My flight to Tehran was via Dubai and I refused to visit the city (Dubai is one of those cities that arouses a mild irritation in me – the same way Bangkok or Gurgaon does. But then that’s for another post!). As I waited to board the flight at Dubai, I was one of the few non-Iranians and couldn’t but help notice that everyone was immaculately dressed. My traveller’s pants, it seemed, would cut no ice in that country. Time would tell…
My flight reached Tehran pretty late (everyone, including me, was stocking up on liquor in their blood streams during the hour and a half long flight). On the (rather long) cab journey into Tehran my taxi jostled for space on the choc-a-bloc highway. It was late Friday night and it seemed that all of Tehran had gone out of the city and was returning at the same time. Or was it something else? The next day, when I went for a walk around my hotel, there were no people, or cars, to be seen. Where was everyone? It was only later that I found out that because it was the Persian New Year season (21st March – 2nd April), the entire country had come to a standstill (did you read the previous post?)
Fortunately, I found one shop open and went in to buy some water and biscuits to keep my backpack emergency ready. As I picked up the stuff I wanted and handed it to the person at the counter, he gave me a look as if he expected me to know the prices - when I shrugged my shoulders, he looked quite surprised. So I could pass off as a local?
And when he mentioned the price, I shook my head (yet again), he then reluctantly brought out a calculator and keyed in the price. I was totally confused. It could not be 1,900 Rials (that being the currency) as that translated to 8 or 9 rupees (for two bottles of water and a packet of biscuits). I threw up my hands and showed him some currency Of that he neatly took out 19,000 Rials leaving me totally perplexed and feeling a bit cheated.
It was only later that I was able to figure out what had happened. The official currency is Rial but in everyday life the Toman is quoted. The Toman was the official currency till the 1930s when the Rial (1 Toman = 10 Rials) was introduced. But people still use the Toman - that explains why I was quoted 1,900 (Toman) but had to pay 19,000 (Rials). Of course, this did not make life simple. Every time I was quoted a price (in Toman), I had to multiply it by 10 to get the Rial value. That I mentally converted into dollars, before figuring out the Rupee value. If, as was usually the case, I wanted to haggle, I would reverse the process and then reconvert the rupee value I wanted into dollars to Rials to Toman. These complicated calculations got me pretty worked up and after a while I would just randomly haggle.
First stop in Tehran was the Golestan Palace. This elaborate palace was built by the Qajars. Who? A bit of Iranian history is in order?
The first major Persian rulers belonged to the Achaemenid empire (550 – 330 BC), of which the most well-known kings were Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, and Xerxes. This empire is best known for Persepolis and the Cyrus Cylinder (believed by many to be the first ‘charter’ of human rights). This empire was followed by the Seleucids, Parthians, Sassanians before the Arabs/Turks brought Islam to Persia in the 7th Century AD. The Mongols came in the 13th Century and the Timurids ruled from the 14th to the 16th centuries, when the Safavids came to power.
Nader Shah (rather well known in India!) ruled Persia from 1736 to 1747 and the Qajars held power from 1795 to 1925 when the Pahlavi dynasty was set up (Reza Shah from 1925-41 and his son Mohammed Reza Shah from 1941-79). The infamous CIA coup and Mohammad Mossadegh need no introduction. Dynastic rule came to an end in 1979 when, with the Revolution, came the Islamic Republic.
Ok, back to Golestan Palace. While exploring the audience halls and art galleries of the Palace, I couldn’t help notice that each and every woman there looked beautiful. That was to be the over-riding theme of my two weeks in Iran – Persian women are stunning. By law, they’re required to wear head scarves (i.e. cover their hair) but women being women, they’ve taken to this constraint with panache, and have converted the headscarf into a fashion accessory. Hair peeks through the head scarves of some of the more bold ones, some of them tie up their hair in a bun under the scarf which gives their heads a very elongated and, in my opinion, exotic look. And since their face is the only part of their body which is visible, they take great care in making it look beautiful. I have been to quite a few countries and I can safely say that the Persian women definitely make it to the top of my ‘most beautiful women’ list!
Ok, I can go on and on, but I think I should end this post here. More later :)
