67Rumi might be better known in the West, but for Iranians,
Ferdowsi was the one who had given the land its identity.
Out of nowhere, we saw that our driver was standing by the
tombstone. He took off his cap—his large head was bald—and
set his hand on the marble. Eyes closed, he began to deliver
lines from the Book of Kings in a resonant, haunting bari-
tone that might have been mourning the death of a parent.
Everyone in the place stopped, transfixed. When he finished he
put on his cap again and said to me, in perfect English, “I’m so
glad I could do that. I was diagnosed with throat cancer seven
months ago and advised by my doctor not to sing. But when I
come to the tomb of Ferdowsi, how can I not burst into song?”
In many of the countries I’ve visited, that moment would have
been the highlight. But in Iran it was just one in an hourly suc-
cession of vertiginous surprises that humbled me as I criss-
crossed the land for 16 days in September 2013.
I’d landed in Mashhad to find the airport’s parking lot
teeming with revelers, seated oncarpetsastheypassed
around sweetmeats and cups of tea.
“Iranians,” Ali had said, “are worldcham-
pions when it comes to picnics.”
By chance, I learned, I’d arrived
the week 7 million of the Shia
faithful were flocking into the city
to celebrate the 1,247th birthday
of Imam Reza, the saint buried in
its central shrine.
As we nosed through the
crowded streets in the predawn dark,myurbane
guide started describing a Jon Stewartsketch
he’d recently enjoyed and pointingoutpassersby
who looked like Mr. Bean. I’d neverguessedthat
Mashhad would be lined with high-rising banks, less Delhi than
Dubai. I hadn’t expected the lobby of my luxury hotel, left over
from before the revolution, to be filled with young women in
hijabs, in clouds of Chanel or Dior, tapping away on smart-
phones. And when Ali advised me that I need change only
$40 for my entire stay, I couldn’t have imagined that he was
erring on the generous side. Iran’s economy was so shattered,
tragically, that a foreigner could buy everything for nothing.
I travel, in part, out of curiosity about the places that
always feature in our headlines. I visit Haiti and El Salvador
and Kashmir because I long to give a human face and voice
to what would otherwise be mere abstractions. But Iran was
proving more intriguing than anywhere I’d seen.
Stretched out on a divan in a garden hotel, surrounded
by fairy lights and the smell of honeysuckle, I could see why
British newspapers sometimes choose Iran as the world’s best
tourist destination. I’d long known that the word “paradise”
has its roots in Iran. What I hadn’t known is how vividly the
country’s tradition of sensuous refinement still flourishes.
Later on, in Tehran, I passed squadrons of women, hijabs
barely containing their blond highlights, enjoying aerobics
TRAVEL BloombergPursuits June 29, 2020
to the accompaniment of boomboxes. Near Persepolis,
Ali and I stopped at a caravansary being turned into a
romantic boutique hotel. In Isfahan, razor-sharp kids piled
into a place called Kentucky House for fried chicken, and
bookshops featured pirated copies of Walter Isaacson’s
then-recent Steve Jobs biography. The sound of the clerks,
English-fluent and pungent as Brooklyn, made me wonder
where I was.
The political oppression and economic suffering of the
people were impossible to ignore, but at every turn I was
remindedwhyI’dbeenwarned,asanAmerican,tobeready
formoresophisticationthanI’dknowwhattodowith.When
friendsoffriendssweptmeofftolunchatacutting-edge arts
complex, all the talk was of Daniel Day-Lewis and Antigone.
I’d once spent four years of my life researching everything
I could find about the culture and history of Iran, to publish
a 354-page novel partly set there. I’d explored Yemen and
Oman and Israel, as well as Syria and Lebanon and Jordan, so
I thoughtI knew something of the neighborhood. But within
24 hoursit wasclear that I didn’t know a thing.
Intheageof information, Iran reminded me,
we often know less about the
world than ever before, and least
of all about the countries we hear
about most. We read so often about
Tehran’s hostile leadership, its
nuclear program, its demonstra-
tions, but almost nothing of
the daily life of its 84 million
people. I’d never heard of the
mango and lemon malt bev-
erages I saw on sale wherever
I looked, or the place mats
depicting Santa Claus. From now on, I’d try never to under-
estimate the depths of my ignorance and trust only what I
saw myself, even when it meant flying back into North Korea.
And that first day, beginning with the trip to Tus? After a
few hours, I slipped away from Ali, pleading jet lag. Longing
for unchaperoned sightseeing, I went to the hotel taxi desk,
where I met a young man with a small car and a boyish smile.
As we emerged from the thronged burial place of Imam
Reza—my driver’s eyes bright with tears—he told me, in
details I couldn’t doubt, that he was about to return to his
blonde English wife in Yorkshire. Some years before, he’d
gained legal asylum in Britain, having paid a human trafficker
$2,500 to smuggle him there in the back of a truck. Yet hav-
ing risked his life to flee Iran, he was now risking it again by
stealing into the country every summer, to visit the home-
town, the mother, and the mosque he missed so profoundly.
I’ve been lucky to travel incessantly for 45 years, from
Bhutan to Easter Island and Ethiopia. I’ve spent years return-
ing to Cuba and Tibet and Japan to try to unriddle their com-
plications. But after Iran, I realized I’d never find anywhere
more unexpected or rich—so painfully difficult for its resi-
dents, so gloriously inexhaustible for its visitors. <BW>In the age of
information,
Iran reminded me, we often
know less about the world
than ever before,
and least of all
about the countries
we hear about most