A Travel Junkie's Diary by Dina Bennett

Author:Dina Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Kindness of Strangers

GHALAT, IRAN, 2016

Shahpur is trapped in one of life’s eddies, swirling down an ever tighter, lonelier, more desperate spiral. This puzzles me. Given how dire his circumstances are, how can he be so full of joy? And how is it that chickpeas can both sustain and utterly ruin him?

These questions enter later, though. When we meet Shahpur, chickpeas, mashed or otherwise, are the farthest thing from my mind, which instead is occupied with thoughts of worm-eaten apples and the stubborn perseverance of the elderly. To be precise, that of a woman whose every step speaks more clearly of what it takes to move forward with dignity than any globe-travelling diplomat could ever achieve, 747s and bespoke suits notwithstanding.

It’s late fall and we are near Shiraz, partway through a group road trip from Istanbul, Turkey on the Bosporus Strait which divides the Sea of Marmara from the Black Sea, to Bandar Abbas, Iran on the Strait of Hormuz which divides the Gulf of Oman from the Persian Gulf. The drive has been more arduous than we expected, with long days in the car to cover the thousands of miles before us, something we’re willing to accept because we’d longed to return to Iran since crossing the country from west to east in 2011. To embark on this trip requires us to ignore the potential perils following Turkey’s near-coup some months earlier. I remind myself that machine gun fire at roadblocks is something that happens to others, not me. I also extract a promise from Bernard that he will not diverge from our route to where the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has street fighters, no matter how tempting the photo op may be. And we do see roadblocks and armored personnel carriers aplenty through Turkey, on one day being told not to proceed on pain of having our tires shot out.

While five years ago I entered Iran from Turkey with trepidation, on this trip crossing the border feels like a reprieve, entering what right then seems a haven of orderly calm: the Islamic Republic run by Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has sat atop the power structure in Iran since 1989, so the country’s mode of government is forcefully stable. In a certain way it’s a relief that the ever-present issues defining America’s relationship with Iran are so entrenched they’ve hardly changed since I last was here. Five years ago this felt oppressive, but today, in comparison to the seismic upheavals in Turkey, it feels profoundly reassuring, despite how emphatically I disagree with the way Iran is run. Which just goes to show you that, when traveling, a sense of security is remarkably relative.

Today we’re in the old village of Ghalat. The distance we’ve driven intensifies my exuberance at being footloose. It’s just like the airy glee I felt on an elementary school snow day, a sense that without me doing anything to earn it, loads of fun await. Why? Because we’ll spend most of today indulging one of my favorite activities: meandering on foot.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.