Revolutionary Ride Page 2

  But Freya Stark’s snappy quotes and tales of derring-do could only get me so far. I lived in very different times. Her Iran had been wilder in some ways, but it had also been under the control of Reza Shah, who was actively modernising the country, while the British presence was still powerful, running Iran’s oil industry as well as the railways and telecommunications. The ayatollahs of the twenty-first century wouldn’t have had much truck with Miss Stark, and I doubted they would think much of me and my motorbike. At night I would lie awake and wonder if I was making a terrible mistake, if this was one adventure too far. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t done this kind of thing before; in the last decade I had motorcycled the length of North and South America solo, and also through Africa, riding from London to Cape Town via the Muslim countries of North Africa, so I had some idea of what I was getting into. And I knew from past experience that there is a certain kind of person who likes nothing more than to predict a grisly outcome. But something about Iran brought out a different kind of response, even in people I considered worldly and open-minded. This time it wasn’t the usual concerns of ‘What happens if you break down in the middle of nowhere?’ or ‘What will you do if you crash and break your leg?’ It was all about the locals, and primarily the men, and what they were going to do to me.

  I had to admit that I was not immune to the insidious drip-feed of anti-Iranian, anti-Islam sentiments that had entered our collective consciousness over the years, and I couldn’t always shrug off the concerns of the naysayers. This journey would be more than just an interesting road trip around a foreign country; it would be a painful test of some of my own deeply entrenched fears and opinions, the ones to which I didn’t really like to admit. But if fear is a product of ignorance, then that in itself was a reason to go.

  So I monitored the political situation over the next year, watching and waiting for news of the embassies reopening. But the freeze never thawed and Ahmadinejad continued to stir up trouble, so in 2013 I decided that hanging around for politicians to cosy up to each other was a mug’s game. Would there ever be a ‘good time’, according to the Foreign Office, for a solo British woman to ride a motorcycle around Iran? Probably not. I took the plunge and applied for a visa.

  With no functioning embassy or consular services in London, I employed the services of a specialist visa agent, a brilliantly efficient Lebanese woman. By coincidence, she had recently learned to ride a motorcycle, and therefore thought my idea of a solo bike trip around Iran was a great idea. It was refreshing to finally receive some positive encouragement, but it was soon countered during the second stage of the process – by the man behind the counter in Snappy Snaps who took the photo for my application.

  ‘Iran?’ he said, aghast. ‘What d’you wanna go there for?’ It was becoming something of a mantra. ‘Well, whatever floats your boat,’ he continued, not waiting for an answer and shaking his head. Then he read me the rules: three concepts that were all entirely alien to me. ‘Right, you’ll need your hair covered, no make-up and don’t smile.’

  The resulting photo may not have been my first choice for an online dating profile pic but, I decided with an objective eye, it was perfect for cosying up to an Iranian bureaucrat. With my bare, unsmiling face and tightly wrapped headscarf, I felt like a poster girl for female oppression. I sent it off along with a carefully constructed application and a large amount of money. But despite my best efforts to appear a reputable and unthreatening tourist, my application was returned a few weeks later with a request for further information. I had been singled out for some suspicious questioning by the Iranian authorities: What was the purpose of my journey? What did I do for a living? By what means was I travelling? I gave some creative responses that I hoped chimed with the ideals of the Islamic Republic, and waited.

  Life went on hold. I couldn’t make any plans. I was twitchy with nerves and sometimes, in the middle of the night, I secretly hoped my application would be rejected. After about two weeks the call finally came from the visa agent. This was it. My fate would be sealed: was I going to Iran or not?

  Her voice was upbeat. ‘The good news is that they have approved your visa, but …’

  I held my breath. That ‘but’ didn’t bode well.

  ‘The bad news is that it has only been granted on the condition that you travel by public transport. They won’t let you enter Iran with your own vehicle.’

  A muddle of emotions was already coursing through me: excitement, fear, relief. And now, frustration. This news was a major blow. The autonomy afforded by having my own wheels was crucial to my plan.

  ‘You mean I can’t go on my bike? Does it mean I have to fly there? And travel by train or bus or…? What do they mean exactly?’

  She interrupted my protestations. ‘You know what? I’ve never heard of this happening before. They haven’t given a reason, but to be honest, I don’t think there will be anything actually written on your visa to enforce this rule. Maybe you could put your bike on a train or a truck in Turkey, just to get over the border? Once you’re in Iran I’m sure you’ll be fine to travel around on your bike.’

  ‘Really? You think I can get away with it?’ It seemed sketchy as hell, but I liked this woman’s gung-ho style.

  ‘Obviously I can’t give you the official go-ahead to do this, but from what I know of the system, I don’t think they will have this level of detail at the border post, so I don’t think you will get challenged.’

  ‘So you think I should just set off on my bike and wing it?’

  This was all beginning to sound slightly weird, a bit risky and hugely exciting. I gave a thought to Freya Stark. I knew exactly what she would have done in this situation. My visa lady was speaking again and it seemed as though she too was channelling Freya Stark’s ghost.

  ‘Obviously, there’s a risk and the decision is up to you, but my unofficial advice would be to give it a go.’

  That was all I needed to hear.

  2

  ‘Go and Wake Up Your Luck’

  TWO MONTHS LATER I was riding my motorcycle across Turkey, heading east, following the classic hippie trail of the sixties and seventies – but in the twenty-first century this route was a whole different story. Only a few decades ago the standard itinerary of Turkey–Iran–Afghanistan–Pakistan had been the mind-opening rite-of-passage for thousands of wide-eyed British teens making their way to India. But now, a generation later, Iran stood isolated from the world; Kabul, once the swinging city of the Middle East, was reeling from war; the Buddhas of Bamiyan were blown to smithereens and Pakistan had become a no-go zone, only accessible with military escorts for the few overland travellers prepared to run the gauntlet.

  I was born too late for that innocent era; my world travels had coincided almost exactly with the so-called War on Terror. In the spring of 2003 I had left the safe but tedious confines of my BBC office job to ride my motorcycle from Alaska to Argentina, just as George Bush invaded Iraq. The Stars and Stripes were flying high on the first leg of that trip. But as soon as I crossed the border into Mexico it was a different story. And by the time I reached Central America the graffiti was already appearing – BUSH GENOCIDIO, ENEMIGO DE LA HUMANIDAD. I spent a lot of time explaining that I was a UK passport holder, ‘Soy Inglesa!’, not a war-mongering gringo from north of the border, and it seemed to help. But a few years later, while travelling through Muslim North Africa, that distinction had blurred; our ‘special relationship’ meant that as far as the rest of the world was concerned, we were all in it together. Border guards saw my passport and spat Tony Blair’s name into the sandy ground as they issued a grudging entry stamp. Hey! I was on that anti-war march in 2003, I wanted to tell them. But what good would it do? As much good as the march itself. In the intervening years London had been shaken by the 7/7 bombings, and in 2007, when I emerged from the Algerian Sahara to discover that Saddam Hussein had been killed, I knew that the days of chatting with immigration officials about David Beckham and Princess Diana were over. Now, taking my f
irst foray into the Middle East, to a country famous for its hostility towards Britain, I felt a mixture of sadness, anger, regret and shame, albeit for actions for which I wasn’t personally responsible but which still hung heavy on my shoulders. The great British passport had lost its lustre, and its pompous statement on the inside cover – ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary’ – seemed vaguely ridiculous. Good luck with that, Ma’am.

  My first taste of the East had appeared in the shape of Istanbul, with its thrilling skyline of minarets and domes and the mighty Bosphorus Bridge shuttling traffic between Europe and Asia. But as I continued east my confidence in outwitting the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to wane. Their mistrust surrounding my visa application was contagious; they were paranoid about me, and now I was paranoid about them. Ever since the embassy-storming episode of 2011, the granting of visas to UK citizens had become such a fickle business. I imagined it presided over by some demonic bureaucrat in Tehran, brandishing his all-powerful rubber stamp and laughing maniacally whilst burning the applications of hapless Brits in his wastepaper bin. I was surprised they had agreed to let me in at all.

  The further I got from home, the twitchier I became. The long days in the saddle, across Turkey’s lonely Pontic Mountains, allowed my imagination to concoct all sorts of dramatic stories which involved me being turned away at the border, arrested for spying, escaping from my cell and hitching a ride in a truck full of contraband booze, and making a midnight crossing via some obscure smugglers’ route in the mountains.

  My arrival in Ankara, the functional, if rather dreary, capital of Turkey, stilled my fevered imagination and offered an agreeable, if less theatrical, answer to my problem: the Trans-Asia Express, a weekly rail service between there and Tehran. Its first Iranian destination was Tabriz, the north-western city just over the frontier that I had planned as my first stop. For the price of a few kebabs I could put myself and my bike on the train across the rest of Turkey and be deposited just inside Iran, 1,000 miles away. Hopefully, once there, I could slip the bike out of the guard’s van and be on my way, no questions asked. There was a time when my younger motorcycling self, who valued the notion of purism, would have been aggrieved by interrupting the ride like this, but purism be damned! Outwitting the Iranian authorities was my priority, and besides, as a secret railway fan, I was geekily excited about the idea of riding such a romantically titled train.

  Much to the bemusement of Ankara’s morning commuters, I pushed my bike through the busy station, over a level crossing and on to Platform 2, where it was heaved into the goods wagon by a gang of surly Turkish railway workers in greasy shirts. At the shriek of the guard’s whistle, everyone climbed aboard and I found myself alone in a four-berth sleeping carriage. After a few hours rumbling through Ankara’s outskirts, I flirted with the idea of contacting Turkish Trading Standards to point out that not only was the train just Trans a little bit of Asia, it was also seriously stretching the definition of Express. Not that I minded. I had a cosy cabin to myself, and as darkness fell and rain spattered the window, I knew I had made the right decision.

  My solitary status was not to last long. At the next station a knock on the door brought the conductor with the news that I was to be joined by some fellow travellers. ‘Bayan?’ I asked. It was the word that accompanied pictures of women on toilet doors. I had been ‘Salaamed’ with a little too much interest by a couple of unctuous guys in the train corridor and hoped I was not destined to spend the next two nights in similar company. The conductor nodded and struggled in English,

  ‘Yes, bayan, a woman and her—’ he faltered, searching for the word. ‘Her chick.’

  I imagined a young lady and a baby, so was surprised when an elderly Iranian woman appeared at the door and her ‘chick’ turned out to be her middle-aged son.

  My new companions greeted me like a long-lost friend and, after arranging their beds, wasted no time in laying out a tea towel on the table and barricading us in the cabin with a wall of Tupperware. From this came a steady supply of bread, cheese, tomatoes, grapes and a home-made spread of egg, potato, mayonnaise and dill.

  ‘Please, eat with us,’ they said with beaming smiles. I tried to imagine this happening on the 09.42 to Doncaster, and failed. I had vague childhood memories of strangers sharing food on trains in the 1970s, but the chances nowadays of my own countrymen and women offering to share their food with a foreign stranger on public transport were, sadly, almost nil. I wondered if this protectiveness of our personal space and possessions was a symptom of being a small, overcrowded nation; if there was an unconscious need to keep hold of something, anything, for ourselves.

  The first course was followed by a cake of dates and nuts with tea brewed in a tiny electric travel kettle plugged into the train carriage socket. My new companions were from the Iranian city of Isfahan and the chick, as I now thought of him, spoke some English, while his mother spoke only a few words, but we muddled through with the help of my Persian phrase book, much to their entertainment. Meanwhile the food kept on coming and I eventually had the opportunity to use the crucial phrase an Iranian friend of mine in London had warned me I would need, ‘Seer shodam, merci’ – I am full, thank you. I had the feeling this would become something of a catchphrase.

  After the meal had been cleared away the mother closed her eyes and put her hands together.

  ‘Now I pray.’

  She began a high, keening wail that seemed to go on and on. I sat there in awkward silence, not sure how I was supposed to respond, wishing we could just talk about the weather or have a pop quiz, or something. I didn’t know where to look. The carriage suddenly seemed very small and a little too intimate. Her son sat next to her, a beatific expression on his face, and when she finished he pulled out a small book from his bag and began reciting a prayer from it.

  ‘We are followers of the Bahá’í religion,’ he said when he had finished. I nodded a little too eagerly, glad that any kind of normal conversation had resumed. ‘It is illegal in Iran,’ he explained. ‘I was two years in prison because I am Bahá’í.’

  He was a jeweller by trade, with long, slender fingers and a gentle manner. His expression and tone of voice were so soft and open that this revelation came as a shock to me. I couldn’t imagine him weathering the harsh environment of an Iranian jail. I had read a little about the Bahá’í religion, mainly that its followers in Iran were a persecuted minority, but often well educated and professional. The religion dated back to nineteenth-century Persia, originating in Shiraz. It had since spread throughout the world, picking up some well-known followers along the way, including jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and, more recently, the British-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili. But the celebrity endorsement had failed to convince the Iranian authorities, who still considered it to be some kind of sinister cult and took a heavy-handed approach with its followers. I asked him why it was outlawed in Iran.

  ‘Because it began by breaking away from Islam. Mohammed says Islam is the last religion, there will not be another. But it’s mostly because we believe in peace and equality for all people – men and women are equal in Bahá’ísm. But this is not true in Islam; they do not believe in this. We believe in unity, of all humankind.’ I had to admit, it didn’t sound like something the Iranian ayatollahs would be signing up for any time soon.

  ‘Other religions are allowed in Iran; there are Zoroastrians of course, the original religion of Iran. But also Christians and even Jews in Iran, but the Bahá’í faith, it is the only one that is illegal. For our people in Iran, life is very difficult,’ he went on. ‘We cannot attend university, or work in government positions, our people are imprisoned, sometimes executed. They say we are a political organisation, that we are linked to Israel, they destroy our businesses, our homes …’


  He fished around in his bag and handed me a Bahá’í promotional pamphlet. I read the propaganda, a vaguely woolly treatise on love and peace with a sprinkling of moon, sun and stars thrown in. It seemed pretty harmless as religions go, and these two gentle folk seemed about as kind and sweet as you could get, but the disseminating of literature and the loud praying made me uncomfortable. I wondered if this is what the rest of my trip would hold.

  ‘What is your religion?’ asked his mother. They both looked to me for my answer, all friendly, interested eyes. I sensed a cheerful proclamation of atheism might kill the mood but I hadn’t prepared an answer and I found myself mumbling something about ‘not really being religious’. I wondered if I should have made something up. Maybe any religion was better than no religion in this situation. There was a short silence.

  ‘And do you work in London?’

  ‘Yes, I’m, er, a secretary, at a school.’ I decided to lie this time. It was an innocent lie but it tied in with my visa application, where revealing yourself as any kind of writer was a fast track to the DECLINED stamp. A school secretary seemed a respectable and innocuous job for a woman, I reasoned, unlikely to raise the suspicions of the authorities. I was paranoid enough to feel the need to keep my story straight, even with these embattled religious dissidents.