Three Women I Met in Iran
In Honour of Women's Day Last Week
I want to spend a few-to-many posts on this newsletter talking about people I met on my travels. Here’s the start of that trend with the stories of three women I met in Iran.
Alice
I met Alice for the first time while cycling in Tajikistan. I was on my way to the Bartang Valley, and she was going the other way after finishing the same stretch. She had a plastic crate secured to the back of her bike, and in that crate was a dog named Canton!
Imagine that. Here I was, feeling brave and cool that I was cycling in remote parts of Central Asia, and here was Alice, cycling the very same adventurous roads with a dog!
We met again two months later on Hormuz Island in the South of Iran. She, a Korean cyclist, and I spent a nice few days camping on the beach. We swam, “led” yoga lessons for locals, cooked, drank, and talked a lot. Everyone told their stories, and I complained a lot about visa processes.
Alice wanted to be a nurse in England, and had decided — because why not — to take the long route and cycle there from Hong Kong! While cycling in China, she had picked up her co-traveller Canton. They had travelled together only for a few weeks when she realized that Canton was pregnant!
So she went back to Hong Kong, waited for Canton to deliver her puppies, made sure all the little Cantons got a home, and then restarted her cycling journey.
[Alice told me after I published this that she did not go back to Hong Kong immediately after she realized Canton was pregnant. Canton actually delivered her babies on the road! To know the full, amazing story, read this footnote from her1]
Nine months later, she entered Iran alone, and had to dress up like a man to avoid stares and comments. After Iran, she even cycled through the Iraq (Kurdistan region). A few months after that, Canton was killed while crossing a road in Montenegro. Alice forged on to England, where she now lives with two of Canton’s children.
Here is her Instagram post from two years ago, on Women’s Day 2019.
Soheila2
Soheila was my warmshowers host in Nahavand in the Kurdistan region of Iran. She was waiting near the edge of the town on her cycle, and I followed her to her house, where she stayed with her family. Like almost all of the houses that I stayed in when I was in Iran, she took off her hijab as soon as we walked into her compound.
Again, like almost everywhere else in Iran, Soheila and her family welcomed me with open arms. There was lots of laughter, questions, food, and conversation.
After dinner, Soheila, her mother, and me were sitting in the living room talking. “She doesn’t really understand English. She’s staying because it’s considered rude if you don’t sit with your guests”, Soheila told me.
Soheila was 28 (or maybe 29) years old, and proudly unmarried. Like Yasmin, who I introduced briefly in my previous post, she was the first woman in her town to cycle. Now, inspired by her, other girls were starting to ride too. She used to work in an agriculture company, and now worked in a bank. At night, she used apps to chat and learn English with people from around the world. On top of that, she was learning Japanese, and then — as if that wasn’t enough — she played the guitar too.
I asked her if she had faced pressure from her family to get married. “They tried, but now they have given up”, she laughed. “They see that I’m happy, though.”
Our conversation meandered through a lot of topics, and at one point I asked her about what she thought about the mandatory hijab in Iran.
She then said something that has stuck with me since then. “I care about the hijab, but I have to wear it. What I want is to be respected. I have studied Environmental Health Engineering. At the company I worked for, they didn’t promote me because of nepotism and bribery, which is very common here. I was made to leave”.
After she agreed to be included in this post, we were talking. I knew that things in Iran were already bad because of the sanctions imposed by the United States, and now there was Coronavirus. “Every thing is worse than what it was and like always we are just fighting for staying alive”, she told me when I asked how things were going.
Soheila has now moved to Tehran and is working as a sanitary inspector.
A girl somewhere near Nahavand
A few days after I met Soheila, I was cycling along the highway, and asked two road construction workers if they knew a place nearby where I could camp. They invited me for tea, then after some laughing and handwaving, one of them (Ahmad) said I could stay with him and his family for the night.
The family consisted of him, his wife and three children: the youngest still a baby, and the middle one a boy in sixth or seventh grade, and the oldest a sixteen year old girl named Theena.
Theena knew a few words of English, so most of my communication was with her. She helped her mother cook, did her homework, helped her brother do his homework, scolded him when he played for too long on my laptop, and then of course helped clean up before and after dinner.
One moment that is clear in my memory is just after we finished eating. I was about to pick up my plate and go to the kitchen, when Ahmad put his hand on my arm and stopped me. “She will pick it up”, he said pointing at his daughter. I tried to protest, but by then the plate was gone.
When her younger brother was done with his dinner, he got up, put his empty plate in front of this sister, and walked away to wash his hands, even though she was still eating. My host could see that I was uncomfortable. “This is how it is in Iran. Men do men’s work outside, and women do the house work inside.”
In the morning, I was feeling quite emotional about the hospitality I had just experienced. I told the girl to write something in my notebook, and I told her to bring hers to write something in. Her eyes lit up and she ran inside and returned with her notebook.
Emotional times bring out cheesy words. “Don’t let anyone stop you from achieving your dreams”, I wrote.
A note from Alice: Actually I did not go back to Hong Kong after I knew that Canton was pregnant. We continued cycling but with a trailer at the back. Then she gave birth to five puppies in the tibetan mountains on the way to Lhasa. Then I nursed and cycled with Canton and five puppies together until Lhasa, where they became around 1 month old and weaned breastfeeding. Then I realised that it would be difficult to carry all these dogs with me, so I had to think of a solution.
I gave away two puppies in Tibet, and then went back to Hong Kong with Canton and three puppies. Two puppies gave to my family, which are the ones with me now. Another one was to another friend. After 5 months in Hong Kong, I went back to Lhasa with Canton, and continued. However, on the way back to Lhasa, when I wanted to visit the two puppies that I gave away in Tibet, I found that they were already abandoned. So I searched for them, and one died already, but another still alive. So I got the puppy back, and sent back to my friend in Hong Kong.
Soheila told me I remembered a few things wrong, so I have edited her story based on her inputs. Sorry!
Liked the sweeting. I felt a lengthier post on each of them could have helped in understanding them better.
Great post, Pritam! Would love to see more stories from you! :)