Hamoon said the sanctions really made life hard for Iranians, i was struggling to understand how sanctions work though because seemed like a lot of stuff was available in Tehran, like branded clothes (in the shopping malls), food and all the typical stuff that can be found in the bazaar, essential items, toys, even the latest handphones... everything seemed normal to me. Hamoon said its all a very big and organized smuggling ring, everything i see in Iran is smuggled, he said, still, it was hard to comprehend such a scale, at least for me, even if its all smuggled, its more like an open smuggle, and if its open smuggle, it might as well be normal import/export business. but he did say most stuff are more expensive than what you can find overseas by some margin, most people i met said Apple products are very expensive in Iran (when they saw i used iphone and ipad), but when we compared the price of Apple products in Malaysia and Iran, it turned out to be almost the same after conversion in US dollars (even using the old currency rates before the market crisis happening right now). so, hmm. Foreign credit cards are obviously cannot be used in Iran, but they have found ways around it for foreigners, at least at shops that sell expensive stuff like carpets ;p When asked about politics, Hamoon said most people did not like Ahmadinejad and he liked the current president Hassan Rouhani better. and of course everybody says the govt. is corrupted. like so so corrupted. the supreme leader being the Ayatollah, he likened it to our Muftis in Malaysia.
In Tehran, there is this big and very long main street that goes all the way from north to south of Tehran city called Vali Asr, the north side lives the affluent neighborhood and people, which was where Amir's house was located at, at Velenjak street. We walked around the bazaar at Tajrish Sq, also at the north side of Vali Asr, and that night we had dinner and coffee all around the same area. obviously Hamoon and Amir are the more fortunate and well-to-do Iranians. As you move towards the south side of Vali Asr street, you can find and see drug addicts and prostitutes and the poorer people of Iran, so Hamoon said. In fact, we did pass through the southern side of Tehran on our way to Qom and Kashan the next day (on the bus), and saw the more dilapidated buildings, square boring brown buildings. At the north side, the buildings were very European to my surprise. I didnt feel like I was in a Middle Eastern city (i was comparing to Cairo and Amman and Makkah and Muscat and Old Dubai). I am careful not to say Arab cities, because Iranians are Persians and they dont like the Arabs and they are also not Arabs, they'll get mad if we call them Arabs. Hamoon said before the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran was very westernized and it was during this time the leaders at the time built the buildings following the european architecture especially the french. Its amazing really to see it with my eyes. the place where we had coffee was at one of the museums with european architecture, it was really very fancy. even the place we had dinner at. about 100-200 years ago, the main language in Iran was actually french, and they still used some french in their daily conversations, like merci and billet, im sure there are more. it was funny that i was saying merci alot while i was in iran! hahahaha.
Late that night, i got a confirmation from the CS host in Kashan who initially declined, saying the she could host us at the last minute. we were going to Kashan the next day, lucky! or else i was already prepared to find accom on arrival to the city.
Apparently Tehran is kinda polluted which i mistook for haze, that day we went to Tochal was particularly bad as you can see from the picture below. But more than a week later when i was back in Tehran before my flight home, it was so clear, and it was really beautiful because you can see the snow capped mountains surrounding all of Tehran in the north side, even from a distance of 40km from the mountains. lovely!!
Tehran from telecabin 1st station (roughly 900m asl)
Qom & Kashan
Day 3
After another hearty Iranian breakfast and armed with food to eat by Farida, we took the subway to the bus station to get ourselves to Qom. The subway (also public buses) are separated for men and women. I saw many women selling products on the subway, moving around in the subway from car to car carrying the stuff they are selling from panty hose to skin scare to knives, making ends meet. some friendly ladies came to talk to me as usual. At the bus station, ticket sellers were standing outside their buses shouting the destinations, we approached the one going to Qom, paid our 200,000 rials (aka 20,000 toman, about 6 usd) per billet, and the bus made its way when it was almost full. Even while the bus was moving slowly, the minders were still standing at the steps and shouting the destinations, and they picked up a few more passengers along the way right before it entered the highway. and our bus driver was a lady too. i gave some fruits to the minders and bus driver, and he in return gave us hot tea. everywhere its tea, tea is everywhere. love tea. haha. the bus was very comfortable and spacious.
A billboard with the words 'ya Ali' (was on the bus Tehran-Qom)
Qom was a pitstop, we were dropped at a small bus station next to the highway, took a taxi to Jamkaran Mosque (not knowing the significance of the mosque yet). wore our customary chador (it was always provided at the entrance of most mosques), and went it. most mosques in Iran have a open air square in the middle, and the praying area with the mimbar will be at one of the sides where the kiblat is facing outwards. the interior of the mosques are very beautiful, the designs intricate and very good craftsmanship. very cozy, while my cousin prayed zuhur/asar jama', (i was on 'holiday' lol), i took my time just watching the syiah women pray using their stones. the syiah use a stone that they put at the position where they sujud, so their forehead will touch the stone instead of the sajdah or the ground. everything other prayer movements seems to be similar to us. the quran they used are also the same. at the entrance to prayer area, most mosques would provide plastics to put your shoes in and bring it with you.
Jamkaran Mosque in Qom. You can see the pictures of Ayatollah Khomenei and Ayatollah Khamenei on the left and right of the entrance to the praying area. This duet pictures of the Ayatollahs can be seen everywhere in Iran.
After that, we took a bus to another place called the Fatima Mausoleum, or the Holy Shrine of Fatima. At first i thought it was the Holy Shrine for Saiyidina Ali RA's wife, or Rasulullah's daughter, since i don't know any other Fatima, although I was a bit skeptical of my own assumptions. We walked from the bus stop to the shrine, carrying our backpacks, and lo and behold, a friendly Iranian came to chat with us. Again, he correctly guessed we are from Malaysia, although he did ask my the style of my hijab was different from what my cousin was wearing (she was wearing something like a fancy snowcap-like head/hair cover). I wore my usual hijab like u've seen numerous times before. This man said he's been to Malaysia before. Seeing this man was eager to talk to us and show us around, i took the opportunity to ask him all the questions i had about this shrine, a free tour guide! ;p. His name is Iman, first he helped us locate the place to store our bags, and then we went ahead to enter the shrine and told him to meet us inside, but we were turned back because we didnt have chador. We started going to the chador place, and then Iman suddenly appeared again, i guess he saw us not going in, and he walked with us to get the chador, then we queued to enter the shrine, which was really huge and had like over 20 different entrances i think. Btw most entrances into shrines and mosques for the women are covered with curtains. At the entrance behind the curtains, there were women inspectors to check our bags and stuff. When we wanted to enter the shrine, we were stopped. It was obvious that we were tourists (again, despite the hijab and being muslim, we couldnt really pass off as locals ahhaa). usually there were no problems entering mosques. But this was a Shrine of someone important to the syiah community, so they were wondering why we wanted to go inside. And tourists usually come in arranged groups and tours, yet there were only two of us. so after they checked with their head office which took some time, we were finally let go to enter the shrine. Iman was already waiting inside at the square.
What we found out from Iman, our adhoc tour guide:
About the prayer stones, it is made of clay from a place called Mashad. This city is where their 8th Imam Reza comes from, hence they believe the clay is holy i think. The syiah believe in 12 Imams, the first being Imam Ali, our 4th Khalifah, and all the rest of their Imams are descendants of Saiyidina Ali RA (btw these stones sell for like 1 usd in the bazaars). The Shrine that we were visiting is the sister of Imam Reza, who died in Qom while on the way to Mashad to visit his brother. Right, that makes more sense to me! hehe... here was the first time i saw the mirror mosaic architecture, and the whole interior was decorated with mirrors, with the mausoleum right in the middle, there were so many people inside and outside the shrine, and people were surrounding the tomb, touching it and stuff. its not the first time ive seen something like this though, the touching and all, as if by touching a holy shrine, they'd get the barakah or whatever, i dont really understand. i once saw the same thing in Ajmer Sharif Dargah in India, when i was there back in 2011, there was located a sufi shrine, and the indians brought offerings and such to the shrine, touching and praying in the area, reading the quran, and they were muslims, its as if the practices of the Hindus (bringing offerings) and Islam were assimilated, and again i saw the same thing in Makkah, when the indians/pakistanis were touching the Kaabah.. even Nabi Ibrahim's makam.. and at the top of Jabal Rahmah (where supposedly is the location where Nabi Adam met Eve), these people revere the tombs and the monuments alike.. the police had to place people at these people to prevent them from doing that, but its too much to handle really. so anyway, photography was not allowed inside the shrine,.. it was amazing, the architecture that is. by the time we left the shrine it was already 4.30pm, and that after turning down Iman's offer to drink tea and talk some more..we didnt want to arrive in Kashan too late. Iman wanted to visit Malaysia again, he took my phone number down. one of the things he asked was, "Iran is a syiah country, you are sunni, why do u want to visit Iran?" but at the end of the day, they'd say, its good no problem we are all muslims, we should welcome each other.
Another thing i found out from Iman was that, the Jamkaran Mosque that we visited earlier was actually dedicated to Imam Mahdi, which they believe is their 12th Imam, and its the same Imam Mahdi as Sunnis believe.
Mirror mosaic at the entrance of Fatima Holy Shrine, the whole interior was decorated like this.
We got on our bus to Kashan around 5pm, the other passengers probably paid extra to get a packet of biscuits and drinks, coz we didnt get them, but one guy gave his to us. When we reached Kashan, he invited us to share a taxi with him to the bazaar area in Kashan because that was where he was headed as well (he didnt speak English so it was all sign language lol), apparently he had a textile shop and sold men's clothing at the bazaar, and his two sons were waiting for him at this shop. we walked around the bazaar, and we were also desperate to go to the toilet, so we found a mosque with the men's toilet at the front, we couldnt find the women's toilet, then we saw an iranian women who simply went into the men's toilet, and we just followed suit. men who came into the toilet later were shocked to find us in there, but we paid little mind hahahahaha. again, being non local and not being able to speak Farsi was our ticket to do whatever we did (feigning clueless-ness as tourists/foreigners who doesnt understand how things work) hehehehehehehe.
we were hungry so we looked for some falafel and waited at the shop for our CS host to pick us up. Our host, her name was Fatima, came to pick us up with her friend. She's a part time english teacher who teaches english at the university for engineering students, her classed finished earlier than expected, and we went straight to her house. As we were arriving at her house, she dropped the bomb: "btw, couchsurfing is illegal in Iran". hahahahahahahhaha. really? okayy. she told us to be quiet, and before we left the car, we made sure there were no nosy neighbors around looking, as far as we could see, and quietly entered her house. her friend left, and then i found out she was married, and her husband was on the way home. Apparently her husband is a tour guide, and she helps her husband with the tour guide work sometimes.
i asked more about CS being illegal in Iran. The govt is very well aware of CS, they declare it illegal in the country, but they don't really catch people doing it as long as the surfers and the host dont stir trouble while couchsurfing. trouble such as making noise or whatever else, or if neighbors don't complain. The govt knows and monitors the websites and all. the reason they dont take any action despite declaring it illegal is because they also know that CS is very famous in Iran and its one of the unofficial way to encourage tourists to come to Iran and say good things about Iran. as ive already mentioned, Iranians are very friendly, and so many people have only good things to say about the hospitality of iranians, its like the word of mouth kind of promoting tourism in Iran. CS hosts in Iran is very limited, and Fatima said that the hosts gets requests from surfers like all the time, almost everyday, especially those in Shiraz and Esfahan, the more touristic cities. They have their own lives too and can't accept every single request that comes in. Also, its illegal for women to stay at a man's house and vice versa, especially if they are single, so even hosts have to be careful in choosing the surfers they agree to host. So she said, that's probably the reason why 3 hosts in Shiraz have already turned us down.
about 30 minutes later, her husband came back, we ate some bread and drank tea, and he offered us saffron ice cream, which sounded exotic but didnt taste really good. although we forced ourselves to finish it since it was impolite to not finish it, lol. Fatima and her husband, Mostafa operate the Free Iran Tour in Kashan, following the same modus operandi as the free tours available in most big european cities, which i totally utilize whenever i am touring europe. basically, these free tours make money from tips, and its up to you how much you want to give. they have their free iran tour page on tripadvisor, and they rank number one in the things to do in Iran, as voted by users. amazing right? from the tourists Fatima and Mostafa get from their free tours, they offer further paid arranged tours, in Kashan and all around Iran. they've been doing this for 2 years now. Mostafa was also previously and english teacher. He said his pay from a month of being and english teacher is the same as how much he could make in a week as a tour guide, and that's about 200 usd. the risk though, when he get requests to arrange for tours in Iran from foreigners, is that the foreigners couldnt pay or use their credit card, and they cant get paid, like the usual deposit, before the tourists actually arrive and meet them in Iran, so Mostafa has to front their own money first making the necessary bookings. and sometimes these tourists may cancel at the last minute due to inability to get visas, for instance. and that is money gone for them, unless they make other arrangements to get back their money, which seems very hard (like sometimes someone they know is going overseas and the foreigner would bank in their money in a bank and that someone will withraw it from that bank that is not in Iran and then he will bring back the money into Iran, something like that.
so anyway, we used Mostafa's contacts (he offered) and he arranged for us a hotel in Shiraz, which cost only like 16 usd a night for a double room (our room we booked in Yazd cost 40 usd a night). we couldnt have gotten this deal from any online sources, or if we booked ourselves. it was a rate for locals. we also arranged for a driver to drive us to Esfahan the next day, with a pitstop in Abyaneh. (we couldve taken a bus straight to Esfahan but we wanted to detour to Abyaneh, which cannot be done if we took the bus). once all of that was arranged, i was ready to sleep. we slept in the living room on one side, while Mostafa and Fatima also slept in the living room at the other end, it was a huge area. my cousin did her prayers, and after that we got to talking with Mostafa the differences between sunni and syiah, like the prayers and ablution. you might know this already, but i'll write it down anyway.
The basic prayers, and the amount of rakaah is the same as us. But the difference is that syiah only pray three times a day. The subuh, 2 rakaah. And then they combine Zuhur and Asr, as in praying at the same time, one after the other. both prayers 4 rakaah, so a total of 8 rakaah with 2 salams. And then at maghrib time, they combine Maghrib and Isyak, also the same number of rakaah, 3 and 4 each, with 2 salams. As for ablution, its also the same with us except the feet, whereby they only slightly touch a part of their feet with water, whereas we would wash our whole feet thoroughly.
Mostafa and Fatima have never been to Malaysia. they said its not easy for them to leave the country because Mostafa have not yet completed his 18 months compulsory military service thats imposed on all Iranian men citizen above 18 years old. If they wanted to leave the country for a trip, they must get special permission from the government, or if it was an official trip like presenting at a conference or something like that. So Mostafa is preparing to do his military service soon, and because he is married, he is allowed to do it in Kashan where he lives. I told them that I'd be happy to bring them around in KL whenever they come to Malaysia one day.
TBC
