Returning...again

I’m back in Iran.

In Tehran.

It’s weird.

Same, same, but different.

The weather is amazing, not as unbearably hot as it was when I left in July, but still so beautifully sunny with a lovely cool breeze at night. I now get out of breath when I walk up the huge hill near my house to get a taxi; I guess I’ll get used to it again. The pollution is heavy on my lungs and making my nose run but I’m again tortured by the fact I can’t blow it. I blew it happily on the Iran Air flight over, figuring that although I was on an Iranian plane surrounded by Iranians, I was technically in international airspace so it was ok.



A pretty gate

I don’t get the same thrill about being out and about and doing things on my own...that went awhile ago. So I’ll have to find new challenges, like driving! I have had a very brief run around twice since I’ve been back, but only on very quiet streets with no traffic, which sort of defeats the point as the whole challenge about driving in Tehran IS the traffic. We shall see if I ever manage it, or if it is inherently a bad idea. Anyone who has been here knows what I mean, and for anyone else, well, last March nine hundred people died in car accidents over one day across the country. Reminds me of how when I first got here I kept a mental count of how many accidents, big or small, I saw. It averaged two per day, although actually Isfahan was worse than Tehran. Realising it was a morbid and depressing hobby I gave it up.

My Farsi is coming back to me. It never left, it’s just the words don’t come out of my mouth as easily. Already I’m back in to my English/ Farsi ghati (mixed) way of talking with friends, which is better than it just being English I guess. I went with my Dad to visit an old friend of his at his house in the mountains; ironically I did the same thing the first week I got here last year. The conversation flows around where to get the best contrabands, name checking of various prominent Iranians that the other might know, what’s wrong with the young generation in Iran, and then the inevitable children, grand-children and marriages. I sit fairly mute, partly because I was tired from my first night back on the Tehran party scene the previous night, and partly because depressingly my Farsi still doesn’t allow me to fully participate in the conversation which jumps so quickly from one subject to another. Being limited linguistically means I appear much younger than I am, as if I’m too frightened to speak in an adult conversation, and when I do speak, I still tend to use fairly simple language, that again makes me seem that I am either a child, or am a little uneducated. I still have a very long way until I can fully communicate while completely being me.

I went to two parties the previous night. When the Iranian pop was blasted and I was dragged out of my seat to dance I immediately felt I had returned. Some of the songs I know and I make up my own lyrics when I can’t understand them properly; like ‘Ey ghashangtar az Pariya, bea berim to the darya’, but I learnt it’s actually ‘Ey ghashantar az Pariya, tanha to kuche nariya’. Then there is the ever popular ‘Khoshgela bayad beraghsan, khoshgela bayad beraghsan’, I don’t know the rest. I kind of like the Iranian pop, Iran or LA made. There is something comforting in the cheesy simplicity of it, plus I can’ help but move when I hear music, and this works on me as much as anything else.



A pretty tea-pot chandelier

The second party left me cold. The people count was much lower, all listening to excessively loud house music, a girl in teeny shorts dancing incessantly to the incessant, repetitive beat, and all manner of contrabands being shared out. I felt empty and disconnected. I know there are a zillion other parties just like this one around town, and I woke up the next day panicked. Panicked that maybe this time round I wouldn’t like Iran, or at least not as much. Maybe I’d had my fill, had my fun, and that now, without the thrill of the adventure I had before, I would end up finding it depressing and stifling, as so many of the natives do. I put this feeling down to a bad party with a bad atmosphere; I’d feel just as cold after such an event in London. The panic has subsided, but there is still a slight niggle........

So the search for work begins. Its a minefield. You need to know people, and I now know people, that know people. That doesn’t mean they have work though. It’s basically now a matter of cold-calling people who know people to see if someone might know someone who might have some work to offer me. I’m not specific about what I want to do, which probably doesn’t help, and the best skill I have to offer is English. If anyone reading this has any suggestion of how to approach people or where to start my search, let me know!