Visit to Iran: Glimpses of another world
Every year on the first of February I think back to my very first visit to Iran in 1989, the first time I was out of Europe. Thirty-one years ago this week marks the beginning of a long, close relationship with Iranian culture and everyday life on both personal and academic levels.
I was working for Iran Air at Heathrow at the time. I visited Tehran as an official guest of Iran Air, and also met my in-laws for the first time.
Tehran was covered in snow. The Azadi monument stood like an intricate table ornament on a spotless tablecloth. I felt as if I had stepped into another world: it was just six months after the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Tehran was emerging out of the ashes rendered all in black, various shades of grey and no white, except for the snow, which also turned to a muddy squelch under worn-out tyres and polluted air. A rather bleak picture, you might think; but the human heart is a mystery. I was already in love with Hossein, whom I had married ten months before in Greece, without ever having seen his country or his family. He was still in Athens waiting for his UK visa, and now I was about to get to know his country and his family without his mediation.
Aqa-jun, Hossein’s father, and Mansoureh, Hossein’s sister, came to pick me up from the hotel. Aqa-jun was shorter and stockier than Hossein and sported a three-day greying stubble, the chapped, blackened hands of a blacksmith, and a permanent smile. Mansoureh was still single, so she had beautiful thick Iranian eyebrows still unspoilt by the beautician’s tweezer-happy hand.
We drove through the streets in a battered, bottle green Peugeot. I had no idea in which direction we were travelling. Down a long street, above the rows of shops were stucco façades flanked by ornate columns and topped by lunettes and polychrome tiles, like an aging beauty still showing traces of lost glory.
We took a long road south, straight and dreary, lined with low-rise mud brick workshops with frayed shop signs. The entrance to the family house was through a narrow ironwork gate that sealed the high wall. He rang the bell, the door buzzed. He pushed the door, lifted the thick green curtain just behind the gate and gave way.
We went through a narrow corridor, into the yard. Hossein’s mother, Maman-jun, stood by the front door, same hazelnut eyes and benign smile as Hossein. She hugged and kissed me three times and welcomed me into their home. I took off my shoes just outside the door and was led into a room without furniture but with a hand-knotted carpet with intricate floral patterns on a dark red background.
We started talking about my family, England, Hossein, my job with Iran Air. My knowledge of Persian at the time was rudimentary: I struggled with words and gestures to make myself understood, but the linguist in me found it enjoyable, if hard going.
Mansoureh brought a tray of narrow-waisted tea-glasses and a bowl of crystallised sugar. This was soon followed by a traditional Iranian meal. A large piece of fabric was laid on the floor with an oilcloth over it.
The four of us sat down to a veritable feast for me at the time, after months of airport canteen meals and Instant Soups: a thick barley soup with chicken, mixed vegetables and parsley; yogurt with mint and grated cucumber; fluffy, white rice with a stew of lamb, yellow lentils and thin strips of fries.
Maman-jun kept refilling my plate in order to make sure I was not too shy to eat my fill as an Iranian might do. I finally remembered the magic words that gave her the signal to stop
“May your hand not be tired, it was very tasty,” I said.
For the first time in the year and a half after I left home for England, I had the warm feeling you get when you return home and your mother cooks your favourite dish.
Only this was hundreds of miles away from home, among people I had just met.
© Sofia A Koutlaki, 2020
