Ab

'Khodaadaad' means 'god has given everything to us' in Farsi. It's written on a water pump out in the pistachio fields of Anar.









Water. In Iran they gave the life-giving liquid the name of an alphabet. Alpha Beta: Ab. Language: the essence of life to some philosophers. My friend Ali Hadi, who is a pistachio farmer in Anar, doesn't speak much. But he knows the importance of water. No water, no pistachio. For him, water means life. In a shed near his pistachio fields he has a generator that keeps a water pump going. The water streams from the pump into a basin, and from there it gets distributed out into the fields through ditches and small canals. Like this they have managed to keep these trees alive for more than fifty years. Ali has inherited the trees, he is 29 just like me.


(Pictures: Ali Hadi and one of his pistachio trees)

Somehow I keep on meeting 29 year old's on my travel. It interests me to see what they do; how they make life worthwhile. Hans (29) from Norway: headhunter and traveller. We share a lot and since our first meeting in Yazd we have had many a meaningful conversation. He goes north and then takes a plane to India, but I know we'll meet again. Then Ali Hadi, cyclist and farmer. He showed me Anar, its historical castle, the pizza joint on main street, and fixed some of my problems. Got me a new bicycle repair set and tried to find me new cycle gloves (I incinerated my old ones after a storm; never dry textile gloves with 'gel cushions' on a gas stove). The leather ones that the sports shop had on offer didn't fit my hands. That night however, in a gesture of unconditional friendliness that's characteristic of Iranians, his friend Ibraheem gave me a pair of fiery red Shimano gloves, worthy successors for the blue ones I've been using up to now. Probably only available in a few big cities (so far away from Anar) and only if you're lucky. Ibraheem is a cyclist too, but he thought I needed them more. And besides, he's more into Karate at the moment, as he insisted when I told him that I could not accept his gift.
And today, on the boat ride back to mainland Iran, I met with Abtin (29) from Bandar Abbas. Like most of the guys I've met throughout the last couple of months he studied civil engineering, apparently a safe choice in Iran (not much use for political science for instance). He now works in some petrochemical industry. And like most of the guys I've met, he would like more freedom. "Frankly", he told me, "I'm bored as fuck." No excitement. He invited me to his garden in Minab. It's about 100 kilometres east from where I am at the moment, so on the way. Tomorrow I'll meet him there.
A lot of trifles to say that I meet many 29 year old's and that I get the sense of a generation. We've lived long enough to know what we like and what we don't like, have had our first experience with working life, our first bit of money, and all of us try to figure out how to spend it so that it satisfies.


(Picture: Ali Hadi buys cycles in bits and pieces and assembles them himself)

I've been wary to write anything critical on this blog - as I cryptically put it in the introduction of one of my first entries in Iran: 'e-walls have ears' - afraid of the consequences for my visa extension and another visit of the revolutionary guard, the basij, who searched my believes and belongings on a long, dark night when I was cycling from Mashhad to Tehran. But now that I secured my final extension and am on my way out, I'd like to say a few words about freedom, 'azadi' in Farsi.
No freedom of expression for instance, what does that mean? Well, that you cannot make the music you like to make. See movies that you want to see (or make them, as the arrest of Jafar Panahi today shows). Read a newspaper with 'news' in the true sense of the word. Use Facebook.. But it is more than this. It is also not being able to be the person you like to be. Or being with the person that you like to be with. Internet-dating is very popular in Iran; secretly in internet shops people make contact with one another. Contact that out in the open is unthinkable.
Going out, another void in Iranian society. Apart from some dreary fast food joints, there's not much that resembles a bar. There were some tea houses in Esfahan, where youngsters used to gather and smoke qalyan (water pipe) but they've been closed. There's a bowling alley here and there, but what if you don't like bowling? Young guys, frustrated because they can't meet girls or have a drink together, resort to driving around on their motorbikes. Or they start using rubbish like 'crystal', a synthetic drug that looks like sugar. Of course there's the age old usage of opium, but I've got the impression that it's more the elderly men that enjoy this mind-altering drug.
The encompassing problem in Iran, to my mind, is the fear what 'the other', be it the neighbour or an informant, or some complete stranger that you will never meet again in your life (but maybe in the next!) might think. This fear is fueled by the religious fanaticism of some (if you don't do this, you're not a good muslim, if you do that, you're not a good muslim..). All this creates distrust. Distrust of the clerical regime towards the people inside Iran and the Iranian diaspora outside (who might like to see friends and family every once in a while). Distrust of the people towards the mullahs. Of parents towards their children. Of men towards women. Women towards men. Married people towards singles. Among neighbours and strangers. It's a suffocating grip.


(Picture: fisherman making a net)

But back to water. In the desert around Yazd and Anar they know how to deal with shortage. They have water houses, that look a bit like igloos, but are constructed of heated mud instead of frozen ice, and designed to keep water cold instead of people warm. But essentially they also do just that, they keep people warm, alive. And then there are the 'qanats', irrigation systems, wells and reserves. All measured ways of dealing with the water on offer. But what if there's water in abundance, as is the case with heavy weather? The desert soil is solid like rock after it has been backing for months during summer. So when the thunderstorm came a few days back the valleys inundated within the hour.


(Picture: water storage on Qeshm island.)

Luckily I did not have to paddle through these mud streams. A few hours earlier I reached one of those moments where you suddenly think, what on earth am I doing? This happened on road 71, 30 kilometres outside Anar. I thought it would be a nice and quiet secondary road to Bandar Abbas, but it turned out to be Iran's most dangerous road. It is designed as a one lane in each direction, secondary road (although they are busy upgrading it to two times two lanes) but it bears all the cargo that is offloaded in Iran's main port, Bandar Abbas. So heavy road transport roaring in both directions. On top of this I was fighting a hurricane like headwind, that from time to time (on winding roads uphill) came from the side. I didn't feel safe. Hitchhiked a bit with a pick-up, but they didn't go further than the nearest building side. Again I was drudging against the wind, trying to balance myself on 20 centimeters of asphalt, while containers of IRISL (Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines) and China Shipping pass me by an inch. Madness.
Moments like these create guardian angels. This time they were called Mohammad and Layla. Mohammad, an ex-cyclist, who speaks English (with a lovely Indian accent: "water is there"), knows about the world, and likes his wife to know too. Layla is curious, so when they passed me, she urged her husband to stop. Where I was going and if I wanted a ride? Hitching rides, it feels like cheating normally, but this time, with the dark clouds in- and outside my head, I said "YES!" This wasn't just 'a ride'. This was 450 kilometres down south, and a bed upon arrival. Fantastic. Their sons Ali Reza and Hamid Reza were sleeping quietly next to me, and on the tunes of Metallica and the Cranberries (they honestly slept through that without opening their eyes once) we cruised to the harbor.
We passed a hailstorm that caused floods. We saw lightning bolts and heart thunder that made Layla crawl up to Mohammad and cover her head underneath his armpit. Mohammad kept the speed below 80, so that the smallish Saipa didn't aqua-plain us from the road.


(Picture: invited for fishermen's tea. Strong stuff! (The Dutch will read the commercial of Fishermen's friends in this line.) Full of sugar, this sailor's set of teeth was just as eroded as many of the hilltops that crown the island of Qeshm.
I love this picture. The look, the posture (not posed, the man just went about his business as if I wasn't there); the backdrop of badgirs (wind towers) that decorate the village of Laft. You can see the cross-over between African, Arabian and Persian that makes this region so interesting.)

Another ground for me accepting their offer, is that it would free up space to take other roads in the time that I've got left. Daniel, my friend the pick-up driver, had told me the road along the coast to the border with Pakistan is just the ticket for anyone who likes to leave the beaten track (the road from Yazd to Kerman to Bam) and experience desolation. It appealed to me, so now that I'm no longer facing the tunnels and mountains in between Iran's central desert and the coast, I can use my time to see some of the coastal life of Baluchistan.


(Picture: fishermen at the south coast of Qeshm; before they arrived I was swimming naked, thinking that I was the only one who made it this far out. Luckily they drive motorcycles and not bicycles, so that I could hear them coming from a mile away.)


(Picture: 'having a rest in the oasis against the date palm'-view)

But a story about ab isn't complete without the Persian Gulf. The last couple of days I've spend on Qeshm, Iran's largest island in this straight between Arabia and Persia (the two quarrel about the name, should it be called Persian or Arabian Gulf?). It was great even though my mood was tested a couple of times by the weather. The island turns into an Turkish bath house during summer (some 40 degrees and a humidity of more than 80 percent), but winter is acceptable, with temperatures in the high twenties and a humidity of just above 50 percent. On average, they see about three storms a year here. I must have had the honour to be in all three of them. Tenting. The first night on the island, it hit me when I was just pitching my tent. It became a classical race against the drops. Fast-fast putting the poles, getting all my packs inside, bicycle underneath an inclining dune, Koen inside the tent. Soaked. It was a moment in which I realised that I've grown inside this trip, 'cause being all wet inside a tent that is also wet and that has trouble to stay into place and not being washed away with the nails, would have seriously annoyed me in the beginning. Now I shrug my shoulders, closed my eyes and watched the lightning. And sitting like this, I felt my cloths becoming dry again. The intensity of the drops on the outer lining of my tent diminished and with this sound of water fading out, the other sound of water, that of the waves washing on shore, fading in. There aren't many sounds as soothing as the sounds of waves on a beach. Maybe the breath of the person you love, but I cannot think of anything else.



The next day the sun shone as if it had never seized to do so (and it hadn't, it just wasn't visible for me for quite some time). I cycled southwestwards, crossing villages with names as 'Suza' and seeing the asphalt road upgrade into a 'dirt' road. I prefer to call it real road, a real road with real challenges. It had been washed away in some parts, leaving crater like holes. Some bits were muddy, causing constipation between my tires and mudguards. But it brought me to beautiful rocks, worn out by millennia of erosion. Some of these mountains look like waves of sand. Lifted on one end like a see-saw the northwestern part of the island seems to be a continuation of the sea made of sand.
I camped on a fantastic lonely beach, once more taking in the lovely sound of gushing water on sand and shells.


(Picture: fisherman who was mending his boat with fiberglass and glue, with his bare hands as you can see when you enlarge the picture.)

I felt like writing today, the words flew from my fingers. I know, long story and thanks for reading it to the end. I wanted to show more photo's, but somehow this doesn't work again. Hopefully it is easier to share images in Pakistan (who am I kidding).
Goodbye for now. Maybe I get to write to you in Zahedan, maybe the next time will be somewhere deep down in Pakistan were security measures will dictate my itinerary. Luckily I've still got a big bag of pistachio, gifted by Ali Hadi for the ride. They've proved to be a good companion for when the going gets tough.