pain, and I know the enthusiasm of the Iranian clergy toward it is not overwhelming. “It’s crazy, really, when you consider that Imam Husayn fought for freedom, but there’s no freedom for us,” says Amir, a man in peak condition, with round glasses and a bald head. Iran’s Shiites venerate Husayn, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, who died for his beliefs at the legendary Battle of Karbala. Every year during Muharram (the first month of the Islamic calendar), Shiites mourn his death, and some devotees practice the tradition of self-flagellation.

  “Hasn’t that also got something sadomasochistic about it?” I ask.

  “Sometimes. Believers want to repent, to free themselves from their sins via pain,” explains Farshad. In the meantime, self-flagellation is officially forbidden, but this does not in any way deter people from practicing it. Every year the ritual is repeated.

  “For me it’s not about repentance, but rather about passing on responsibility to someone else,” says Farshad, who is employed by a law firm. “The most important thing is trust. You can compare it to a bird in a cage; it is completely dependent on the owner, totally at his mercy. This external domination can be very relaxing; afterward you feel reborn.”

  Give me a dictator who can convince me that he means well, and I will follow him.

  Amir adds: “It’s all about switching off logical thought, simply to feel that even something irrational can be pleasant. Many people repress this. But the success of Fifty Shades of Grey1 shows how many secretly feel it.”

  “Can you buy the book here?” I ask.

  “Of course not. Nobody here would be allowed to read it.”

  Now and then the conversation drifts into Persian, and then I only understand a few English words like “sadist,” “domination,” or “submission.” There does not appear to be adequate Persian words for such terms. Farshad notices that I’m struggling to follow the conversation. “We’re just discussing what we are going to do with you,” he explains with the heartiest laugh imaginable.

  Two newcomers shake hands with the group. Shahin, a shy writer. “My first slave a few years ago,” Yasmin whispers to me. And Babak, a journalist for a news agency. “He’s a switch,” she explains. “Sometimes Master, sometimes Slave.” The young man apologizes for being late; he was detained by the police—not because of the meeting, just a spot check. His car was combed for drugs and alcohol: the trunk, seats, glove box, foot mats, the works.

  Directly in front of the entrance to the park are the law enforcers, with an army tent and machine guns. Now and then a the park is patrolled by a policeman, which we can observe from our terrace. But being searched doesn’t seem to have perturbed a man like Babak, not even on the way to a forbidden SM meeting. Soon after, the subject changes to Iran’s places of interest.

  “You want to visit the country? Then you must go to Kermanshah, to the mountains of Farhad and Shirin,” suggests Babak. He doesn’t speak English, so Yasmin has to translate.

  “Who are Farhad and Shirin?” I want to know, and he begins to explain.

  “In the mountains of Kurdistan there lived a simple stonemason named Farhad, who fell in love with Princess Shirin. One day she heard him play his flute in the open air, and she fell for him, although they weren’t from the same class. Khosrow II, the then king of the Persian Empire, also revered the princess. When he heard rumors of her infatuation with a commoner, he hatched a plan to separate the lovers. He ordained that Farhad had to perform an impossible task to prove himself worthy of Shirin’s hand. ‘Cut a forty-mile tunnel through the mountain between two valleys in Kurdistan, and then you can have her for your wife,’ he said. Farhad shouldered his tools and set about his task.

  “Every day from dawn to dusk he hammered away at the rock face with his pickax and shovel, month after month, year after year. Sometimes when he slept, Shirin would secretly visit him to view the progress. He slept on the naked mountainside, using his shovel as a pi
llow. Shirin’s heart warmed as she saw that every fifteen feet he had sculpted a statue of her in the rock, so great was his love. So hard did he work that after many, many years it looked as if he might finish his task. Khosrow, of course, wanted to prevent this, so he ordered a gathering of his viziers to concoct a plan. The advisers suggested sending an old lady to Farhad to tell him that Shirin had died. Then he would be sure to abandon his work.

  “So the next morning an old lady approached the doughty stonemason. She wailed and wept, and Farhad asked her the reason for her suffering. ‘I’m mourning a death—and for you,’ she answered.

  “‘Why is that, then?’ he asked, astonished.

  “‘Brave man, you have worked so solidly, but it was all in vain. The object of your affections is dead.’

  “Farshad’s heart was heavy with despair. He threw his shovel into the air and it landed on his neck, mortally wounding him. His blood flowed into the channel that he had hewn with so much effort. When Shirin heard the news she immediately left for the mountains. She saw her dead lover, grabbed the shovel, and in anguish aimed a blow to her head. To this day the two lovers lie together high up in the mountains of Kurdistan, and to this day on Mount Bisotun you can see where Farhad worked away at the rock face out of love for Shirin.”

  Farshad sighs audibly and seems moved, although he must have heard the tale many times. “There are many love stories in literature, but that is the only one that is about pure, unconditional love,” he says. Only then do I realize the similarity in names.

  As a slave he deems it difficult to find a partner in Iran. In a country where women, from a legal point of view, are second-class citizens, dominatrices are apparently particularly sought after.

  “There are far too few of us. I get so many requests on the Internet that I could have twenty slaves all at once,” says Yasmin. However, she has no need of them because she has been in a steady relationship for nine months. She regularly posts on Facebook sites that are only accessible to members, photos of bondage games in the jungle or sessions in her torture chamber, in a house in northern Iran. In the scene, she has quite a reputation.