My Introduction to Iran (edit July 2023)

In the spring of 1975, I decided to return to explore more of Turkey and head further east
into Asia. I walked across the main border crossing between Turkey and Iran,
about 30 km east of Doğubeyazit, where I recall little children hurling stones at
me as I made my way through their town carrying my heavy backpack. Although I had made it to the
border by bus and dolmuş (a shared taxi), I had no idea what I would use for
transportation once in Iran. Not spotting any buses or taxis, I decided to try
hitchhiking and within minutes, I found myself in the cab of a large dump truck. Before
climbing into the seat, the driver motioned for me to put my backpack in the empty bed
behind the driving compartment.

Once we were on our way, something both unexpected and unwanted happened. The driver put his
arm around me to draw me closer to him and began to stroke my leg. I laughed, something I usually did in awkward situations, at least as an initial reaction. Of course I was thinking: ‘could this
be true, this burly truck driver, the first person I encounter inside Iran is trying to put the
make on me?’. In a nervous but friendly smiling way, I pulled away from him, trying
my best not to panic lest that create an even more complicated situation. After-all, I
couldn’t just try and open the door and get out since my backpack was in the bed-box and I
would have to climb in to retrieve it.

Fortunately, the driver didn’t force himself on me, and after a few more kilometers, during
which he no doubt mulled things over, he pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and
let me grab my pack and get out. Now, left out in the middle of nowhere, I had
no choice but to put my thumb out again and hope for the best. I was almost totally ignorant of
the history, politics and cultural differences of the countries I was exploring; even at age 29,
especially Asia & the Islamic world, it was all very much a learn as you go experience.

Within a few minutes, a college aged young man on a motor scooter stopped
and I climbed on behind him with my heavy pack. He took me to his house in a small town
midway between the border and Tabriz. Like so many young Iranians at the time, he spoke
reasonable English. (This was when American influence was at its peak, two decades after the US and
Britain had deposed the legally elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh, and
replaced him with Mohammed Rez Pahlavi, initially as the Shah (or King) of Iran.- Starting at the border crossing and forever on-wards, there were huge posters of the Shah, his wife ‘Empress’ Farah and their little son Reza.) It seemed that on the day of arrival in Iran I had lucked out, with an offer of food
and a place to stay for the night. However, just after I had spread out my sleeping bag and
undressed, a variation on the earlier scenario unfolded. The student pounced on me and tried
to fuck me. By now, I was already thinking to myself that in sexual matters, the world had
turned upside down.

I knew little about Islam, let alone about Islam and homosexuality, and hadn’t a clue about the
Shia and Sunni divisions within the Muslim world. Nothing of this kind had occurred during my previous two visits to Turkey. Yes, I had been charmed by how the boys seemed
to cling to each other, arms wrapped round each other’s shoulders or simply holding hands
(pretty much every one of them always did that!) And yes, I did wonder why so many
young guys looked at me, often glued to me, either just with their eyes or sometimes
actually latching and occasionally even wanting to hold hands. In those days there were few tourists in Turkey so it partially had to do with surprise and curiosity at seeing a solo young
traveler from another culture. However despite the warm friendliness of the Turks,
no one had been so aggressive as those first two Iranians I had met. So my thoughts were
excited by the possibility that all Iranian males were homosexual.
Like the driver, the student was aggressive but not to the point of rape. Eventually it sunk in
that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me, so he laid off and let me go to sleep. Of
course he wanted to fuck me: that is the male homosexual sex act in all of Islam. Yes, it’s
definitely linked to the concept of power in their male to male relationships. In any subsequent
experiences in nine or ten other Muslim countries I’ve visited, the idea of switching
roles has never been mentioned. Cock-sucking has always been my thing, and of course all
males like to be sucked off, however no Muslim I ever met initiated oral sex. I’ve never been
receptive to playing bottom to a top. Even the reverse also has almost no appeal to me, but yes, I’ve tried both many times, hoping to get into it and derive the immense pleasure
that many, if not most gay males get from anal sex.

I hit the road early the next day, determined to make it to Tehran, still about 650 km away.
Somehow, I made it, lucking out with a trans- Europe/Asia lorry driver who, thankfully, just
drove.* Once in Tehran, I tried to check into one, and then another, moderately priced hotel, always picking the smaller hotels, the ones ordinary Iranian citizens might choose. The quality of
such places, like my budget, was at the low end, but I was fast learner, becoming
observant and critical of the facilities before committing myself. It was a tough game in
those days, no Rough Guides, Lonely Planets or Let’s Go for backpackers existed,
other than for the most popular countries. I had managed to buy a Baedeker, their
audience being the older & wealthier class of travelers. As well, once you were even slightly off the
beaten track, there were no tourist offices offering any assistance whatsoever. And rarely
could you even find a city map of any kind. Most basic information sources didn’t exist, so you
had to be pretty flexible and tenacious, able to adapt while blundering through a maze of
unforeseen challenges.

Time to talk turkey! … About shitting and pissing … specifically in Iran, and in Islam generally. I was totally exhausted from my ordeal and started to panic when hotel after
hotel told me they were full. How could that be true? And how did I figure out what this was
really all about? Finally, someone directed me to a hotel where all foreign backpack travelers
eventually ended up. Indeed, it now seems unlikely that any of those other hotels I had
visited were booked up. The reason behind maneuvering young foreigners to one hotel?
After shitting, Muslims clean their sphincters using water. Directly – with their hand and a
bucket of water. (Adding a hose to spray water around the anus came a decade or two later.)
Toilet paper is sort of ‘haram‘ (forbidden),since it is not the method prescribed by their
religion. In Tehran, as in most Muslim countries at the time, Western flush toilets did
not exist (except perhaps in the most expensive hotels). The sewage systems were
entirely gravitational. As my certified plumber former housemate repeated ad nauseam, “shit
flows downhill!” No doubt, this the most basic fact for any aspiring plumber. Toilet paper
impedes the gravitational flow of turds down the pipes, likely causing offensive, disturbing
scenarios for hotel managers accepting toilet roll carrying guests. As for myself ? Well, I
had already given up this toilet paper roll nonsense, basically because of space problems
in my backpack. Slowly had came to accept the hygienic superiority of Muslim toilet
habits, eventually reaching the point where I resent finding myself in a bathroom without a
hose or a bidet. Males in Muslim countries also have the freedom to piss outdoors, but in
Iran they must do it in the same way females do in the West – by stooping down as if sitting
on a toilet seat. Perhaps this is a Shia thing since the Sunni in Morocco pull their cocks
out at any perceived semi-private space and let it flow standing up!

My strongest memory of Tehran remains how males on the streets whistled and catcalled me,
the same way guys directed those behaviors at girls when I was growing up. I deduced that it
had to do with the fact that I always wore shorts and the sight of my bare legs turned
them on, resulting in those spontaneous reactions. I decided to see if I could get all this
seemingly widespread, if not universal, overt homosexuality to work to my advantage. Not
just spend my energy warding off unwanted advances by guys interested in fucking a
youngish looking foreigner. After a few days exploring Tehran, visiting the bazaars and the
National Museum, I decided to see what the Caspian Sea coast had to offer. I only knew
that along with the Elburz Mountains (which separates Tehran from the sea), this area was a
popular national summer vacation spot. By late afternoon I found myself in the town of
Babolsar. Fortunately, my concerns about hotels had almost totally relaxed. I figured that
things would somehow always work out. After finding no hotels around the area where the
taxi had dropped me off, instead of panicking,I took my backpack off and sat on the curb on
a street corner. Within minutes, I was surrounded by boys of various ages,
curious to find a solo backpacking foreign traveler in their midst. They figured out that I
needed to find a place to stay and I immediately had several invitations to go with them, back
to their homes. I chose a handsome mature one and followed him.

Iranian homes incorporate their own unique concept of privacy. There is the street, then the
open sewer, a sidewalk, abutted by a solid ugly wall about three meters high. You see
nothing of their world unless you are invited inside. It didn’t take me long to realize that, by
going with this boy to his home, I would suddenly gain entry into a private sphere that
otherwise, I might never have experienced. When the door opened, I entered a compound
resembling a Roman house. A four sided one story building with rooms around a garden. In
this case, it was pretty basic, belonging to a middle-class family, not poor but not
particularly prosperous. The boy spoke almost no English but his three
older sisters were surprisingly conversant in it. During the next two days, there were a
surprising number of rather naïve discussions about our two cultures. It seemed to me that I
was being examined by the young women. I must say that, to a degree, I was taken aback
by their intelligent inquisitiveness. I was also astounded the first time I saw one of them
come through the door from the outside, her floor length chador, with its mesh piece
covering the eyes, was immediately cast off, revealing a woman in a miniskirt with plenty
of makeup and jewelry! This was at a time when the impact of Women’s Liberation encouraged women, back in North America, to do the exact opposite, and cease up in Barbie doll, sex objectification outfits. I found it ironic that, for these Muslim women, wearing a miniskirt with plenty of make-up for them, was a symbol of a woman’s freedom. Even though there were no males to see them dressed as ‘sex objects’ except for their father, brother and the guest from North America.

Meals in Iranian homes take place on the floor. No chairs, just a low table upon which
the various food plates and flat bread are placed. The so-called national dish of Iran,
chelo kebab, appeared far too often and tasted too much the same for me to ever say that I
grew fond of it. Years later in Paris, I was invited to dinner at the home of a wealthy
Iranian gay immigrant and was completely blown away by the elaborate and creative
dishes he served. It made me realize that what people ate in Iran must be largely class based.
Chelo kebab is simply a helping of rice accompanied by barbecued beef kebabs. (This national dish

is somewhat analogous to the Egyptian diet, dominated by ful (fava beans mixed with various spices and herbs) and flat bread). No utensils are used, one eats with the right hand … reserving the left
hand to the sphincter at the other end. Myself, being strongly left-handed (favored for everything from
writing to washing to digging in the garden), ate of course with the same hand. What they think about that, and what Muslim parents do with their own left-handed children is unclear.

Males and females do not eat together, however because I was both their guest and
their entertainment (there was no TV or radio that I noticed), the women were present while
the father, the son and I ate. The father asked me if I liked his daughters. This gave me an
unprecedented opportunity to test his reaction to a subject dear to my heart. One daughter
served as translator. I proceeded to tell him how fine his daughters were and how much I had enjoyed
speaking with them. And then I added something like ‘but I really like your son’. The
daughter translated her father’s reaction. “My father says that he understands your feelings”.
And then, after a minute or two of chattering in Farsi, added “the boy will sleep with you
this night.” His/her words came as a total shock and are forever burned into my
memory. When the time came time, the mother escorted a giggling young man on her
arm to the door of my room. There was no bed, just a mat on the floor. After spreading
my sleeping bag over the mat, I turned off the light. We undressed and lay down next to each
other. Our feet met and rubbed up against each other. Then we nestled together as close as
possible. I draped one leg over his and gently placed my arm around his shoulders. Slowly,
nature took its course. There is nothing on this earth quite so wonderful as sleeping next to a
beautiful youth.

I do have another memory of a gay sort about the town that is worth sharing. I recall spotting
a very modern looking liquor store on the main shopping street, so I went in to take a
closer look. It very much resembled an American liquor store, well lit and full of
displays. As I was standing there, checking out the impressive selection of liquors, two
extremely effeminate men came into view, affecting a high camp act of a sort that was
better suited to a gay neighborhood in New York or Los Angeles. I tried speaking with
them but, alas, their generation (they were about 40-45) had missed out on the more
recent push to learn English. I left finding it hard to believe that this couple could survive
in the Muslim world, let alone run such a high profile liquor store. Maybe this was a sort of
necessary special place since it would have been overrun in the summer months with
people escaping the heat of Tehran.

After the Islamic Revolution, I read about the closing of all liquor outlets in Iran and thought to myself that these poor fellows were very likely executed – for their doubly haram lifestyle.

From the Caspian Sea, I traveled back to Tehran where I boarded a bus for Isfahan and
then further south to Shiraz, the two famously beautiful cities of ancient Islamic Iran. They
both are quite capable of casting a spell over any visitor with their combination of endlessly
fascinating souks and splendid masterpieces of Islamic architecture. Fortunately, in both of
these classic cities, I found reasonable small hotels that even had no problem in allowing the
occasional young man I met into my room. Like most other Westerners, I superimposed a
romanticized gloss over much of what I experienced. An Orientalist veil pervaded the
way we were, and still are, socially conditioned to look at the Islamic world. But
the truth is, before terrible events that began with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the
Islamic world was much more relaxed, gentle, hospitable and essentially benign. This was
especially true around expressing your homosexual feelings. In a few Islamic
countries it may still largely be this way, but the love that flourished before it was given a name
(through the influence of the western world) and subsequently targeted by fundamentalism
and jihadist mentality in countries like Iran, mostly survives in an underground mode.
Indeed, several of the countries I visited in my youth are potentially dangerous today.

One day, while deep within the souks of Isfahan, I remember coming upon a crowd of
men & boys gathered around a lad of about 16, laying on the ground, eyes shut, seemingly
asleep or near death. He looked so gentle & helpless, dressed in traditional clothes
including a headband or sarband. His face was that of an angel and I felt overwhelmed by the
scene. Not knowing what was happening or what I could do, I was frozen, as were the
onlookers, gazing at his beautiful form, wondering what had happened. I guessed that
he was in the middle of an epileptic seizure and that, hopefully, he would likely come out
of it after several more minutes had passed. For me it seemed like some sort of defining
moment, staring at the form of a beautiful boy lying in the dirt, surrounded by men and boys
who likely also guessed about his condition, but not knowing what to do. Having no common language and overcoming my urge to hold him in my arms, I walked away.

From Shiraz, one can easily visit Persepolis about 60 km to the north. The great palace of
the Persian Achaemenid Empire (sacked and burned by Alexander the Great) was even more
famous at the time since, in 1971, the “Shah” had held the most fabulous party at the site to
celebrate what was dubbed the 2500th anniversary of the Persian Empire. For the obvious purpose of reinforcing his position and power. I was impressed by the reliefs depicting males
holding hands and what appeared to be images of men throwing kisses at each other. Perhaps
I read too much into such images … but then, who knows what went on before religion
changed the rules.

Iran also allowed non-believers into its mosques and religious compounds. The
privacy issues around the residential architecture of Iran (as well as those of many
Muslim countries) are such that it’s easy to travel through a country without ever getting a glimpse into how people actually live their daily lives inside their personal dwellings. It was wonderful that one
could get close-up look at the architecture and elaborate decorative work found in all their
ancient mosques. But it did strike me as odd that non-believers could access holy
precincts, yet privacy issues were looked at much more seriously regarding the architecture and
rules involving in personal residences. No doubt, these are related to Islamic principals, including

how women are generally regarded as property, to be controlled entirely by men. Except in Tehran where, at least at that time, to a degree women could assert their independence, the majority of women wore full-length black chadors outside the home. Chador clad women always appeared to be scurrying from Point A to Point B, whereas the men and boys were just either carrying out their work duties or hanging out, often promenading with other men, usually in close physical contact with each other, most often holding hands.

In fact, it was never easier for me to meet other males … rather it was always a matter of
figuring out what their game was while they tried to figure out mine. Usually, they were
looking for entertainment and foreigners, (both appearing as somewhat exotic creatures
to the other). Being alone, I fit the bill and appreciated the ease with which they expressed interest. Then there is the sex thing. Islamic societies are worlds where males and females generally go
about very separate lives. Boys hang out with other boys and men, girls with other girls and
women. The contact points when and where the two genders interact are few and are
usually controlled within a strict protocol. In addition, in their world the generation gap
often seemed far less severe than in North America. Older people are generally treated with
sensitivity and kindness, something close to non-existent in North American culture.

In the complex around the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, I experienced a potentially life
threatening physical attack, one that I could have avoided if I had learned my lesson about
the volatility of a (young?) male wearing shorts. It seems that both Catholics and the Muslims share their fear of seeing the human body, albeit just a pair of male legs. An admission of and subsequent rejection of desire? So wearing shorts when I entered the ‘holy‘ precinct, with a
medium format camera dangling around my neck I was asking for it! This was likely the same outfit I had on while visiting the mosques in Isfahan and Shiraz. In the hierarchy of holy places for
the Shia, this enormous complex of mosques, mausoleums, madrasahs, including a library and
museum, no doubt attracts the most peaceful of the devout as well as the most fanatic of believers. Fortunately, I had about half an hour walking around undisturbed, admiring the art
and architecture, before a crazed-looking older man with long, disheveled green hair
approached me, started shrieking while proceeding to pound on me with his fists. I
hadn’t a clue what it was all about and I hadn’t even taken a single photo. I did, however, seem to be the only non-Muslim foreigner in the place. Fortunately, a few Iranian visitors pulled him
off me and I quickly fled back to my hotel. It only occurred to me later that I had likely
transgressed both the dress code and potentially one about photography. I’ll end
this narrative here at Mashhad where I headed south by bus on the road connecting
Iran and Herat, Afghanistan.

• I did this sort of marathon road travel a few other times – hitchhiking from Dover to
  Edinburgh in one day, including somehow managing to get through London, a vast city
  of which I had no understanding. And on a trip to Egypt, I managed to play the
  collective taxi game well enough to make it from Aswan to Alexandria in one day.
  Nowadays I’ve come to prefer a much slower pace … and looking back, I can’t imagine being
  capable of traveling such distances and meeting so many challenges in a single day on
  the road.