I must have slept a little. I remember lying next to Val, both wearing almost all our clothes, under the blanket. Or was it 2? I can’t remember, but it/they weren’t doing any good at all, for I was freezing cold, so cold that I didn‘t dare to move. All I could do was lie perfectly still + wait for time to pass. And time did pass, + I don’t recall any of it, so can only assume I slept. It certainly wasn’t for long. For at 1.30 we were all up, or at least awake, + bemoaning the bitter cold. Alan hadn’t slept at all; Walter barely had; Colin had been well away – he has a good sleeping bag – until feeling the need for a piss. Understandably, but foolishly, he had climbed out of the van still in his bag. A difficult enough feat in itself, but a piece of cake compared with the monumental task of climbing back in again. Alan had had to haul him back in bodily, like a long thin sack of potatoes. Rev had suffered as much as any, having the position next to the draughty side door. So when it was decided by all present that we might as well move on as not – after a cup of tea of course – + Colin handed back his sleeping bag, it was Rev who gratefully crawled in, tightened all necessary tags + drawstrings, + was soon asleep. And warm, one trusts. And there he stayed for 4 or 5 hrs. But one really couldn’t blame him, for it really was so very cold.
Normally, the roaring stove is enough to have the van as warm as toast, but this morning it wasn’t powerful enough to melt the ice on the inside of the windscreen. We heard the next day that the area we had been staying in had been 21 degrees below – that sounds about right.
It was better when we were on the move, + later on there was a hefty pot of thick porridge sweetened with honey, to warm everyone from the inside. There were no real stops at all today – food + drink were prepared out of stock + on the run. This was mainly because it had been worked out that there was an outside chance of getting into Turkey tonight, + which, as the day went on, seemed increasingly possible, despite the dreadfully slow progress. Rev told us that the Iranian customs + immigration closed down somewhere between 6 and 7, so when we arrived there at about 5.20, we sprang into immediate action, + following Rev slavishly as he ran from one tatty office decorated with a picture of the Ayatollah to another, + then back to the first again. Slowly, we were done, with an exit stamp here, an all-too-swift check of our declared monies (by Rev himself, as like as not), the most cursory of checks to the van to finish things off. And we were done! To drive in to Turkey (actually, part of the same set of buildings, + separated from Iran only by a courtyard + archway.
We said goodbye to Rev, with real affection. He took a postcard to post for Val, but refused to take any money for the stamp, refused likewise the “spare cash” Alan offered him. Our relationship had begun, on our side at least, with suspicion, resentment + xenophobia, + had been transmuted into real warmth + respect. I can only hope he liked us too. I have said little of Iran itself because we saw next to nothing of it. We drove from morn till night, by-passed towns wherever possible, + looking out thro’ the steamed-up window of the van into a swirling blizzard is no way to get a feel of a country.
At the other end of the playground… I mean, tunnel, was Turkey. At first, it was difficult to get things started, but in their own sweet time we were stamped in. It was customs that proved the stumbling-block. For a little while, it looked as tho’ we might have been passed – the prospect of a hotel, even more, a hot shower, had us all excited – but C + A made the mistake of showing the customs officer the rear roof section, the one with all those boxes sealed by the Iranians at the other end. And the Customs Officer made the bold deduction that 7.30 pm on a cold night was not the time to be starting in on all that, + told us we would have to sleep in the van till morning. A bitter blow, but one consolation was that the Turkish end had a cross between a palace + a temple, in the shape of a duty-free shop with attached café. We ate too much, but found it even more difficult to tear ourselves away from the stove. We sat + talked + slowly became warm. The rottenest news for C + A was that they could have been paid for out of black market money, the whole affair being thoroughly chaotic.
And that was Iran. Have we been there? Technically, yes, and I suppose more than arriving at a stopover airport would be visiting a place. After all we had a visa (God, did we have a visa!) and entry and exit stamps. But absolutely no feel whatever at all for the country. And yet, strangely, we now have a lot of Iranian friends, all of them having fled the place. And in our own way, we had had something of a small adventure, the cold being memorable and adventurous.
