Day 78 The Moment

SYNOPSIS:  I left Kerman and the hospitable Akhavan Hotel.  This is about taxis and taxi drivers, and about Meymand, an Iranian “Cave Town” with the only guest house closed and finally about my Iran Moment.  Life is different in this remote desert cave town of Meymand.I guess, I am fueling the local economy by taking taxis for a third day in a row, but there was little choice.I said good-bye to Amir and Ascar, the two brothers who together with their mother are running the historic Akhavan Hotel.  The Lonely Planet once again was right on the mark to describe this as the best place in town for foreign tourists.  These brothers are in tune with tourists in many ways but it is hard to please everyone.  A small tour group from Hong Kong stayed there for two days while I was there.  I spoke with one of the travelers who described the hotel as “so retro”, complained about a wobbly sink, and that breakfast was slow in coming at 7:30 AM.  I wonder how long they have been in Iran.  Did they not noticed, that Mohammed, the ever smiling waiter had served until midnight the night before and was the only person around by 6:30 AM doing his very friendly ever best?  And retro is all relative.  And wait, until just about everything wobbles even in much more expensive hotels…After more than 30 days in this country, this was by far the best hotel I have been at.  The blankets were new, the walls were freshly painted, there was a closet with hangers, the furniture was comfortable and plentiful, lamps were everywhere with soft light bulbs – you won’t believe how tiresome the fluorescent dangling energy saving single bulbs can become…  Everything essential was provided, a restaurant was attached and useful insights for all of my tours came along with it.  And when the local internet cafes failed me, an emergency dial up internet was available at the office.  There was no USB port, so I could not post for a few days, but at least I could communicate that all was fine.   But most of all, this was the first hotel with soft pillows!  What is it with the pillows around here?  I cannot figure it out, but they are rock hard no matter where you go from one to four star hotels!With my luggage, I needed a taxi to move on.  My plan was to hire a shared taxi at the terminal to my next destination in lieu of frequent buses.  Ascar called the local taxi and predicted – rightly so – a female driver!  There is a fleet of local on-call taxis, monitored by two-way radios which employ female drivers.  That was a first and a great little bit of cultural experience.  There are soft pillows and female taxi drivers in Iran after all, even if not very frequent!At the terminal I was immediately surrounded by about 15 taxi drivers who yelled at me, yelled at each other, grabbed my luggage, and almost made me yell back.  What on earth was this about?  I soon realized that there were about 50 taxis parked in the back and I was about the only customer in sight…  I soon figured out that there was no shared taxi.  My destination was too remote for even that.  I had to hire my own.  One older taxi driver who was not yelling but who used his about 10 words of English to be helpful became my choice.  Among all the yelling drivers, I simply pointed to him and said yes.We did not speak another word for the 2.5 hour drive to Meymand, but Bakhrahim got me there safely.  I am in the boonies now.   Meymand is a town of up to 110 inhabitants.  That is during winter.  But most of them leave during the summer months and migrate with their goats and sheep following pasture.  That leaves about 30 people behind in a village that you can cross in about five minutes.  If the “roads” were not so treacherous, you could surround it on the hills in about 15 minutes.  As it is, you have to place every step carefully among rocks and rolling debris and it will take you 30 minutes.  Despite being watchful, I landed on my behind twice.  Worrisome less for me, but for my camera…We arrived in town to a pole of wooden pointers.  “Guesthouse” – that was my destination.  But the honking of the taxi did no good.  There was nobody.   We stopped near the promising “Traditional Restaurant”, but that looked like it had been closed for years…  People gathered around me and my suitcase and a young man stepped forward:  Ali, the translator.  English “Vocabulary for Travelers” in hand, he indicated that his parents were offering me a place to stay and food if I liked.  Guesthouse and restaurant would not be open indefinitely.  And that’s how I became Fatima and Yussuf’s guests.  We agreed on a price which I had to pay upfront and Ali took me on the grand tour of the village.Meymand, according to various sources is either 3000 or only 1200 years old.  Does it matter? It is definitely old.  It is only 35km away from the next town, yet life here seems to have stood still since the middle ages.  Well, not quite – there is electricity.  But aside from the single dangling light bulb, and the refrigerator, I see no signs of civilization.  No computer, no television, no radio.  Oh, but cell phones!  Yes, there is reception out here and Fatima was shouting into the phone a few times in the course of the evening.  The women around here all seem to shout.  You can hear them communicating across the valley.  The men say little to nothing.  Even when Fatima sits two feet from another person, she shouts.  She seems to be convinced that if she crouches right up to me and really shouts out loud right into my face, that I will finally understand Farsi.  I always answer her in quiet complete English sentences, which for the moment makes her realize that shouting won’t teach me any Farsi.  That is, until ten minutes later, she moves up very close again and shouts into my face once more…We exchanged the usual information on country, husband, children, and age.  We both looked at each other with the same shock in our faces when it turned out that we were the exact same age.  She looks hardly any younger than her 80 year old husband…  I think there is something about the climate and this harsh outdoor life that weathers a face at around the age of 30-40.  After that, it is hard to tell anyone’s age.  People seem to have incredibly high life expectancies, but look brown and wrinkled very early on regardless of age.The sun was setting and the lighting was perfect, so I took way too many pictures of this unique town.  All the homes are carved into the rock!  There are over 2000 rooms in the village, many of them abandoned.  There are villages like this in Turkey, perhaps other places.  In Iran, it is unique.  Rooms are either larger living rooms with a window, a fire place, and niches for stuff; or they are bedrooms just hollowed out caves with a door.  That’s what I have now: A cave with some old carpets on the floor, a broom and a light bulb.  Over dinner it turned out that Ali and Yussuf were leaving town with one of the rare rides available and that Fatima would be alone in her home.  She invited me to sleep with her in their living room.  It was hard for me to continuously reject her offer.  She could not understand why I wanted to hike up the hill into a cold cave rather than sharing her warm and cozy living room with her.  I could not explain to her that I would suffocate in a room in which the gas cooker had been used for a long while polluting the air beyond breathable.  Nobody seemed to notice or mind.  The door had been closed after sunset; the window was boarded up…  I also could not explain to her that her not very tidy way of housekeeping would make me utterly uncomfortable.  Her living room is littered with plastic bag containing who knows what.  It is dirty and messy.  After a delicious broth with eggs into which we all dipped bread to be soaked, I excused myself.Ali helped carry three dusty blankets and a hard pillow up into my cave.  I thanked him profusely for his tour and tried to get him to leave.  But he had a few thoughts, I could tell…  I had to tell him in no uncertain terms that it was time for him to leave and that meant now!  I pushed him out the door and the wooden lock into place and tried to comprehend this incredible space.  To live in a cave, what a primordial experience!   I thought about how I would turn this cave into a home for two days and decided sweeping was not a bad first step.  After a few minutes, I looked out through the slits in the door only to find Ali out there peeking!  He was quite embarrassed to have been caught and finally did leave for good.  I thought it best to use one of the blankets to hang over the door covering up all the crevices …The sheets I have been carrying around for so long came in handy here.  My suitcase is a table now.  I have an outlet for my computer.  There are things I can live without and there are others I cannot…  I went into this retreat to recharge, but also to catch up writing.  Too much sightseeing lately…The little town fell into complete silence.   The ticking of my alarm clock was the only sound left. I packed it away.  There was total silence now.  To be away from it all; this was bliss!  It was the moment I had been waiting for.  In Lebanon I had been hiking down the mountain, in Syria I had reached the Euphrates.  It had been slow in coming in Iran:   The moment that hits out of the blue.   The moment that encapsulates total content, all invasive happiness, and total amazement that I am where I am.Good night.