Tehran - The Last Supper of Dramas

Tehran - a full circle

We arrived back in Tehran via a very cheap plane ticket from Shiraz. Our taxi driver was a feisty woman in a pink headscarf, who chugged us along the traffic chaos, negotiating bends and sur-charge paying points back to the dingy IK square area where we managed to get another cheap room for the evening before the 2am departure back to Istanbul.



While we spent three days here only a week and a half ago, it felt almost like a lifetime away. The contrast of the big bustling city seemed a little overwhelming, but offering the comforts like readily available every day commodities, a touch of glam, diversity of people, and most of all, a little bit of anonynimity.

We headed into town to check out a few art exhibitions that we saw being advertised. Walking up Ferdosi Street, there were several protests outside the Egyptian and German Embassies regarding the Gaza bombings. They were small gatherings, but by now we knew to keep our heads extremely low around these situations.

Punch Out At High Noon

We stopped by the basement-floor teahouse we visited last time. The Maitre de there gave us free tea on Christmas eve, so we thought we should pay them back by splurging on our last meal there - and admittedly, their menu did looked like it came out of a royal palace kitchen. This fantasy was short-lived, however.

Just before the food arrived there was a huge glass-smashing noise, followed by an episode of violent screaming shouting match between a man and a woman. This all happened on the other side of the restaurant to us, so while we could hear everything, we couldn't see much. The whole restaurant stopped to observe this 'irregularity', all alerted by the whole kerfuffle. Then the physical fight eventually spilt into our side of the room, with a young man being pulled back from fighting by three other men. One of the waiters who tried to intervene and was shoved back to our side of the restaurant, with a few spots of blood apparent on the back of his white uniform. Just as it looked like it was finishing our plates of steaming food arrives, with the maitre de smiling at us ushering us to eat. We were not in the mood for eating, if not already feeling nauseous.

We sat there with our shoes on and bags over our shoulders pretty much ready to leave. As we expected, the screaming started again, so we got up to leave. Shanti tried to shove money into the maitre de's hands but he wouldn't take it, furiously waving his palms in the air. He got two of his boys to shelter us as we walked past the angry scene. Just inside the front entrance, we took a quick look back - a woman was screaming her head off while a man was lying in a pool of blood. It sounded like she was the one that broke a plate onto his head... there were more blood splatters all over the marble staircase as we walked out the door, fleeing this intense and unexpected scene.

By the Breadth of the Hair on our Chinny Chin Chin

After having a puff of consolation smoke and strolling an Ashura themed poster exhibition, we felt a lot more relaxed for food. As it was our last evening in Iran, and with the pressure of having to witness the trauma of this afternoon, I had managed to spend all but about 150,000 of my 3.7million rials. The hotel offered to call a taxi for us at 2am to go to the IK International Airport, which was about 50 minutes out of town, which would cost us around 200,000 rials. I had put away my half of the money, and blew the rest on bits of food and drinks. Unfortunately, Shanti was badly taken advantage of by a dodgy hostess at the restaurant we dined at that evening, and through muddily written Arabic numbers and a blatantly over calculated bill, she was ripped off on her last meal by about 40,000 rials, which meant that together we only had 160,000 left for the taxi ride.

Through an internet forum, I had found out that the going rate of the taxi ride was between 140,000 – 180,000 rials if one was flagged down on the street, so we decided to cancel the hotel-ordered taxi and brave it in the dark at 2am and try our luck. Armed with flashcards with ‘14,000’ ‘15,000’ and ‘16,000’ (Tomans - which is the other unit of money that's ''10% larger'' than Rials) written in both Arabic and Roman numerals on it, we set off into the square.

It was pitch black and freezing. The square that was once bustling with cars and crowds is now completely abandoned with not a person or a car in sight. Shit. We really thought there would be at least a taxi rank. Just as we were about to cry and heading back to the hotel almost in tears, a big empty bus pulls up next to us. The driver tried to converse with us with no avail so I showed him the flashcard I prepared with 'International Airport' written on it in Farsi. "AHHHH HAAAA!" He said, and gestured us to hop on. He took us across town to what must be the ONLY taxi rank in the whole of Tehran. At the taxi rank three taxi drivers sat in one car, and were apparently watching some sort of dodgy DVD. They quickly switched it off and two of them went back into their own cars. The bus driver spoke to one of them who gestured us to get in. We gave him the flashcard that said "14,000", and surprisingly he accepted immediately.

In the middle of the night Tehran is deadly silent. No congestion to taunt our anxious desire to just get to the airport, no traffic lights stop us just as we thought we'd got to the line, no need to check that we are heading the right way - the highway was empty, clear, signposted and we flew.

And that is how we managed to get to the airport, after being ripped off our dinner, but still had 2,000 rials spare to spend on tea in the waiting lounge.

As the call to prayer ripped through the dawning air, our adventures in Iran ended after only a few drops of tears.