Esfahan III - A Wild Teenage Joyride

So we were walking around near Khaju Bridge, completely mesmerized by the romantic glows and shadows of this unusual and ecstatically beautiful scene, when out of the blue there was a bit of a kafuffle on the boardwalk above us about 10 meters away. A few cops were yelling at someone in a parked car. Down near us, three girls in their late teens looked at the scene with dread in their eyes, and retreated towards the bridge. We tried to ask them what the scene was all about, but the language barrier proved to be too much. They gestured to us that it was OK and there were nothing to worry about.

The girls became quite curious about us, and we started an extended conversation mostly based on signing and basic Farsi vs basic English. We established things like age, country of origin, and occupation (“Typist” was quite adequate for me for the time being, and “Beautician” and “Students” were established as theirs) and why our skin were the colours that they were. “Hot in Thailand yes? Lot of Sun? Oh Iran is so cold and I hate my headscarf!”. One of them pretended to tear her headscarf off in a bit of theatrical frustration showing perfect white teeth.

They were quite excitable young women, shrieking at every answer they were able to get out of us. They were very ‘loudly dressed’ in Iran terms, the ‘head-girl’, Marideh, 18, the Beautician, was in leopard printed headscarf. Arizeh, the youngest one at 17, was in multicoloured checkered scarf, and Razia, Arizeh’s big sister at 22, who was getting married next Monday ‘to a very nice man’ (that took about 5 minutes to establish) was in a bright yellow scarf so small in width that only covered half of her head.

“Come Drive With My Caaaaaar!” Marideh announced. “Come Driyyyyyyyve!!” She gestured with an imaginary gear stick. “Money from Beauty Bar!!”. They were probably from upper-middleclass families, and she lived very generously. So it wasn’t hard to convince us that they could show us a fantastic time.

So off we went squeezing into her little silver two-door car (a KIA I believe). The eye contact Shanti and I exchanged just as we hopped in was rather quite priceless. It was doubt, excitement, and anticipation all rolled into one. We were verging on risking our lives just for a very random thrill of riding in a Teenage Iranian Girl’s car.

We took three or four loops around town, Marideh speeding, hooting, and yelling out stuff out the window, crunching on the gears and the breaks almost sending us flying a few times. Typical Iranian driving etiquette I suppose?



“Iran Goooood! Thailand Gooooooood!” (yes I know she was meant to say Taiwan)
“We loooooooooooovveee boooyyyyyzzzz!!!”
“Eeeeeeeee yaaaaaah!” “Hoooot hooooot hooooooot!”
“Iran Very Very Good” “Veerrrry very very very verrrryyyy gooooooood!”
We couldn’t stop laughing and occasionally joining int - it was such a bizarre situation full of unpredictable outbursts.

She then parked the car behind a group of boys around a very flash sports car on the side of the road. All of them wearing tight t-shirts and smart cut jeans, their hair smeared in grease. They checked the girls out flirtatiously and the girls hooted at them, giggling. Then without further interactions (don’t they swap numbers here, for example?), we drove off again. What the point of that exercise was I had no idea.

We stopped again next to a line of fast food joints, and we explained that we had eaten. But the girls insisted on getting us something, so two of them got off leaving one to ‘baby sit’ us, and came back producing bags of potato chips and some pastry. “Goooooood Goooooood!” Marideh licking her fingers gesturing us to eat (and I checking her pupils to see if they were somewhat diluted…) We munched on, expecting another announcement of some sort.

“And now, 9 o’clock P-M, must go home, my mother worry.”
And with that, they dumped us back at the bridge where they picked us up and drove off again. The sound of the accelerator bumbling into the traffic. Somewhat speechless, but mostly amused and exhilarated, we walked home to the hostel.