'tis the season for nose jobs and boot bans

Many people ask me what I like about Iran. It’s a difficult question I realized. Often I give the stock answers: It’s new for me, there are many places to see-interesting places. People here talk to each other.

Yesterday in the taxi, the driver asked me the question again. I said, well many things I really love, and many things not so much. It’s sort of like a roller coaster. So driver said

You know what it is about Iranian people? Something that no one in the rest of the world has? Ehsas!

Ehsas literally means feeling. And though I don’t necessarily agree with the inadequately researched statement about Iranians having the most feeling, I do agree that Iranians have a curiously wide capacity for feeling. And in the same way that you can generalize about Russians missing some certain sensations, thus exhibiting a high threshold for pain, cold weather and heavy consumption, you can generalize that Iranians have an excessive threshold for feelings, in all directions. Whether it’s shows itself in the penchant for heavy complaining, the sudden hot temper, or the utterly melancholic hyperbole...

I’m thinking a lot about recording all my taxi conversations….some really interesting ones so far. Sometimes it feels like as soon as someone is given the green light, they just let it out, those volatile feelings I mentioned. One day I was in the front seat…the driver mumbled something about oil and corruption, I wasn’t listening at that point…but whatever he said launched the old lady in the back seat. It turns out she was sitting on a rocket. Her chador was black but not clutched together so anxiously, as you sometimes see. Like today I saw a woman with the chador tucked in so firmly with her teeth you’d think she was storing away nuts for the winter, or something. This lady’s chador hung loosely about her relaxed limbs. Anyway, so the rocket launched and she went off. “The bastard” this and that…and “why don’t they just hit us already!!? We are tired!” and etc.

I often wonder to myself why I like it here. Or do I really like it? Like the most recent news everyone ironically chuckles about: The boot ban. Boots worn over the pants have been deemed by one police chief as revealing, using the same root word that describes a high rise building ("borj"). This is living in an “Islamic Republic” whose name in itself to some feels like a contradiction. For whom boots and the “winter dress-code crack down” are issues of interest, as they also are for the westerners reporting. Even stranger for me is the guess-work that people are playing, constantly. Because you hear the news, but are never sure if it’s going to be enforced, and even if it is getting enforced, will they be on your street corner? Probably not, but maybe.

Waiting for kabob...in shiny boots

I’ve also noticed lots more fresh nose jobs recently. Maybe business booms in winter, since people can stay indoors more heal in private. Although It's known that some kids like to parade their nose jobs, bandage and all its glory. Something like the boots-in-pants trend: nose jobs are in fashion, simple as that. Let’s get it!!

I wonder if other women here also have a stiff neck like me, continuously subconsciously stressed that hejab will fall off my head? I sometimes also wonder if my head is steeper than others’, who manage to keep it propped on the back of their coiffed heads, just so.

Words like "boots" and "hairy" are filtered on internet Google search.

These are some examples of the strange feelings I sometimes have. So why do I like it? Perhaps because from day 1 going to the corner store was an adventure. Taking a short taxi ride or sitting in a class for 2 hours, are all interesting encounters for me. Of course I have moments of clarity when I get a bit depressed…but they don't last, because usually something very nice happens soon after.

There are tons of hidden secrets, little pearls waiting to be discovered, lurking around every corner. One day I was sitting alone at home, feeling like I’m on a very foreign planet, or sitting inside an island surrounded by sharks, but it’s just a feeling. And all of a sudden I hear a beautiful violin wheezing melancholic in the near distance. I thought it was from a car or someone’s house, but it echoed such a rustic and classical tale that it couldn’t possibly be....what it is I thought, drawn towards it. And I realized they were some street musicians…slowly trailing through the streets of my area, to who knows where. I was waiting for people to hit the streets dancing, because this melody had something in it, that dirty heart-wrenching feeling...and soon they disappeared.

On the way back from Persepolis, we stopped for lunch at a friend’s farm…It was one of those special places, and perhaps one of my best days so far in Iran. (I've posted photos from the farm in Shiraz entry.) Nature was absolutely perfect, wild, and yet designed with care. Space contained all the elements: fire, earth, water, and fresh air. And good people.

Sometimes the oasis comes in the form of a person, who tells you a funny story or a beautiful, funny poem relevant to that moment, or shows you a rose and reminds you of its beauty.

A Man in Esfehan recites us a poem...

Or a funny face someone makes, that looks so familiar...

There is something so other-worldly and romantic about these fleeting, sometimes invisible encounters…and I guess it’s this feeling that gets repeated here for me so often, which makes me like it here. But that sounds too cheesy!

It’s like you have to walk though a kilometer of shit to reach an oasis. When you reach the oasis it is so utterly pretty, and wonderful, but your feet still reek of shit. Something like that. I’ll have to keep thinking about it.

My kitchen, with "Islamic" layers hanging near the door