Iranian Rappers And Persian Porn by Jamie Maslin Read Free Book Online

the bench, the bigger of the little lads who’d approached me before came over for a piece of the action with the tourist. He attempted his tried and tested “Hello” line again, but before I could answer he got the Farsi equivalent of “Get lost, shorty” from the proper big boys. He looked a little annoyed; after all, he’d been the one who’d found the tourist first and now the big boys had stolen him. He did as he was told though, and walked off sullenly.
    Gesturing to the game, I asked the guy who spoke a little English if he played volleyball. Shaking his head, he replied, “Football and box,” followed by a brief shadowboxing demonstration.
    Having done a bit of this myself, I did likewise with a quick flurry of the noble art. They all liked this so he did his again. I again followed suit. We were buddies now, and to show it he produced a flick knife and began meticulously slicing up an apple and banana for us to share. They were delicious. I stayed around trying to communicate with them long after it got dark, and when it was finally time to leave, they insisted on driving me back to my hotel.
    Before going inside to bed, I headed up the street for a stroll; I was struck by the clarity of the stars, which blazed in the clear night sky with an intensity I’d not yet seen on this trip, and I stood for several minutes just looking up. They were spectacular and although I was delighted to be here, I couldn’t help but wish I had someone to share this magical sight with.
    When I got back to the hotel, the fatigue of the last couple of nights caught up with me and I crashed out exhausted but happy.

    Iranian taxi drivers can be a pain in the ass. I’d spent the last twenty minutes in animated negotiation with a group of hard-nosed cabbies in an attempt to get a ride to my intended destination of today, the church of St. Thaddeus, but things hadn’t gone according to plan.
    I had made my way out to a little junction just outside of Maku where a group of taxis was parked haphazardly along the road I needed to take to get to the church. Despite my best efforts, none of the crafty cabbies, of which there were about fifteen, was willing to take me unless I paid way over the standard price and stumped up an outrageously big tourist fee instead. They didn’t say this, of course, but since the prices they were quoting were seven times higher than those in my guidebook, it didn’t take a genius to work it out.
    Taxis in Iran work in a slightly different way from those in the West, in that they can be hired in two ways, either in the conventional manner, or as a so-called shared taxi. This is where the taxi picks up multiple passengers along a standard route in much the same way as a bus does in the West. Both are interchangeable, though, with the driver going for the best option as it presents itself.
    My plan had been to catch a shared cab to the church, as the costs for this were much lower, but the cabbies vetoed this option despite there being other people heading along the same route. They insisted that they would only take me privately, and only to the town nearest the church, Kandi Kelisa, but not to the church itself. And for this they wanted a ridiculous amount of money, IR200,000, which at about twenty dollars was having a laugh to say the least.
    The fact that they were all together made them impossible to negotiate with, as a sort of group mentality developed that made none of them want to haggle, or more accurately back down in front of their buddies, and especially not to a tourist. A gangly traffic cop from across the street who had been watching all the commotion and lively negotiations loped over to lend his authority to the drivers’ argument. He insisted, in broken English, that their price was an absolute bargain just for me, and that I was a very lucky tourist indeed to have encountered such generous drivers. Yeah right. I shook my head with a laugh. He demanded my passport.
    Whoops. I explained