About a year ago, the local people from
the United Nations called me up and said,
"we're worried about sort of a rush to
war, and a lot of saber rattling, and was
there anything I could do, as a travel
writer here in the Seattle area, to help
calm things down?" And I said, "really the
only thing I could do of any
consequence would be to produce a TV
show on Iran. And I said, "I'm too busy
to spearhead this," but
I said, "if you guys
can get me the permission,
I will get my
crew together, we'll go over there and
produce an hour show, and get it run on
public television." And it's complicated
when you're trying to get permission to
go to Iran as a individual, and it's really
complicated as an American film crew, you
see. But we finally got our permission,
and they didn't let us know we had our
permission until just a week before we
were going to go.
We were filming in Athens and that we
got the okay, so we had to pick up our
visas in Athens. And it was just really
quite interesting to go to the Iranian
embassy in Greece, and it was a casual
thing, we got our visas, and then a couple
days later we're flying into Tehran.
Now when we went there, we didn't have a
script. I had not been there since I was
a kid. We had a friend to go ahead and do
some scouting, I had a general idea of
what we wanted to film, but for me this
was a personal mission of discovery. I
wanted to know about I--more about Iran.
It was clear to me
I didn't know much about Iran, and I'm a
travel writer, I'm supposed to know about
these things, and my neighbors didn't
know much about Iran either. For a lot of
us, history stopped with the embassy
crisis, and the hostage-taking, and all
that kind of thing, and we've just been
stuck in this
"they're the enemy and we're at
each other's--we're at odds," and I
just really thought there must be--
it must be worth knowing what's going on.
I was nervous before I went,
we almost left our big camera in Athens
and took our little camera with us.
I charged up on my batteries because I
didn't even know how easy it would be to
charge things in
Iran. I heard there was no cash--no credit
cards, you had to just bring cash with you,
I didn't know how people were going to
receive us. And we went there and we
learned a lot.
It really bothers me that I believe
fear is being used against us in our
society. And I just--time and time again I
found when I'm afraid of a place I go
there and I find it's not that scary.
And what I believe I find is the
fundamental humanist of different
countries on this planet.
This picture symbolizes to me the stress
and struggles between our two societies.
I wanted to see the place from a
travel point of view. I made it really
clear in my presentation to the Iranian
government that we are interested in not
politicizing it. I didn't want to deal
with their funding of terrorism, I didn't
want to deal with their treatment of
homosexuals or Baha'is, I didn't want to
deal with nuclear,
you know, issues. I just wanted to be a
travel writer and go there and
understand the culture, because it's a
rich culture, and it's 70 million people.
I wanted to get the big city, I wanted to
get little towns, countryside,
historic perspective. Right off the bat
we were meant by Abdi, and Abdi was my
friend in Seattle who's Iranian. He grew
up in Iran and works here in Seattle now,
and he was my assurance that I wasn't
being duped, you know. I wanted a guy who
was savvy with the local scene that
wasn't working for the Iranian
government. And then we had our minder,
Saeed, and he's the same guy that took
Ted Koppel around when he did his thing
for Discovery. We couldn't do it without
him
and the blessing of the Iranian
government. Now as soon as we got to the
airport,
they met us and they took us to the CIP
that's the--not the VIP lounge but the
CIP lounge, the commercially important
people lounge.
Okay, so we settle down there and we had
our tea and our cookies and stuff, and the
customs police came, and they--Simon
showed his passport.
Simon's from New Zealand, and they said
welcome. And then I showed my passport
and they said, "come with me,"
okay. So they escorted me over and
I had to get fingerprinted, and I think I
got my fingerprints there.
I've never been fingerprinted before.
When it comes to fingerprints, when they
come here if they're going to get in
they're going to get fingerprinted,
so they're going to fingerprint us when we
get there. We have to remember that
that's a reasonable thing and I had to
do that to get in.
Right off the bat you see, "respected
ladies, observe the Islamic dress code," I
mean it was clear this was not
Denmark, okay, this is a different world and
this is what I was excited about.
We were in good care with the government
minder and with Abdi, and we went to
our fancy hotel. In each city there's a
hotel for diplomats, and wealthy people,
and big shots, and that's where they
put us up, and there was a lot going on
here. There was security, it was a very
comfortable place, a lot of businessman
from around the Islamic world mostly,
security gate to get in and out of the
hotel,
fine rooms, a prayer room, always in the
hotels you had a prayer room if you wanted
to have a few moments of worship.
If you wanted to prayer and you didn't
want to leave your hotel room, you could
look up on the ceiling and there would
be an arrow pointing to Mecca. From my
14th floor balcony I could look out and
see this is one incredible city, Tehran.
More than 10 million people. So I was
raring to go and get out there and check
out this city, but you have to do the
polite, slow-moving, respectable kind of
stuff, so we had to go to the Ministry of
Guidance,
which is the governmental
organization overseeing the Ministry of
Tourism, and sit there and have tea and
watermelon with the big shot who got us
into all the sites of our next 12 days
of shooting, and his staff. So we sat
around, and I'm saying, "let's go shoot, I
want to go to the subways, I want to go
to this and that, you know, but we had--we
did all that stuff, and
this is cameraman Karel getting his
photograph taken because we all needed
to have our journalist passes, and they
spelled our names in Farsi, so they
transliterated it so people knew that we were
legit, and then finally we were out in
the streets. And at this point we don't
know what kind of reception we were
going to get, but we were everywhere we
wanted to go with our minder who was always
taking pictures of us as we take
pictures of everything else, and then
we're quite a stir to have us, an
American film crew, out and about on the
streets of Iran.
There's not a lot of great tourist
attractions in Tehran, it's not one of
the prettier cities around. They have this
big freedom gate that's quite impressive
to see that has stylistic roots that
are a reminder that this society goes
back 500 years before Christ to the
Persian--the great Persian Empire times.
Our guide, Saeed, spent a lot of time with
plainclothes security people explaining
what we were doing. A lot of people
wondered,
"Rick are you just going to let them
shelter you from all of the reality and
you're not going to get the real story?"
Well you know what my mission was, it
wasn't to be 60 Minutes and go in
for all the bad stuff, I just wanted to
show what life was like for real people
in Iran and gain an appreciation for
their culture.
Given that, I felt I was able to go
everywhere I wanted to go and get the
information I wanted to get, I'm very
clear about that.
Saeed, our minder's, responsibility was to
stay with the camera.
I could go anywhere I liked as a tourist
and I did, and I had a lot of fun doing
that as the cameraman was doing his work
with with the producer Simon. But
every time the camera went somewhere
the minder had to go with him to protect
the camera, to deal with security people,
and to make sure we're not shooting
things that are getting people into
trouble.
What could not we shoot? We couldn't
shoot governmental buildings, we couldn't
shoot banks for some reason, and we
couldn't shoot in little businesses that
let people break the laws.
You know, I mean, we wanted to go into the
clubs and show people holding hands
and girls not wearing the scarf
correctly, and the club owners were like
in sync with us, they would love to share
this information, but if they had video
evidence that they were not following
the rules of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, they could lose their license, and
they have many times in the past when a
film crew proves that people are allowed
to do that--it's like letting underage
people drink in our bars, to have any
sort of public display of affection, or
racy dress, or alcohol consumption.
So we didn't get to film there and I
didn't want to push it. I was happy with
what we got for our purposes.
The city was crazy and the traffic was
mesmerizing to me.
The amazing thing about the traffic in
Tehran is you have, you know, ten lanes
coming together with no traffic lights.
Now I would have--I've seen that in
different parts of the world but it's
because the traffic lights are broken.
Here they just didn't want traffic
lights. I mean they come together, they
sit through it, and they break out of
that and they continue on, and that's
just the way they do it. Now
I might've thought this is crazy but who am I
to judge, it works for them, and it
actually works okay.
We were meeting people all the time. And
I've never been anywhere in my travels
where I met more people and had more
access to people on the streets. I mean
you see a lot of people and you bump into a
lot of people in Europe but you don't
talk to people all the time. When I was
in Iran, everybody--there was soldiers,
bookstore people, and so on--
wanted to talk. And I did this thing
where I would--they would--I'm tall and
I don't look very Iran--Iranian, and
I would get--as soon as I got eye
contact,
that's what I needed to do, as soon as
they got eye contact people say, "welcome,
hello." And in Iran a foreigner is a gift
from God.
Literally, I mean they treat you like a
gift from God, that's in their culture,
and they would always take very good
care of us.
I was stuck in a traffic jam, you just saw
that, and in the car next to us said, "roll
down your window," and they said,
"you've got a guest in the backseat, give
him this bouquet and apologize for the
traffic jam."
I mean can you imagine that on our
streets. And I just shook my head and I
thought, "there's a lot about this country I
didn't appreciate until I came here," you
know. "You've got a foreigner in your
backseat,
take this bouquet." It was like that. So I walk around and
I get eye contact with people, they say,
"hello," say, "hello," they--invariably they'd say,
"where are you from?" And I would never see
America.
I would say, "where do you think I'm from,"
and they would guess. And I'd make them
guess,
and they'd guess five or six countries,
they--I can't remember once that they'd
get it right.
Finally they'd run out of guesses and they'd
say, "where are you from?"
And I said United States of America,
then they go--it kind of shocked them,
and then they go--they think, "what are you
doing here,"
and then they'd say welcome. Then usually
they'd say," I like America," or something
like this. And then we'd talk politics and
they'd tell me what they think of our
president or something like this. But
honestly, I didn't know what to expect,
and I have never been in a place where,
ironically, where being an American with
such an asset.
It was thoroughly an asset to be an
American individual there,
okay, so make of that what you will, I just
think it was a fascinating--
I think--I went into a bookstore, it was the
equivalent of the U Bookstore, it had
beautiful books, lots of poetry. I had to be
taught that they read them from, what we
call the back to the front. And I just
admired the books, and then I said thanks--
they brought us tea and everything--and I
was leaving and the lady said, I
wasn't gonna buy anything, so she says,
"here, take one of these as a gift
from us," you know it just doesn't happen
at the University Bookstore here,
but again it was that kind of like,
how do I handle this welcome? I mean it's
just quite nice. When you go to Iran
it is clear from day one that these
people have traded away their freedom
for a theocracy. This really bugs me. I
had the creeps because of the bigness of
government and the lack of freedom.
You know, I say a lot of progressive
things and a lot of people think I'm not
appreciative of freedom.
I am such a fan of freedom, I mean that's
why I travel is to learn and understand
this kind of dynamic better. And there
are reasons
Americans trade away our freedom aren't
there? We've been known to trade away our
freedom,
we've done a lot of it lately. And there
are reasons that Iranians trade away
their freedom. And when I went there, I
realized it's motivated by fear and love.
Okay, they love their kids, they want to
raise them like good Muslims, they are
afraid of encroaching Western values,
they've got reason to be afraid of
Western Imperial culture. I'm not saying
it's right or wrong, I'm just saying I'm
trying to understand what motivates the
country to have a guy like
Ahmadinejad as their president.
There are reasons for this, and I believe
it's fear and love.
Now when you go to Iran, you see how
people love their children. And you hear
them talking about Imam Khomeini,
"revolution
is the revolution of values. It's been a
big catch word in our political
discourse for the last 15 years I think,
family values, right? And family values
can be any number of things. Well in Iran
they don't want their little girls to be
growing up like Britney Spears or Paris
Hilton,
that's what terrorizes these parents. And
they will willingly give up the
separation of mosque and state in order
to have a theocracy knowing they're
going to trade away their freedom, which
they wish they didn't have to, but
they're more--but their concern for
their kids and the environment they're going
to grow up in trumps their need for
freedom,
okay. Again, I just--I don't know what the
answers are, I think it's very complex,
but what strikes me is how little
energy Americans put into understanding
this before just saying, "they're the axis
of evil," and then, "we're the great Satan."
And there's this kind of bombast that we
have to deal with. And the bombast, what
I've learned is, politicians on either
side shoring up their base.
Why would one politician say, "bomb, bomb,
bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," and another one even
from the other party say, "we'll
obliterate Iran if they do this." And then
why would they say, "we'll bomb them out of
existence,"
you know? Who are they talking to? I don't
think they're talking to people in the
other country,
I think they're shoring up their base. So
Ahmadinejad's base is the the small
town, frightened, fundamentalist, less
educated majority of the population in
Iran, I would imagine. When we hear that
discourse I think we've got to
understand that.
And when we look at Iran, I think we've
got to understand that there are ways
where we can have this people that people
get-together that undercuts the fear and
makes it less--makes it tougher for them
to demonize us. But we have to understand
the roots of this. For us, history with
Iran starts--for most of us who aren't
historians--in 1978 or whenever the
hostage crisis is, right?
What did you know about it before that? Just
the Shah, he was our man, a dictator, kind
of a tough guy but at least we got the
oil, right? Well for the Iranians, the
history starts in 1953
with us. And in 1953 is the year
Britain, and the United States, and the CIA
threw out their democratically elected
prime minister.
Why did we throw him out? Because he
nationalized their oil, making it tough
for Western oil companies to get their
hands on Iranian oil. And what they did--
the CIA--and there's no dispute about
this, it's not a liberal sort of claim, it's
just history--
they threw out their prime minister so--
and they put the Shah back into power,
who is friendly to private ownership,
private foreign ownership, of Iranian
natural resources,
okay. That really is hard to swallow for a
lot of Iranians, and for their lifetime
of their parents, from '53 to '78,
they had to live with a guy, the Shah, as
their dictator. Now if you had to live
with the Shah as your dictator and you
were a fundamentalist Muslim, you'd be
really irked at whoever put him and
kept him in power.
I think it'd be natural for you to be
irked. So it's a theocracy,
it's not free, there's no apologies about
it,
it's just not free. They're not anti-freedom,
they're pro-Muslim values,
okay. And you look around and you find the
evidence of that, I mean on every street
corner, liberty, there's an Alms Box for
instance, because Muhammad said, "be
concerned about the poor people." And if
you stick a couple of bucks in here, we
can find the orphanage.
So you find all over Iran these
reminders of the fact that it is a
theocracy.
Now I was interested because I'm interested
in what makes totalitarian governments,
non-free governments, tick. And I relate it a
lot to the Soviet Union. When I was in
Iran I kept thinking about the Soviet
Union.
It's the same pattern, the same tactic,
and it's two different ideologies, one is
motivated for economic ideology,
the other is religious ideology, but you
got the same kind of ways to maintain
control and shape people's minds. In the
United States it's capitalism, materialism,
and everywhere we go in--advertising is
drummed into us. Every billboard--it's
making us buy stuff. Go to the TV
channels--it's making us buy stuff.
Look at the sweatband of some great
athlete--it's making us buy stuff.
Go to an airport and sit in the lo--in a
la--in a gate--
you have to listen to CNN with their
advertising. Try turning one of those TVs
off,
it's illegal, they're getting paid to run
it. So this is us. We are commercial
creatures. You go there, late at night in
the hotel you go through your upper
channels, here you'd see shopping channel,
all this kind of stuff, over there it's
Mecca live.
It's meditational images to pray by, it's
fascinating. You wander around you, don't
feel the energy in the economy because
they're not driven to make money,
they're driven to drum into you their
ideology, which is a theocracy,
it's Islam. Every time you're looking at
a country's political and economic sort
of discourse,
you gotta discount what they're saying
if they're sitting on oil. Any politician,
Hugo Chavez, Sarah Palin, Ahmadinejad, if
they talk to you about tax policies and
what they do for their people, and they
get all this free money from oil,
you gotta discount it, don't you. Well, Ahmadinejad can do all sorts of stuff,
his people don't pay taxes, they don't
need to be efficient, they got money
rolling in from oil.
I just think that is really quite
interesting. When you're out and about
you see billboards, and they're not
advertising billboards,
there's some, but mostly it is propaganda
billboards. All the billboard space is
dedicated to propaganda. Some of it's
religious and some of it is hateful,
okay. This would be pro--I can't read
this but it's probably a guy who died in
the war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein
invaded Iran in the 1980s
and Iran lost a quarter of
a million people, that's a big deal,
that's more than a Vietnam. So this is a
martyr, and you got your religious leader
and your political leader saying, "martyrs
are heroes and they go right to heaven,
and we should all stand strong against
Western imperialism." That's drummed into
them all the time.
Martyrs marching into the setting sun,
it's a beautiful thing
if you die for God and country, you see.
It's driven into a lot of countries I
think, God and country, God and country. We
were on top--we saw--we wanted to
get this one here, this is the famous one.
And we got up on top of a building to
shoot it right, and you've got skulls
for stars and dropping bombs for stripes.
And it's sad to see this,
it hurts me to see this. And I had to
struggle with this in my visit,
and I wondered, "what do they mean, who's
putting this up, what impact does that
have on the people, do people really buy
this stuff," and so on, and it really was a
heavy experience. Some of them say
beautiful things out of the Quran, you
know, "care for your loved ones, take
care of people that are not as fortunate
as you," all that kind of stuff, and then
you got this "great Satan, destroy
Israel," kind of stuff. So
"death to America," what do you make of it? Well
I don't know, that was our mission, to
learn more about this.
I was, on that same day, in traffic, and we
were stuck in another traffic jam, and
suddenly my driver just blurted out,
"death to traffic."
And I mean, I remember going, "what?" I mean,
I was just thinking, "death to Israel,
death to America...death to traffic?" And I
had to ask him, "what's that about?"
And he said, "well in Iran, anytime were
frustrated by something that's, like, out
of our control we say 'death to it.'"
It's in their--it's in their--what do you call
it--lexicon, their jargon, and I thought
about that quite a bit, and I thought
about how many times I've heard people
say,
"damn those teenagers." Do you really mean
you want 'em to die and burn in hell for
eternity?
I don't think so. Now I don't want to
excuse or belittle the whole "death to
Israel" thing at all, but I do think it
behooves us to recognize that it's more
complicated than what some commercial
news
hysteria might pound into our heads, or
some politician that might be playing
into our fears.
We need, as citizens, to expect a little
more of each other than to be wrapped up
in this hysteria
when the consequence of us not getting
it is very expensive.
It's very expensive, and that haunted me
in my 12 days in Iran, the importance
that we sort this out. Because I didn't
really think that people I was meeting
on the streets
look at this stuff and thought, "death to
America," you know. I wanted to know where
are the free spirits in Iran. And I just
thought, I'm going to the university. I went
to the greatest university in Iran, and
we went in there, we had permission, and I
said, "where is the, like, the student union
building?" You know, here at the university you
got the student union building, and
that's where all the action is, and all
the anarchists, and the Communists, and
the hedonists, and the who-knows-what's, and I
went there and it--
this is one of the most discouraging
part of my whole trip, to go to the
University and see nothing but
compliance,
nothing but conformity, nothing but
students who get free education kissing
up to professors that have their jobs
because they embrace the ideology of the
theocracy. And it's happened for 30 years
now. And you've got to think, half of the
people in Iran are less than 30 years
old,
who's writing their textbooks, and what
are those textbooks trying to get them to
think? You add into that the fact that
they're very Western media savvy and
they've got a huge blogosphere and a web
kind of action and they know what's
going on, but still higher education is
very conformist, okay.
People were delightful to talk to, people
very sweet, but when I walked around on
the campus there wasn't a bit of
graffiti,
there wasn't a bit of posters, nothing was
out that wasn't ordained by
the system. Having said that, I've looked
at videos, I've talked to friends in Iran,
and since I got home
there's plenty going on behind the
scenes and very savvy
cosmopolitan, you know, people that that
completely do their own thing, but it's
effectively hidden from the public, and
when you go to university its toe-the-line.
And I really take that as a warning,
if--round--in our country. To me,
the university environment is sacred.
This is where people should be able to
piss off the government, you know. This is
where you should send your kids and they
can learn all the things that you didn't
teach them, just so that they can get
character, and make their choices, and be
self-assured, free-thinking, free
individuals.
I love it when we have that aspect that
carbonates the whole intellectual
discourse and political discourse in our
society. And if you don't appreciate that,
go to a country that doesn't have it and
see what you think, if you had it your
way
completely from top to bottom, it's pretty
boring, it's pretty boring.
Now there's a big issue about women, and
I really wanted to figure this out.
Because you hear about women who have to
cover up, and women who have to go in the
back of the bus, and it just reminds me a
lot of blacks in our country when they
had to sit in the back of the bus and so
on.
So you've got--you going in the subway and you
see, "women only" here. Well the average
American in a quick look would say, "well
that's crummy, women are here, men are there,"
but then you look at it a little more
closely and you realize, well women go
in the men's car,
there's a woman, there's a woman, but men
don't go in the women's car.
I talked to the women there about this, and
they said, "well maybe in New York in the
subway the women would appreciate it if
he had one car that was reserved just
for them,"
and I just thought, "wow, I never thought
of that."
And I would be so quick to judge them
and think they're bad and wrong to have
a car for women, and it's just something
that they have found a different
solution.
It humbles me, every time I get
self-assured I go to a place and I
realize, "oh, there's a different way to
look at it." And I'm so thankful for that,
and I celebrate that, and when I find
people here that don't have passports
that know all the answers about how evil
they are, it really frustrates me.
The state of women in Iran is a matter
of respect. Women do not worship with the
men in the mosque.
Well that's happened in churches and
synagogues also, it's not right now but
we got to be honest about that, and you
read the Bible and it says, "women obey
your husband, and husband respect your
women," and so on,
it's not unique to Islam. When you look
at women there,
some women agree, most don't but many do,
seventy percent of the women,
statistically, would like to have more
freedom to wear what they like in public,
but thirty percent of them think this is
the modest way to be. But the reason
they're told to cover up is out of
respect for women.
Anything can go in the domestic world,
but in public it's different, you see.
Women cannot show the shape of their
body, they can't show hair, and no
neckline. And when you look at the--
my measure of what is the correct woman's
presentation in public is to look at the
women who work for the TV stations in
Iran
Whenever you see somebody is a
spokesperson for the government, she'll
be perfectly attired.
Not a single strand of hair will show, and
a very tight thing here,
you know. Now so there's the--a proper way
for the woman to dress respectfully in
public,
and then there are bad girls that get
away with murder,
with the style, you know. You go on the
street and you see beautiful women who
are out in public pushing it a little
bit.
Now there's no--I never saw a
neckline the whole time I was there,
what you do is, this is what's exciting, a
little bit of hair, all right,
right here, just a little hair. And if--
when nobody--no cameras around, no
authorities are around, the scarf goes
back and the hair comes out. And I found
my eyes going right here.
There's a real weird sort of thing, and I
I just felt like, wow, dig that hair. And
It was, psychologically, it was a trip
because, I mean, I'm a people watcher, I
love looking at men and women when I'm
traveling, and in Iran,
no shape of body, no neckline, no hair,
this is it, this is what it's all about.
So here you see a beautiful--nice
accessories, beautiful hair,
a woman who is looking good on the
street of Tehran.
Why not? You can show your face, let's
make it really good.
They have more nose jobs per capita in
Iran than any other country.
Beautiful people, modest, but they are not
beyond being appealing to the opposite
sex when they're out and about,
it's fascinating stuff to observe. If
you're wealthy, and cosmopolitan, and
Western you will go to the rich part of
Tehran, and there you've got places that
are just as expensive as our fancy
suburbs, you know, and malls, and
everything, and you find people--these
women are--technically they're covered up,
but you'd hardly notice it,
you know, they're pretty decadent, and
they're wealthy, and they can get away
with it.
There's lots of business, and lots of
business metabolism, but because of the
30 year em--old embargo from the United
States, there's no American chains, no
obvious American companies, and no
international banking
I couldn't use my credit card. People--
it's a cash society, people buy cars with
suitcases full of cash there. So
there's this kind of--they just live with it, it's
the American embargo, you know, life--
you just develop it, there's a lot of
countries that have been living with
American embargoes and life goes on. And
if you want to see the elite, you go into
this rich area,
you pay to get into a fancy park, and you
hang out with people who have seen it
all.
Even here, public display of affection
was pretty muted, I think people holding
hands is about it.
That was really quite racy. And it was
fun to talk to these people. By the way,
everybody who is educated, I found spoke
some English.
There was not much of a language barrier
for me there, not because they're
talking to Americans a lot, but it's just
what you learn to talk with people from
other countries.
The country is dry,
there's no alcohol. I thought, "well sure
but I mean on that rooftop garden of my
Intercontinental Hotel in Tehran there's--I can get a beer."
Nope, nothing, okay. So you have something
that feels like a beer, and looks like a
beer, and tastes like a beer , it's malt
beverage, and the local Budweiser guys
have that and they drink it all the time
but it's non-alcoholic beer.
As I mentioned, there--
my impression was a very strict and
effective legislation of morality.
You just don't take drugs, you don't have
easy sex, you don't dress this way, and
that was the impression a visitor gets.
Everybody who knows Iran or lives
in Iran tells me behind--in domestic
quarters, if you know what phone number
to call you can get anything delivered
to your door,
okay. I didn't see any indication of hard
drugs except for one little vial of
something that I saw in a garden there, but
I know that goes on, and it's just sort
of a--there's a parallel world that is
beyond my casual view. The Shah, kind of his
ghost is there, you just feel--everything
that used to be called the Shah Square
or the Shah Mosque is now called Khomeini
Square and Khomeini Mosque, and of course
the Shah used to be on all the money, now
Khomeini is on all the money, so it's
just one radical swing of the pendulum
from the far right dictator to the far
fundamentalist Muslim dictator, basically.
The Shah's palaces are now
museums, and they're showcases to remind
the young people
what a horrible dictator their parents
grew up under. If we were living under
the Shah we'd have his palaces open and
kids would go there on field trips also.
When you go to the the Shah's place, all
the kids dress up from school and go
there. They learn the whole propaganda
line, that "this evil man was put in here
by the United States and he kept us down,
and we had to live this horrible
decadent way because they wanted our
oil and they wanted to make us all like
Christians or all like Jews,
is instead of like good Muslims like we
want to be." I would imagine that's what
gets drilled into their heads and that's
a very interesting problem that we need
to reckon with.
Why are they telling their kids this?
Because a lot of it is understandable, if
not true, that they feel this way. They
were proud to take us to the American
Embassy.
It was like, "when are we gonna go to the
embassy, I'm sure--you're American film
crew you'll want to go to the embassy," and
of course we did,
and of course this is what most
Americans know about Tehran, is the
embassy. 19--what was it--78, the kid--the
students--'78, '79, the students came in and
took--overran it, and they took 50 or 60
Americans hostage, held 'em hostage for four
hundred and some days. We remember it
quite well I think. It's an interesting
thing, this whole hostage crisis,
I think it's interesting to talk to
locals there about why, what motivated
them, and so on. A lot of people think they wanted
to radicalize the revolution. It could
have been a moderate revolution but if
they antagonize the United States and
polarized it--it's what happens in
revolutions, certain characters want to
make it more radical, and you do that by
blasting out the middle. If you humiliate
the United States, you make United States
more angry at us, it's easier to demonize
the United States, and everybody runs to
the extremes,
all right, that's what happened there I
believe, and that radicalized the
revolution. And that was 30 years ago,
today most Iranians were not even born
at that time, and it still is part of
their psyche.
When we went there, they had the graff--
the graffiti, the murals, the political
murals on the walls, quite clear. They've
got the chipped out flag--
you know, embassy medallion, and so on. And
you look at all these horrible images
mixing United States, and war, and killing, and
Israel, and all this, and you look at the
young people walking to work by it every
day, and you wonder what is--is this is white
noise for these people?
Or do they look at it and does it really
make them go, "yeah death to America?"
My hunch is young people just have to
get on with it, you know. It's just like a
lot of kids will do whatever they--you
say--tell them to do at church or at school and
they just mouth it or something,
and do they really think about those
words? You just gotta say it. And in Iran
I'm sure the kids just gotta say,
"death to Israel." And you even feel it's a
little bit of a limp wrote response when
they could do this, but it's propaganda
top down, and it kind of gets, I think--is
they get numb to it after a while, that's my
hunch.
It is sure good, vivid imagery, when I
travel I really enjoy seeing the power
that political murals can do for
whatever cause they're trying to
represent. And here of course you see the
grip of the world as the American Empire
controls everything, we've got military
bases in a hundred and thirty countries,
we got--we spend as much as everybody
else in our military put together, and
you can get elected in America without
spending more, and Israel as the 51st
state,
you know. There's all of this stuff that
the people are going to hear.
And when you combine that with vivid
imagery that Al-Jazeera can put together,
it's quite believable that there is a
great Satan out there that has its
sights set on Iran. And why does Pakistan
get a bomb and they don't, you know, I'm
certainly not justifying, just telling you it's
not an easy issue just to tell people, "just
make do,
just be compliant, we'll be good to you,
we promise." You know, it doesn't sell very
well because there's not a lot of
credibility.
So this is the guy, Khomeini, that replaced
the Shah, and he's on all the money today.
I grew up thinking Khomeini was this
scary, scary, mean, never smiling, you know,
guy, and you get there and you---
he's a--he has a different persona among
about Muslims in Iran.
He's an approachable, wise, lovable, elder.
And I felt--people told me that and I
said yeah right,
I went to his mosque where he's buried,
and on certain days there's a million
people in his mosque, we were there on a very
quiet day, and there's
such casual ambiance in the mos--I've never
seen it in a mosque before, kids were
kicking the soccer ball,
families were having a little picnic, old
men were sitting reading all day right
next to his tomb, and it--
I don't understand Khomeini's appeal,
and I don't think most Americans do. He's
just easy to put on TV and hate.
But there must be something about him
that appeals to frightened, less educated,
fundamentalist, small town Muslims in
Iran.
This is his tomb here, this is all money,
and we headed outside.
We wanted to get out of the big city, and
we were looking for a slice of life
stuff in the countryside. And, you know,
it's everywhere. It was so fun just to
stop and talk to a shepherd. It's a scene
right out of ancient times, you know, and
we had a good time filming that. And then
went to a village called Abyaneh,
a very hot and dusty sort of world.
This town was quite famous with tourists
for having two different knockers on
every door. And one knocker was for men,
and one knocker was for women.
Now what's with that? And then I learned,
well if you're a woman inside and you
hear the knock and it's a woman,
great, get up and answer the door, no
problem. If it's a man, you got to get all
fixed up in order to answer the door.
It's just a very practical way to tell
who's knocking. In this town
I was having so much fun with the people,
and I'm telling you it was just a
delight to be on the streets of Iran. And
in this village I'll never forget the
tourists from Tehran, the wealthy, big time,
local tourists were coming to this
village just like we were. And the local--
the Iranian tourists, they were kind of
put off because the villagers would not
let the big city Iranians take their
photograph, but they would love to take
their photograph with an American. And
they're all just clowning around with me,
an America, and so on, and it was just a
very interesting, the dynamic there. But
we found--again, we found a nice welcome
where we went. People in Iran love to put
out flags, there's flags everywhere, and
what they do is they have huge
collections of flags, and I think it's
their way of just excluding the United
States, and Britain, and Israel.
I noticed the only time you see
an American flag is on a mural, one of
those things I just showed you.
I mentioned that because of the American Embargo
there's no international banking, so
you got ATMs but they're only for local
people.
There's a lot of rials in one dollar,
10,000 rials equals one dollar. So I think a
hundred dollars makes a million rial,
then. And this is Abdi, our tour guide and
my friend, and I was amazed when he paid
hotel bills, it was like how many zeros
are you counting there? And Abdi--we'd count it
double and everything, and Abdi
explained to me that the country doesn't
meant big bills, local banks do or
something, and you've got to make sure
it's for real,
and one way to tell is you rub the
number and the heat of your finger
makes the number disappear, and then it
comes back and that would be not
counterfeit.
Here we have the greatest view, from a
sightseeing point of view I would say, in all of Iran.
This is the great Imam Square in
Isfahan, clearly the most exciting city to
see in Iran if you're a sightseer,
glorious tile mosques, wonderful grand bazaar,
a lot of people have been to the grand
bazaar in Istanbul,
this puts that to shame, because there's
nothing for tourists, it's all just for
real people doing their real shopping.
And you go through here and it's just a
carnival of color, and fragrance, and
friendly people, and, you know, people just
doing their chores. Persian carpets, great
opportunity, real frustrating for them
because they love to sell them to
America but it's very tough with the
embargo, there's creative ways to get
around it but this embargo is for real
for Iran, but you look at the people
and you just feel, I want to be this
man's friend.
I just really want to understand these
people. I was impressed in Iran how
there's not that many little places to
eat and drink. You go to a huge mall or a
bazaar and it's hard to find any place
to sit down and eat or drink, and I don't
quite know why, but we had to look
carefully to find little tea houses
hiding away where we could sit down and
a little break. Part of it is just
there's not a lot of extra money
floating around for that kind of thing.
Now here we have Abdi and Sayeed
discussing something, and this for me was
really interesting, because we wanted to
get all the good stuff, and we had to--
Sayeed was on our side, but he was also--he had to
explain what's possible and what's not
because it's complicated. It's just--you
know, you're an international film crew,
you can't go in there and so on. And one of
the big deals for me,
I wanted to shoot a prayer service. I
mean, the odd thing when you're in Iran,
it's not that clear that this is a
theocracy, you don't see a lot of minarets,
you don't hear a call to prayer like you
do in Istanbul or Morocco,
it's kind of odd. And when I look at the
people,
this is just my take on this, I thought
was very ironic,
they've got a top-down, ordained, theocracy,
you gotta be faithful, you know. And I
felt there was a lot of lip service to
the religion. I didn't feel a vibrant,
strong, grassroots kind of faith like I
felt in other secular Islamic countries,
where I just felt a lot of strong, from
the heart or from the gut, Muslim faith.
I'm not sure about this, but I do think
there's an interesting irony. If you are
a passionate Christian, and you wish
everybody thought like you did, and you
had a chance to make your government a
Christian government so the kids would
have to pray in school, and they'd all
have to dress right, and everybody would
celebrate the same holidays, because you
care about people's salvation.
I'm just telling you, I think the ironic
result of that is you'd have a country
that was less faithful than if you just
educated people, and gave people reason
to live their lives the way God wanted
them to be lived.
That's the beauty of the separation of
church and state, even if you're a
Christian ideologue, and that's the
pragmatic rightness of the separation of
mosque and state if you're a Muslim
ideologue. Interesting to think about.
So we went to the big mosque.
I went there wanting to look at it as a
wor--a generic worship service. And it was
clear to me, you could edit it in a way
that it would look menacing, or you can
edit it in a way that it would look like,
essentially like my church service
that I go to Sunday here,
okay. And it was clear to me as a TV
producer, you can have an agenda and
bring home what you want. You can take
pictures of people bowing down and cut
in guerillas jumping over barbed wire, and
laying on jihadist music, and you get
yourself one scary Muslim clip. You could
do the same thing with Christians if you
wanted to and they do, you see.
Or you could go there and film it the
way I wanted to film it, which is more just
neighborhood worship service.
Well this is the big mosque, we went there
as tourists, and all the rugs were
rolled up, it just felt like a chaotic
parking lot kinda, and I just couldn't
even envision it full of people. And the
next day,
all the rugs were laid out
properly, and the place was filled with
worshippers. In Islam when you have a big
prayer service on Friday you got
soldiers, because--it's just an indication
of the tension in the Muslim world these
days, if there's going to be some angry,
you know,
fringe group that's going to shoot up
some other Muslim group they don't like,
it's probably gonna be at a mosque, so
they're always going to be worshipping
with soldiers standing guard. It's not as
prevalent until everybody bows down and then
you see the soldiers standing there,
okay. So we want through all of these
thousands of people worshipping halfway
through the service, and we set up our
tripod in the corner and just watched. It
was fascinating for me because we had
to stand there for over an hour, and I
just kept thinking how much this is like
my church service.
There's a sermon that goes too long,
there's
people bowing, there's passing of the piece,
you know, there's anxious little kids
pulling on their dads finger to go,
and there's people whose cell phones
go off and they go "oh darn, I should've turned
that thing off before the service,"
there's people catching my eye contact
and winking, and clowning around, and it
just was very much like a church.
Everybody was dressed up, you know, the
moms were on the other side of the
curtain there because they have their
zone where they prayed.
Why do women pray apart from the men?
Well praying is very physical in Islam.
So we're there filming this, and people
are praying. And I asked my friend
Abdi, "what does this say?" And it says
"death to Israel."
So you got this top-down propaganda
raggin' on these people, and you got the
soldiers, you got the tension, and you've
got people that just want to praise God
according to their faith.
It was fascinating to watch the whole
dynamic and the friendly vibe I got
there. I got a real friendly vibe
standing there, and I felt rude walking
in there, not one of--in their faith,
I'm obviously a Christian instead of a
Muslim with a big camera and we're just
taking pictures of them, and they
welcomed us there,
and afterwards everybody shakes hand with
the cleric, like we shake hands with
the pastor on the way out of church, and
everybody gathers in the narthex for
coffee and cookies, right? Well here it
would be mulberries, and to talk with
the neighborhood, and they've got--because
it's so hot they've got a big courtyard, but
everybody there is the same conviviality
after the Friday mosque prayer service, as
you'd have in this Sunday morning in a
church.
So you got the old-timers shaking the
tree, and you've got a big sheet here
gathering the mulberries, and the kids
were scrambling for the berries, and
everybody catching up on what's going on
with the neighborhood, and hear about
so-and-so got into school, and what about
your grandma,
it was just that kind of neighborhood
scene after the mosque. I thought it was
quite a charming situation.
The cleric was all excited that we were
there, he came running over and wanted to
talk,
he spoke English quite well, and you know it was just a very
poignant experience for me to witness that.
Afterwards, you know, people got all
dressed up, and it was there Sunday go
out for prayer or Friday go to prayer
thing, and then they take pictures of the
kids, and be thankful that their family is
healthy, and feel good about worshiping
God.
Now when you go to Iran, there's two
different reli--sects in the Muslim
world,
Shia and Sunni. Eighty-five percent of
the Islamic world is Sunni, fifteen
percent are Shia. The only real Shia power
is Iran. And Iraq is--we know--we're
learning about this now--is mostly Shia,
but it was ruled by Sunni Saddam,
a minority who was the heavy head guy who
keep his majority down, and that was not
sustainable.
Today you're going to have a Shiite Iraq
and a Shiite Iran, and they are going to
be, you know, natural allies because
they're like Protestants in the Catholic
world or something like this.
People ask, "is their religious freedom in
Iran?" And I wanted to know what's the
deal, because I've got Baha'i friends
who can't go to Iran because they'll get
killed, or they'll be in danger if they
go to Iran.
I asked my guides, I asked the Iranians
that I met.
Yes, there is religious freedom, as long
as you are not blasphemous to Muhammad,
and Mohammed says he is the last prophet.
So if your profit, like Jesus, is before
Mohammed, he's okay.
Jesus is 600 years before Mohammed, no
problem. In fact, Jesus and lots of Bible
characters are revered in the Muslim
faith.
Bahá'u'lláh, who is the prophet of Baha'i people,
is from the 19th century long after
Muhammad. He's not okay.
By their religion, they are offended by a
prophet who's after Muhammad.
Okay, that's their religion. And they've got
a theocracy, and you cannot be a Baha'i in
Iran.
Now, I don't think that's okay, but they
live by that and that's something that
they're not going to change.
What do we do? That's a tough question. If
I was a Baha'i, I'd get out of there, you
know, and find some other place, but I
don't know, it's just, that's the reality.
I asked my guide then, ok it's really
just read unless you're Baha'i? In practice,
if I'm a Christian or a Jew can I get
anywhere in society?
He said yeah, I said what about the
military or the government,
he said well no, then you have to be a Muslim.
I said a Shiite Muslim? He said yes.
Practicing Shiite Muslim? Yes. Okay, so if
you want to get anywhere in the military or
the government,
you got to be that religion. Now a lot of
Americans think that's disgusting, and
then can you imagine
a Muslim candidate for the
president of the United States? No you can't,
it's not allowed here.
Just like a Christian is not allowed
there to be their president, you see, I
mean that's the honest truth, isn't it.
So we can be appalled at this stuff, but
we got to take a hard look at ourselves
and we got to understand what motivates
their strong feelings.
There's some beautiful, beautiful things
to see in Isfahan, and as Karel and Simon
were working I had a lot of time to work
on my notes, and so on. I'd be sitting down,
trying to find a private place to
mind my own business, working on my
papers and stuff, and invariably people
come over and want to talk.
At first I was annoyed, and then I
realized, this is a delight, I've got--
everywhere I go in Iran I've got friends,
people that are well-educated, curious,
and confused about America, they want to
talk. If I look up, I got all these guys
just looking down at me,
"hi where are you from?" "Alright, we'll
talk," you see, and it was just a beautiful,
beautiful thing,
and many times I wished I wasn't working
so I could just have fun with all these
people. If you ever want to go to Iran
just on your own and have some fun,
you'll meet lots of people, I can promise
you that. I'm sure if you have free time
you would have no shortage of fun people
to hang out with while you're traveling.
And when I look at these little girls,
and I see their self-assuredness and
their body language,
I celebrate them. I just hope the best
for them, and I want to have them not be
afraid of the rest of the world, because
I don't think they have any aggressive
intentions,
I just think they want to be able to
live the way their culture wants
them to live.
We did a lot of walking around in the
street talking to people, I found
people were, you know, happy to clown
around with us and talk, I had to be
careful because we're more casual and
there's certain things you don't do, it's
just implied and puts people in
awkward situations. I found that the
mannequins even had to cover their heads.
And we went down to the river and that's
where life really got relaxed and fun.
I really enjoyed going down the river
because it seems like people are much
more casual and candid there. They have a
six or eight or ten mile long park
on either side of the river, and in the
late of the day when it gets cool,
twilight, everybody's out. It's gotta
be one of the most beautiful ambiances,
you know, that you find just as people
paseo kind of stuff I've seen
anywhere in my travels. And we had plenty of
chances to talk to people, and then we
went to a martyrs cemetery.
I mentioned the Iran-Iraq war, they lost,
nobody knows exactly, but there was a
million casualties in the war between
Iran and Iraq, a million. And the West--
their front was a lot like the Western
Front I believe in WWI, it was
that kind of hellish situation, and Iran
lost a couple hundred thousand boys
fighting Saddam Hussein,
interestingly enough. Every town in Iran
has a martyred cemetery, and if you want
a powerful experience, as an American, go
to their martyrs cemetery. And there you
see all these flags flapping, and all
these beautiful faces, and all of the
loved ones without their dads or
whatever, and very poignant to me was this
image of a mother sitting on her son's
tomb. And I looked at that and I just thought, "it
doesn't matter whose side she's on,
this is a horrible situation." And I just
thought that is
an amazing tragedy. We filmed that, we
filmed--
there's also a place for the unknown
soldiers. A lot of mothers don't know
where their son ended up, so they also
mourn, but they sit on tombs that don't
have a photograph, and don't have a flag,
thinking about their lost boy. And I just
was a very powerful experience, and it
was odd to be an American there with a
film crew,
welcomed by these people who were
mourning like it happened last year.
There was no problem with us being there,
people invited us to eat with them on
the tombs of their dead sons. And it
occurred to me then, that it's very
important that we do not underestimate
the spine of other people.
It's so easy for us to say we'll shock
and awe them, you know.
We'll shock and awe 'em, as if one big
thunderous bombing is going to make them
all give up and let us tell them how to
raise their kids.
I don't think they will. I had a very,
very well-educated, impressive woman
cross the street,
come right up to me, and said, "I want you
to go home and tell your people that we
are strong, and we are united, and I want
you to tell the truth,"
you know. These people are proud. I saw so
much constructive, get on with life,
raise your kids, get an education, build
your community,
good people, and I thought, "in one day we
could radicalize these people and all of
a sudden have 70 million enemies sworn
to fight us to the death.
I cannot stress the power I felt for
these people would be willing to just
fight until the last man was dead on
whatever front was there.
There's gotta be a more constructive
way to get around the problems and
that's the challenge that we have ahead
of us, but they're not going to be easy.
We talked about this stuff as we drove,
we spent a lot of time driving, and
here's Karel, and Sayeed,
and Abdi, and me, we're just debating
these issues, it is so interesting.
We drove down a long stretch where there
was huge security, they bulldozed a big
mound of dirt so we couldn't see
anything past that, and that's where
their nuclear power plants were, and all
that action. And our guide said, "keep your
camera's down,
you shoot a picture here and we're
in big trouble," you know, and I believed him,
it was not allowed to take pictures of
that. As we drove around, we found rich
cultural heritage going back thousands
of years.
Marco Polo times, Silk Road time, Ancient
Persia time, this was a caravanserai.
Every camels walk--days camels hike apart,
there'd be a Motel 6, alright, with a
good safe garage, a restaurant, and a
little nightclub,
okay, all within a nice fortified--whatever
you do when you circle the wagons, okay.
Think about that, if you were those Marco
Polo guys with all that good stuff from China
coming back to Europe,
every day's march should have one of
these, and to go there and to be thinking
about what that was like was really fun.
On the field across the street from the
caravanserai, I saw this guy who was
whipping these stones with a sling,
exactly like David had for Goliath, it was a
biblical seen that we saw there, and this
guy was like a little teenager whipping
rocks across his bar--about his barley
field all day long, keeping the birds off.
And it was just fun to watch, that
timeless scene. In the middle of his field
he had a modestly attired scarecrow,
and as we were driving it was fun just to
stop in little towns that never saw an
American or a foreign film crew and get
out and shoot whatever we could shoot.
Here is Karel shooting the the bakery, and
people would come and pick up their bread for
the day. For the whole first week I was
so excited about everything, I was
running back to our friend who's the bus
driver and I would call him Najaf, I
think, and I would be going like this,
"yeah, we got it, you know, hurray, we got it,
that was really good," and then later he said, "my
name is not Najaf that's a city in
Iraq,"
it's something else and I forget his name.
And then--and this is the same as in your
country giving somebody the finger.
So for the rest of the trip we are both
doing this at each other
as just a little joke. But when you go
Tehran, cut this out okay, it's not
going to help you. Our driver was so
thoughtful, and you know they don't have
enough money to take you over to
Starbucks but they've always got their
little kit there for your tea or coffee,
and we'd have little breaks like that, or
donuts at the end of a long day of work.
And you know in my work in Europe I'm
always looking for the untouristy places,
in Iran I wanted the touristy places, alright,
give me a touristy restaurant, alright.
And our guide was good at finding us
touristy restaurants and we'd eat very well,
and Sayeed was--I still don't know why--he
was filming us the whole time.
It's got to be the most boring little
home video he's got. And we came to
Persepolis. I went through Iran back in the
19--late 1970s, just in the last
days of the Shah, and I--my big regret was
I didn't get down to Persepolis. All my
life I've been neglect--regretting
that, I've built it up in my mind, it's
one of these sites that, you know, you
know that when you get there it's going to
be a little bit of an anti-climax.
I finally got there and it did not
disappoint, it exceeded my wildest
expectations. Persepolis is the greatest
ancient site between the Mediterranean
and India. And when you go there today you
find this ugly tarmac out in front with
these gross
parking lot kind of lighting at this
great site, what's going on?
Well this is the remnants of the Shah's
extravagant party in 1971 or something
like that, remember that, when he invited
Aristotle Onassis and all the big shots,
flew 'em into in Persepolis, which is really
out in the nowhere, and he flew in dinner
from all the fanciest restaurants
in Paris, and it was this most
extravagant display of wealth
you can imagine, and it was really
considered by historians the beginning of
the end of the Shah, because when he did
that, the terrible poverty in his society
looked at that and they said, "this man has got to
go." So I think they leave that there
as a reminder, because when we met
Iranians that were going to Persepolis,
they were going there to sort of
celebrate their roots, their Persian
roots. And when you remember when you're
talking to the Iranians,
first of all they're not Arabs, they're
very clear about this,
they're Persians, they don't speak Arabic.
Most Americans think they speak Arabic.
No, they speak Farsi. And when you talk
to them they make it really clear, I mean
it's not the Gulf of Arabia, it's the
Persian Gulf,
you know, they told us that
many times. And their greatest
experience is to really communicate the
greatness of their culture by going back
to the days of Xerxes and Persian Empire in 500 years
BC, and people come here. And we saw
people like this who were, you know,
having a great national holiday of their
own by going to the roots of their great
civilization which was not a Muslim, but
it was Zoroastrian, which is a Mon--they say it's the first
the first monotheistic religion.
You look at the tombs of these great
emperors and they are on the scale,
really, of the Pharaohs in Egypt. And it's
just--it blew me away to go there and check
out all this. Here's where we saw a lot
of Western tourism. Traveling to Iran is
a lot like a Cuban cigar.
You know, it's a big deal for an American
but everybody else does it routinely. The
Lonely Planet guide to Iran is a big
seller,
they just came out with a new addition. I
don't think you'll meet many Americans that buy it,
but you know Canadians, Germans, Australians,
Brits, they go there in droves. Now Iran
today is a lot like the Soviet Union
from a tourist point of view. They want
tourism, they want the money, they want
the exposure to the West, when we asked
for permission to film they recognize
they get a bad shake from the press, they
wanted us to give them a good shake, you
know, that's why they let us in. And they
want tourism, they actually do, but they
don't get how to make tourism, and you
have to take a tour. If you're a
Westerner you got to take a tour like
you used to do with the Soviet Union,
it's the same kind of fear of having
Westerners roaming around on their own,
unless you got relatives or something.
You met a lot of tour groups here. They
would always have their scarves on, and
it would always have their local guide.
You met a lot of younger travelers with
their Lonely Planet book that had a
guide having tea somewhere, just because
you have to have a guide, but they would
turn him loose and they would do their own
thing. From Persepolis, our last stop was
going to Shiraz, and Shiraz is a city with
a rich history, a great market,
wonderful chance to get out and see the
people, but what is most important about
Shiraz
is the tombs of its poets. And when you
go to Iran you realize there's almost a
religion for the great poets of that
society, and flowery beautiful poets of
of love really,
and people go on--it's like dressing up
on a Sunday afternoon to go to some
great cultural center.
The people in Shiraz would go there and
they'd sit over the pond and meditate, or
read the poet--the poems of their
favorite
poet at his tomb. And that was a very
powerful little glimpse of a--the--society
that I really didn't--I still don't
understand very well.
Everybody told me, if you're going to eat
well in Iran it's going to be in
somebody's home. And we wanted to get
into somebody's home but it's scary to
have an American film crew come into
your home.
I wanted to see everybody kick back and
relax and doing their own thing, which
happens, but as soon as you take the
camera into their home,
it's like you're outside, you know what I
mean, everybody is dressed modestly and on
good behavior,
it's just the cultural norm. So we went
into this very gracious home, and this
man is quite wealthy, he's got a couple
of shops, and the women had to wear their
scarves, and we have a glorious dinner,
and they just pulled out all the stops.
We got to meet the kids, and, you know, it's
a wealthy home and it felt very much like
a wealthy home in the United States. And
this is really a cool scene for me, I
just thought, "okay, the company has worn out
its welcome, when are these people going to
go home,
I think I'll just curl up on the big
chair in the TV room." It could happen in
in suburban America, just like in a fancy
home in Shiraz.
Well from there we flew back to Tehran,
and it was like coming home after being
away from Tehran for 10 days or
something, and it was great to wrap things
up there, we were thankful to have all of
our gear in one piece, all of our footage,
and flew out of there, and came home with
a lot of powerful memories, and the
determination to help our country better
understand that country.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you very much, okay, thank you.
