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| Let's hope these girls are allowed to cry and become judges |
It was not a good day to have a bout of pre-menstrual tears.
This is a lesson in how little decisions and seemingly small gestures turn into big events.
I set off from the Parasto Hotel in Tehran in search of an imaginary
‘Foreign Aliens Office’ (dreamt up by the Lonely Planet) with a heavy
heart. My friend from London, Katherine, had left Iran and our trip was
over. I wouldn’t be going back to London anytime soon. I felt sad and
when I hit the streets in the rain I knew the tears were mounting in the
dam behind my eyelids.
With my map in hand I easily found the street that the shamefully
outdated, incorrect and dangerously misleading Lonely Planet guide to
Iran directed me to. I knew as soon as I turned on to it that there was
no visa office on this industrial thoroughfare. But I blindly followed
its instructions anyway and paid an incorrect fee of 550,000IR to Bank
Melli.
I walked up and down the street four times in my attractive purple
raincoat, with people helping me cross the road in the treacherous
traffic and asking the occasional passer-by if they knew where the
so-called Foreign Aliens Office was. Nobody did because it doesn’t exist
but I didn’t know that then. After about an hour I decided to give up,
go back to the hotel, and follow the advice of the locals not to try to
extend my visa in Tehran.
Just before jumping in a taxi, I gave it one last shot and asked a
male shopkeeper if he spoke English. He didn’t, but he asked a woman
passing if she did. She stopped and asked me if she could help. I told
her I was looking for the Foreign Aliens Office, she didn’t understand,
so I showed her my notepad with the address, which also had other notes
on which metro to catch and which branch of the bank to pay the visa fee
to. Unfortunately she misread my scribbled notes and understood that I
needed to go to the bank at the metro stop I had written down. But I
didn’t know that then. She said she knew where it was. She meant the
metro stop. I thought she meant the Foreign Aliens Office.
A nurse made me cry
But this lady was so nice and even after I suspected she had
misunderstood, I couldn’t leave her or convince her to leave me. I
discovered that she was from Syria, but had moved to Iran with her
family because they were Shi’ites. I discovered she was a nurse, like my
mum. I discovered her mother was very sick and her father died four
months ago. I discovered she was a beautiful, beautiful person. And I
cried. And once I started I couldn’t stop. Once I started, for more and
more reasons, I had to keep crying.
I cried because women on the bus were nice to me, offered for me to
stay at their homes, told me they loved me and then gave me tissues to
wipe up the tears they induced. I cried because a poor nurse refused to
let me pay my own bus fare. I cried because a busy bank manager took
time out of his day to accompany me to a visa office because I was a
guest in his country and I had the wrong address in my notepad. I cried
because he was genuinely concerned at the bad impression the west has of
Iran and Iranians. I cried because it was one of those days when I just
needed to let the tears go. I cried for London and for friends I was
leaving behind and I cried because the generosity of the human spirit
was on display in lurid detail in a country that people told me was
dangerous.
When we got to Bank Melli near the metro stop I had written down, I
felt so bad about taking this woman so far out of her way, especially
knowing we were clearly on the wrong track, that I thought it more
polite to just carry on until somebody gave us the right address. This
looked like Bank Melli’s head office. Surely they would know where the
visa office was. I thought somebody would tell us the address and I
could just leave and go back to the hotel, well and truly over the visa
situation, as I was. But no, somebody called the manager, who was so
distressed at my tears, he went off to find the correct address of the
visa office and then personally accompanied me and the nurse in a taxi,
for which he paid.
While we were waiting for him, I was given water, chocolates, a
chair, a heater and tissues to dry myself with - both my tears and my
coat of the rain.
Unfortunately, I could not communicate to anybody that I wasn’t
crying because I was scared or lost. Apparently Iranians don’t cry when
people are nice to them. Unfortunately, the tourist police don’t like it
when two locals bring in a foreign woman who’s been crying, is wet,
alone and has an incorrect address in her notepad.
Nobody listens to a cry baby
They were very nice to me, but demanded to know where I was staying
and how I got the visa to Iran. I explained that I had been on a tour,
but it had ended. They rang Reza – my divine, composed and urbane tour
director – but they called me Catherine, my middle name. They had not
asked me my name, just read it from my passport incorrectly. I tried to
interfere.
‘My name is Gabrielle,’ I insisted, first talking directly to the
police officer, then to the bank manager and finally to the nurse.
Nobody listened. I knew Reza would be confused because Katherine, who
was also on the tour, had left the night before. I said it over and
over, and even though I was no longer crying, nobody was listening to a
word I said.
I don’t speak Farsi, but I didn’t need to in order to understand that
the policeman was angry and Reza was copping it. Eventually he put me
on the phone to Reza and I was able to explain that it was Gabrielle and
that I was trying to extend my visa in Tehran, against his better
judgement. His calm and confident manner almost made me cry again, but
not quite. By this time I suspected I might be in trouble, and I don’t
cry when I’m scared.
In his own inimitable way, Reza told me not to worry, assured me
everything was fine, that he would send somebody over from the hotel who
would ‘act as my host’ in Tehran. And then they would give me my visa.
All seemed fine. The bank manager and nurse left and as I was waving
goodbye Mustafa arrived. Mustafa worked for Reza and we had met in Yazd.
I was so pleased to see him that I even forgave him for the stories
he’d told me about tormenting donkeys and throwing a kitten off a roof
when he was a kid (although I still might not trust him with my pets).
He asked me why I was crying when nothing was wrong. I told him I was
crying because Iranian people are so nice. He looked at me strangely
but carried on to the office of the head honcho tourist police dude.
Hand over your licence, buddy!
Mustafa has a face that could melt an ice queen and you know before
you talk to him that he has been bewitching women since birth. But in a
day of unforunates, unfortunately, his cheeky charm did not impress the
tourist police. Pretty soon after Mustafa entered the office, he’d had
both his tour license and driver’s license confiscated. Angry policeman
kicked us both out of his office with no advice on what to do next.
Mustafa was scolded for leaving me alone and giving me the wrong
address and for letting me walk the streets of Tehran alone in the rain.
When he explained that I got the address from the Lonely Planet, that
the tour had ended and that, as an Australian, I was free to roam the
country alone, the policeman lost it. Apparently, he did not like to be
told he was wrong.
In the course of the six hours he kept us sitting in the visa office,
long after it was closed and everybody else had gone home, it emerged
that he was cross because I had been found alone and surrounded by
Afghan men under a wooden bridge. Which was why I was crying. And it’s
there I was saved by the nurse.
It was no use trying to explain that this story was mad and
completely and utterly untrue. I was crying; there had to be a reason,
and to this very angry man, that seemed like a reasonable explanation.
Neither Mustafa nor I could fathom from where this story had come,
but we decided it was counter-productive to keep insisting I was crying
because people were nice to me and my friend had left for London the
night before.
It’s for her own protection
‘What if something should happen to her?’ angry policeman asked
Mustafa. ‘It would reflect badly on Iran. The western media would blow
it all out of proportion.’
'She has been to much more dangerous cities than Tehran', Mustafa
said. But every time Mustafa spoke, no matter how calmly, this man saw
red. His anger was palpable and we could tell, by this stage, he felt he
had something to prove.
Although Mustafa had befriended other officers there and had calls
put through from his tourist police friends in Shiraz, our dude was the
ranking officer on duty and he had a grudge.
Eventually, he decided I couldn’t stay if I wasn’t on a tour: an
arbitrary and unlawful decision, but one that I was, frankly, ready to
accept by then. I had terrible guilt about getting Mustafa’s livelihood
confiscated and hijacking his whole day.
You may now go home to your mother
The police officer said he would give me my passport back, along with
Mustafa’s various licenses, if I got a flight back to Australia. It was
for my own protection, he insisted. I said I wasn’t going to Australia,
I would go to Turkey or Georgia. He said, ‘Why can’t you just go back
to your home country?’
‘Because I don’t want to and it’s none of your business actually,’ I
didn’t say. I just stared at him in disbelief. He shook his head and
walked off. He didn’t like it.
We waited.
Eventually, after our hours in purgatory, head honcho angry dude said
that if another tour guide could come and vouch for Mustafa, and they
bought me a flight for the next day, they would let us all go. Oh, and
by the way, Bank Melli had paid my visa fee to the wrong account and the
visa office couldn’t accept it, so I had to go back to the same branch
(by now far away) and get my money back and pay it again to a different
account. But the bank closes for a couple of days in, like, 20 minutes.
Sorry we didn’t mention it six hours ago when you gave us the receipt.
Only joking, they didn’t apologise.
Mohammed, another of Reza’s contacts swept in to save the day. We
were able to go to another bank, pay the visa fee again (300,000IR this
time, without a refund on the other 550,000IR I’d already paid) and
Mustafa and Mohammed kindly bought me a flight to Istanbul. It took
about an hour for the ticket to arrive and then we were all set free. Me
with my passport, Mustafa and Mohammed with their licenses.
I’ll cry if I want to
It felt like a relief, but only for a little while. I left the visa
office feeling embarrassed and ashamed. I was so sorry to have got
Mustafa and Reza in trouble and mortified about wasting Mustafa’s whole
day. All because I cried.
I had spent two weeks in Iran speculating that women there were much
more free than I had thought. Sure, they have to wear the hejab, but
they wear it in such a way that expresses their protest every day.
Everybody talks about the hejab and how they hate it and women work and
date and go out at night. And then, there in that visa office, it became
clear how much further they’ve got to go.
For while my country also has a long way to go till we reach
equality, I am allowed to choose to travel alone; go anywhere alone, in
fact. That’s how I’ve lived in Sydney, New York and London and even
spent a little stint in Barcelona. It’s how I’ve already travelled
through Greece and Turkey by myself. I’ve been out alone and travelled
around these
very dangerous places all by myself and nobody has
ever stopped me or kicked me out for crying. And believe me, I’ve cried
a lot on the streets of these cities. I remember, back in 2007, crying
on the 38 bus at least once a week late at night, all alone, for many
different reasons. I never got kicked out of London, although nobody
ever offered me a tissue either.
This piece was originally entitled ‘The day I let all Iranian women
down.’ I thought I’d let them down by proving the male belief that women
are emotional and irrational: the very reason women are not allowed to
become judges in Iran. I thought I’d proven them right. But I hadn’t. I
cried that day, yes. Let me get this straight, though, because it’s
important: at no point did I sob or break down or make, like, crying
noises. I just had tears coming out of my eyes. I was laughing about it
most of the time. I never lost my reason.
On the other hand, that police officer lost his. His anger was just
as raw – if not more so – than mine. He made totally unreasonable
demands and statements. He made up scenarios to support his position.
The day the tourist police let Iran down
When I think about how the tourist police officer behaved and I
behaved, I am sure, on balance, he was acting more irrationally that day
than I was. But it’s OK to lose it with anger, because that’s a
male thing,
is the underlying belief structure. There is no doubt in my mind that
anger and ego corrupt reason more than a few tears. And that is what
Iranian society, and western society I suppose, must somehow face.
I’m not ashamed anymore, nor am I embarrassed. If I want to cry on a
bus because women are nice to me, I am going to bloody well going to cry
on the bus because women are nice to me. I didn’t let those women down
that day. It was the day, rather, that one man in the tourist police let
Iran down. If it weren’t for him, you see, I’d leave Iran with only
fond memories.
