I talk to many customers that take my taxi and speak of these things, and when they arrive at the destination, we pretend the conversation never happened.” The government has many spies, and you can be arrested for speaking against the government. “It’s very dangerous to talk of these things in Iran. Much of the money made from Iran’s vast oil reserves – estimated at around 10 per cent of the globe’s supply – is invested in religious and ideological institutions that will always remain supportive of Iran’s ruling party. If we had less money from the oil, maybe our government would have to open up more to the outside world, and they would act differently,” said Arman. “Sometimes I think it would be better for Iran to not have so much money, to not have so much oil. Since then, secular culture and education have completely evaporated, the only free schooling available to poor rural families is at schools that teach primarily of the Quran and Iran became the significantly more insular country that we know today. That was until Ayatollah Khomeini took control of Iran following the 1979 Revolution, whereby Iran became an Islamic Republic the next year. The influence of the Shia-Islamic clergy in Iran’s political sphere throughout the 20 th Century has ebbed and flowed, but was ultimately hindered by the secular monarchy of Reza Shah. Not long after finishing his sentence, we passed a massive road-side billboard glorifying the Ayatollah’s face, alongside portraits of martyrs who had died in the Iran-Iraq conflict of the ’80s. This is very different to the Iran that you see today.”Īrman wasn’t wrong. “Previously, our leaders took religion out of the schools, made universities free and made showing signs of religion, like a man’s beard or a woman’s hijab, illegal. It’s a bad thing for Iran that the religion has become our government”, he quickly replied. “Religion and politics are not to be mixed. This is good for the government, for the rich people, but for the poor people, we see no changes from all the money we make.”Īrman stopped short of throwing anyone under the bus, so I probed a little deeper, asking him the dangerous question of what he thinks of his government. We have a lot of oil, a lot of gas and things in the ground our government sells. How much is petrol in your home country?” Arman shouted. We set off on the hour-long journey and quickly got onto the topic of petrol prices, almost yelling at each other over the thunderous roar of the wind entering the cabin as the hatchback sped through the desert. My driver, Arman, showed up a few minutes later in his dingy white hatchback with the windows rolled down: a pretty clear sign the air conditioning wasn’t working, or was never installed in the first place. Unwilling to fight the scorching heat in my black jeans (hobos beware: shorts are not an option in Iran), I contacted a driver who I met the day before to take me out to Persepolis, a collection of 2500-year-old ruins. Walking up the stairs and out of the restaurant, I thanked the manager who was vigilantly keeping watch on the street, protecting his patrons from the prying eyes of the secret police who enforce religious traditions – of which he, and all his patrons were breaking – as well as political dissent with a resolute iron fist. Flickers of their thick Persian hair was on show – an unthinkable act in public. I paid my bill and passed a group of women, seated separately from the men, who had slightly lowered their hijabs in a casual manner. The broken air conditioning was no problem for the 20 or so other diners whom, despite it being the holy month of Ramadan, were feasting on lamb, bread and dates while sipping away on orange juice and water. The temperature outside in the city of Shiraz in Iran’s south-east was 45 degrees, and set to get even hotter. Midday was drawing near as the air conditioning unit began to choke in the corner of the underground restaurant I’d taken refuge from the heat in.
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